President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team on Tuesday laid out ethics rules for the changeover, which a senior official said will make for the “strictest, most far-reaching ethics rules of any transition in history.”

Transition chief John Podesta, briefing reporters at the transition team’s enormous headquarters in downtown Washington, said the rules for the transition will serve, for the most part, as a continuation of those that were in place at the Obama campaign and, later, at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) after Obama secured the party nomination.

Podesta, who served as President Clinton’s chief of staff, also said a gift ban will be put in place that is similar to that which Congress is now subjected to. The ethics guidelines only apply to the transition — not the inauguration — at least for the time being. But Podesta said announcements about the inauguration will be made at a later time.

He added that he anticipates that the contribution limit of $5,000 per person will be left intact for the inauguration.

The transition has a congressionally appropriated funds of $5.2 million, but Podesta said the transition will operate with an estimated budget of $12 million. The rest will have to be raised from individuals, Podesta said.

The transition team will employ about 450 people in Washington and Chicago.

Podesta also announced the creation of agency review teams that will start looking at about 100 governmental agencies and departments in preparation of appointments. While Podesta said the names of the people heading some of those teams will be announced later this week, noting they could start work as early as Monday.

He said that the agency reviews will look to make sure that appointees have the necessary information to be confirmed and lead their departments. The names of the reviewers will be released on the transition’s website, www.change.gov. For team leaders, names and short biographies will be released.

The combination of these efforts will contribute to the unprecedented transparency in government Obama promised during the campaign, according to Podesta.

Obama promised during the campaign to conduct full reviews of departments and agencies in an effort to eliminate programs that aren’t working in hopes of freeing up funds to pursue other policies on his agenda.

As for appointments, Podesta said Cabinet-level appointments will likely be made personally by the president-elect and likely from Chicago. White House staff announcements will be made available when necessary.

Podesta said the transition team is committed to Obama’s goal of running a transition that is “efficient, that is organized, that is bipartisan and that is more open and transparent than those before.”

Meredith McGehee of the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) said Obama’s limits on lobbyists during the transition is a nice first step but the real test on whether the new president is committed to changing the ways of Washington will come when he starts spending political capital to get difficult reforms like fixing the presidential public financing system passed into law.

McGehee called Obama’s transition policies governing lobbyists “atmospherics.”

“I’m more concerned at this point about whether he will start spending that political capital he has to make real changes in the system that are going to make a difference in the way Washington works,” she said.

Seven watchdogs including CLC, Common Cause, Democracy 21 and the League of Women Voters announced a public integrity reform agenda late last week. The groups’ main goals are repairing the presidential public financing system and creating a new public financing system for congressional races.

The groups argued that contributions to presidential and congressional campaigns from the financial sector played a major role in thwarting effective regulation and oversight and helped create the national financial crisis.

The watchdogs have had “informal contact” with the Obama transition team in the last week, McGehee said.

Susan Crabtree contributed to this article.