Imagine.
Imagine if we could promote agricultural production that better nourishes Americans.
Imagine if we could help feed others throughout the world.
Imagine if we could help rural America thrive, and provide economic opportunity through innovation
to all Americans.
Imagine if we could preserve our Nation's natural resources through conservation, restored
forests, improved watersheds, and healthy private working lands.
This is how we imagine America.
This is our Vision.
This is the United States Department of Agriculture, the USDA.
Today, the USDA is working to achieve this vision by providing leadership on food, nutrition
and agriculture.
On rural development,
On natural resources, and more.
Proven Leadership, based on a triad of public policy, the best available science and effective
management.
And, underlying this vision and our goals is the USDA's commitment to excellence
in ethics.
Public service is a public trust.
This is especially true at USDA since it has programs and employees in every county of
the United States and its territories, and in most countries around the world.
It is paramount that our employees exhibit the highest standards of ethical conduct so
US taxpayers are confident their money is spent judiciously, and that our employees
conduct is beyond reproach.
The USDA Office of Ethics leads these efforts to ensure our stakeholders receive the services
we provide with integrity.
Located at USDA headquarters in downtown Washington DC, the employees of the Office of Ethics
are engaged in several initiatives that go beyond mere compliance with the law.
Sometimes when you look at an issue, a change of perspective can help you understand it better.
In many activities, the Office of Ethics encourages other USDA agencies to approach their operations
from a risk management perspective.
The Office of Ethics uses regular ethics training and financial disclosure reviews to help these
agencies realize the value of looking at their operations with an eye toward protecting their
reputation and increasing public confidence in USDA.
Viewing an agency's operations through
a risk management lens goes beyond merely checking compliance boxes.
It now brings ethics into the forefront of decision making, adding value by strengthening
the integrity of the process.
Office of Ethics employees routinely participate in senior management meetings throughout the
Department to teach the risk management viewpoint.
To bolster the public's confidence in the integrity of USDA's workforce,
The Office of Ethics provides advice and counsel to USDA employees.
The importance of this preventative advice cannot be overstated.
OE employees catch problems before they happen, allowing USDA to operate efficiently and ethically.
Training is useful tool for USDA employees,
but only if it's relevant, and accessible.
The Department has almost 100,000 employees, all with diverse skillsets and responsibilities,
so it's imperative that the Office of Ethics carefully tailors its training to specific
groups of employees.
Ethics training for USDA scientists will be very different than training for USDA meat
inspectors, because different issues affect each group in the workplace.
This customized approach goes well beyond complying with the law - it now makes the
training real for these employees.
The office uses innovative case studies and discussions to help our employees fully understand
ethical rules and their implications.
By setting an appropriate context and using examples that employees will actually see
on the job, we better educate employees to know how to spot ethical issues and what to
do if they see one.
This approach has yielded much better results than the required, one-size-fits-all standard
for ethics training.
Accessibility to this training is a challenge, because of the geographic distribution of
USDA employees.
We've implemented a new approach for delivery that allows any employee with a smartphone,
a tablet or computer to receive timely training.
By partnering with USDA's distance learning solution, AgLearn, the Office of Ethics will
create and distribute many useful ethics training programs to USDA employees.
At the Office of Ethics, we will continue
to find and implement new methods that go beyond merely complying with ethics rules.
As a proactive and energetic office, we look
forward to engaging with all USDA employees in the future.
Imagine.
We really can increase the public's confidence in USDA and the important work we do every
day to serve the American people.