FINAL FY 2002 ANNUAL PERFORMANCE PLAN

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Vision and Mission

Strategic Initiatives

5-Point Plan

Annual Performance Plan and Budget Overview

Total Agency Budget

Budget and Strategic Goals

STRATEGIC GOAL 1
Enforce Federal Civil Rights Employment Laws

Private Sector Enforcement

Federal Sector Enforcement

State and Local Program

STRATEGIC GOAL 2
Promote Equal Opportunity in Employment

Outreach and Technical Assistance to Employers

Outreach and Technical Assistance to Employees

STRATEGIC GOAL 3
Enhance Agency Effectiveness to Achieve our Mission and Strategic Goals

Staff Effectiveness

Policy Guidance and Technical Assistance

Agency Infrastructure

Verification and Validation of Agency Information

Program Evaluations

The Commission⁽¹⁾ is over 36 years old, yet its mission today is as vital as it was when it was formed as a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Cari M. Dominguez became the Chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on August 6, 2001. In a message to employees, Chair Dominguez said: "... I believe that EEOC is a very special agency, rich in history. At my swearing-in, I said that the building materials used to erect this agency are not the typical ones; rather they include the blood, sweat, tears and struggles of those who saw wrong and tried to right it. I can think of no richer legacy, nor a more important mission, than the one we are here to discharge." Our Mission Statement conveys to employers and employees alike that "... no worker [will] be left behind for reasons as wasteful and abhorrent as prejudice and discrimination. ... [EEOC's] mission captures the promise of America and the mandate of our times."

Our Vision

Become the World's Preeminent Civil Rights Employment Law Agency and Serve as the Standard Bearer for Excellence in Outreach, Enforcement and Professionalism.

Our Mission

Eradicate employment Discrimination at the Workplace.

STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

This Annual Performance Plan is composed of several interrelated strategic initiatives. The initiatives, both the Administration's and the Agency's, work together to support the agency's vision and mission.

After her arrival, the Chair and the agency's senior leadership developed a 5-point Plan. The Plan is a strategic framework through which the agency will accomplish its vision and mission. It builds upon what the agency has done to improve its operations and seeks to broaden the agency's reach through increased education, outreach, mediation, and strategic enforcement and litigation. Our goal is to provide the best service possible at the least cost to the American taxpayer.

This final fiscal year 2002 Annual Performance Plan fully supports the 5-Point Plan, effectively directs the allocation of our resources this fiscal year and sets the stage for fiscal year 2003 and beyond.

To achieve our vision and mission, our 5-Point Plan will focus on the following important elements:

• Proactive Prevention - The EEOC will pursue efforts geared toward prevention to combat employment discrimination. Our focus will be on providing information and solutions that will enable us to identify and solve problems before they escalate into intractable conflict.
• Proficient Resolution - Our goal is to achieve quality services that are fair and cost effective. We will ensure that all EEOC activities and functions are consistent, accurate and timely. In both the private and federal sector complaint processes, the EEOC will seek ways to evaluate and improve every stage of these processes.
• Strategic Enforcement and Litigation - Using all of the tools and resources at its disposal, the EEOC must make the greatest impact possible to eradicate employment discrimination in the private and federal sectors. We will determine those areas where the agency needs to provide more attention.
• Promote and Expand Mediation/ADR - Promoting and expanding mediation and other types of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is the centerpiece of the EEOC's 5-Point Plan.
• EEOC as a Model Workplace - The President's Management Agenda is the roadmap for the final point of our 5-Point Plan - to make EEOC a model workplace. The President's Agenda addresses important enhancements to internal agency operations and its interface with the American public.

In addition to the President's Management Agenda, we are also incorporating other Administration and Commission initiatives into this Annual Performance Plan.

The President's Management Agenda

The key features of the President's Management Agenda are:

• Integrate budget and performance by focusing on agency results.
• Strategically manage human capital.
• Plan for competitive sourcing of identified agency functions to bring the best features of competition between private and public sources to improve services to the American public.
• Improve performance of the timeliness and accuracy of financial data and payments.
• Expand electronic government to deliver services and benefits to the public.

