House report criticizes Homeland Security’s workforce diversity

The Homeland Security Department's career workforce, including senior executives, is less diverse than other federal agencies, according to a report released Friday by the House Homeland Security Committee.

"Racial and gender diversity help to ensure that a wide range of perspectives are taken into account when decisions are made," said Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. "The makeup of the department's senior leadership must be reflective of the face of America."

DHS spokesman Russ Knocke vigorously contested the report's findings and said the department was deeply committed to advancing diversity.

"There were 2,500 Homeland Security employees at the celebration of DHS's fifth anniversary], and had Chairman Thompson actually accepted our invitation and joined that event, he would have seen 2,500 very diverse employees right there in that audience," Knocke said.

African-Americans make up 14.5 percent of the DHS workforce and 17.4 percent of the federal workforce as a whole, the report said. African-Americans comprise 8.5 percent of the entire Senior Executive and 6.5 percent of Homeland Security's top ranks.

Women also are underrepresented at DHS, according to the committee's report. They make up 33.7 percent of the workforce and 25.3 percent of the SES at the department. Governmentwide, women are 44.6 percent of the federal workforce and 28.9 percent of the SES.

Hispanics are the only minority group that has greater representation at DHS than in the federal workforce at large. Hispanics make up 16.5 percent of the department's workforce versus 7.3 percent of the federal workforce. Homeland Security's Senior Executive Service is 5.4 percent Hispanic, while Hispanics comprise 3.4 percent of the SES across the executive branch.

DHS headquarters in Washington has 46 senior executives, among them one Hispanic and one African-American. Those groups were better represented in the SES of DHS component agencies. The report pointed out that the Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology, Domestic Nuclear Detection Office and the Science and Technology Directorate had no minority senior executives at all. Just 2.1 percent of the SES in the inspector general's office is female.

Knocke said those statistics are from March 2007, and are not currently relevant. The House report said the committee used March 2007 data because it was more comprehensive than data released later in 2008.

According to Knocke, internal research showed that the number of employees with disabilities has grown 300 percent across the department from February 2004 to December 2007. That increase is particularly significant at DHS headquarters, he said, where 7.4 percent of the senior executives are disabled. People with disabilities hold only 0.46 percent of government jobs rated above General Schedule 15, according to Christine Griffin, a commissioner with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Homeland Security is promoting the concept of mentoring across its component agencies, according to the Office of Personnel Management's most recent Federal Equal Opportunity Recruitment Program. The report said 113 Homeland Security employees participated in such mentoring programs in fiscal 2007. Fifty-eight percent of those were women; 30 percent were racial or ethnic minorities. Of the 113 participants, 69 held jobs between General Schedule levels 5 and 8.

The agency also implemented a learning management system at headquarters in fiscal year 2007 providing 1,499 employees with more training. More than half of those participants were in GS levels 13 to 15, and 29 percent in that group were women, while 32 percent were racial or ethnic minorities.

The OPM report also noted that African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Pacific Islanders were better represented at Homeland Security than in the relevant civilian labor force. Native Americans and women were represented in smaller percentages at Homeland Security than in the civilian workforce, according to OPM.

"We're the first to say that there's always more that we need to do and that we want to do," Knocke said. "We have established a corporate diversity strategy within our management directorate here, and that has detailed action plans for specific component actions to be taken."

Those actions include a partnership with the Urban League and the creation of a Delta Region Homeland Security internship program. The initiative targets high school and college students in Mississippi, Arkansas and Missouri and encourages them to tailor their education in preparation for jobs in Homeland Security-related fields.

The House report, prepared by committee staff and the Congressional Research Service, echoes a similar report on legislative branch agency diversity released in November 2007 by the House Oversight and Government Reform Federal Workforce Subcommittee. That report found that racial and ethnic minorities and women were less well-represented in the leadership of those legislative agencies than in the executive branch.

"To realize its potential, become the agency Congress intended and fulfill the expectations of the American people, DHS must actively seek to bring to bear divergent perspectives on every aspect of its operations," the Homeland Security report said.

Knocke said the agency was well on its way to meeting that goal.

"If you look at where we were five years ago compared to where we were today, there's no question that this is a good news story and one that reflects well that we are prioritizing this," he said.