Equal Employment Opportunity: Immigration and Naturalization Service's Equal Employment Opportunity Program

GAO discussed the Immigration and Naturalization Service's (INS) Equal Employment Opportunity Program (EEO), focusing on the: (1) status of the EEO complaint backlog during fiscal years (FY) 1989 through 1993; (2) timeliness of INS EEO complaint processing during FY 1989 through 1993; (3) status of INS efforts to improve EEO operations and workforce diversity between FY 1989 and 1993; and (4) number of employees promoted to supervisory and managerial positions in INS between September 1992 and September 1994 by race and gender. GAO noted that: (1) INS consistently reduced the average number of days for processing EEO complaints from 1,682 in FY 1989 to 484 in FY 1993; (2) INS more than tripled its EEO program resources from $893,000 in FY 1993 to $3.1 million in FY 1995 as a result of its EEO Task Force findings; (3) 34 of the 36 recommendations to improve the representation of African-Americans and other minorities have been implemented or are in various stages of implementation; (4) INS promoted 1,002 employees to supervisory and managerial positions between September 30, 1992, and September 30, 1994; and (5) minorities accounted for about 40 percent of the promotions, women accounted for about 32 percent of the promotions, and African-American men and women accounted for about 11 percent of the promotions.