When the Congress enacted FACA in 1972, one of the principal concerns it was responding to was that certain special interests had too much influence over federal agency decision makers. In this act, the Congress articulated certain principles regarding advisory committees, including broad requirements for balance, independence, and transparency. Specifically, FACA requires that the membership of committees be “fairly balanced in terms of points of view presented and the functions to be performed by the advisory committee.” Courts have interpreted this requirement as providing agencies with broad discretion in balancing their committees. Further, FACA requires that any legislation or agency action that creates a committee contain provisions to ensure that the advice and recommendations of the committee will be independent and not inappropriately influenced by the appointing authority (the agency) or any special interest. Finally, FACA generally requires that agencies announce committee meetings ahead of time and give notice to interested parties about such meetings. With some exceptions, the meetings are to be open to the public, and agencies are to prepare meeting minutes and make them available to interested parties. FACA also set broad guidelines for the creation and management of federal advisory committees, most of which are created or authorized by the Congress. Agencies also establish committees using their general statutory authority, and some are created by presidential directives. Further, the act requires that all committees have a charter, and that each charter contain specific information, including the committee’s scope and objectives, a description of duties, and the number and frequency of meetings. As required by FACA, advisory committee charters generally expire at the end of 2 years unless renewed by the agency or by the Congress. This requirement encourages agencies to periodically reexamine their need for specific committees. GSA, through its Committee Management Secretariat, is responsible for prescribing administrative guidelines and management controls applicable to advisory committees governmentwide. However, GSA does not have the authority to approve or deny agency decisions regarding the creation or management of advisory committees. To fulfill its responsibilities, GSA has developed guidance to assist agencies in implementing FACA requirements, provides training to agency officials, and was instrumental in creating the Interagency Committee on Federal Advisory Committee Management. GSA also has created and maintains an online FACA database (available to the public at www.fido.gov/facadatabase) for which the agencies provide and verify the data, which include committee charters; membership rosters; budgets; and, in many cases, links to committee meeting schedules, minutes, and reports. The database also includes information about a committee’s classification (e.g., scientific and technical, national policy issue, or grant review). While GSA’s Committee Management Secretariat provides FACA guidance to federal agencies, each agency also develops its own policies and procedures for following FACA requirements. Under FACA, agency heads are responsible for issuing administrative guidelines and management controls applicable to their agency’s advisory committees. Generally, federal agencies have a reasonable amount of discretion with regard to creating committees, drafting their charters, establishing their scope and objectives, classifying the committee type, determining what type of advice they are to provide, and appointing members to serve on committees. In addition, to assist with the management of their federal advisory committees, agency heads are required to appoint a committee management officer to oversee the agency’s compliance with FACA requirements, including recordkeeping. Finally, agency heads must appoint a designated federal official for each committee to oversee its activities. Among other things, the designated federal official must approve or call the meetings of the committee, approve the agendas (except for presidential advisory committees), and attend the meetings. OGE is responsible for issuing regulations and guidance for agencies to follow in complying with statutory conflict-of-interest provisions that apply to all federal employees, including special government employees serving on federal advisory committees. A special government employee is statutorily defined as an officer or employee who is retained, designated, appointed, or employed by the government to perform temporary duties, with or without compensation, for not more than 130 days during any period of 365 consecutive days. Many agencies use special government employees, either as advisory committee members or as individual experts or consultants. Special government employees, like regular federal employees, are to provide their own best judgment in a manner that is free from conflicts of interest and without acting as a stakeholder to represent any particular point of view. Accordingly, special government employees appointed to federal advisory committees are hired for their expertise and skills and are expected to provide advice on behalf of the government on the basis of their own best judgment. Special government employees are subject to the federal financial conflict-of-interest requirements, although ones that are somewhat less restrictive than those for regular federal government employees. Specifically, special government employees serving on federal advisory committees are provided with an exemption that allows them to participate in particular matters that have a direct and predictable effect on their financial interest if the interest arises from their nonfederal employment and the matter will not have a special or