The STOCK Act: An Independent Review of the Impact of Providing Personally Identifiable Financial Information Online

The Ethics in Government Act of 1978 requires the filing of publicly-available annual financial disclosures by senior officials in all three branches of the federal government. Congress amended the Act in 2012 with the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act (STOCK Act) that requires online posting of executive and legislative branch officials’ financial forms on April 15, 2013, as well as the creation of a searchable, sortable, public database for these financial forms in October 2013.

Concerns about the potential impact of the Act’s online posting prompted Congress to delay certain of these online posting requirements and to direct the National Academy of Public Administration to “examine the nature, scope, and degree of risk, including risk of harm to national security, law enforcement, or other Federal missions and risk of endangerment, including to personal safety and security, financial security (such as through identity theft), and privacy, of officers and employees and their family members, that may be posed by website and other publication of financial disclosure forms and associated personal information.”