Revolving Door Rules

While Employed With Government

• Once employees begin seeking or negotiating employment with a contractor, they must disqualify themselves from taking any actions involving that contractor.
• If negotiations are terminated, employees can once again work on issues involving that contractor.
• Federal employees cannot use government property, personnel or equipment to conduct job searches. For example, a manager cannot have his secretary type letters being sent out with his résumé.

Post-Employment

• Senior Executive Service members and political appointees face a one-year cooling-off period during which they cannot have any contact with their former agency, but they can provide advice about agency operations.
• All employees are permanently banned from representing a contractor on an issue on which they had "direct and substantial impact" during their government careers. For example, a contracting officer could not later represent a contractor on a deal she had awarded.
• Supervisors face a two-year ban on representing contractors on issues that fell under their supervision. For example, a senior acquisition official could not represent a contractor to which a contracting officer on his staff awarded work.

Specific Restrictions for Procurement Personnel

• Employees are banned from disclosing or obtaining contract bid and proposal information once they leave government.
• Employees directly involved with a procurement worth more than $100,000 must immediately notify their supervisors and designated agency officials in writing if they are offered jobs by contractors involved. Then they must either reject the job offer or not take any role in overseeing the contract.
• Employees involved with awarding, modifying or managing contracts worth more than $10 million are banned for one year from receiving compensation from that contractor. Such employees may be paid by the company's other divisions or affiliates that produce different products or services.
• Employees may request a legal opinion from their agency on whether they are covered by the one-year ban. These opinions are known as "30-day letters" because that's how long the government has to respond to the request.