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conduct; developed new briefings on professionalism that are given prior to major protective events and all overseas protective trips; and issued a user-friendly Ethics Desk Reference Guide for all employees. The ethics guide, published in January 2013, highlights the Secret Service's core values, compliance principles, standards of conduct, security clearance adjudication guidelines, and the expectation that all employees must adhere to standards of ethical conduct.

The two major recommendations made by the PRWG relating to discipline were (1) the institution of a table of penalties (the Table of Offense Codes and Penalty Guidelines, or Table of Penalties[1]) that would ensure that employees knew the consequences for specific offenses, instilling greater predictability and a sense of fairness to the disciplinary process; and (2) the creation of a separate Office of Integrity.

The development of the Table of Penalties began with the establishment of a Secret Service working group that consisted of representatives from multiple offices in the agency, including the Office of Chief Counsel, the Office of Protective Operations, the Office of Investigations, the Office of Technical Development and Mission Support, the Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information, the Office of Administration, the Security Clearance Division, and the Human Capital Division/Employee Relations Branch. Over a 6-month period, this working group benchmarked the Secret Service against other federal agencies, such as the FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the Transportation Security Administration, and developed recommendations to centralize disciplinary processes and develop a table of penalties. A second working group comprising Deputy Assistant Directors from each Secret Service directorate finalized the creation of an Office of Integrity and the Table of Penalties.

In November 2013, the Secret Service published the Table of Penalties and applied it to all future disciplinary proceedings. The Table of Penalties is intended to serve as a guide in determining appropriate corrective, disciplinary, or adverse actions for common offenses. The purpose of the Table of Penalties is to:

  • provide employees the ability to review both offenses and penalties for various types of misconduct;
  • provide consistency and predictability based on the facts of the incident; and
  • provide penalties that are not overly narrow for a particular offense that may limit the ability to take appropriate factors into consideration.

In addition and in order to better facilitate consistent discipline, the Secret Service established the Office of Integrity (ITG) on December 1, 2013, as a separate office that reports to the Deputy Director. On January 31, 2014, the functional responsibilities of

  1. ↑ See Appendix A.

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