Council Meeting
Held Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Ms. Delia L. Johnson,
Co-Chair and Director, Office of Civil Rights for International Broadcasting
Bureau, opened the meeting with a few remarks and then asked the attendees to
give their name, agency, and position.
She thanked Bonita White, Director,
EEO Programs, DHHS, for sponsoring this meeting.
Denise Lee, EEOC
Disability Program Coordinator, discussed the creation of the Federal
Disability Program Committee – an interagency organization that includes 508
and selective placement coordinators to promote the employment of people with
disabilities in the federal sector. The Committee has had two meetings, and the
last one was held on April 28, 2005.
Ms. Lee would like
for this Committee to hold monthly meetings. She noted that this was a federal
interagency initiative, rather than an EEOC initiative. The focus of the
Committee was to share staff, budget resources, and best practices to enhance
the disability programs at federal agencies.
For additional
information about the Committee, you may e-mail Ms. Lee at Denise.Lee@eeoc.gov,
or call her at 202 663-4308.
Dr. Kedibone
Letlake-Rennert and Ms. Jane Wilson gave a presentation on their company,
Phambili Strategies and Solutions. Phambili offers training services on
diversity management, mentoring, intercultural competence, gender sensitivity,
leadership and management development, and emotional intelligence. The company
is headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, with an office in Washington,
DC. For additional information about this company, check its Web site at http://www.phambilistrategies.com/,
send an e-mail to wrennert3@comcast.net, or call 703
536-0642.
Robert Jew (Director, EEO & Diversity Programs, National
Archives and Records Administration) announced the 2005 FAPAC Conference, which
will be held on May 31-June 3, 2005, at the Marriott Crystal Gateway Hotel in
Arlington, VA.
Registration can still be accomplished on-line at http://www.fapac.org, as well as
on-site. After May 13, the cost increases from $375.00 to $400.00.
Additionally, it's not too late to participate as a sponsor/exhibitor.
Further information about the conference can be viewed at the FAPAC web site.
Barbara Beck-Matthews (from the U.S. Department of Justice)
indicated that contractors had to identify the cadre of investigations used when
submitting bids for EEO investigations.
Ronald Ballard (Assistant Director, Office of Civil Rights, EPA) stated
that he had few problems with the contract EEO investigators at EPA. Anthony Torres mentioned that contract
investigators received a bonus for completing EEO investigations ahead of
schedule at ATF. Caffin Gordon (Chief, Compliance Operations at the Department
of Transportation (DOT)) said that if EEO contractors completed the reports of
investigations late, they deducted some money from the final payouts. For
example, DOT will deduct 20 percent if the case is 10 days late, 40 percent if
it is 20 days late, and 70 percent if the case is 30 days late.
Jorge Ponce, Council Co-Chair, pointed out that federal agencies had incurred enormous disruption to their workflows, staff allocations, and financial resources to retool their statistical databases to conform with the nine job categories that replaced the PATCOB categories used by the Office of Personnel Management and that were first announced in EEOC’s Instructions to Management Directive 715. Nevertheless, Mr. Ponce read from the preface to EEOC’s Annual Report on the Federal Work Force for Fiscal Year 2004 that showed that “to prepare this report, the Commission relied on work force data obtained from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s Central Personnel Data File (CPDF), …”
Mr. Ponce reminded Council members that they had until April
29, 2005, to submit to OPM their comments on the notification and training
requirements of the No FEAR Act. He
indicated that OPM still had not published anything on the section 203
requirements of this Act on the Federal Register.
Ms. Johnson reached out to the EEO professionals who wished
to set up a Title VI organization to serve as a subcommittee of the
Council. She reminded Council members
that if they wanted to have more Title VI speakers, they had to suggest topics
and speakers to her.