Executive Branch Ethics Program: Roles and Responsibilities

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In addition to the work done by OGE, the head of each executive branch agency, ethics officials, federal employees, and the public all have an important role in implementing the executive branch ethics program.
Agency leaders play a significant role in promoting an ethical culture and supporting an agency’s ethics program. The head of each executive branch agency has primary responsibility for implementing the ethics program in that agency. To administer the day-to-day activities of the ethics program, each agency head appoints individuals to serve as the agency's Designated Agency Ethics Official (DAEO) and Alternate Designated Agency Ethics Official (ADAEO). Depending on the size of the agency, there may be additional professional ethics staff supporting the ethics program. Approximately 4,500 full-time and part-time ethics officials work in the executive branch to provide employees assistance in identifying and resolving potential conflicts of interest. Their duties include collecting and reviewing employees’ financial disclosure reports, providing employees with ethics training, counseling employees on ethics and standards of conduct issues, and maintaining compliant agency ethics programs.

Ultimately, it is the responsibility of each employee to understand and abide by the ethics laws and rules. Agency ethics officials are available to help each employee fulfill these responsibilities and to ensure that employees make decisions based on the public’s interests rather than their own financial interests.

The public’s role is to assist in holding government officials accountable for carrying out their duties free from conflicts of interest. In order to foster transparency, the ethics rules allow members of the public to access various government records, such as public financial disclosure reports, OGE ethics program review reports, and agency reports of travel payments provided by non-federal sources. With this information, the public can review the processes in place to detect and resolve conflicts of interest.