Financial Disclosure

USDA's Systems Limited by Insufficient Top Management Support Gao ID: GGD-90-100 July 13, 1990

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO evaluated the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) financial disclosure systems to determine how USDA used those systems to detect and resolve potential conflicts between employees' outside financial interests and their official duties.

GAO found that: (1) the USDA financial disclosure system did not ensure that conflicts of interest would be detected and resolved; (2) USDA did not obtain confidential disclosure reports from employees in certain positions, since it believed that the positions did not pose significant risks; (3) USDA did not have procedures to ensure that all disclosure reports were filed and reviewed; (4) USDA did not follow procedures to ensure that employees timely filed public and confidential disclosure reports; (5) USDA reviewers did not follow a systematic approach in identifying and resolving conflicts of interest; (6) USDA reviewers did not regularly receive internal management reports on the operation and the effectiveness of the ethics program; and (7) USDA lacked adequate criteria for reviewing disclosure reports.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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