The President's New Freedom Initiative

• The New Freedom Initiative is part of the President's ongoing efforts to build a single nation of justice and opportunity by improving access for people with disabilities to all aspects of mainstream American life.

The Freedom to Compete Initiative

• The EEOC's Freedom to Compete Initiative fully supports the President's efforts by identifying strategies that promote fair and open competition in the workplace without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, or disability. The Freedom to Compete Initiative will promote best workplace practices that use the best human talent available to preserve our country's leading role in the global economy.

Executive Order 12067

• The EEOC will reinvigorate its role as the lead federal civil rights agency for coordinating employment discrimination policy.

Agency Restructuring

• The EEOC is working with an outside consultant to review its current organization to recommend ways to restructure to effectively support implementation of the President's Management Agenda.

ANNUAL PERFORMANCE PLAN AND BUDGET OVERVIEW

Our Annual Performance Plan for fiscal year 2002 adopts the overall structure in our current Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2000-2005. During fiscal year 2002, we will review our Strategic Plan's Strategic Goals and Objectives in light of our 5-Point Plan, the President's Management Agenda and our other critical initiatives. Until a new strategic plan is adopted, however, our current Strategic Plan guides the framework for this Final Fiscal Year 2002 Annual Performance Plan with the following three strategic goals:

• Strategic Goal 1: Enforce Federal Civil Rights Employment Laws;
• Strategic Goal 2: Promote Equal Opportunity in Employment; and,
• Strategic Goal 3: Enhance Agency Effectiveness to Achieve our Mission and Strategic Goals.

The Goals contain a total of eight strategic objectives.⁽²⁾

Finally, the agency's broad strategic goals are linked to our budget in the following way:

TOTAL AGENCY BUDGET

Two budgetary program activities comprise the agency's total budget: (1) Enforce EEO Laws and Promote Equal Opportunity, and (2) Executive Direction and Support.

BUDGET AND STRATEGIC GOALS

The first budgetary activity combines resources dedicated to EEOC's Strategic Goals 1 and 2, as shown below:

STRATEGIC GOAL 1 Enforce Federal Civil Rights Employment Laws.

This Strategic Goal includes the agency's enforcement programs for the private and federal sectors, including charge processing contracts with state and local Fair Employment Practices Agencies.

STRATEGIC GOAL 2 Promote Equal Opportunity in Employment.

This Strategic Goal focuses on preventing employment discrimination by emphasizing outreach, technical assistance and voluntary compliance with a broad range of stakeholders. These activities promote understanding of the laws enforced by the Commission and emphasize our efforts to reach out to employers, employees and members of the public, including small businesses and under-served communities.

The second budgetary activity includes resources dedicated to EEOC's Strategic Goal 3, as shown below:

STRATEGIC GOAL 3 Enhance Agency Effectiveness to Achieve Our Mission and Strategic Goals

This Strategic Goal concentrates on areas to improve support operations to better enable the agency to meet its goals and objectives. It includes such areas as enhancing staff effectiveness, policy direction and guidance, and improving the agency's infrastructure.

The following pages highlight the agency's efforts to achieve these Strategic Goals and the performance measures adopted for fiscal year 2002.

STRATEGIC GOAL 1
Enforce Federal Civil Rights Employment Laws

Three major programs cover our nationwide investigation and litigation activities under Strategic Goal 1: the private sector enforcement program, the federal sector enforcement program, and the state and local program.

Private Sector Enforcement

The Commission's private sector enforcement program is an important component of the statutes we enforce. Individuals file charges alleging employment discrimination. We assist them in the charge filing process, offer mediation to both charging parties and respondents charged, review and investigate their charges, and conduct other settlement efforts throughout the charge process. Finally, in appropriate cases, we file litigation based on the merits of a case, the legal precedents involved, and the effective, strategic use of the agency's limited resources.

Our revised fiscal year 2002 measures focus on efforts that support our private sector enforcement program.

