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Letting the Sunshine in: OGE Increases Transparency so You Can Oversee the Integrity of the Executive Branch

March 14, 2022


By: Shelley Finlayson, Chief of Staff and Program Counsel

Transparency plays an essential role in strengthening trust in government. Without this transparency, you could not meaningfully oversee the integrity of your government.

This is why OGE works every day to make sure that you have access to information about the executive branch and its leaders. In recent years, OGE has taken significant steps to improve your access to ethics disclosures and related records. Notably, OGE created the Officials’ Individual Disclosures Search Collection to make it easy to see which financial disclosure reports, ethics agreements, and ethics agreement compliance certifications are available from OGE. From this collection you can get immediate access to the financial disclosure reports and ethics agreements of the President, Vice President, cabinet secretaries, and other heads of executive branch agencies. You can also see which other top officials’ reports are available from OGE and request them by completing a short form. OGE has also created a glossary of document types and a list of frequently asked questions to help you understand what’s available, when, and where.

In addition, to make it easier to request the ethics documents for the approximately 25,000 public filers in the executive branch whose disclosures don’t come to OGE, OGE has compiled agency ethics program contact information on its website. This enables you to request those ethics documents from the agency where the official works.

You can also see what else OGE is doing to further transparency on its website. For example, you can access a library of documents that have been released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. You can review correspondence holding agencies accountable as well as responses to Congressional inquiries. You can even stay apprised of OGE’s current rulemaking activities and much more on OGE’s website. 

OGE values transparency and is committed to helping you oversee your government. It is your right to know and it is our job to help you.