U.S. Department of Agriculture
Recommendations and Options to Address Management Deficiencies in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights
GAO-09-62, Oct 22, 2008
Additional Materials:
Contact:
For decades, numerous federal reports have described serious weaknesses in USDA's civil rights programs--in particular, in resolving discrimination complaints and providing minority farmers with access to programs. In 2002, Congress authorized the position of Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights (ASCR) at USDA to provide leadership for resolving these long-standing problems. GAO was asked to assess USDA's efforts to (1) resolve discrimination complaints, (2) report on minority participation in farm programs, and (3) strategically plan its efforts. GAO also reviewed experiences of other federal agencies to develop options for addressing the issues. This report is based on new and prior work, including analysis of ASCR's discrimination complaint management, strategic planning, and interviews with officials of USDA and other agencies, as well as 20 USDA stakeholder groups.
ASCR's difficulties in resolving discrimination complaints persist--ASCR has not achieved its goal of preventing backlogs of complaints. The credibility of USDA's efforts has been and continues to be undermined by ASCR's faulty reporting and disparities in ASCR's data. Even such basic information as the backlog of complaints is subject to wide variation in ASCR's reports to the public and Congress. For example, ASCR's public claim in July 2007 that it had successfully reduced a backlog of about 690 discrimination complaints in fiscal year 2004 and held its caseload to manageable levels drew a questionable portrait of progress. By July 2007, ASCR's backlog had surged to 885 complaints and ASCR officials were in the midst of planning to hire attorneys to address that backlog. Also, some steps ASCR had taken to speed up its work may have sometimes been counterproductive and adversely affected the quality of its work. ASCR does not have a plan to correct these problems. USDA published three annual reports on minority farmers' participation in farm programs, as required by law. However, USDA considers much of its data to be unreliable because they are based on employees' visual observations about participants' race and ethnicity that may not be correct. USDA states that it needs the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) approval to collect more reliable data. ASCR started to seek OMB's approval in 2004 but, as of August 2008, had not followed through to obtain approval. ASCR's strategic planning does not address key steps needed to ensure USDA provides fair and equitable services to all customers and upholds the civil rights of its employees. For example, strategic planning should be based to a large extent on the perspectives of stakeholders, but stakeholders' views are not explicitly reflected in ASCR's plan. Also, ASCR could better measure performance to gauge its progress. ASCR's strategic plan also does not link funding with anticipated results or discuss the potential for using performance information for identifying USDA's performance gaps. The experience of other agencies in addressing significant performance issues provides important insights and options that are relevant for addressing certain long-standing ASCR issues. First, Congress required executives at three federal agencies to be subject to statutory performance agreements. Such an agreement for ASCR could be used to achieve specific expectations by providing additional incentives and mandatory public reporting. Second, Congress has authorized oversight boards for a variety of purposes, including one for the Internal Revenue Service to oversee performance. A USDA civil rights oversight board could be authorized to oversee USDA's activities to identify weaknesses that need to be addressed and to provide transparency. Third, an effective USDA ombudsman--one who is independent, impartial, fully capable of conducting meaningful investigations and who can maintain confidentiality--could assist in resolving civil rights concerns at USDA. USDA has some authority to establish an ombudsman but has not done so.
Status Legend:
Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.
- In Process
- Open
- Closed - implemented
- Closed - not implemented
Recommendations for Executive Action
Recommendation: To improve USDA efforts to address civil rights issues and the participation of minority farmers and ranchers in USDA programs, the Secretary of Agriculture should develop a results-oriented department-level strategic plan for civil rights at USDA that unifies USDA's departmental approach with that of ASCR and the newly created Office of Advocacy and Outreach and that is transparent about USDA's efforts to address the concerns of stakeholders.
Agency Affected: Department of Agriculture
Status: Open
Comments: This recommendation remains open because USDA has only partially implemented it. As of April 2010, according to agency officials, USDA planned to implement this recommendation as part of the ongoing department-wide strategic planning process for fiscal years 2011-2015. Officials in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights expected to base department-level strategic planning for Civil Rights in part on a report, due in October 2010, from a contractor that was assessing the civil rights activities of various USDA entities and speaking to officials and farmers in 14 states. USDA established the Office of Advocacy and Outreach in November 2009. To ensure the concerns of stakeholders are addressed by the strategic plan, a draft report summarizing the information gleaned from previous meetings with community-based organizations was provided to the Secretary in August 2009. However, USDA had not yet issued a results-oriented department-level strategic plan for civil rights that unifies the departmental approach with that of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights and the Office of Advocacy and Outreach and that is transparent about USDA's efforts to address the concerns of stakeholders.
Recommendation: To improve USDA efforts to address civil rights issues and the participation of minority farmers and ranchers in USDA programs, the Secretary of Agriculture should work expeditiously to obtain Office of Management and Budget's approval to collect the demographic data necessary for reliable reporting on race and ethnicity by USDA program.
