Statement of Organization, Functions, and Delegations of Authority

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES <SUBAGY>Office of the Secretary</SUBAGY> <SUBJECT>Statement of Organization, Functions, and Delegations of Authority</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of the General Counsel, Office of the Secretary, HHS. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This document revises and restates the Statement of Organization, Functions, and Delegations of Authority for the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the General Counsel (OGC). Issuance of this Statement of Organization rescinds all prior Statements of Organization. </SUM> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Sean Keveney Acting General Counsel, Office of the General Counsel, Office of the Secretary, 200 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20201. (202) 690-8454. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The Office of the Secretary (OS) Statement of Organization, Functions, and Delegations of Authority for the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the General Counsel (OGC), should now read as follows: <HD SOURCE="HD1">Section I. Mission</HD> The General Counsel is responsible for providing all legal services and advice to the Secretary, Deputy Secretary, and all subordinate organizational components of the Department, which legal advice, to the maximum extent permitted under Executive Order 14215 (Feb. 18, 2025), shall be binding on the Department unless overturned by the Secretary. Under direction of the General Counsel, the Office of the General Counsel (OGC) serves as the sole officially designated source of legal advice and services to the Department's operating and staff divisions (except the OIG) to ensure that all the operating and staff divisions receive uniform advice. OIG is authorized to have its own Office of the Counsel to the Inspector General (OCIG) with respect to matters solely within the OIG's jurisdiction. <E T="03">See</E> 62 FR 30859 (June 5, 1997). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Section II. Organization and Leadership</HD> The Office of the General Counsel, under the supervision of a General Counsel, consists of: <FP SOURCE="FP-2">1. Immediate Office</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">2. Divisions</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">3. Regional Offices</FP> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Subsection A. The Immediate Office of the General Counsel</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD3">1. The Immediate Office of the General Counsel</HD> The Immediate Office of the General Counsel consists of the General Counsel, his or her executive assistant(s), a Principal Deputy General Counsel, such other Deputy General Counsel as the Secretary deems appropriate and appoints, such other Special Assistant Deputy General Counsel, Senior Counsel, Counsel, Senior Advisors and attorneys and staff as the General Counsel deems appropriate, and the Office of Legal Resources (OLR). a. The General Counsel. The General Counsel is the chief legal officer of the Department and is directly responsible to the Secretary. b. Principal Deputy General Counsel. The Principal Deputy General Counsel is the second-ranking legal officer of the Department and is usually a non-career inferior officer appointed by the Secretary and is directly responsible to the General Counsel and the Secretary. c. Deputy General Counsel. The Deputy General Counsel report to the General Counsel and each shall be responsible for overseeing such substantive legal areas and corresponding OGC portfolios as designated by the General Counsel. Deputy General Counsel may be assigned oversight of one or more portfolios within the Office of the General Counsel. In addition, certain Deputy General Counsel may generally be responsible for OGC management and operations, oversight of OLR, and such litigation, substantive, or programmatic portfolios and other duties as determined by the General Counsel. For performance evaluation purposes, it is OGC's policy that, when feasible, a career Deputy General Counsel will be assigned to serve as the rating official for all career Associate General Counsel, Chief Counsel, the OLR Director, and any career Senior Counsel or Senior Advisor. i. Chief Counsel for Food, Research, and Drugs. One Deputy General Counsel will be appointed as the Chief Counsel for Food, Research, and Drugs and will be responsible for supervising the Associate General Counsel, and their staff, who provide legal services to the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. ii. Special Assistant Deputy General Counsel. The General Counsel may designate one or more attorneys to act as a special assistant and to carry the title Special Assistant Deputy General Counsel. Any Special Assistant Deputy General Counsel shall report directly to the General Counsel or to such Deputy General Counsel as the General Counsel may designate. d. Senior Counsel, Special Counsel, Counsel, or Senior Advisor to the General Counsel: Senior Counsel, Special Counsel, Counsel, or Senior Advisors to the General Counsel perform such duties as may be assigned to them by the General Counsel, Principal Deputy General Counsel, Deputy General Counsel, or Chief Counsel for Food, Research, and Drugs. <HD SOURCE="HD3">2. Order of Succession</HD> a. General Counsel Vacancy. In the event of the General Counsel's absence, or in the event of a “vacancy” in the position of General Counsel as a result of death, resignation, or an inability to perform the functions and duties of the office, the Principal Deputy General Counsel shall act in the General Counsel's stead, or serve as the Acting General Counsel as dictated by the Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, 5 U.S.C. 3345 <E T="03">et seq.