U.S. GAO - Equal Opportunity

Recent Reports

Qi Tech, LLC

We sustain the protest in part and deny it in part.

B-416711.8,B-416711.9

Equal Employment Opportunity: Progress Made on GAO Recommendations to Improve Nondiscrimination Oversight, but Challenges Remain

Published: Sep 19, 2019.

Publicly Released: Sep 19, 2019.

Equal Employment Opportunity: DHS Could Better Address Challenges to Ensuring EEO in Its Workforce

Published: Jul 24, 2019.

Publicly Released: Jul 24, 2019.

Board Diversity: Strategies to Increase Representation of Women and Minorities

Published: Jun 20, 2019.

Publicly Released: Jun 20, 2019.

High School Sports: Many Schools Encouraged Equal Opportunities, but Education Could Further Help Athletics Administrators under Title IX

Published: May 10, 2018.

Publicly Released: Jun 11, 2018.

Minority- and Women-Owned Business Contracting: Analysis of DOD Contract Awards, Fiscal Years 2010-2016

Published: Dec 18, 2017.

Publicly Released: Dec 18, 2017.

View More Reports

Open Recommendations

Equal Employment Opportunity: DHS Could Better Address Challenges to Ensuring EEO in Its Workforce

Show

6 Open Recommendations

Agency Affected	Recommendation	Status
Department of Homeland Security	The Secretary of Homeland Security should develop performance metrics for the department's EEO program including a mechanism for tracking progress towards eliminating barriers. (Recommendation 1)	Open When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Department of Homeland Security	DHS component EEO Directors, in consultation with the Deputy Officer for EEO and Diversity, should develop policies and procedures to help ensure that their component EEO programs have action plans for addressing deficiencies in their Management Directive 715 (MD-715) reports. (Recommendation 2)	Open When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Department of Homeland Security	The Deputy Officer for EEO and Diversity should develop a formal staffing model for its EEO program. (Recommendation 3)	Open When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Department of Homeland Security	DHS component EEO Directors, in collaboration with the Deputy Officer for EEO and Diversity, should develop component formal staffing models. (Recommendation 4)	Open When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Department of Homeland Security	The Deputy Officer for EEO and Diversity should develop policies and procedures for responding in a complete and timely manner to EEOC's feedback letters. (Recommendation 5)	Open When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Department of Homeland Security	The Secretary of Homeland Securityin consultation with the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) and EEOC, and other agencies and components, as relevantshould analyze options for granting additional authorities to the Deputy Officer for EEO and Diversity to ensure DHS components comply with MD-715 guidance, including the authority of the Deputy Officer for EEO and Diversity to certify components' MD-715 reports. (Recommendation 6)	Open When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

High School Sports: Many Schools Encouraged Equal Opportunities, but Education Could Further Help Athletics Administrators under Title IX

Show

1 Open Recommendations

Agency Affected	Recommendation	Status
Office for Civil Rights	The Department of Education's Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights should determine the extent to which Title IX coordinators at the K-12 level are aware of and using the tools recommended in OCR's existing guidance and any barriers preventing their use of this guidance, and use this information in OCR's efforts to encourage them to work with athletics administrators on ensuring equal athletic opportunities. (Recommendation 1)	Open In November 2018, the Office for Civil Rights sent an e-mail to its Regional Directors to inform them of GAO's report, remind them of the importance of coordination between Title IX coordinators and athletics administrators, and encourage them to look for opportunities in their investigations and compliance work to examine the role of Title IX coordinators at the K-12 level. Agency officials also said they sent a letter to Title IX coordinators reminding them of the tools available to them under Title IX. While these are important first steps, as we noted in our report, we continue to believe the systemic approach we recommended is necessary. We will close the recommendation if Education demonstrates that any of these steps results in obtaining new information about the extent to which K-12 Title IX coordinators are aware of and using existing Title IX tools, and any barriers they face in doing so, and that they have used this information to inform their work with Title IX coordinators.

