Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the federal affirmative employment program, focusing on: (1) the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's (EEOC) major workforce data requirements for agency multiyear affirmative employment plans; and (2) agency compliance with requirements.
GAO found that: (1) 27 of 35 agencies, employing 98 percent of the federal workforce, complied with the EEOC requirement to identify major occupations in their multiyear affirmative employment plans, but the criteria for selecting those occupations varied; (2) although EEOC required each agency to submit summary analyses by grade groupings for its total workforce, it did not require data or analysis of major occupations by grade level and, as a result, agencies did not identify and address representation disparities that existed between upper and lower grades of major occupations; (3) EEOC approved 17 agency plans that did not include the required workforce analysis of major occupations, in an attempt to prevent further delays of otherwise appropriate affirmative employment plans; (4) agencies cited personnel changes in agency equal employment opportunity (EEO) offices and the inaccessibility of EEO data as the main reasons for late submissions of plans; (5) although the 18 agencies that complied with EEOC major occupation reporting requirements provided actual workforce numbers or percentages of employees in their major occupations, additional analyses of data could help to develop representation indexes and estimates of the number of individuals needed to attain full representation in major occupations; (6) major occupation data by grade level was needed to identify and to help eliminate those barriers that prevented the upward movement of individuals within major occupations; and (7) the compilation of representative information by common occupations could facilitate EEO information sharing among agencies.
