Agenda
Welcome - Chair Dominguez
Opening Statements
Question and Answer Session
Question and Answer Session
Question and Answer Session
Question and Answer Session
During the period November 9, 2002, through September 4, 2003, the Commission acted on 89 items vote by Notation Vote:
Introductory Statements by Chair and Commissioners
Chair Cari M. Dominguez
Vice Chair Naomi C. Earp
Commissioner Paul Steven Miller
Commissioner Leslie E. Silverman
MORNING PANELS - 9:30 A.M.
Panel 1: Experts on Government Reform: Scanning the external factors driving the need for change
Q&As by Commissioners
Panel 2: NAPA & EEOC: EEOC begins process of assessing its organizational structure
Panel 2: NAPA & EEOC: EEOC begins process of assessing its organizational structure
Q&As by Commissioners
Panel 3: EEOC Senior Managers/Headquarters: Current state of the EEOC: New Realities
Q&As by Commissioners
Panel 4: EEOC Field Staff: Perspectives on change
Q&As by Commissioners
Panel 5: Stakeholder Groups: Recommendations to improve efficiency and effectiveness of EEOC delivery of services to the public
Q&As by Commissioners
The meeting will come to order. Good morning. On behalf of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, I join with my fellow Commissioners in welcoming all of you here this morning.
We're very glad you're here and greatly appreciate your taking precious time out of your day to come and participate in this public meeting. Your presence here reflects the importance of the issues that we're going to be discussing today, and our shared commitment to ensuring that the outcome serves the interests of our nation's working men and women.
We have with us senior representatives from the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management, as well as Senate and House Staff. I am very pleased that our union leadership, along with a number of EEOC district directors and regional attorneys, are able to be here with us as well.
We also have a number of officials from the International Association of Official Human Rights Agencies, IAOHRA, many of whom represent the Fair Employment Practices Agencies that are EEOC's partners on state and local levels. IAOHRA has submitted a very thoughtful set of comments which are most welcome and will be made part of the public record.
Special greetings to our EEOC staff nationwide who are listening to these proceedings via telephone hookup in all of our field offices. And of course, I very much want to welcome and thank our panel members this morning. Your presence here today enhances the discourse that we're going to be carrying out, and we could not advance our efforts without your being here.
So thank you very much. I'm going to introduce the members of the panels individually throughout the day.
But before we get started, I am pleased to have this opportunity to introduce our Vice Chair, Naomi Earp, who was sworn in on April 28th of this year, and also our General Counsel, Eric Dreiband, who joined us four weeks ago. So this is their first public meeting, and it has certainly strengthened our forum and our leadership at the Commission.
At this point, let me ask Bernadette Wilson to announce any notation votes that have taken place since our last Commission meeting.
Ms. Wilson?
MS. WILSON: Good morning, Madam Chair, and welcome back to EEOC, Madam Vice Chair, and, Commissioners, I'm Bernadette Wilson from the Executive Secretariat.
During the period November 9th, 2002, through September 4th, 2003, the Commission acted on 89 items by notation vote.
VICE Chair EARP: Madam Chair, I move that the list of items approved by notation vote since the last meeting be entered into the record as if read in its entirety.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Is there a second?
COMMISSIONER SILVERMAN: I second.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Any discussion?
[No response.]
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Hearing none, all in favor?
Opposed?
The ayes have it, and the motion is carried.
MS. WILSON: Madam Chair, it's appropriate at this time to have a motion to close a portion of the next Commission meeting.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Do I have a motion?
VICE CHAIR EARP: So moved.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Second?
COMMISSIONER SILVERMAN: I second.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: All in favor?
Opposed?
The ayes have it, and the motion is carried.
It's been nearly 40 years since the Commission was established as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While the world and the workplace have changed dramatically during that time, our service delivery infrastructure has remained virtually unmodified.
The time has come for a good look-see at the Agency. Indeed, we would be remiss in our responsibilities if we failed to examine the trends and issues that are driving the economy and fueling the workplace and how those issues impact the way we carry out our responsibilities at the Commission.
Shifting demographics and an explosion of technological innovations, globalization, and a heightened state of security alert have converged in the workplace to require the Commission to be more flexible and adaptable in its enforcement role.
Our final destination remains the same: to eradicate discrimination and ensure equal employment opportunity; but our manner of traveling to get there must be upgraded if we're not going to be overtaken by leaner, faster carriers.
After a briefing on the financial state of the Commission, my very first act as Chair of the Commission, August 6, 2001, I regret to say, was to authorize an agency wide hiring freeze. That freeze, with a few critical exceptions, remains in effect today. This is not the tone a new leader wants to set beginning an administration, but unfortunately it's the way we had to start, to get our arms around the budget, and get our arms around the constraints that we were facing.
With 81 percent of our budget devoted to fixed expenses, our top priority has been to preserve existing jobs, avoid furloughs, and this leaves little room for discretionary investment in human capital, including the redeployment of resources where needed.
Keeping pace with progress relies upon retaining and attracting dedicated employees. Competition for talent demands that we provide our people the recognition, training and development that they deserve. Attention to these requirements will put us in good stead to ensure a high-performing workforce and a strong leadership for tomorrow.
In the meantime, employer profiles have changed as well. Small and midsize companies have become the fastest-growing respondent segment of our charge activity. These smaller companies tend to shun big cities, preferring to deliver products and services from lower-cost areas. Yet our presence continues to be, for the most part, in downtown areas.
As a public service agency, we have a choice to make. We can disregard these external indicators and keep everything the same, continuing to face budgetary constraints and to forego much needed human capital investment in the process, or we can seize the moment and catch up to the times, which is why we're here today.
In accordance with the President's Management Agenda, the Office of Management and Budget required each federal agency to prepare a five-year restructuring plan aimed at more customer-centric, results-oriented and performance-driven governance.
As a first step EEOC commissioned an independent study by the National Academy of Public Administration, NAPA. NAPA's report is one of the many sources of input that have been considered by the Commission, as we deliberate on this issue. We also established a National Contact Center Work Group to explore the possibility of implementing a cost-effective customer service center. We're going to hear reports today and findings from both of these sources.
We have a comprehensive agenda ahead. Throughout the day, we're going to be hearing from five panels. The first panel will address the many external factors driving the need for change. The second panel will focus on recommendations made by the National Academy for Public Administration. Panel 3, comprised of senior managers from EEOC headquarters, will speak to the current state of the Agency and new realities.
During the afternoon, we are going to begin with a panel representing EEOC's union and field staff.
And Panel 5, representing stakeholder groups, will offer recommendations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of EEOC's delivery of services to the public.
I look forward to the comments and recommendations of each panel today.
Panel 1 will commence following remarks by my fellow Commissioners.
Madam Vice Chair?
Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
First of all, I want to thank the Chair for scheduling this meeting. I hope that it will be the first of many opportunities for us to get together, share ideas, but more importantly to think together.
The Commission is clearly facing enormous challenges, and while we do a pretty good job of generating ideas, and we do a good job of sharing those ideas, we don't often have an opportunity to think through those ideas together.
We have to get to a point where we're prepared to move to the next step, which is problem solving, and I hope that today will serve as the first step toward getting real solutions to the challenges that the Commission is facing.
It has been said that human beings are separated from other species by our use of language. I think that probably explains why we are often better speakers than we are listeners. Today, I hope that each of us in this room will take an opportunity to listen.
We often become so enamored with our own position that when we are speaking, we should be listening; when we are questioning, we should be thoughtful. Today, I would encourage each of us to fully embrace, through listening, the different points of view that we're going to hear.
I would dare say that there is no 100-percent accurate path for us to follow. We will probably end up at some point with a blended approach to the issues the Commission is facing.
We will not change just for the sake of change, but we have to adapt to a changing environment, and the Commission is committed to doing that. We all want to hear the business case for the changes that we're facing.
Mark Twain once said, in responding to how people resist new ideas, that sometimes you have to take your brain out and dance on it.
[Laughter.]
VICE CHAIR EARP: I think, given what we face today, clearly, we need to do some dancing.
Thanks.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Commissioner Miller?
Good morning, Madam Chair; Madam Vice Chair, whom I welcome to your first Commission meeting; and Commissioner Silverman; and General Counsel Dreiband, whom I also welcome to your first Commission meeting; Dick Roscio up here from the Office of Legal Counsel, who is standing in today for my colleague, David Frank; distinguished panelists and my fellow EEOC Employees; and government representatives and members of the public.
I am excited this morning to once again join my fellow Commissioners in considering the actions that may be necessary to ensure that the EEOC continues to fulfill its mission throughout the 21st Century and beyond.
I applaud you, Madam Chair, for taking this step in gathering information, this first step in gathering information in order that the Commission can better understand the challenges in front of us, to ensure that whatever alternatives ultimately come before the Commission, that the enforcement mission of the Agency is strengthened and that employers are better served--employers and employees and workers are better served.
An important goal to that end is to continue the universally applauded movement of attorneys and investigators working more closely together and greater teamwork, both within and without offices, to ensure greater quality in our investigations and more strategic enforcement.
As you know, I am no stranger to this kind of process, having chaired the Task Force on Alternative Dispute Resolution that was the genesis of our current, private and federal sector mediation programs. And having co-chaired with then-Vice Chair, Paul Igasaki, Task Forces on Charge Processing and Litigation that resulted in the first National Enforcement Plan, now known as Strategic Litigation and Enforcement Plan, and fostered unprecedented cooperation between our artificially divided enforcement and litigation operations.
Over the course of this meeting, we will hear in some detail about how the reforms resulting from those earlier efforts have streamlined our processes and led to more efficient and expeditious resolution of the matters entrusted to our care.
Madam Chair, I hope that the insights that my staff and I have gained during those previous endeavors will assist you and my fellow Commissioners, as well as the EEOC's dedicated employees and our stakeholders, and ultimately the American people, as we determine how best to respond to the critical challenges confronting this agency now.
Now, despite the salutary gains of the past decade, I harbor no illusions that there is little room for improvement, and I eagerly anticipate the task of identifying and addressing some of the areas that require our attention. Nevertheless, I approach this endeavor with some homespun caution. Again, I hadn't planned it out with VICE CHAIR EARP. Mine is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Now, please don't misunderstand me. Change is an inevitable part of life. It's an inevitable part of an institution, the necessary, but not sufficient means by which we learn and grow. This axiom is as true in the life of an organization as it is in our individual lives. But we should not be seduced by the facile and uncritical pursuit of change for its own sake.
Now, with that caveat in mind, I have every confidence that the talents and wisdom of the committed employees who will implement our decisions, the experiences, insights and guidance of charging parties, and representatives and advocates whose lives and livelihoods our choices will affect, and in the end, this body's evaluation and approval of the blueprint for our Agency's future direction will place the EEOC on sounder footing to meet the challenges, whether anticipated or unforeseen, that await the Agency in coming years.
