National Science Foundation: Better Guidance on Employee Book Writing Could Help Avoid Ethics Problems

A new draft policy and procedures to reflect the recommendation were circulated and received extensive comments. One more revision was to be circulated for comments. The new policy and procedures were expected to be final by February 1994. In early 1994, NSF ceased work on its policy covering book writing because of the President's Executive Order 12681, requiring all federal agencies, as part of reinventing government, to reduce internal management directives by half. In March 1995, NSF issued a staff memorandum implementing the executive order at NSF by calling for the cancellation of many existing and proposed regulations. Thus, according to an Office of General Counsel official responsible for drafting the book-writing policy, in order to be consistent with the executive order, the policy probably will not be issued. As of August 1996, the status had not changed in three years.