GovernmentExecutive.com

Over the past year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission made significant progress reducing a large inventory of discrimination complaints filed by federal employees, agency officials announced last week.

The civil rights enforcement agency cut the number of federal sector cases awaiting hearings before an administrative judge by more than 30 percent, from 8,467 at the end of fiscal 2003 to 5,871 as of Sept. 30, the close of fiscal 2004, according to preliminary EEOC statistics. "We are moving in the right direction and making clear progress," EEOC Chairwoman Cari Dominguez said in a statement.

The EEOC also handled cases more efficiently over the past fiscal year, the preliminary data indicated. In fiscal 2004, the agency took an average of 298 days to process federal employees' complaints, down 29 percent from the previous year when the typical case took 420 days.

These figures only include time spent once the case reached the EEOC. Federal regulations ask civil servants to initiate discrimination complaints at their own agency's equal opportunity office. If the agency doesn't investigate the case within 180 days, the employee can request an EEOC hearing. Employees can also appeal agency decisions to the EEOC.

By "working harder and smarter" to reduce case inventories and processing time, EEOC employees set a positive example for agency equal opportunity offices, said David Grinberg, an EEOC spokesman. "We're trying to do what we can on our end," he said. "[It's] up to the agencies to do their part at the investigative stage."

Data on the average time that agencies spent investigating discrimination complaints in fiscal 2004 isn't available yet. But agencies are making progress at settling cases earlier by using alternative dispute resolution, Grinberg said. In turn, fewer new complaints reach the EEOC, allowing staff members to focus on disposing of older cases.

The EEOC hopes to continue making dents in the federal sector case inventory and average complaints processing times over the coming year, Grinberg said. But the agency's ability to do so will depend partly on funding, he said. Congress has yet to settle on a final fiscal 2005 appropriations package for the EEOC, but in initial versions, both the House and the Senate fell short of the agency's request for $350 million.

"If we got the full funding, it's possible we'd be able to add more staff," Grinberg said. In her fiscal 2005 budget request, Dominguez sought a $26 million increase over the previous year, in part to hire 100 full-time enforcement employees.

Even if the EEOC doesn't receive the full request, the agency doesn't plan to lay off employees, Grinberg said. "We're used to doing more with less," he said.

The EEOC's announcement boasting improvements in fiscal 2004 came a week after civil rights groups gathered near the Capitol to decry shortfalls in EEOC funding. Congress consistently has failed to grant the agency's budget requests, leaving employees there overworked and ill-equipped to process cases expeditiously, the groups said.

"Much more needs to be done to make the federal sector complaint system more efficient, expeditious, fair and cost effective governmentwide," Dominguez acknowledged in her statement touting the past year's progress.