Strategic Objective 1.1.

Improve the effectiveness of the private sector enforcement program, including the use of charge prioritization, mediation and litigation.

Measures for Strategic Objective

Program Highlights

Over the past few years, the Commission has made considerable gains in improving its private sector enforcement program. In fiscal year 2002, we are building upon past successes. Our private-sector enforcement measures will inform us on how well we are achieving several key aspects of our 5-Point Plan.

Our fiscal year 2002 measures track the timeliness of resolving charges (including reducing the processing time and the charge inventory) and the proper categorization of charges, so that resources are appropriately deployed. These measures will show the effectiveness of our private sector enforcement program.

In fiscal year 2001, 64% of administratively processed private sector charges were resolved within 180 days. We expect to continue this important accomplishment into fiscal year 2002. Our mediation program contributed immensely to achieving this objective. In fiscal year 2002, we will expand the categories of charges eligible for mediation and the points in the process where mediation is available.

Also, our charge prioritization program is invaluable in helping the agency evaluate its work and manage its workload more effectively. Proper charge categorization is critical to effectively administer the enforcement process. In fiscal year 2001, a sample of charge files revealed that 90% of the files contained information that supported the charge category. We expect to maintain this performance level in fiscal year 2002.

Federal Sector Enforcement

Our federal sector enforcement program focuses on eradicating employment discrimination in the federal government. Its emphasis is different from EEOC's private sector enforcement program in several important ways. In the private sector program, individuals file charges directly with the Commission. Individuals in the federal sector file complaints with their own federal agencies first. The agencies initially investigate allegations of employment discrimination. Complainants can then request a hearing by the EEOC on the allegations, which is not part of the private sector enforcement process. Individuals cannot request a hearing in the private sector enforcement process. Also, a complainant or federal agency can file an appeal with the EEOC. The appeals procedure is also not part of the private sector enforcement process. If dissatisfied with the outcome, federal sector complainants can file a lawsuit in federal court, similar to a private sector charging party.

In addition to hearings and appeals programs for federal sector complainants, our enforcement efforts include on-site reviews in federal agencies as part of our oversight role. These reviews help us identify concerns and advise federal agency managers about the federal sector process. Similar to the private sector program, we also establish policies implementing the equal employment opportunity laws and conduct outreach, education and technical assistance activities to prevent or correct discriminatory practices in the federal sector.

Strategic Objective 1.2.

Enhance the effectiveness of the federal sector program.

Measures for Strategic Objective

EEO Cases from Other Federal Agencies

EEOC Internal EEO Cases

Program Highlights

Hearings and appeals are the two major components of EEOC's federal sector program. Over the past few years, we have shown considerable improvement in each facet measured and plan to continue this direction in fiscal year 2002. Our focus will be to continue reducing the complaint inventory by resolving more hearings and appeals within 180 days. Also, we modified our measure addressing the aged inventory of appeal cases to reflect the increased attention to cases over 500 days old. We will also continue to improve the processing time and quality of our own EEO investigations and hearings.

One particular strategy to accomplish our goals is to use Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) techniques to resolve workplace disputes in federal employment; consistent with our 5-Point Plan. We plan to pilot the use of ADR in hearings throughout the country. In addition, we will fully implement EEOC's Federal Appeals Settlement Team (FAST) program, which we piloted last year, to continue to assist parties in settling their disputes. Training will be provided to support these initiatives.

In fiscal year 2001, a web-based data collection system was designed, developed and tested. We implemented the system in November 2001 (fiscal year 2002) to collect federal sector EEO information from all federal agencies; almost a year ahead of schedule. The system provides internal, automated editing checks to prevent agencies from entering incorrect data. This new web-based system supports EEOC's efforts to timely collect, analyze and publish the most accurate data from federal agencies. To monitor the effectiveness of this new system, we have added measure 1.2.6 which seeks to reduce the time it takes to collect and verify data from federal agencies and issue a report to the public.