Agency Affected: Department of Agriculture
Status: Open
Comments: This recommendation remains open because USDA has only partially implemented it. As of April 2010, according to agency officials, the Office of Advocacy and Outreach had developed a voluntary form that each applicant would fill out that asks for three items--race, ethnicity, and gender. The form would be implemented by the Farm Service Agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and Rural Development, the three agencies identified in the 2008 Farm Bill, according to USDA officials. USDA planned to finalize the voluntary self-identification form and forward it to the Office of Management and Budget. However, as of April 2010, USDA had not yet submitted its proposed data collection form to the Office of Management and Budget; USDA also had no plans to expand the data collection to other agencies.
Recommendation: To improve USDA efforts to address civil rights issues and the participation of minority farmers and ranchers in USDA programs, the Secretary of Agriculture should obtain an expert, independent, and objective legal examination of the basis, quality, and adequacy of a sample of USDA's prior investigations and decisions on civil rights complaints, along with suggestions for improvement.
Agency Affected: Department of Agriculture
Status: Open
Comments: This recommendation remains open because USDA has only partially implemented it. As of April 2010, according to agency officials, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights had hired a contractor to perform this work. The contractor had looked at a sample of USDA's prior civil rights investigations and was making suggestions for improvement, both areas envisioned by the recommendation. However, USDA has not yet provided documentary evidence that the contractor has provided a legal examination of the basis, quality, and adequacy of a sample of USDA's prior investigations and decisions on civil rights complaints.
Recommendation: To improve USDA efforts to address civil rights issues and the participation of minority farmers and ranchers in USDA programs, the Secretary of Agriculture should develop and implement a plan to ensure the accuracy, completeness and reliability of ASCR's databases on customer and employee complaints, and that provides for independent validation of ASCR's data quality.
Agency Affected: Department of Agriculture
Status: Open
Comments: This recommendation remains open because USDA has only partially implemented it. As of April 2010, according to agency officials, USDA had migrated all of the information in three databases related to program complaints into one database. Agency officials were in the early stages of working with the Office of the Chief Information Officer to validate and verify the data, including identifying any gaps that may exist. However, USDA had not yet conducted the steps envisioned by the recommendation for data on employee complaints.
Recommendation: To improve USDA efforts to address civil rights issues and the participation of minority farmers and ranchers in USDA programs, the Secretary of Agriculture should prepare and implement an improvement plan for resolving discrimination complaints that sets time frame goals and provides management controls for resolving complaints from beginning to end.
Agency Affected: Department of Agriculture
Status: Open
Comments: This recommendation remains open because USDA has only partially implemented it. As of April 2010, according to agency officials, USDA had taken a number of steps aimed at implementing this recommendation. Among the most relevant actions to date, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights had developed standard operating procedures for intake, including the number of Final Agency Decisions to be completed per year, and was internally reviewing every completed Final Agency Decision on program and employee complaints. However, USDA had not yet set time frame goals for resolving complaints or developed management controls for resolving complaints at all stages from beginning to end.
Recommendation: To improve USDA efforts to address civil rights issues and the participation of minority farmers and ranchers in USDA programs, the Secretary of Agriculture should further explore the potential for an ombudsman office to contribute to addressing the civil rights concerns of USDA customers and employees, including seeking legislative authority, as appropriate, to establish such an office and to ensure its effectiveness, and advise USDA's congressional oversight committees of the results.
Agency Affected: Department of Agriculture
Status: Open
Comments: This recommendation remains open because USDA has only partially implemented it. As of April 2010, according to agency officials, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights had convened a team that studied the ombudsman concept and concluded that an Office of the Ombudsman should be implemented at USDA through legislation. In September 2009, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights submitted draft legislation to the Secretary of Agriculture that would accomplish this. As of April 2010, the draft legislation was still being reviewed by the Office of the Secretary. The agency had not yet sought legislative authority to estalish an ombudsman office, nor had it advised its congressional oversight committees of its study of this issue.
Recommendations for Congressional Consideration
Recommendation: To better ensure sufficient oversight and management direction are provided to guide USDA's civil rights efforts, to make responsibility for improvement clear, and to make USDA's performance more transparent, Congress may wish to consider establishing a USDA civil rights oversight board.
Agency Affected: Congress
Status: Open
Comments: As of April 2009, agency officials stated that they were not opposed to this matter for congressional consideration, but believed other actions the agency planned to take in response to GAO's recommendations would render this step unnecessary.
Recommendation: To better ensure sufficient oversight and management direction are provided to guide USDA's civil rights efforts, to make responsibility for improvement clear, and to make USDA's performance more transparent, Congress may wish to consider making USDA's Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights subject to a statutory performance agreement.
Agency Affected: Congress
Status: Open
Comments: As of April 2009, agency officials stated that they were not opposed to this matter for congressional consideration, but believed other actions the agency planned to take in response to GAO's recommendations would render this step unnecessary.