Background

This document presents the results of GAO’s survey of major defense contractor ethics programs. To obtain information on contractors’ ethics programs, we developed a Web-based survey. We sent the survey to major defense contractors, defined as any company that was awarded DOD contracts in fiscal year 2006 totaling more than $500 million. Originally, we emailed 59 contractors but later determined that two should have been excluded because they were owned by foreign governments, so 57 were included in our review; we received completed surveys from all 57. The survey was activated on September 9, 2008 and closed on March 13, 2009. In this document, we show the aggregate survey results. We do not include responses for all survey questions. For example, we do not report responses for questions about demographics, open-ended questions, or questions with high non-response rates. A more detailed discussion of our scope and methodology and of our survey results is contained in our report entitled, "Defense Contracting Integrity: Opportunities Exist to Improve DOD's Oversight of Contractor Ethics Programs", GAO-09-591. We conducted our survey work from September 9, 2008 to March 13, 2009 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.

Instructions for Viewing this Survey

How to View The Surveys

• Click on the Table of Contents link located in the lower right of this screen. To read to the bottom of the screen, you may need to use your scroll bar on the right side of this screen.
• The first screen in the survey is an introduction and general information that was sent to and viewed by recipients of the survey. There are no survey results to view on this screen. This screen is for information only and you may by-pass it by clicking on Next located at the bottom of the screen in the lower right.
• The survey may have links to allow respondents to bypass inapplicable questions (skip patterns). While these were active links during the data collection period, they have now been disabled.
• When a respondent wrote a narrative response to a question, we sometimes present the percent of respondents making a comment.

How to View the Responses for Each Question

• To view the responses to each question, click on the question number (Links to survey questions will look like this: 1., etc.).
• After viewing the responses to each question, click on the "x" in the upper right corner of your screen to close that window and return to the questionnaire.

How to Return to a Page That You Previously Visited

• To return to the last screen you viewed, click the Previous button on the lower right corner of the screen.
• Click the Next button to advance to the next screen.

How to Make the Font Larger on Your Screen

• You can make the font larger by changing your browser setting. For example, on Internet Explorer you can change the font size by going to View and selecting Text Size.

Contact Information?

• If you have questions concerning these data, please contact John Needham
or (202)512-4841.