For our own internal EEO process, we exceeded the 15% reduction goal in the average number of days to process internal EEO complaints in fiscal year 2000. However, in fiscal year 2001, we did not meet the goal. We are examining our systems and exploring ways to improve our internal EEO complaint process and reduce the processing times. We plan to use mediation/ADR techniques and provide appropriate training to employees to meet the measure.

State and Local Program

We work with many state and local Fair Employment Practices Agencies (FEPAs) and Native-American Tribal Employment Rights Organizations (TEROs) throughout the country to augment efforts to enforce employment discrimination statutes nationwide. EEOC's partnership with these agencies/organizations, through our work-sharing agreements and other activities, benefits both the employer and employee communities for several important reasons. We coordinate charges that are dual-filed under both state or local law and federal law; preventing the duplication of effort, coordinating enforcement efforts, streamlining the charge resolution process for both charging parties and respondents, consistently applying enforcement practices, and conserving resources. A charged respondent usually responds to only one agency, but has the opportunity to resolve both state or local and federal actions simultaneously.

In addition, we provide training on investigative and legal issues and conduct joint activities to benefit our mutual constituencies, such as outreach to provide education and technical assistance. We contract with our TERO partners to promote employment opportunity on Native American reservations.

Strategic Objective 1.3.

Promote coordination and enhance efficiency by strengthening partnerships with State and Local Fair Employment Practices Agencies (FEPAs) and Native American Tribal Employment Rights Organizations (TEROs).

Measures for Strategic Objective

Program Highlights

Over the years, we have established strong partnerships with many state and local FEPAs and TEROs. In 2001, we contracted with 91 FEPAs to resolve 55,020 dual-filed charges. We contracted with 64 TEROs to promote equal employment opportunity on or near Native American reservations. We will continue to work collaboratively with state and local FEPAs and TEROs throughout the country to prevent discrimination and enforce our respective laws in the workplace. Our collaborative efforts have helped advance equal employment opportunity nationwide.

STRATEGIC GOAL 2
Promote Equal Opportunity in Employment

Preventing employment discrimination from occurring in the workplace in the first place is preferable to remedying the consequences of the discrimination. A major component of EEOC's enforcement strategy is our outreach, education and technical assistance initiatives to assist employers, employees and stakeholder groups understand and prevent employment discrimination. We believe that discrimination can be averted if companies, federal agencies and individuals know their legal rights and responsibilities.

Our GPRA Strategic Plan establishes separate objectives and measures for employer and employee groups. Although employers and employees, and their respective stakeholders, attend many of our outreach, education and technical assistance events or benefit from our educational materials, we believe that it is important to focus on the unique issues and perspectives of each group with separate objectives and measures for Strategic Goal 2.

Outreach and Technical Assistance to Employers

The EEOC believes that it is important for employers to know about practices and behaviors that can lead to unlawful employment discrimination. With this knowledge and understanding, they have a better opportunity to eliminate or change policies or practices that violate EEO laws. Since the employer community is a key component of the equation to eradicate employment discrimination, our enforcement strategy includes extensive outreach, education and technical assistance efforts to assist private sector and federal sector employers in voluntarily complying with the laws we enforce.

Strategic Objective 2.1.

Encourage and facilitate voluntary compliance with equal employment opportunity laws among employers and employer groups in the private and federal sectors.

Measures for Strategic Objective

Program Highlights

For fiscal year 2002, many outreach, education and technical assistance activities are geared toward employers and employer groups, as well as employee and employee groups (see Strategic Objective 2.2 on page 27), in the private and federal sectors. These activities continue or enhance our successful efforts last year to encourage voluntary compliance with EEO laws to build upon past accomplishments.

Other initiatives will also enhance the Commission's visibility and facilitate the prevention of employment discrimination. The President's New Freedom Initiative and the Commission's Freedom to Compete Initiative will focus on promoting fair and free competition in the workplace. EEOC will spotlight the importance of open and free competition in the workplace, without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, or disability status, through a nationwide series of informative roundtable discussions, joint corporate alliances, recognition of best practices, and public service announcements tied to the 2002 Winter Olympics.