Voters with Disabilities: Observations on Polling Place Accessibility and Related Federal Guidance [Reissued on December 4, 2017]

Show

1 Open Recommendations

Agency Affected	Recommendation	Status
Department of Justice	The Attorney General should study the implementation of federal accessibility requirements in the context of early in-person voting and make any changes to existing guidance that are determined to be necessary as a result of the study. (Recommendation 1)	Open The Department of Justice (DOJ) agreed with this recommendation and stated it would make any changes to existing guidance that it determines to be necessary as a result of the study. DOJ also outlined its efforts to enforce the protections for voters with disabilities found in federal law. As of October 2019, DOJ indicated that the agency planned to study these issues and has not made any changes to its guidance. We will consider closing this recommendation when the agency has completed these efforts.

Diversity in the Technology Sector: Federal Agencies Could Improve Oversight of Equal Employment Opportunity Requirements

Show

5 Open Recommendations

Agency Affected	Recommendation	Status
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission	The Chair of the EEOC should develop a timeline to complete the planned effort to clean Integrated Mission System data for a one-year period and add missing industry code data. (Recommendation 1)	Open As part of an effort to overhaul its IMS data system, EEOC has begun developing an Employer Master List that will provide a source of employer information, including industry codes, but EEOC told us that it has not yet completed this effort. It anticipates this system will be more fully developed by spring 2020. It is important for EEOC to collect sufficient information through its Employer Master List and use it to analyze charge data by industry.
Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs	The Director of OFCCP should analyze internal process data from closed evaluations to better understand the cause of delays that occur during compliance evaluations and make changes accordingly. (Recommendation 2)	Open In June 2019, OFCCP officials reported that OFCCP's procedures outlined in the Active Case Enforcement Directive (DIR 2011-01) caused delays in case closures, but OFCCP did not indicate that this conclusion resulted from the recommended analysis of internal process data from closed evaluations. OFCCP officials reported that the agency's aged case rate-defined as a case which is open for more than 730 days and has not been referred for further enforcement-has dropped from 27.7 percent in fiscal year 2017 to 20.9 percent in fiscal year 2019. However, it did not report on changes in case outcomes. In September 2019, OFCCP officials told us they continue to look for ways to address delays with effective policies that make the agency more efficient. We maintain that OFCCP should determine the root causes of delays based on data analysis of actual evaluations to demonstrate that its policy changes are accurately targeting the causes of these delays.
Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs	The Director of OFCCP should assess the quality of the methods used by OFCCP to incorporate consideration of disparities by industry into its process for selecting contractor establishments for compliance evaluation. It should use the results of this assessment in finalizing its procedures for identifying contractor establishments at greatest risk of noncompliance. (Recommendation 4)	Open In its agency response to our November 2017 report, OFCCP officials reported that the agency was exploring the use of U.S. Census Bureau and administrative data to refine its selection process to focus on industries with a greater likelihood of noncompliance. In January 2019, DOL officials reported that DOL had revised its scheduling methodology to include industries with the highest rates of violations. OFCCP published the scheduling list in March 2019 and its field offices started scheduling cases in May 2019. OFCCP stated it will continue to monitor results from this revised scheduling methodology to determine its effectiveness. It will be important for OFCCP to refine these methods based on its experiences with them. This new process is a step toward focusing efforts on industries at greater risk of potential noncompliance with nondiscrimination or affirmative action requirements. We will consider closing this recommendation when these efforts are complete.
Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs	The Director of OFCCP should evaluate the current approach used for identifying entities for compliance review and determine whether modifications are needed to reflect current workplace structures and locations or to ensure that subcontractors are included. (Recommendation 5)	Open In fiscal year 2019, OFCCP evaluated its current approach for identifying subcontractors for review. OFCCP stated that the current approach does not reliably include subcontractors in the pool from which contractors are scheduled because there is no government or public database that captures the complete universe of subcontractors and other important data. In June 2019, OFCCP submitted revisions to its process to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for approval. We will consider closing this recommendation when these efforts are complete.
Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs	The Director of OFCCP should evaluate the Functional Affirmative Action Program to assess its usefulness as an effective alternative to an establishment-based program, and determine what improvements, if any, could be made to better encourage contractor participation. (Recommendation 6)	Open OFCCP has taken steps to encourage contractors to use the FAAP program without fully evaluating it as an alternative to the establishment-based program. Evaluating the FAAP could help OFCCP improve its ability to achieve its objectives and may provide broader insight for OFCCP's overall enforcement approach. We will consider closing this recommendation when these efforts are complete.

View More Recommendations