Today's meeting and subsequent deliberations will allow the Commission, as a collegial body, to examine the factors and trends affecting the EEOC's work at present and in the future, including the realities of continued fiscal and budgetary constraints.
I hope that this meeting will provide a deeper understanding of and valuable perspectives on the mechanics of the process through which we will address the issues before us, the realities of the budget and its likely impact on our work and organizational structure, and whether and how the recommendations we are considering will affect the Agency's ability to fulfill its charge and mission.
I very much look forward to today's presentations and our conversations together, along with the opportunity that this meeting affords the Commission to undertake the essential dialogue with the Administration, with Congress, with our employees, with advocates for those who seek our assistance as well as representatives of management on how the EEOC can best carry out the mission first entrusted to us nearly 40 years ago in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which is ...to ensure equal employment opportunities... without discrimination.
Thank you.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Thank you, Commissioner Miller.
Commissioner Silverman?
Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. This is an important meeting of the Commission, and I, too, would like to thank CHAIR DOMINGUEZ for convening it. Our mission here at the EEOC is crystal clear, to eradicate employment discrimination from our workplaces. It is a noble and worthy mission, vigorously pursued by teams of dedicated professionals throughout this country.
In my short time as Commissioner, I have been fortunate enough to visit a number of field offices, and I have seen firsthand some of the important advances that are being made by EEOC employees.
Our mission has always been a challenging one, but as we approach our 40th year, we face new challenges as well: demographic changes, broad economic changes, and the realization that our funding is not limitless.
To confront these emerging challenges, the time has come for the Commission to be introspective. Given the changing world around us, are we best aligned to fulfill our mission of eradicating employment discrimination? Now, it's no secret that over the past couple of years, the Commission has been spending a great deal of energy on this issue of change; namely, whether change is needed, what change is needed and how we should best approach and implement change.
I agree with the vice chair that I do not believe in change for the sake of change. I know that change can be daunting, disruptive, and extremely stressful, but I also recognize that in order to move forward and to continue to pursue our mission in an environment that is far different from when the Agency's foundation was formed, change may be necessary.
I believe that one of our stakeholders succinctly captured it when he said change is inevitable if we are to fill the public expectations of a responsive and efficient government.
Indeed, the Commission has proved that statement to be true. The 1995 changes to our charge processing procedures were initially greeted by many inside and outside the agency with skepticism. They turned out, however, to be an incredibly positive move for the Commission because they helped us to prioritize our workload and dramatically improved our ability to efficiently process charges of discrimination.
And the introduction of mediation as a voluntary option to resolve disputes is another example of how our agency was able to implement a significant change to claim resolution in response to a burgeoning caseload. And anyone who has heard me speak knows what a huge fan I am of the mediation program. Its success has been outstanding.
Now, this time around, we are considering more global changes. In assessing whether doing things differently would enable us to do a better job and make better use of our limited resources, we have sought input from a wide array of individuals and organizations. We have the benefit of studies conducted by NAPA and the Commission's Inspector General, and we have sought the views of EEOC staff, including those working on the front line in the field, and the views of our outside stakeholders.
Now, today's meeting is critical to this process. We will hear from government reform experts, those who have studied our agency, and all of you who have watched the EEOC grow and develop from both inside and outside the Agency.
There is no doubt in my mind that your thoughts, observations and perspectives will help inform the decisions that the Commission must make as we move the Agency forward.
Some creative ideas have already begun to emerge. For example, a national contact center staffed by individuals trained to respond to public inquiries has the potential for ensuring that members of the public will always be able to speak to a live body when they call the EEOC. Unfortunately, as I know from firsthand experience, this is not always the case today.
A national contact center could allow us to improve customer service, while at the same time freeing up valuable field resources for other critical work. But it is imperative that the creation of the center be done the right way. It must involve proper training, oversight, and quality control. And it must be staffed with the right people. Compassionate people, who possess the necessary skills. Individuals committed to EEOC's vital mission.
We are also considering whether realignment of our staff, both at headquarters and the field, could improve our efficiency and better utilize our limited resources. But any realignment must ensure that we maintain an effective presence throughout the country and that the close interaction between investigators and attorneys, which is critical to a successful enforcement and litigation program, is preserved.
I'd like to add my welcome to today's speakers. Thank you all for coming. You certainly got wonderful weather, those of you who have traveled from out of town, probably the only good weather we've had all year.
I'm eager to hear your thoughts for moving the Agency forward, and I also look forward to the days, weeks and months ahead, as we work together to chart the Commission's course for the future.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Thank you, Commissioner Silverman.
At this time, I'd like to invite our Panel 1 guests to please come up, take your seats.
One little housekeeping matter. This gadget here is our timer. We have such a compressed schedule that, just for your reference, when the yellow light goes on, there are two minutes left for the comments.
I am just delighted to have such a distinguished panel here to kick off this day, and I am pleased to introduce, first, Clay Johnson, Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget; Max Stier, President and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service; and Marta Perez, who is the Associate Director of Human Capital Leadership and Merit Systems Accountability at the Office of Personnel Management.
Welcome, again, Mr. Johnson.
MR. JOHNSON: One, I understand, when I was communicating with you Friday, that I was going to make a statement, and make myself available to questions and then have to leave. Is that still okay with you?
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Yes. Yes, that's fine. Yes. Thank you.
MR. JOHNSON: CHAIR DOMINGUEZ, VICE CHAIR EARP, Commissioners, I am honored to be invited to come here today and make a statement and observations about your efforts to become more results oriented. I applaud your efforts to become more results oriented and to improve your focus on your citizen customers.
The entire federal government, each agency, is currently in the process of more clearly defining its goals, determining how best to measure success, which is extremely important. How do you know if something is "broke" or "unbroke," unless you define clearly what success means, how to measure success. Each agency is determining if some aspect of their agency does not work, what are they doing, what can they do to address that opportunity, not taking the status quo as a given fact.
And as a part of all of this, what investments might be necessary, investments in people, investments in technology, investments in reorganization. These changes, these investments, are good for agencies, they're good for the citizens, they're good for employees.
Every employee wants to be a part of a successful organization. And if it is not successful or as successful as it can be, it wants to work with management--this is my experience, an experience we are seeing in federal agencies today--work with management to make their beloved agency or commission be more successful, if that is an opportunity.
This kind of change, this focus on results, this focus on the citizens, on our customers, is necessary, I believe. It's necessary because, one, the citizens, our customers, have higher expectations of the federal government than ever before. In the private sector, they get information, they get answers, they get goods and services delivered to them at incredible speeds, with incredible accuracy, and they get it in a fashion that was inconceivable five, ten, fifteen years ago.
Therefore, what they expect from government has to have increased. They expect, from the government, what they are getting from the private sector, in terms of accuracy and speed of information, and if goods and services need to be delivered, that as well.
I believe this focus on results, and this focus on the citizen, is also necessary because we can do this. This is imminently, completely possible. We have communication technologies available to us today that were unthought of five/ten years ago. We have the ability to communicate from afar ways that did not exist only a handful of years ago.
This is also possible because we have shown, in the last several years, that anything, everything is possible in the management arena if four things exist. Every quarter I sit in on management reviews of the 26 CFO agencies, and we review the President's Management Agenda. There are five initiatives. So 5 times 26. There are 130 management discussions.
And every time these four things exist, there is progress, significant progress, on the management area, with those four things there can be significant change in management if the top person in the organization or, in this case, the Commission, is totally dedicated to that change.
Change is also highly possible, when 100-percent certainty will occur, if, in addition to that, there is a very clear definition of what change is desired, what change is called for to be successful, if there is a very clear definition of what success is, a very clear definition of what has to happen to achieve that level of success, a very detailed action plan.
The third thing that is important, and must exist if success is to occur, is that the action plan must be clear who is accountable for making the overall action plan, not what group of people, not what group of consultants, but what one employee is responsible for the accomplishment of that management objective, and then what person is responsible for each of the component parts of that action plan.
And, oh, by the way, what's their phone number.
[Laughter.]
MR. JOHNSON: You need to know who that one person is, and then who the individual people are responsible for the component parts, and you need to have their phone numbers, mailing addresses and e-mail addresses right next to their names just in case you have a question or two.
And the fourth thing that, if it exists, will guarantee success 100-percent of the time, is that the plan must be aggressive and it must be nonconditional. It can't be, well, as soon as the war in Iraq is over, we'll get back to our management objectives or as soon as we deal with the power outage in the Northeast or as soon as the floods and whatever subside, we'll be glad to--the focus on management has to be unconditional. It has to be without regard to what else is going on in the environment or with the Agency.
If those four things exist, commitment at the top, clear, detailed action plan, accountability, and an aggressive, unconditional plan, there is management success 100 percent of the time. When those four things exist, agencies that are in the GAO's high-risk list become low-risk projects. Agencies that are at red on some of the management agenda items go to green. Agencies like Social Security and EPA get to green on financial management. Agencies like the Ag Department get an unqualified audit opinion.
Nobody thought that was ever, ever going to happen, but there was commitment at the top with Ann Veneman. There was a very, very detailed action plan. Ted McPherson was in charge of making that happen, and he made sure there were individuals responsible for each of the component parts, and they had a plan to make it happen in one year.
People thought it was never, ever going to happen. Their plan was to do it in a year. One year later, they had an unqualified audit opinion. They still have lots of issues to deal with, but they accomplish the impossible or what people thought was the impossible.
We need better government. We need to govern better. We can govern better. There's a lot of talk these days about good governance in our financial markets, in our corporate enterprises. I believe that what good governance is also what good government is.
We need to serve our citizens, just as corporations need to serve their owners, their shareholders, their customers. We need to produce results for our citizens. We need to show respect for our customers. We need to be held accountable by our citizens, and we need to live up to the trust our citizens, our customers, have in us.
I applaud your efforts for focusing on these matters. This is possible. This is, I believe, the time is right for this focus. The technologies to commitment, the opportunities exist, and I applaud your efforts to focus on this as a Commission because I know you have plenty of other things to pay attention to.
I'd be glad to entertain any questions you have before I duck out.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Thank you very much, Mr. Johnson, and you've certainly given us a lot of high standards here to follow on these four items, and I very much appreciate your support.
Just a question with respect to, clearly, commissions are a little different from federal agencies. It's more consensus building. It's almost a little bit like Congress; you know, you have different views and perspectives. From your perspective, what is the one thing that we should be focusing on first and foremost?
MR. JOHNSON: I think the main thing--the initial thing--is to focus on paint a picture for yourself, I don't know whether it's a year or two years out, about what you want the EEOC to look like, to feel like, and operate like and move toward that picture. Don't think about, well, what can I do next month to move in that direction, and the month after that? Forget the realities of getting there.