The Commission has consistently received high marks from participants on the quality of its Technical Assistance Program Seminars (TAPS) provided by the Revolving Fund. Last year, 99% of the participants rated the overall quality of the TAPS acceptable or better. Our TAPS and other training courses have provided practical information and assistance to encourage voluntary compliance with federal laws prohibiting job discrimination. We have offered a variety of fee-based training and technical assistance programs throughout the country aimed at serving the needs of employers and employees in the private and the federal sectors with the aim to prevent employment discrimination.

Finally, we will expand our outreach and education efforts to include the promotion of mediation/ADR as a viable alternative to the enforcement process. In particular, we want to increase the employer participation rate in mediation, which has been substantially less than the charging party rate. We will conduct outreach activities designed specifically to encourage employer participation. Our fifty-one field offices throughout the country will develop and execute strategies to accomplish this goal.

Outreach and Technical Assistance to Employees

We make extensive information available to private sector and federal sector employee communities to help educate them about their rights and assist them in the important steps they need to take to exercise those rights. The agency recognizes that employees, or applicants for employment, are valuable partners in the quest to eradicate employment discrimination. The private sector and federal sector employee communities require special attention with programs to ensure that we are able to reach this broad audience.

Strategic Objective 2.2.

Increase knowledge about individual rights under equal employment opportunity laws among the public and employee groups.

Measures for Strategic Objective

Program Highlights

Our efforts to reach this community in fiscal year 2001 were very successful. We intend to continue these efforts and introduce new ones; as we rebalance our initiatives among the different enforcement, outreach, and technical assistance priorities. In addition to our discussions with stakeholders and other employee representatives, we will make available no less than 15 frequently requested EEOC publications in alternate languages (Spanish, Haitian-Creole, Vietnamese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Chinese) to better serve under-served communities. Examples of these types of publications include Fact Sheets on the laws we enforce and other information materials and pamphlets.

(Also see the narrative regarding employer activities)

Strategic Goal 3
Enhance Agency Effectiveness to achieve Our Mission and Strategic Goals

In fiscal year 1997, when the Commission developed its first GPRA Strategic Plan, a separate strategic goal was established to heighten the importance of the initiatives of our executive direction and support functions. Our Strategic Goals- enforcement, prevention, and agency effectiveness - send a powerful message that all three, working together, are necessary to accomplish our mission.

Staff Effectiveness

Our employees' skills and abilities are key to successful enforcement of our statutory authorities. We must give our employees the necessary information and tools to do a quality job since knowledge and technological requirements are quickly changing in our society. Part of the President's Management Agenda emphasizes critical components of human resource management, because federal agencies are now facing challenges to retain current employees and recruit and select new employees. To address these challenges, we have identified important areas in our GPRA measures to enhance staff effectiveness.

Strategic Objective 3.1.

Enhance staff capabilities and substantive knowledge to improve work processes and job functions through training, partnership, team-based approaches, and customer-based principles.

Measures for Strategic Objective

Program Highlights

In fiscal years 2000 - 2001, we conducted an agency-wide training assessment, identified critical skill gaps in our major occupational groups, and began providing training to front-line employees to address those gaps to improve work processes and service delivery. In fiscal year 2002, we will develop a prototype for technology-based learning for implementation in fiscal year 2003.

Also, in fiscal year 2001, we piloted a Quality Peer Review program for intake and outreach functions of the private sector enforcement program. This initiative was undertaken to: (1) facilitate employee-to-employee learning, knowledge-sharing, collaboration and assistance; (2) identify and share effective practices; and (3) continuously improve the work of the Commission. In fiscal year 2002, we will evaluate the pilot program.

Policy Guidance and Technical Assistance

External policy guidance and technical assistance aids employers, employees, courts, and Congress in understanding the federal equal employment opportunity laws. These items provide valuable information about individual and employer rights and responsibilities and also encourage voluntary compliance with federal employment discrimination laws. In addition, courts carefully review Commission regulations and policy guidance to interpret employment discrimination law.

