Under Wraps

The Defense Department today published a final rule in the Federal Register implementing an ethics provision of the Fiscal Year 2008 National Defense Authorization Act. The legislation requires former DOD employees who were involved with acquisition programs exceeding $10 million to obtain a written opinion from a DOD ethics counselor before jumping on the payroll of a contractor. The law applies to the first two years after officials leave their DOD jobs.

According to the legislation, the employment-seeking official's request to the ethics counselor must detail information about "government positions held and major duties in those positions, actions taken concerning future employment, positions sought, and future job descriptions, if applicable." The ethics counselor's opinion, in turn, must then discuss the "applicability of post-employment restrictions to activities that the official or former official may undertake on behalf of a contractor."

Since publishing an interim rule in January, officials received one lone comment on the issue, according to the FR notice. The commenter requested that the records of the written opinions be made available to the public.

But DOD rulemakers chose not to implement the suggestion, arguing the legislation does not "authorize" the opinion database to be publicly accessible. (Although the particular section of the law doesn't appear to prohibit this, either.)

In any case, the law tasks the DOD inspector general with conducting periodic reviews of the ethics opinions process, with the first due no later than two years after enactment of the FY-08 defense authorization legislation. That puts the due date in late January 2010.