COIC Disclosure Process for 2018

CATEGORIES: Announcements

Complete your annual COIC disclosure (for 2018) now. You should also update the COIC disclosure form throughout the year as necessary. Instructions for employees and supervisors are below.

Instructions for employees:

Per the Conflicts of Interest and Commitment (COIC) Policy and the COIC Procedures, Applications, and Guidance Document:

All Faculty, P&S staff, Contract Staff, Graduate Assistants and Postdoctoral Scholars are required to disclose whether or not they believe they have a conflict. Failure to disclose may result in sanctions or disciplinary actions in accordance with the Iowa State University misconduct policies and procedures.

The COIC disclosure is accomplished through an electronic process on AccessPlus. The COIC Disclosure site contains a screening question and then a “Graduate Assistant Form”, “Short Form” or “Standard Form” for your disclosure based upon your position responsibilities and your answer to the screening question.

Instructions for COIC Disclosure

  1. Sign into AccessPlus, click on the “Employee” tab, and then click on “COIC Disclosure” on the left side bar.
  2. In the upper left hand corner, select “Create/Update”.
  3. Answer the “Screening Question”.
  4. Answer the questions on the “Graduate Assistant Form”, “Short Form” or “Standard Form” to which you are directed. If asked to provide information about one of your external activities, please give enough detail that reviewers not familiar with your situation can understand. Avoid abbreviations when possible.
  5. Verify that your supervisor (or the “major administrative unit head” for your employing department) is listed in the supervisor field, or use the drop down list to select your supervisor or unit head.
  6. Click on the “Submit” button to forward the form to your supervisor for review.

Thank you for your cooperation. Questions about the process of COIC disclosure may be directed to coi@iastate.edu.

Instructions for Supervisors:

We need your help to assure this is done for all applicable personnel in your unit. Please remind your personnel to disclose and then review their disclosures.

Supervisors should do the following:

  1. Send (via email) a message to all full-time and part-time faculty, P&S staff, contract staff, graduate assistants, and postdoctoral scholars in your unit with instructions for completing the COIC Disclosure. Use the above section for employees.

  2. Check to be sure that everyone who is required to disclose actually discloses. You can use the COIC Submittal Summary for Reviewer to track who in your unit has disclosed in the last 12 months and who has not. This report is available at the “uBusiness” tab. Click on “COI Reports”, then Click “COIC Submittal Summary for Reviewer”. If a disclosure is listed as “none”, it means that the employee has not disclosed in the last 12 months as required by ISU policy. Please ask them to disclose promptly.

    Note that the Procedures, Applications, and Guidance document provides a target completion date for 2018 COIC disclosures of March 31. The target completion date provides you a mechanism to ensure all persons required to disclose have done so in a timely manner.

  3. Review/discuss your employees’ disclosures. Your role as a supervisor/major administrative unit head is to review each of the disclosures for employees in your unit. This is accomplished in AccessPlus. Only disclosures containing at least one “yes” response will route to you for review. It is also a best practice to discuss such external activities (as reported on the disclosure) at the annual performance evaluation.

  4. To access and review the disclosure forms, start at the “uBusiness” tab in AccessPlus. Click on “e-Forms Approval”, then, under “Browse Forms,” click “For Approval” (with “COI DSCLR” in the “E-Form Type” drop-down field). Each of the submitted forms with at least one “yes” response should display. Click on the form you wish to review and after you have reviewed the responses, (at the end) click to accept and “Reviewed” will appear there.

    1. If it is clear that the employee did not fill out the form correctly, you may reject the form. To do so, click on the “Reject” button at the bottom of the disclosure. The system will ask you to add a comment. The comment will be visible only to you and authorized individuals involved in the review process; it will not be visible to the employee. An e-mail will then be sent to the employee informing him or her that you have rejected the form. We recommend you follow up with the employee to explain the corrections needed.
    2. Note that, even if you plan to accept a form, you can still add comments on the form to document your understanding of the situations disclosed or to assist review by personnel involved in the COIC Disclosure review process. To do so, click on the “Add Comment” button and type in your comments. Your comments will be visible only to you and persons involved in the COIC Disclosure review process; the comments will not be visible to the employee.
    3. If you wish to view all the disclosures that have ever been routed to you, click “Browse Forms by E-Form Key.”
    4. If you wish to view only disclosures starting with a specific last name, type the last name into the E-Form Key box then click “Browse Forms by E-Form Key.”

  5. Discuss the COIC Disclosures with your employees if you have questions whether it is the annual disclosure by the employee, or an update throughout the year.

  6. Initiate a Management Plan, if needed.
    1. If an employee answers “yes” to questions in Section I or II of the Standard Form, s/he may have a conflict involving research and a significant financial interest or management role, which would require management at the VPR Office level, with your assistance. A representative of the VPR unit will follow up.
    2. If an employee answers “yes” to any other questions on the Standard Form, or any questions on the Short Form, follow up with the employee and decide whether a management plan would be beneficial at your unit level. ORI will also review these disclosures, make recommendations for when a department management plan is advised, and provide a template you may use. An excellent time to review COIC Disclosures and management plans with employees is during their annual performance review.

If you have questions about the process, please contact Brooke Langlitz at 4-7793, Lynn Wellnitz at 4-3324 or coi@iastate.edu