Leap ahead, define the best Commission you can, and then look back towards what you would have to do to get there. I agree you should not fix something if it "ain't" broke, but I think you need to be very clear about what the definition of "fixed" and "broke" is.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Thank you.
Madam Vice Chair?
VICE CHAIR EARP: No, nothing.
COMMISSIONER MILLER: Just a couple of things. I thought that your four criteria were really excellent and a very thoughtful way for approaching the challenge ahead of us. One of the things, and maybe I can put this out as a placeholder for some of the other panelists, one of the things that I think is a challenge, has been a challenge for this agency, over the past decade that I've been here, is how do we measure success?
I think measuring success is important. The question is how do we do it in the context of an enforcement agency? Do we do it by expectations of number of lawsuits we file? Do we do it by case closures? How do we count the widgets or what are the widgets that are here at the Agency in an enforcement context, when it is so amorphous and difficult to really discern whether discrimination is decreasing and how we are having an impact on employment discrimination in the workplace.
The second piece that I just want to emphasize, which I believe wholeheartedly, and I think I get it, but maybe if you can talk about two of these things, I assume that you believe that piecemeal change is not sort of the appropriate effect. You believe that it is best to lay out a broad picture of what change should be, what it should look like, I think, as you said, and then figure out the steps over time of how to get there, and that incremental, this is easy, so we should do this, and then we'll figure out what happens next, that that would not be the approach that sort of mandates success.
MR. JOHNSON: I agree with that because, one, I believe that you can rally your several thousand employees around the vision of what their EEOC can become, and it becomes the focal point, and it becomes a rallying point for everybody's activities.
COMMISSIONER MILLER: Thank you. Very thoughtful.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Commissioner Silverman?
COMMISSIONER SILVERMAN: No questions.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Well, thank you very, very much.
MR. JOHNSON: Thank you for having me.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Mr. Stier, welcome.
MR. STIER: Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you very much, Commissioners, for inviting me to testify today.
My organization, the Partnership for Public Service, is a relatively new nonprofit that has a twofold mission: the first is to work on transforming the way government works in order to make it attractive to talent; and the second is to inspire a new generation into service, into government service, because of some of the challenges that I'm going to talk about shortly here.
Clearly, I think that all of you are to be commended for holding this hearing and even beyond, obviously, this hearing for engaging in what is a difficult task, as Mr. Johnson suggested, in the midst of having your hands full and doing your day-to-day work. These kinds of strategic efforts are difficult. It may not be the war in Iraq, but you have many other things that you are having to address, and engaging in thoughtful ways of improving your long-term capacity is hugely important. And it is from our perspective at the Partnership particularly important to be focusing on the people element of the equation, and that's what I want to talk to you about today.
I have provided some written testimony. I am not going to, obviously--I am going to just try to hit the very top points of that testimony. And, again, the primary line here is to really focus on the fact that good government requires good people. And that is the essential element that I want to talk about and that I think would be useful for the Commission to be focusing on.
All of the research that has been done on human capital management shows that it drives organizational success. And, again, I cite a number of studies that have been done in the private sector that shows dramatic changes in performance in organizations where there has been effective human capital management.
It is also true that--I commend the Chair in particular for her support for the Partnership, but also making, creating a world-class model workplace, one of the elements of your plan, your vision of what you want to see for EEOC.
It is critically important to realize that EEOC is not alone. The kinds of issues that you are facing and addressing here are the same issues that are being addressed by agencies government wide. And Mr. Johnson talked about measurement. Obviously, one of the factors that has been important here is the President's Management Agenda, focusing on human capital issues, and in the scorecard that was created in conjunction with OPM. It's worth noting that there is not a single agency that is yet at green in human capital management. There is progress being made, but they have not achieved--no agency has achieved green. And that, again, gives an important context.
The General Accounting Office has placed the issue of human capital across government as a high-risk element. It's one of only two government wide high-risk elements. And then, when you start digging in more deeply, we can see that the contours of the problems are really quite substantial. And, again, the Office of Personnel Management did a very important employee survey last year. Over 200,000 employees were surveyed, and that work found some very troubling information.
For example, only 43 percent of those employees surveyed held their leadership, their managers, in high esteem. Over half believed that doing better at work would not result in better compensation or better rewards.
Those are very troubling numbers. Those numbers are government wide and it gives, I think, a context for the sorts of issues that you are having to deal with here at EEOC.
Not only are you not alone with problems, you are also not alone with solutions. There is a lot of work that's being done across the government that is worth taking a look at, starting with the fact that the President, again, has placed human capital on the top of his management agenda. There has been important cross-agency collaboration, OPM working with OMB and GAO, for example, on human capital initiatives, and very important congressional change, legislative action that has been occurring, not only specifically around certain agencies, like the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the reform efforts that are going on around the Department of Defense. And I would note that just those two efforts alone affect over 50 percent of the federal workforce. And one of the things that I would note is that it is worth recognizing that over half the federal workforce will be operating in a vastly different personnel environment in the very near term, and the rest of government should not be left behind, including the EEOC. And making sure that EEOC is at that forefront is, if anything, only more important given the oversight function that EEOC plays as a needed role model, not only for the private sector but also for government itself.
Indeed, there are also a lot of efforts underway in individual agencies that are worth looking at, for example, the General Accounting Office, in its performance management efforts. You also have the IRS in its leadership development work. The Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency has done some important work on a user-friendly performance management system. NASA has done important work on strategic workforce planning.
There are plenty of agencies that are, again, grappling with the same kinds of issues that you have that have come up with solutions that will not immediately transfer over to EEOC but are guideposts for ways in which you can yourselves address the kinds of things that you need to do.
And, clearly, again, the report that was put together by NAPA is a very important starting point. And from the Partnership's perspective, we would agree with the human capital recommendations that are made in that report. They are sound. The challenge is going to be moving from the 10,000-feet level to the actual implementation.
What I would also like to focus on in my last point here is that if you look at--again, I've seen some of the testimony from other panelists coming forward. If you look at the NAPA report, if you talk to experts in general, there's a fair bit of consensus on what needs to be done on the human capital side. It is, again, the doing it that is the difficult part. What I would suggest is that the Commission focus very hard on the how it gets done. The what is going to be, I think, the much easier question than the how. And the most critical element in getting the how right is going to be to continue what you have started, to continue engaging both your stakeholders and your employees in the activity of managing the change that you're trying to follow here.
Clearly, from the Partnership's perspective, if there's any way we can be of assistance, we would like to be. I mentioned a number of the best practices that are being engaged by a number of agencies. We will be launching a solution center that will lay out those best practices in about a month and a half. You have unbelievably helpful other allies, for example, from OPM, which you will be hearing from shortly, and, again, you're not in it alone.
So thank you very much for offering to give me this opportunity to speak, and I look forward to hopefully helping you on your way.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Thank you very much, Mr. Stier.
Commissioner Silverman?
COMMISSIONER SILVERMAN: In your experience, what are the greatest obstacles to implementing a restructuring plan and how are they best overcome?
MR. STIER: A great question that I will try to give a very short answer to. The obstacles, Mr. Johnson I think laid them out pretty well.
There is, again, a pretty sensible conceptual framework to approach these things with. If you prepare right, the obstacles become less significant. Clearly, having the strategic vision that Mr. Johnson mentioned is very important.
I think a very key starting point is with your leadership. One of the issues that we see, again, across government is concern among employees about whether managers can effectively manage. And, typically, engaging in the kinds of changes that you're talking about here, if you have not worked on ensuring that your leadership and your management corps has the skills that it needs to effectively manage that change, then it's very difficult to succeed.
And, you know, again, you're talking about a smaller number of folks, the investment that you can put into making sure that they are active and successful change agents, is a place that I think is extremely useful.
Third, and very importantly, I think is employee buy-in, and I would add stakeholder buy-in. There is no such thing as too much communication, and it needs to be a two-way communication.
I mentioned the survey that OPM did. EEOC was not included in that first round. I know that OPM focused on large agencies. They're talking about doing work around small agencies. And there's, in fact, I think, a commendable effort to place more resources and focus on small-agency work. But that's a place where I think you would be well served in investing in.
One of the things that you will see a difference between--and you have a very interesting perspective here because you see a lot of private sector organizations as well, obviously, as dealing with government agencies. Well, one thing that you probably will notice is that the best-run private sector organizations have significant internal communication efforts. They have people that are dedicated to communicating their message inside the organization, not simply externally.
That's something that, by and large, you almost never see in government agencies, and that's a problem. You really need effective means of communication both to rally around the shared message of the agency, but also to ensure that those people who are on the front line and your managers and others are able to give real input on how it is that the agency can improve.
COMMISSIONER SILVERMAN: Thank you.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Madam Vice Chair?
VICE CHAIR EARP: Just one quick practical question. The best practices solution center that you mentioned--
MR. STIER: Yes.
VICE CHAIR EARP: --is this a virtual project or brick and mortar? Can you say a little bit more about it?
MR. STIER: Certainly. It is a virtual project, virtual in two senses of the word: It will ultimately be on the Internet and Internet accessible, and virtual in that it hasn't yet been launched. So--
[Laughter.]
MR. STIER: But I would say that the plan is to launch it in approximately six weeks, and even before then, the information that will be included in that solution center is an open book for you and anybody else who is interested in actually seeing it. And it's a first step, and we are, you know, really, again, working with OPM and with OMB in trying to collect this information, and GAO. And that's another interesting, I think, development. My time from government, I always saw GAO as the enforcer on the other side of the table looking for problems and the "gotcha" organization. I think that Dave Walker is really trying to make GAO into a more constructive partner, and certainly on the human capital management side. I mean, he was one of the early proponents for a focus on this issue, and I think, you know, along with a small handful of other people, largely responsible for the attention that is being paid to the issue.
VICE CHAIR EARP: Okay. Thanks.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Commissioner Miller?
COMMISSIONER MILLER: Mr. Stier, I applaud your comments. I found them very helpful and thoughtful.
One thing that strikes me, sort of picking up on something that Commissioner Silverman had said in her opening comments, and your comments yet again on sort of two-way communication and employee/stakeholder buy-in, one of the reasons, I believe, that the change that occurred here at the agency the last go-round back in '95, which was met with great resistance, whether it's charge processing or mediation, was the side-by-side collaborative efforts of our stakeholders in not just reacting to plans but developing plans, that two-way communication so that everybody has an investment and feels that they've been heard, and, most importantly, the good ideas that are sort of floating around out there are incorporated earlier on in the process rather than later on in the process.
Is that your experience?
MR. STIER: Absolutely. I think that getting that shared buy-in is a very important element to success, and that buy-in comes from early involvement of stakeholders, including, obviously, employees.