</E> b. Principal Deputy General Counsel Vacancy. In the event of the absence of or vacancies in offices of both the General Counsel and the Principal Deputy General Counsel, the Deputy General Counsel with the greatest seniority in that position shall perform the functions of or serve as the Acting General Counsel as dictated by the Vacancies Reform Act of 1998. <HD SOURCE="HD3">3. The Office of Legal Resources, Immediate Office of the General Counsel</HD> The Office of Legal Resources shall be headed by a Director, who is responsible for providing personnel, budget, correspondence, and information technology support to the Office of the General Counsel as well as providing legal information law services through the Law Library. The Office of Legal Resources includes six branches, each headed by a Director or Manager: <FP SOURCE="FP-1">a. Budget</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">b. Correspondence</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">c. Human Capital Services</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">d. Information Technology</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">e. Legal Information</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">f. Procurement, Policy and Planning</FP> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Subsection B. Divisions</HD> Each OGC Division is under the general supervision of the General Counsel. Each OGC office head reports directly to the designated Deputy General Counsel on substantive legal matters, litigation strategy, and other matters as directed by the General Counsel. The OGC office heads who provide legal services to the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration will report directly to the Chief Counsel for Food, Research, and Drugs. There are ten divisions in the Office of the General Counsel: 1. The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) Division shall be headed by a Chief Counsel/Associate General Counsel, who reports to the General Counsel through a designated Deputy General Counsel. 2. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Division (CMSD) shall be headed by an Associate General Counsel, who reports to the General Counsel through a designated Deputy General Counsel. The Division consists of three groups each headed by a Deputy Associate General Counsel reporting to the Associate General Counsel: <FP SOURCE="FP-1">a. Litigation Group</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">b. Program Review Group</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">c. Program Integrity Group</FP> The Associate General Counsel may designate supervisory attorneys to report to the Deputy Associate General Counsel as appropriate. 3. The Children, Families, and Aging Division (CFAD) shall be headed by an Associate General Counsel, who reports to the General Counsel through a designated Deputy General Counsel. CFAD also includes a Deputy Associate General Counsel, who reports to the Associate General Counsel. The Associate General Counsel may designate supervisory attorneys to report to the Deputy Associate General Counsel as appropriate. 4. The Civil Rights, Privacy, and Technology Division (CRD) shall be headed by an Associate General Counsel, who reports to the General Counsel through a designated Deputy General Counsel. The Division will be responsible for providing legal advice on all civil rights, health policy, privacy, and related policy and enforcement matters in the Department, with the exception of defending claims filed by employees of HHS. The Division consists of two groups, each headed by a Deputy Associate General Counsel who reports to the Associate General Counsel: <FP SOURCE="FP-1">a. Civil Rights Branch</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">b. Health Information Privacy and Technology Branch</FP> 5. The Ethics Division (ETH) shall be headed by an Associate General Counsel, who reports to the General Counsel through a designated Deputy General Counsel. The Division consists of two branches, each headed by a Deputy Associate General Counsel reporting to the Associate General Counsel: <FP SOURCE="FP-1">a. Ethics Advice and Policy Branch</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">b. Ethics Program Administration Branch</FP> The Associate General Counsel and Deputy Associate General Counsel for Ethics Advice and Policy simultaneously serve by secretarial delegation as the Department's Designated Agency Ethics Official and Alternate Designate ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 25k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━