Internal guidance assists our employees in understanding federal equal employment opportunity laws and enables them to provide better customer service. Using the Commission's policies and internal guidance, our employees apply investigative and legal standards accurately, effectively and consistently nationwide. In addition, internal guidance and training establishes a model employer atmosphere at the EEOC. It is critical that the Commission adopt and implement internal programs and guidance that allow its own employees to work in an environment free of discrimination.

Strategic Objective 3.2.

Provide policy direction and guidance to achieve all Strategic Goals.

Measures for Strategic Objective

Program Highlights

All of our fiscal year 2002 measures for policy guidance and technical assistance are new. They are designed to enhance our coordination of EEO laws throughout the government and develop our workforce as part of our initiative to become a model employer.

Under Presidential Executive Order 12067, EEOC provides leadership and coordination to federal agencies to enforce all federal statutes, Executive Orders, regulations and policies which require equal employment opportunity without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age or disability. Our responsibility under this Order is a key Commission priority to fulfill our vision to become the world's preeminent civil rights employment law agency.

Also, as the civil rights agency with lead responsibility to enforce federal EEO laws, EEOC intends to be the model for other employers. Diversity training and awareness for our managers and supervisors is part of an on-going effort to prevent discrimination.

Finally, the agency's organizational structure and support systems are critical to its ability to operate effectively and efficiently. In fiscal year 2002, we will study the existing field office and headquarters structures and develop a restructuring plan to streamline and improve agency processes and procedures and redesign the organization. An outside consultant and an intra-agency work group are exploring restructuring and will recommend some interim improvements. We plan to begin to implement the restructuring plan in fiscal year 2003.

Agency Infrastructure

Our third objective to enhance agency effectiveness involves the agency's infrastructure - financial, human resource management, technology and administrative support systems. It is imperative that we have an effective and efficient finance system to account for resource expenditures and to promptly pay for services. Also, a modern personnel system helps us manage our workforce and strategically address human capital issues - an important reform initiative of the Administration and critical to the Commission's Restructuring Plan.

Strategic Objective 3.3.

Improve the agency's infrastructure.

Measures for Strategic Objective

Program Highlights

Information technology (IT) plays a major role in improving the agency's performance. Continued implementation and modernization of IT is critical to the achievement of EEOC's goals and objectives in all areas of agency operations. Over the past several years, we have made significant strides in improving the agency's technology infrastructure. This infrastructure includes modern desktop tools, local area networks, wide area communications, Internet access, and intranet capabilities.

Building on this foundation, our focus now is to develop and deploy integrated information systems to better manage the agency's corporate data, and implement e-government initiatives to improve public service and access to government information. In addition, in fiscal year 2002, we will continue using our new web-based federal EEO data collection system (as referenced on page 19) and pilot our Integrated Mission System in several field offices.

In fiscal year 2001, we implemented a new personnel and payroll system and prepared for implementation of a new finance system, which was in fact implemented at the beginning of fiscal year 2002. During fiscal year 2002, we will continue our initiatives to adjust and expand our Integrated Financial Management System and continue application of our Federal Personnel and Payroll System.

In addition, we will continue to improve our processes for paying our commercial vendors, as well as the processing of procurement actions and travel vouchers. It is important that these and other support functions operate effectively and efficiently to meet the day-to-day needs of the agency and its employees and serve our contractors.

In fiscal year 2002, we will begin moving our Revolving Fund closer to overall self-sufficiency. The Revolving Fund enables the EEOC to charge a fee for the costs associated with the delivery of specialized external education, technical assistance and training on the laws we enforce. Programs offered through the Revolving Fund augment those activities that are provided to the public free of charge.

VERIFICATION AND VALIDATION OF AGENCY INFORMATION

Accurate and reliable data is critical for planning and allocating resources at the Commission. The major front-line program areas-private sector enforcement and federal sector programs-require data on the number and status of matters pending, as well as data on financial and human resources deployed in order to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of our programs.