I think the challenge, obviously--and, Madam Chair, you mentioned earlier the Commission's structure as being different. Obviously, there are difficulties and advantages to that, and one of the--you know, to move quickly can be more difficult in that context. And it also can be more difficult when you try to develop that kind of consensus to move quickly. However, I think the net effect is to have a better chance of success.
You know, one of the issues that I think was also raised is the question about is change really necessary, and I think that what I want to very much highlight is that I believe that you have no choice. The world has changed dramatically. Your own internal demographics are changing dramatically. There are going to be changes. The questions are: Are you going to be able to make those changes occur in a way that is ultimately beneficial to your mission?
I know you've had some successes, for example, in your backlog and in your case management, and those are to be commended. I would say, though, that in order to build off momentum, you do need to be thinking about that long-term strategic plan and not allow those successes to undermine, you know, a focus on getting to be the world-class work environment and high-performing organization that you're striving for.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Thank you very much, Mr. Stier.
MR. STIER: Thank you.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: I think that's a very good parting comment. I'm reminded of the Mark Twain comment that the easiest way to crush your laurels is to sit on them.
[Laughter.]
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: So thank you.
MR. STIER: Very nice. I'm going to stick around.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Okay.
Ms. Perez?
MS. PEREZ: Good morning. On behalf of my director, Kay Coles James, I'd like to thank the Commission for inviting OPM to this important discussion, especially thank you to CHAIR DOMINGUEZ and the other Commissioners as well. And I applaud the efforts of the Commission to hold these kinds of public meetings where you invite outside groups from both the public and private sector to share their experience.
OPM has been involved over the last year and a half in the President's Management Agenda and leading the charge, if you will, in the human capital initiative, and that has allowed us to take a very close look at a number of the 28 agencies that we're tracking in the President's Management Agenda and work intimately with the agencies and look at their plans and assess their efforts. And I think it has given us a perspective that hopefully we can bring to bear, to the extent that the Commission would like us to do that, to EEOC and your efforts.
It is a different time in the world, and I think that we have seen that the agencies that understand that they have to be paying attention to the changes that are taking place in their environment and technology, even within the organizations and the demographics of our organizations, have made it a point to not change for the sake of change, but really to lay out plans that look at the organizations to make sure that their structures are responsive to the needs of the new clientele, whether it's the employees or the outsider customers.
We are expecting the agencies--we partner with the Office of Management and Budget in actually the scoring of the agencies, so we work with the agencies on a regular basis to assess their efforts and hopefully provide them with the tools that they need to make progress in human resources management and move away from human resources as sort of a back-door operation that just looks at transactions and really to the forefront. What human resources thinkers and strategic planners in the area of human resources and human capital management can bring to the table, what is--sort of raise the consciousness of our leadership with regards to human--the workforce and the human people that--the aspect, that aspect of the organizations. Oftentimes wonderful strategic plans are developed and designed, and they're just beautiful. And at the end of the plans, they said, okay, well, what about the human capital? What about the people? Do we have them in place?
The requirements that we make of the agencies and my expectations I think are consistent with where we have seen some success, is that you think about the human resources aspects of your organization and the forefront. And, in fact, when we had a recent conversation with one of our colleagues in one of our large agencies, he says, Well, we've developed our strategic plan and Goal Number 7 is human capital. And I said, I'm sorry, Mr. Assistant Secretary, I said, this is--Goal Number 7 should not be human capital. You need to assess every single goal in your strategic plan against the human--or your human capital against each plan. Do I have the skills that I need in the organization? What are the skills that are needed for each particular goal? And how do I--if I don't, how do I close that delta, those gaps?
So we've worked very closely with the agencies, and I invite you that when you're thinking about your organization, that you be thinking about human capital, as I know you're doing, in the forefront.
Also, how you deploy and how you deliver those services is extremely important, and the organizational structure that you put in place to support your mission is very important. And I think technology is allowing each organization to make changes in the way that we structure organizations to be more efficient and more effective, when we leverage the technology appropriately. And, oftentimes, it gets sort of, oh, my gosh, you know, the investment in technology is excessive. But I think if you do not invest or leverage the technology when you have an organization like the Federal Government that responds to the needs of millions and millions of its citizen customers out there, unless we leverage that technology, we're not going to become more efficient.
So I think that it is extremely important that you pay attention to your organizational structure in a way that leverages technology and your people and looks at your processes to ultimately deliver a better product. And I am of the opinion that you need to be sort of continuously assessing your service delivery, and it's never really quite done. So even when you structure and restructure, it's always--you need to always keep going back and looking at it.
I think that it is also extremely important that you look at the leadership of the organization and you identify do I have the right people in the organization at a given time, at a time when you're looking to make some significant changes, and that you try to address any leadership gaps in a way that is well developed, well designed, and with a vision in mind. And I'll come back to the vision because both my colleagues, Clay Johnson and Max Stier, have alluded to this. And I think it's extremely important.
But you need to make sure that you have the leadership in place to help you get where you need to go, and I think that's extremely important.
One of the problems, I think, in the public sector--actually, in organizations in general, but it's particularly difficult in the public sector, I think--is the execution. Actually, we sometimes develop these wonderful plans, but, you know, the devil is in the detail. How do we actually get there in terms of developing a good execution? And I think having a good execution is extremely important. Once you develop your vision, you have the leadership in place, you need to have a well-designed execution strategy as well.
We think that it's extremely important in the human capital initiative, and we are expecting the agencies and holding the agencies accountable, for developing performance management systems that clearly articulate what are the expectations that the organization has over individual employees. So that at any given time there's a clear line of sight between what I do, Marta Perez, or any employee in the organization, no matter where they are in the organization. A line of sight between what the employee does and the results and the mission of the organization. It is so important for employees to feel connected to the overall outcomes, and I think we fail them miserably when we do not communicate well and we do not use the performance management system to communicate that vision.
So if you think of that, if you have your vision, you have the leadership in place, you have a well-designed execution plan, you develop your management systems in ways that they articulate what are the expectations, I think that's extremely important.
Then we also expect agencies and the human capital effort to have a diverse workforce. We think that in light of the demographics of our nation and the expectations of our citizens, it's extremely important that we create a workforce that is diverse in talent and experience and backgrounds, in all aspects of diversity, including, of course, ethnicity and racial and disability and so forth.
But we also think it's not important only to make it a diverse workforce, but that the diversity exist at the highest levels of the organization in your mission-critical occupations as well as in your leadership ranks. And I think from the mission of EEOC, this is clearly an area that is always at the forefront of your thinking. But I think it's extremely important in terms of your overall mission how you deal with the agencies and your clients, that this is an important area, that we are also supporting your efforts in terms of our expectations of the Federal Government and the federal agencies.
We also think that it's extremely important--and my colleagues alluded to this--that you are able to demonstrate the results. And in order for you to demonstrate results, if you have the vision laid out well in advance and you have outcomes or expectations, what are your expectations with regards to the changes that you're trying to make. I think they need to be well designed so that when you get there, you can look back and say, well, now I know whether I got them, whether I met the outcomes or not.
I think oftentimes we fail to do that, and when we fail to do that, we do it at our own peril. So I think that establishing outcome measures from the very beginning that help you assess along the way, this is the vision that I have, this is where I want to go, how do I measure, what milestones do I identify to make sure that at the end of the day I can assess whether I'm adding value. And then if you're not, if a particular strategy or effort that you establish is not getting you--you're not achieving the expected outcomes, then you can always go back and revisit. I think we fail organizations when we wait, you know, years to look back and say, okay, do I need to make a change in my organization. So if you develop the milestones and the measures to continuously assess the value-added, I think you can stay on top of the game.
So I think overall we're making progress in the Federal Government. I think that--I've had an opportunity to read the NAPA report with regards to your own organization--and clearly you have a great deal of work ahead of you. But I know that you have the commitment to work in collaboration with your employees and the stakeholders and ultimately will succeed. And I think the fact that you're taking advantage of the experience of outside organizations as well is to your credit.
Thank you again.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Thank you very much, Ms. Perez.
You mentioned that small agencies are not necessarily--you know, you have a specialized focus on small agencies because of the nature of the issues that they face. I think we have to both think about the economy while worrying about the rent.
From your perspective, what are some of the things that you think? You gave us a very thorough layout of the kinds of things, as we look at the structure and the human capital. But if we had to look at the top two things, workforce challenges that we're facing, and how can we move this process along--which is a rather lengthy process, as one might expect, where would you best invest that energy?
MS. PEREZ: I think that for small agencies, as well as large agencies, the beauty of the small agencies, particularly in our government--and OPM is an example of this, and we've just recently gone through our own restructure of the agency. We have a more homogeneous, if you will, mission when you compare it to some of the larger agencies that have very different and discrete components.
But I think that establishing that vision, Madam Chair, is extremely important and communicating that vision, I think, in terms of developing a good execution plan, developing--communicating with your employees and your stakeholders. We have seen that change is going to be difficult. It's going to be difficult no matter how you do it. If you do it slow or if you do it fast, it's going to be difficult for your organization, for your employees, for your stakeholders.
I think it's best to just grab sort of the bull by the horns and say, okay, this is the vision, and then able to communicate that vision to make sure that folks understand that. You've had some recent successes in some of the things that you've tried to do, and I think that laying out the vision, communicating that vision, and then just providing the support that your employees need along the way I think is important. But I think you need to sort of lay it out and just go out and do it.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Thank you.
Commissioner Miller?
COMMISSIONER MILLER: Thank you very much for coming, and thank you very much for your comments. I think that one thing I kept on coming back to in all the materials in our books, our briefing books, was--I guess I wanted to ask you about it, and that's about sort of human capital and sort of human resources in the context of the EEOC.
A number of people have said already that there's quite a unified vision of what we should be doing in terms of human resources in our own employees. The question is how do we do it. And one thing that somebody said in the context of our current hiring freeze, which is a situation that nobody wants, and that is, this particular manager or district director said it's very difficult for us to decide how to sort of let go or deal with non-performing employees, when ultimately in the context of a hiring freeze we know that we're not going to be able to backfill those positions; that it's either somebody who's a mediocre employee that we move out, but yet we're not going to be able to reach out and bring somebody in, either promote them from within or particularly bring somebody else out.
And so in the context of that situation, I was wondering what your thoughts were.
MS. PEREZ: Well, first of all, I'm going to assume that the premise of your comment is not that it's best to have someone who's not performing--
COMMISSIONER MILLER: No, absolutely not. But it's that sense that's out there among our management layer that, one, you can't fire--you can't discipline anybody in the Federal Government and, two, the context of everything is viewed through the lens of a hiring freeze.