distinct effect on the employee or employer other than as part of a class. This exemption does not extend to a committee member’s personal financial and other interests in the matter, such as stock ownership in the employer. If a committee member has a potential financial conflict of interest that is not covered under this or other exemptions, a waiver of the conflict-of- interest provisions may be granted if the appointing official determines that the need for the special government employee’s services outweighs the potential for conflict of interest or that the conflict is not significant. This standard for granting waivers is less stringent than the standard for regular government employees. The principal tool that agencies use to assess whether nominees or members of advisory committees have conflicts of interest is the OGE Form 450, Executive Branch Confidential Financial Disclosure Report, which special government employees are required to submit annually. The Form 450 requests financial information about the committee member and the member’s spouse and dependent children, such as sources of income and identification of assets, but it does not request filers to provide the related dollar amounts, such as salaries. Even if committees are addressing broad or general issues, rather than particular matters, committee members hired as special government employees are generally required to complete the confidential financial disclosure form. Agencies appoint ethics officials who are responsible for ensuring agency compliance with the federal conflict-of-interest statutes, and OGE conducts periodic audits of agency ethics programs to evaluate their compliance and, as warranted, makes recommendations to agencies to correct deficiencies in their ethics programs. Under administrative guidance initially developed in the early 1960s, a number of members of federal advisory committees are not hired as special government employees, but are instead appointed as representatives. Members appointed to advisory committees as representatives are expected to represent the views of relevant stakeholders with an interest in the subject of discussion, such as an industry, a union, an environmental organization, or other such entity. That is, representative members are expected to represent a particular and known bias—it is understood that information, opinions, and advice from representatives are to reflect the bias of the particular group that they are appointed to represent. Because these individuals are to represent outside interests, they do not meet the statutory definition of federal employee or special government employee and are therefore not subject to the criminal financial conflict-of-interest statute. According to GSA and OGE officials, in 2004 reliable governmentwide data on the number of representative members serving on federal advisory committees were not available. In 2004, we concluded that additional governmentwide guidance could help agencies better ensure the independence of federal advisory committee members and the balance of federal advisory committees. We found that OGE guidance to federal agencies had shortcomings and did not adequately ensure that agencies appropriately appoint individuals selected to provide advice on behalf of the government as special government employees. We found that some agencies were inappropriately appointing members as representatives who, as a result, were not subject to conflict-of-interest reviews. In addition, GSA guidance to federal agencies, and agency-specific policies and procedures, needed to be improved to better ensure that agencies elicit from potential committee members information that could be helpful in determining their viewpoints regarding the subject matters being considered—information that could help ensure that committees are, and are perceived as being, balanced. Specifically, we found the following: OGE guidance on the appropriate use of representative or special government employee appointments to advisory committees had limitations that we believed were a factor in three of the agencies we reviewed continuing the long-standing practice of essentially appointing all members as representatives. That is, the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Agriculture had appointed most or all members to their federal advisory committees as representatives—even in cases where the members were called upon to provide advice on behalf of the government and thus would be more appropriately appointed as special government employees. Because conflict-of-interest reviews are required only for federal or special government employees, agencies do not conduct conflict-of-interest reviews for members appointed as representatives. As a result, the agencies could not be assured that the real or perceived conflicts of interest of their committee members who provided advice on behalf of the government were identified and appropriately mitigated. Further, allegations that the members had conflicts of interest could call into question the independence of the committee and jeopardize the credibility of the committee’s work. In addition to the FACA requirement for balance, it is important that committees are perceived as balanced in order for their advice to be credible and effective. However, we reported that GSA guidance did not address what types of information could be helpful to agencies in assessing the points of view of potential committee members, nor did agency procedures identify what information should be collected about potential members to make decisions about committee balance. Consequently, many agencies did not identify and systematically collect and evaluate information pertinent to determining the points of view of committee members regarding the subject matters being considered.