One vehicle we will use to strengthen the quality of our information is the newly drafted Guidelines for Ensuring and Maximizing Information Quality for the EEOC that will be developed during fiscal year 2002 and implemented by the beginning of fiscal year 2003. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued its government-wide information quality guidelines to assist agencies in developing their own guidelines to ensure the quality, objectivity, utility and integrity of information disseminated by federal agencies. Under this statutory requirement, the Commission will augment its current efforts to ensure the quality of its data/information.

Also, we have made significant progress in implementing our 5-year technology plan. In fiscal year 2002, we will continue upgrading three major information systems.

• The Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS) will integrate core accounting and budget modules;
• The Federal Personnel and Payroll System will integrate the agency's human resource and payroll data enabling management to keep apprised of information, such as attrition rates, which must be addressed promptly if the agency is to meet its goals; and
• We will pilot the Integrated Mission System (IMS); tracking data for the private and federal sector enforcement programs. IMS consolidates the Commission's charge intake, investigation, mediation, federal sector hearings, litigation, and outreach functions into a single shared system.

The deployment of these systems will allow the future integration of financial, program and human resource data. These systems will provide computerized edit routines to verify entered data as one approach for ensuring the validity of the information. In addition, the agency anticipates using selective sampling and analysis of files to further ensure data validity.

In addition to these three systems, which are the core components of an integrated information architecture at EEOC, the agency completed the development and testing of a web-based federal EEO data collection system, which will improve collection and reporting of aggregated EEO complaints from federal agencies. Work on the system was scheduled to be completed by the end of fiscal year 2002; however, the development and testing of the system were completed ahead of schedule and it was implemented at the beginning of fiscal year 2002 (November 2001).

In fiscal year 2002, EEOC will also augment its information technology security programs to ensure a high level of security for the agency's technology infrastructure and its electronic information and communication systems.

Accurate, secure, and reliable information from these systems is critical for agency managers to make human and financial resource decisions. Continued investment in information technology at the required levels is essential to meet these objectives.

PROGRAM EVALUATIONS

Components of Several Program Evaluations

The agency conducts evaluation activities to inform management of the effectiveness of programs. Below are components of evaluation activities for two areas addressed in the agency's Strategic Plan:

Prevention Programs

The EEOC takes the following steps to assess its outreach, education and technical assistance programs for employers, employees and stakeholder groups:

• Throughout the year, at least quarterly, outreach results are reviewed and checked against plans, using data and reports submitted by field offices;
• Overall performance is reviewed to ensure progress toward meeting GPRA outreach goals; and,
• Participant evaluation forms are used to evaluate fee-based training under the Revolving Fund.

Training

The Commission uses several mechanisms to guide its training programs and activities:

• Agency manager surveys about training needs to guide the allocation of training resources;
• Training methodology evaluations used by EEOC offices to meet training needs and identify those using creative approaches to share;
• Computerized data systems to identify recurring employee developmental needs; and,
• Tools to assess the extent to which staff training initiatives improve the achievement of key program indicators.

Footnotes

1. EEOC, Commission or agency are used interchangeably throughout this Plan.

2. In an on-going effort to improve the description and comprehension of our measures, capture trends and help management, employees and stakeholders understand agency performance information, we have revised the language describing EEOC's strategic goals, objectives and measures in this Plan. For example, several measures for fiscal year 2002 were revised to more clearly encompass the initiatives of the new Administration. Language and target level revisions in measures originally submitted to Congress in April 2001, in the Commission's Fiscal Year 2002 Budget Request and Annual Performance Plan, are designed to strategically focus agency resources on improving enforcement of EEO laws and preventing discrimination in the first place.

3. A one-time supplemental of $1.301 for Emergency Response and Recovery is excluded from this amount.

4. Total workload is defined as pending inventory at the beginning of the fiscal year + receipts + net transfers.

5. Resolved charges include Merit Factor, No Cause, and Administrative closures.

6. The metric of the measure has been adjusted in fiscal year 2002 to use more relevant data.

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This page was last modified on July 25, 2002.