MS. PEREZ: I think there are two separate issues, if I may suggest, and I think in dealing--in talking and working with your management, I think it's extremely important to keep them as such.
The performance management area and the comments and the sense that we can't address inefficiencies in performance in the government I think is sad, and I think that it is not necessarily accurate. I think that it is difficult in government, and in general, to deal with individuals who we feel are not necessarily contributing to the success of the organization.
But I think the problem sometimes lies in the fact that I don't think that sometimes we're as effective in managing our organization as we need to be. And I alluded to this in my initial comments, that I think it's extremely important that we articulate what the expectations are and then hold our employees accountable to that.
Now, the failure to hold employees accountable, even if it's a lengthy process--and when you're talking about people's careers, it should be a lengthy process. We should not be able to just take somebody and say, well, you know, we don't think--today you're not good, and address them--and fire them. I think we should take our time to work with them and to help them understand what the expectations are and address any inefficiencies.
But I think it is doable. I think sometimes our managers fail to leverage the performance management system in a way that helps them communicate with employees and laid-out expectations.
Is it easy to do? No, and I think probably all three of us, Max and Clay and I, would tell you that--and I know you know this--that organizational changes are going to be difficult and dealing with bad performance is problematic in any organization. But if you review the responses in a recently administered federal human capital survey, when we asked our employees, are employees being held accountable for their contributions or failure to perform in the organization, 30 percent, only 30 percent of our employees--that means 70 percent of our employees feel that we're not creating the kinds of work environments where people are held accountable. And that has--that's a problem for the employee that you're not holding accountable. That's a problem for the employees that are working next to those, and overall you're creating an environment that I know you know diminishes the overall effectiveness of the agency.
Is it easy to do? No. If you have a looming issue with the fact that you're not able to hire or bring new people into the organization, that's problematic. But maintaining an environment that is inefficient with bad performers I think creates even a more problematic--a bigger problem for you.
COMMISSIONER MILLER: Thank you.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Madam Vice Chair?
VICE CHAIR EARP: I think that I'm pretty clear about the strategic guidance and support that we could get from OPM as we work through this change, but from a tactical perspective, is OPM available free of charge--
[Laughter.]
VICE CHAIR EARP: --to assist us with more practical aspects, for example, job evaluation and redrafting position descriptions or desk audits where necessary or those real practical pieces of a strategic plan that would encompass the human resource element?
MS. PEREZ: Well, I'm from the government and I'm here to help and, you know, I--
[Laughter.]
MS. PEREZ: I mean that. OPM is ready and stands ready to help you. I think the real value for an organization when it's going through its transformation is to make sure that you're leading a lot of those changes and looking at your organization with your own staff, and certainly we'll partner with your office of human resources to make sure that we're providing whatever assistance you have.
And, in fact, in my prepared comments which I submitted to the Commission, I mentioned this. We now have a new structure within OPM that is actually addressing the needs of smaller agencies. And Dave Amaral, who's the senior executive in that group, is here with me today so that he could listen to the concerns of the Commission. And we will support you in whatever way we can. I don't know about the free of charge.
[Laughter.]
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Commissioner Silverman?
COMMISSIONER SILVERMAN: Are there any other small enforcement agencies that we can look to that are a little bit ahead of us in the process? It's always good to learn from other people's successes and mistakes. Or are we sort of charting our own course out here?
MS. PEREZ: Well, I think that each organization has its own idiosyncrasies and missions and authorities that make them slightly different. OPM has a compliance function within there. We just recently went--are going, really, through our own reorganization and restructuring and eliminating the stove pipes and bringing new leadership into the organization. And we have a very strong compliance effort, but operate under a different authority.
It really varies out there in terms of how agencies are going about it and what--is there an agency, another organization like the Commission that is undergoing or contemplating the kinds of things that you're going through? One does not come to mind in terms of the significant changes or even the structure within the 51 field offices that you currently have. So I think that in some instances you probably are creating your own--charting your own new course, and I think that's probably an exciting place to be as well because that means nobody can say, well, you didn't do it as well as...
COMMISSIONER SILVERMAN: Thank you.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Any other questions?
[No response.]
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Okay. Thank you very much.
MS. PEREZ: Thank you.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Let me now invite our Panel 2 members: Al Ressler, the Director of the Center for Human Resource Management at the National Academy for Public Administration; Edison Elkins of EEOC, who will provide an analysis of the NAPA study and feedback from EEOC's field and headquarters staff, as well as a demographic analysis; and the Inspector General for EEOC, Aletha Brown, who will be discussing the findings of a report entitled "Reducing Infrastructure Costs Through Increased Use of Telework," a project undertaken by her office.
Welcome to all of you. Mr. Ressler?
MR. RESSLER: Thank you very much. Madam Chair, Madam Vice Chair, Commissioner Miller, Commissioner Silverman, good morning. I'm Al Ressler, the Director of the Center for Human Resources Management at the National Academy of Public Administration. I'm sitting in for Mrs. Singleton McAllister, a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, who is the Chair of the Academy Panel that studied the Commission's organization and structure. She was scheduled to make this presentation, but an emergency over the weekend had required her to be out of town today. So I am pleased to have this opportunity to address the Commission on the critical topic of EEOC's organizational structure.
The National Academy of Public Administration is an independent nonprofit organization chartered by Congress to provide trusted advice, advice that is objective, timely, actionable, and is intended to improve governance at all levels, local, regional, state, national, as well as international.
The Academy's membership of more than 500 fellows includes public managers, scholars, business executives, labor leaders, current and former Cabinet officials, members of Congress, governors, mayors, state legislators, as well as diplomats. Since its establishment in 1967, the Academy has assisted hundreds of federal agencies, congressional committees, state and local governments, civic organizations, and institutions overseas through problem-solving, objective research, rigorous analysis, information sharing, developing strategies for change, and connecting people and ideas.
It was a great pleasure at the Academy to have the opportunity to review the organization and structure of the nation's premier civil rights enforcement agency. The Academy's project team conducted structured interviews with 60 individuals or groups in both the headquarters and field offices. We visited a sample of district, area, and local EEOC offices and interviewed representatives of a number of stakeholder organizations, as well as community representatives.
My remarks today reflect the panel's significant findings and recommendations that were included in a comprehensive report that was completed and submitted to you earlier this year.
The panel's fundamental conclusion is that EEOC's structure, which was designed for the 20th century programs and technology, does not permit it to meet all aspects of its current mission, which now emphasizes prevention and mediation in addition to enforcement, or to take maximum advantage of technology advances that have occurred.
Despite beneficial streamlining of processes that have already been introduced, changes are not sufficient to align EEOC's structure and work flow with its budget and broadened mission, which is to prevent and eradicate employment discrimination and enforce civil rights.
The Commission needs more fundamental change to enable it to provide its diverse, far-ranging customers with a level and quality of services that they need and deserve.
In its written report to EEOC, the Academy Panel made a series of recommendations to address a number of inter-related issues, to include: the organization structure, budget realignment, technology, human capital management, and performance management. The Academy Panel believes these changes are necessary to help lower costs, improve organizational and individual performance levels, and meet the challenges facing the Commission.
Our recommendations address five major areas: aligning mission and function; harnessing technology to achieve the mission; making the best use of EEOC's workforce; performance-based management; and implementation strategies for organizational transformation.
Because my time today is limited and the Academy's recommendations total over 50, I will restrict comments to key issues in each of the five previously mentioned areas. The other findings and recommendations of the Academy Panel are contained in the final report which you released in March of this year.
Aligning mission and functions. The Academy concluded that the EEOC structure of widespread field offices and a headquarters office of field programs that guides policy implementation and program focus for most work done in the field has worked reasonably well for the past 35 years. However, this approach was more appropriate when most business was done face-to-face and paper-based methods were the only means available for processing complaints and interacting with respondents or communicating with federal agencies. It was also designed when most headquarters and field functions were geared toward enforcement.
Today, the EEOC emphasizes prevention and mediation to a much larger degree than it previously did. The panel believes the highest priority recommendation in the area of aligning mission and function are those that address the following: establishing a nationwide toll-free national call center, staffed by individuals who have been thoroughly trained in responding to questions about EEOC's mission and services, and who are capable of taking charges over the phone; realigning the agency's field structure to reduce the number of physical locations. The panel believes that the EEOC should establish a network of lead offices in areas with high workload levels. Lead offices might have satellite offices and perhaps a mobile unit that could travel to areas not in proximity to those EEO lead offices.
Initial implementation should begin with pilots of this combination of place-based mobile and remote services so that the EEOC can develop a test service to customers' infrastructure support, management checks and balances, revised work processes, and supporting human resource systems for recruitment, training, and performance assessment as well as other components.
The Academy Panel recommends that EEOC consolidate most administrative support functions, leaving in each major office one highly skilled, fully trained administrative staff member to provide those services that must be performed on site and coordinate those that are performed at another location. Additionally, we recommend that the EEOC develop the costs and benefits of alternative modes of delivery of administrative services, such as establishing full servicing agreements with other departments, potentially the Department of Interior, Department of Transportation, that provide those services to other governmental activities, instituting additional cross-servicing agreements with other federal organizations, or outsourcing administrative functions, possibly to the private sector.
EEOC's restructuring should not be limited to the field. EEOC needs to have clear organizational distinctions between private sector enforcement and other functions such as mediation, outreach prevention, and technical assistance. As an organization that has made major changes in work methods in the past decade, EEOC needs to consider whether its program direction and implementation functions need to be more separate than they are today. The Academy Panel recommends that EEOC establish more distinct focuses of accountability at the headquarters level for prevention and technical assistance, enforcement and mediation.
Our written report provides specific examples of organizational designs that may be useful to you as you consider alternative approaches.
Harnessing technology to achieve the mission. EEOC has established funding priorities to use technology to increase agency productivity and make information more easily available to its employees, its customers, and its stakeholders. Although EEOC has focused on developing its technological resources, there is still more work that can be done to use IT capability to meet the mission.
In the short term, the Commission will benefit from enhancing its analytical capabilities and addressing operational technology needs. Specifically, the panel recommends that EEOC enhance its analytical capabilities by acquiring software that will allow it to access and analyze data from multiple systems to improve its strategic decision making.
To become more strategic in its information use, the agency must be able to assess its data across technology systems. For example, EEOC must be able to assess its workload statistics against workforce data.
The panel concluded that top priority should be on balancing technology with customer service, creating the tools needed to make the workforce more mobile, and expanding the Commission's telework resources. The panel recommends that secure technology tools for electronic filing be designed so that customer service is user-friendly, staff routinely follows up on internet-filed charges with phone or in-person interviews, and information is provided to those whose queries or submissions do not involve employment discrimination.
Managing the use of the EEOC's workforce. In any organization, human capital strategies must be directly linked to organization mission, goals, and objectives. Given the breadth of the panel's recommended restructuring, staff realignment is essential. However, before it begins realignment, the Commission needs to have its leadership structure in place and its comprehensive workforce planning methodology underway. These should be the Commission's top priorities as it develops its strategic human capital plan, staff realignment, leadership structure, and workforce planning methodology.
All EEOC executives, managers, and the staff that the Academy's study team interviewed were dedicated to eradicating employment discrimination, most even passionate about it. However, there is no well-understood model of what successful leadership looks like in the organization, nor is there an established approach to developing strong managers and effective leaders. The Academy Panel recommends that the EEOC build a model of leadership that integrates achieving results, leveraging resources, maintaining accountability, and improving the organizational culture.
Performance-based management. EEOC has done a great deal to assess and improve its operations, such as the charge--excuse me. We have a bit of a logistical problem that we'll take care of.
[Laughter.]
MR. RESSLER: My notes will easily soak it up.
Performance-based management. EEOC has done a great deal to assess and improve its operations, such as its Charge Handling Task Force review that led to the priority charge-handling process and its review to best EEO practices of private sector employees. As EEOC processes charges of discrimination faster, its work may have made more of a difference in the lives of the charging parties. It is harder to document the Commission's impact on reducing discrimination overall.
The panel recommends that EEOC develop methods to demonstrate the impact its work has on reducing employment discrimination in the workplace. This would be a multi-phased process and would require extensive coordination.
Implementing strategies for organizational transformation. Organizational transformation demands leadership and the involvement of all organization stakeholders, political, career leaders, managers, supervisors, individual employees, unions, and interest groups, as well as the OPM, OMB, and congressional committees, and staff who provide oversight and assistance. With the commitment and involvement of these individuals and groups, the agency will have a powerful coalition of supporters who can assist its transformation and modernization efforts. The Academy recommends that the EEOC develop an implementation strategy and detailed implementation plan for changes it decides to make to use the plan to manage the implementation process.
That concludes our remarks from the National Academy. We thank you for the opportunity to share our perspectives and elaborate on our recommendations.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Thank you very much, Mr. Ressler.
We will hear from our other two panel members, and then we'll open it up for questions from the Commissioners. Mr. Elkins?
MR. ELKINS: Madam Chair, Madam Vice Chair, Commissioners, esteemed colleagues from the International Association of Official Human Rights Agencies, other distinguished guests, and EEOC colleagues. I am Edison Elkins and I serve as Senior Advisor to the Chair of EEOC. I'm going to take a few minutes and talk about the NAPA report and what we have done since receiving it. All employees were given the opportunity to provide suggestions to the NAPA Panel during its study of EEOC and to comment on the report after it was issued. Approximately 200 comments and suggestions on the NAPA report were received from agency employees. The District Directors sent joint comments, as did the Regional Attorneys. In addition, a number of Directors and Regional Attorneys sent individual comments. In several instances, comments were provided on behalf of all the employees in the office.
We also received lengthy discussions and comments from the local and national leadership of the agency's bargaining unit.
The NAPA report was made available to a number of organizations with an interest in the work of the EEOC. Further, it has been available on NAPA's website since it was issued in February of this year.
The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which is a coalition of 180 national organizations and is represented here today, provided extensive comments. In May of this year, District Directors and Regional Attorneys were asked to develop and submit joint plans for improving operational efficiency and delivery of services within their jurisdictions and agency wide.
There were common suggestions and themes for improving operations in both the office plans and the comments receives in response to the NAPA report.
Among them: reducing staff costs through a
variety of means, including the use of buyouts, leave without pay, eliminating management positions, reducing the supervisory/employee ratio, consolidating or streamlining administrative staff, and the use of part-time personnel and non-paid interns; reducing the level of management in review of work products; making strategic decisions about which vacancies to fill and reassessing current SES and GS-15 allocations; reducing mediation costs by using in-house mediators and increasing the use of pro bono mediators; establishing national contracts for supplies, copying services for file disclosure, taking depositions, and court reporting services; improving service delivery to the public by expanding the agency's presence to underserved populations in geographical areas; hiring additional bilingual staff to strengthen service to populations not fluent in English; making jurisdictional changes to give persons wishing to file charges access to the closest EEOC office; improving the agency's financial management and addressing the continuing problem of inadequate funding; improving the agency's technology and information systems; reconfiguring headquarters to better support the field, reducing it in size and redeploying employees to field offices; improving training for all employees; improving the agency's performance management and employee award systems; addressing poor performance by employees; and developing specific criteria in making decisions about offices; and not using charge intake as the only criteria.
In the district office plans, there were proposals for reducing rental costs for 28 district, area, and local offices, either by relocating the offices to lower-rent areas or reducing office space in the current locations. Where savings were estimated after the initial expense of moving or reconfiguring the space, the estimated savings ranged from $30,000 per year for one office to $300,000 for another.
In its report, NAPA recommended a number of factors that EEOC should consider in making decisions about the agency's structure, including population demographics, charge-filing patterns, and the presence of Fair Employment Practices Agencies.
I have been asked to discuss these three factors this morning, but first I would like to provide a bit of historical perspective. The last major review of and change to the agency's structure took place in the late 1970s. While EEOC was reorganizing, people were reading "I'm OK-You're OK," "Roots," and "If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?" "Star Wars" and "Superman" were blockbuster movies of this era. Elvis Presley supposedly gave his last live performance in 1977, and "Annie Hall" won the Oscar for Best Picture of that year.
In 1978, a new car could be bought for less than $5,000. Gas was 77 cents a gallon, and a first-class stamp cost 15 cents. Also in that year, in a move for gender equality, the Commerce Department announced that hurricanes would no longer be given only female names.
In 1979, a group called the Village People recorded a song named "YMCA," and the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant suffered a partial meltdown. There was no cause and effect, but they both happened the same year.
Baltimore and Cleveland were considered major cities. Las Vegas was a town of 165,000 people. Today it is the center of the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the country, with more than 1.5 million people.
In the 1970s and 1980s, EEOC had absolutely some of the worst office space, both in Washington and in the field, of any federal agency, almost always located in unsafe and undesirable areas, buildings with elevators and heating and cooling systems that didn't work, mildew, rats, and at headquarters, carbon monoxide from the underground garage seeping into the air system. And these offices were furnished with broken and decrepit furniture, often cast-offs from other agencies.
EEOC started the 1980s with its new structure and a backlog of 63,000 cases. It took in 56,000 new charges in 1980.
Much has changed since that time. All of our offices are now located in safe, clean, and decent buildings. In 1980, the total population was 227 million, 54 million less than in 2000.
There were more than 2.5 million people employed in the U.S. steel industry. Now there are less than 1 million. There have been similar or even more dramatic declines in other manufacturing jobs, particularly textiles and apparel.
Increases in jobs have come in EEO-1 job groups of sales and service workers and professionals, each category gaining more than 2 million workers since 1990. There was a decline in craft workers and operatives in the same time period.
The population of the United States increased by 33 million persons between 1990 and 2000. Of that increase, 10 million were immigrants. There were 26 states that had populations of 4 million or more. The largest population growth occurred in the South and West. The South remains the nation's most populous region. Three states--California, Texas, and Florida--each had more growth than the entire Northeast. With a national rate of 12 percent, civilian job growth for the most part paralleled population growth, with the Northeastern States having the lowest growth rate.
Forty percent of the total population lives in the 15 largest metropolitan areas, all of which have EEOC offices. Of the ten largest cities and six Sun Belt cities, New York and Chicago gained population. Philadelphia and Detroit lost population.
The median age of the U.S. population in 2000 was 35.3, the highest it has ever been. By 2008, the media age is projected to be 40.7, with more than half of all workers in the U.S. covered by the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. California and Texas accounted for 24 percent of all ADEA charges filed the past three years.
Women are an increasingly important part of the labor force. In 1971, 43 percent of all women of working age were in the labor force compared with 60 percent in 2002.
In the 2000 census, almost 12 percent of non-institutionalized persons aged 16 to 64 years answered yes when asked if they had difficulty working at a job or business because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition lasting six months or more.
Minorities constitute 30.9 percent of the population. This population is generally concentrated in the coastal and Sun Belt areas and Illinois.
Fifty-four percent of African Americans live in the South, which also has the highest proportion of African Americans in its total population, 20 percent.
The most dramatic change in the minority population was the 58-percent growth in the Hispanic population, the largest increase of any ethnic or racial group. Approximately one in eight people in the United States is of Hispanic origin; 11 percent of the total population speaks Spanish at home. The states where Hispanics constitute 10 percent or more of the total population are New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Florida, and the Southwestern States from Texas to California. However, the fastest growth in Hispanic population is occurring in non-traditional states in the South, Midwest, and Northwest, with North Carolina alone having an increase of almost 400 percent since the last census.
There was more than 100-percent growth in EEO-1 Hispanic employment between 1990 and 2002. The job growth has been greatest in four groups: service workers, laborers, sales workers, and operatives.
The estimated foreign-born population of the United States in March 2000 was 28 million, or more than 10 percent of the total population. One-half of these residents came from Latin America and one-fourth from Asia.
Over 50 percent of the residents of the Miami metropolitan area are foreign-born, as are one-third or more of the residents of the Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco metropolitan areas.
Total federal civilian employment in 2000 was 2.8 million. California had the most federal employees and Delaware the least.
One last demographic note. The unemployment rates for Hispanics and African Americans remain much higher than those for whites and Asians.
There are 28 states which averaged a thousand or more EEOC charges for the past three years. Texas had the most charges, followed by California, Illinois, Florida, and Georgia. For the past ten years, 1993 through 2002, EEOC has averaged 82,000 charges a year. Comparing the first three years of the decade with the last three years, we find an average difference of almost 6,000 fewer charges in FY2000 through 2002, with a wide variation between states, with some states gaining receipts and some losing.
The states in green on our maps are states that had an increase in the number of charges, while the states in blue had a decrease. The darker the blue, the greater the decrease.
During the same period, total FEPA charges tracked by EEOC declined 5.4 percent, with many states declining both in EEOC and FEPA receipts. But in a few states, there were counter-balancing declines and increases. There are many factors that may have contributed to the overall decline in charge receipts, including better counseling and screening at intake.
Today, because of shifts in workload and not being able to fill vacancies as they occur or to pay to move employees to other offices, we find ourselves with an uneven distribution of resources between field offices and widely varying workloads and productivity per investigator and attorney. One office has an annual workload of 168 cases per investigator, and one office has 64. The national average is 105 per investigator.
Average resolutions of cases per investigator range from a low of 74 to a high of 152, more than twice as many, with a national average of 106. There are also disparities among our legal units. One district has a charge workload of 2,000 cases a year and a litigation workload of 23 cases in 2002. It is staffed with seven trial attorneys. Another district also with seven trial attorneys has a charge workload of 3,000 charges and a litigation workload of 35 cases in 2002. Clearly, we must address these imbalances.
The changes I have described this morning present the agency with both challenges and opportunities to serve an increasingly diverse population and workforce. There have been many suggestions for improving the structure and operations of the agency. The challenge is how to best position the EEOC with its limited resources so that it is accessible to all persons who need our services.
That concludes my presentation. Thank you.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Thank you, Mr. Elkins.
We'll now hear from our Inspector General, Ms. Aletha Brown.
MS. BROWN: Hi, good morning. Good morning, Madam Chair, Madam Vice Chair, Commissioners, General Counsel, fellow EEOC employees, and guests. Thanks for the opportunity to discuss with you today OIG's report on reducing costs through telework.
On January 8th, the Office of Inspector General issued a report which is based on the analysis of four EEOC field offices. Our primary objective was to determine whether EEOC can save on infrastructure costs and achieve other benefits through extensive use of telework, while sustaining or improving mission performance. We define "infrastructure" as the non-personnel items that EEOC needs to operate, specifically real estate, telecommunications, information technology, workstations, furniture, and items such as printers. We define "frequent telework" as a situation whereby an employee works away from the central office two or more days a week.
We chose to assess Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, and Washington field because they show strong potential cost-savings characteristics such as existing telework program, many staff, high rent costs, and difficult commuting environments. We used various data-gathering analysis techniques including interviews with key EEOC staff and telework experts. We've used focus groups of supervisors, investigators, administrative judges, trial attorneys, and mediators.
We surveyed staff at all four of the offices, which covered their demographics and their telework schedule and opinions about interest in frequent telework. We developed the cost model, and that cost model accounts for major costs and savings associated with implementing and maintaining a frequent telework program. This study didn't include any analysis of locations other than the four offices we visited, a workload analysis to determine whether staffing levels are adequate or real estate savings that could be achieved through means other than frequent telework, such as office closure or relocation. Nor did the study recommend mandatory frequent telework for agency employees; rather, it provided a model that allows for both maximum and minimum savings based upon various levels of employee participation in a frequent telework program in the four field offices.
The cost model showed savings that are substantial for the two offices in leased federal space, that is, Dallas and Los Angeles, and for the two offices in commercial space, Washington and Miami. Study results using two models show the optimum model based on 85-percent participation of staff we found to be most suitable for telework, and this resulted in a net cumulative savings of about $1.3 million.
Annual net savings are strongly negative in the first year due to start-up costs. In the second through fifth years, savings are substantial and steady and will continue to accrue beyond five years. The survey model using the 57-percent participation rate obtained through the employee surveys in the four field offices resulted in $700,000 in savings. To achieve the cost savings identified in both models, staff would telework two or more days per week, allowing more efficient use of central office space through sharing arrangements. Office sharing would result in reduced space needs that would lead to lower costs for real estate, producing savings that are substantially higher than the cost to set up and maintain a frequent telework program.
Certain critical factors affect whether frequent telework will allow an office to maintain or improve performance. These are suitability of position or staff member for frequent telework, equipment and related needs, and staff and managers' attitudes toward frequent telework. We found that much of the work that's done in the EEOC field offices is well suited for frequent telework. Well-suited tasks include work which requires concentration and large blocks of uninterrupted independent time, work that has well-defined beginning and end points, that is portable, that can be done with limited, unplanned, face-to-face communication and minimal supervision, and work where the need for specialized material or equipment is minimal.
Those positions we identified as best suited are: administrative judges, investigators, mediators, and trial attorneys. Staff from each of these groups performed many other tasks that are successfully performed by teleworkers in public and private sector employment.
To ensure successful telework, employees need adequate equipment and supplies. Based on our interviews with telework experts and with field office staff who telework, these things are computers with standard EEOC software, capability for good quality faxing, copying, and printing, Internet service, EEOC e-mail access, separate phone lines for business, long-distance service, telework training, storage, and also workstation, adequate space, and equipment in the central office.
We calculated the cost to implement a frequent telework program, which includes the information technology, telecommunications facility, real estate cost, and training for years 2003 to 2007 at $1.7 million. The cost model was built on the office-sharing assumption rather than other different space configurations. Each frequent teleworker would share an office but not a desk with another frequent teleworker. Schedule coordination would generally assure that each office had only one occupant per day on most days.
Staff and managers' attitudes are critical for success and also provide information to base training on before implementing a frequent telework program. Many managers, supervisors, and staff in the offices we visited see substantial benefits for frequent telework that include increased ability to focus on certain tasks, improved quality of life, financial gains, increased productivity, and reduced stress. However, many managers are also skeptical about staff and the office as a whole meeting the needs of customers and stakeholders in a frequent telework environment. Staff, managers, and supervisors share concerns for ensuring that EEOC conducts business efficiently if greater telework is implemented.
Some staff also have concerns regarding office space, collegiality, and the management of a frequent telework program. Some staff in focus groups strongly identified with the concept of an individual office with themselves as the only occupant, regardless of how often the office would be occupied. The viewpoint was strongly expressed by several trial attorneys and administrative judges. Also, a number of comments received on OIG's widely circulated draft report echoed the view by trial attorneys.
We concluded that EEOC's escalating real estate costs illustrate the importance of focusing on ways to more effectively manage its infrastructure. We maintain that major cost savings can be achieved in each of the offices we visited, beginning in the second year of frequent telework. Major cumulative savings begin in the third year, and savings are maximized through the optimum model.
If savings estimated in the cost model could be applied at all EEOC district offices, savings would be substantial, and average about 10 percent of real estate costs for those offices over a five-year period.
Finally, with adequate telework training for all employees, reliable equipment, and attention to office layout, the success of a frequent telework program is probable, and enhanced productivity and morale is likely. Our recommendation was to implement or consider implementation of a pilot frequent telework effort to achieve cost savings in the Dallas, Miami, Los Angeles, and Washington field offices.
We caution that due to start-up costs of frequent telework and the financial advantages of beginning frequent telework near lease expiration, piloting in all district offices in the near term would not be prudent.
As for current work, OIG is studying EEOC headquarters to identify potential infrastructure cost savings and benefits of frequent telework on productivity, performance, and customer service. Our final report is expected around the beginning of calendar year 2004.
Also, a six-month OIG frequent telework pilot begins this month. The pilot will implement many key aspects of the telework model developed during our field study, thereby testing our assumptions and providing an opportunity to gain insights that may assist EEOC in assessing frequent telework.
Thank you. That concludes my remarks.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Thank you very much, Inspector General Brown, and all of the panel members, for your prepared remarks. We'll have a brief question-and-answer period.
Let me start with Mr. Ressler. You mention in your report, and certainly it was well developed in the broader context of your remarks, comments about lead centers or lead offices. And there has been a lot of confusion around that recommendation, whether that, in fact, if there are 10 or 11 lead offices, is there an inference that--does that mean that the 41 other offices are going to disappear?
I just wanted to give you an opportunity to respond to that and get your perspective on what NAPA meant by lead offices.
MR. RESSLER: After we released the report, we believe there was some misinterpretation about what NAPA's recommendation really was. The misinterpretation came that we were suggesting that there would be 10 offices and 41 offices would be abolished, and that was not the case at all. Our suggestion and recommendation was that there would be 10 lead offices and there would be similarly linked smaller offices to those lead offices, a different configuration than what exists today. Just how many would have to be determined based on that workload and the demographics that Mr. Elkins referred to.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Thank you.
Mr. Elkins, you gave a lot of demographic data and all kinds of trends and charge activity. What does it all mean? What's the upshot of all this?
MR. ELKINS: There are a few things that sort of jump out immediately, and one is that we have to have more multilingual staff and greater capabilities. But I think what it really means is that we have to closely examine the way we do business--where we have our offices, who the people are that we serve, how do they access our services, what alternatives can we provide for them to have greater accessibility to our services, and how we can reach more people.
There are areas that have rapidly growing populations that we don't have much of a presence in, and we have to figure out how to expand our presence and outreach to these areas. I'm thinking of areas such as the Rocky Mountain States and the coastal areas of the Gulf States and the Carolinas. I think this gives us an opportunity to sit down and look at how we do business and how we can best reach the maximum number of people.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: I appreciated that historical perspective you shared with us back in the 1970s.
MR. ELKINS: "Annie Hall" was on TV last night.
[Laughter.]
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Thank you.
Inspector General Brown, clearly you've made a very strong case for the savings and the flexibility that we could carry out if we integrated telework more directly into our daily operations. How do you factor in culture? How do you factor in the fact that, you know, we're all human creatures, used to habit, we're used to coming to work, dressing up. How can the Commission transition--and I know it's a very difficult question, but how do you transition a workforce that has been conditioned to operating in a certain way with all of these new opportunities that we now have to become more cost-efficient and more effective?
MS. BROWN: I think the short answer to that would be a good strong training program, change management training, and training in telework for managers, supervisors, and staff, because it's now about looking at how to manage your employees through their performance, through their outcomes, as opposed to being right in their space and looking and seeing what they're doing.
So it's a simple matter--which is not that simple. It's costly. It's an investment. But we included the cost of investing in a strong training program to prepare the agency to transition into a frequent telework environment.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Thank you.
Madam Vice Chair?
VICE CHAIR EARP: Mr. Ressler, we had a banner year last year. Federal complaints are down. FEPA charges are down. The Commission's charges are down. We've had a greater outreach program than ever before. And I'm just wondering, in that environment, given how well we were doing in terms of output, what was NAPA's charge? When you evaluated us, what exactly were you looking for? Cost savings? Efficiencies? Some combination?
MR. RESSLER: We were very specifically looking at your organization structure and looking at your human capital management plan and how best to implement that across the agency and how to deal with the programmatic components that you still had in place, as well as being able to absorb what were the increases in the mission or the expansions of the mission of mediation and of prevention, other than just enforcement. And so that was our beginning process, and I think as we began that examination, we found that we could speak to other topics as well, which was the length of the report, which added to the size and the complexity of it. But our fundamental charge was your organization structure and your human capital management plan.
VICE CHAIR EARP: Okay. Because headquarters, Puerto Rico, and New York take up a large percentage of our resources. Just on the question of cost savings, do you have any thoughts on our perhaps looking at those areas first or after we put our comprehensive plan together? Because they are such a large chunk, where would they figure in the overall strategy?
MR. RESSLER: I think I would work the plan first, and I don't think I would take on the New York, Puerto Rico as my first activity in the implementation of the plan. I would find a medium-sized organization where you could learn from an application of whatever the plan was about from a restructuring standpoint, and then I would move into the harder--I would not take the most difficult challenging activity first. I wouldn't take the easiest, either. I would find something in the middle to test what it is that you have in your plan from an implementation standpoint.
VICE CHAIR EARP: Okay. Thank you.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Commissioner Silverman?
COMMISSIONER SILVERMAN: Probably the most controversial of NAPA's recommendations was the 10 lead offices, as the Chair alluded to. And you said that one of the reasons that NAPA went forward was the additional activity we have of prevention. Of course, we've always had prevention. We're making a better effort at that.
But what we're hearing a lot from both our stakeholders and our employees within is that our presence in a community, an office in the community, has links and ties to the community, and that if we were to restructure and take out an office or only have a small presence, say, investigators there, that we would lose that relationship. And I was wondering if NAPA had factored that in and how you thought we could make up for that.
MR. RESSLER: There is a downside to that initially. I think over time you overcome that by changing the model and giving responsiveness to your customer base through other means--the call center, the mobile unit, et cetera.
Also, I think in looking at the size of the field offices, what we were concerned about was the presence of additional infrastructure in all of the individual offices, and that the thought would be to keep a functional presence only but not an infrastructure support presence because of the way we can deliver administrative services from a nationwide basis, that we would centralize those administrative services in the 10 lead offices, for example, and then deliver that support infrastructure to those linked activities or those linked satellite offices, a much smaller footprint but still not a lack of presence of the EEOC in the communities where it's necessary to maintain that presence.
COMMISSIONER SILVERMAN: Mr. Elkins, the Americans with Disabilities Act is a comprehensive statute, and it's relatively young, and it certainly wasn't around in the 1970s. How does the ADA, which now accounts for 25 percent of our workload, factor into any plans for restructuring?
MR. ELKINS: I should have said, in the late 1970s, very few of our offices were accessible. And all of our offices are now accessible. But I think we also have to consider accessibility in terms of more than just a physical presence, our offices. We have to think of other ways of having people reach out to us and us to reach out to them. Obviously, it's got to be a big factor in where we locate our offices and how we structure them.
COMMISSIONER SILVERMAN: Because I suspect disabled people are everywhere, so--
MR. ELKINS: Absolutely. Every state--
COMMISSIONER SILVERMAN: They have harder barriers to get to us.
MR. ELKINS: Right.
COMMISSIONER SILVERMAN: So we certainly have to factor that in.
Ms. Inspector General, as a result of the events of September 11th, our New York office was forced to utilize teleworking for quite a long period of time. And I think that--I would think that that experience would provide us with a better understanding of how telework would affect our field offices.
Has your office spent any time looking into the New York experience? And if so, what did you learn from that? And will some jobs lend themselves better than others?
MS. BROWN: I personally went to New York with my deputy, and we spent some time with the New York staff. And their views were included in some of our findings.
First off, they were forced into the situation, so it was a little bit different for them. But what we found based on our interviews with staff, there were a good number that found that they could work and work well away from a central office place. Their bigger issue at the time was being in the unsuitable office space that they had. But we learned from them some of the things that people--most of the things that staff need to have if they're going to be working away from central office space.
They helped us pull together or verify what we had gotten from experts in terms of the kinds of equipment and the kinds of supplies and things that they need. We talked with representatives of every work group. Those that were less suitable were the ones that had to rely a lot on what they do in the central office place, like the administrative staff. They didn't telework much at all. But mediators and attorneys, those people teleworked, and most had good experiences doing it.
COMMISSIONER SILVERMAN: Thank you.
CHAIR DOMINGUEZ: Commissioner Miller?
COMMISSIONER MILLER: Thank you. This is certainly sort of a chunky panel in terms of substance, not in terms of individuals.
[Laughter.]
COMMISSIONER MILLER: You've covered a lot, and so let me begin to wade into it.
Mr. Ressler, one of the things that you've said both in the comments and in the report and so on, I want to sort of unpack a little bit. In terms of sort of--I think you said something about, you know, sort of to meet all aspects, changing--you know, that our mission has changed, which now emphasizes prevention and mediation. And let me lay out for you sort of an alternative assumption there.
Coming from the individual who chaired the Mediation Task Force and sort of helped give birth to what at that time was somewhat of a controversial issue, mediation and prevention, I believe, are means through--means to achieve in part our mission of enforcement; that is, mediation is not an end in and of itself, nor is prevention an end in and of itself. Our mission, as I see it, is to reduce and prevent discrimination, and that can occur in any number of ways, through litigation primarily, because I think that that is an important piece of how we respond to discrimination that we find; conciliation; and then also through mediation and sort of outreach as a part of that.
So I don't see those kinds of issues as really a shift in our mission, but those things have always been there in sort of one way or the other. And so, therefore, I'm approaching the structural reorganization in terms of how is this ultimately going to benefit our enforcement activities, because at our core, unlike other sort of DOL agencies or what have you, at our core I think we're an enforcement agency. People come to us, complain of violations of the law, and have an expectation that we as a law enforcement agency, we respond to those complaints of violations of law through investigations and so on and so forth. And so that's sort of my sort of overall approach to how I begin to look at the issue of restructuring.
I think that we do have a challenge of saving money and fiscal responsibility, and our challenge is to figure out what we do with our sort of far-flung, so to speak, office structure, although employees are working everywhere, and that in the impact of face-to-face investigations, face-to-face sort of intake, I think is absolutely critical. And we've seen that in the comments coming not just from the civil rights community but, importantly, from the business and management community as an important piece of how our work gets to be done, and the quality of our investigations and the quality of our work has improved because the quality of our intake has sort of improved. And that occurs not through letter writing or not through Internet but through face-to-face investigations.
In looking at offices, you mentioned sort of charge flow as one thing that you're sort of looking at and figuring out, which offices to sort of think about in terms of lead offices and other lead offices. Is that the only thing or is that the most important thing in your estimation of analyzing lead offices?
MR. RESSLER: I don't think it's the only thing, but I believe it was the belief of the study team that it was probably the most important--for an initial determination, anyway.
COMMISSIONER MILLER: And so, therefore, the issue of that one way--because I think the challenge that we have as a Commission is sort of thinking--you know, is figuring out what to do. And so one way or the way that you're recommending that we at least begin to sift through our office structure is to examine the charge flow. So those offices that have the highest charge flow become lead offices, and those with less charge flow are not. Is that correct?
MR. RESSLER: I would start with that as my model, and I would test that model and apply it against some other options that you might come up with as you develop that.
We did not go into a level of detail as we examined what that lead office component could look like.
COMMISSIONER MILLER: That gets to my next question about implementation strategy that Mr. Johnson and the earlier panel had mentioned and really focused on having an overall goal and vision and picture of what the whole thing is going to look like, and then so that everybody is clear on that, we have a road map, so to speak, of how we go, and then we sort of march forward and everybody has shared expectations of where we're going.
You've talked about sort of piloting or taking a look at medium-size offices first and figuring out how that's going to play out. Is that--how does that jibe with sort of having an overall picture of this is what we believe the agency should look like in five years and here's how we march forward to it?
MR. RESSLER: I think it's consistent with that, Commissioner Miller, in that your strategic plan would be at a fairly high level with some important goals and objectives. Your tactical plan would speak to some examples that you would actually deploy, and you would have an operational piece to that as a third component, where you would put in motion those tactical plans and keeping it linked with the strategic plan.
COMMISSIONER MILLER: One of my colleagues I think raised the issue of headquarters. Was there a particular reason why in trying to sort of assume cost savings or greater efficiencies that you began your look out in the field where the charges are coming in rather than in the oversight functions of headquarters as ways of realizing efficiencies and savings?
MR. RESSLER: Commissioner, I don't know the answer to that question. I'd have to go back and do a little research and talk to some actual study team members. I was not on the study team, having only been at the Academy since March of this year. But I will get an answer to that question for you and submit it back in writing.
COMMISSIONER MILLER: Great. Thank you. Welcome to the Academy, by the way.
MR. RESSLER: Thank you.
COMMISSIONER MILLER: In terms of this sort of fiscal constraint or the fiscal reality, let's call it, that we're now sort of operating under, which I wholeheartedly understand and realize that it's my responsibility to deal with, is there sort of--from your perspective, as expert administrators, sort of a goal in mind for an agency like us in terms of, you know, what our real estate costs should look like, where we should be positioned vis-a-vis other agencies or in personnel costs, something that we should be approaching? Because my question, I guess, goes to how do we know that we've restructured enough? How do we know sort of when to stop in terms of--I mean, I think that there's a general sense that more offices may be better than less offices. So how do we know when we've restructured enough?
MR. RESSLER: I think what you have to do, sir, is you find some benchmarks that are out there with agencies that are similarly situated, that have similar missions, and you begin a dialogue with them about how the delivery of services goes in their particular business area.
I don't know if there is a right answer to many of the questions that we've posed or even some of the recommendations that we've suggested here. You have to kind of look at it, examine it, and do what feels right for the Commission. You've got a very specific culture in this agency. It's a longstanding culture. It's going to take three to five years to even begin to make inroads into the change of that culture.
What you have the ability to do, in our opinion, is to set in motion a lot of these changes and a lot of these recommendations that begin to bring some flexibilities, potentially, to the regional environment. Is the regional environment structure still the right one? Or do you do some different consolidation and some different configuration?
There are so many different things going on in government right now as organizations are being examined that it would be worthwhile and useful to take a look at some examples. And we'd be prepared to help with some of that as well.
COMMISSIONER MILLER: Thank you. I appreciate that, because I think that what's important and what I heard from the previous panel is that we have a plan and a vision in place and that we don't go about this sort of in a piecemeal fashion, either by way of how leases are--you know, because some leases are coming up, let's look at these kinds of issues, but to really have a full, thoughtful plan and then to implement that plan in some sort of rational basis so that everybody is clear on where we're going and what we're heading towards.
One of the things, by the way, in doing some of my preparation for this meeting is--in looking at some of our sister agencies, I mean, one of the things--and I'll come back maybe with some of the other speakers--is looking at some of our sister agencies, one of the things that we hear all the time about the EEOC is, well, 90 percent of our budget is consumed by rent and personnel costs, or 80 percent, or whatever, that we have very high rent and personnel costs.
Well, I looked at sort of if you looked at our sister agencies, whether it's the FCC--the FCC has a higher percentage of rent and personnel costs than we do, the same with some of our other enforcement sister agencies.
So I wonder, while that is a startling and a difficult fact for us to grapple with on a fiscal basis, I wonder whether that's just the nature of us as an enforcement agency, because we are not a grant-giving agency, we are not a programmatic agency. What we do is we have investigators and we have buildings which house them and so on.
So that was something that was challenging. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that.
MR. RESSLER: Well, clearly, the desire of the Commission to be physi