Federal diversity programs should stand apart, report says

Federal agencies should expand their diversity initiatives beyond traditional equal employment opportunity and affirmative action programs, according to a new report from the PricewaterhouseCoopers Endowment for the Business of Government. Federal agencies have lagged behind private sector employers in developing diversity programs, according to the report, "A Changing Workforce: Understanding Diversity Programs in the Federal Government." While private sector diversity programs took off in the late 1980s, federal agencies didn't begin putting similar programs in place until the mid-1990s. By the end of the 1990s, agencies had made significant progress in creating and maintaining diversity programs, but the programs varied widely from agency to agency, the report found. A 1999 survey by the now-defunct National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) found that 120 agencies had diversity programs, but 26 percent of the programs were just continuations of EEO and affirmative action requirements, rather than real initiatives to address workplace diversity issues, according to the report's authors, Katherine Naff, assistant professor of public administration at San Francisco University, and J. Edward Kellough, associate professor of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia. More remarkable, the authors said, was that 5 percent of the agencies surveyed failed to include racial differences in their diversity programs and 10 percent did not address ethnicity or national origins as issues in their diversity programs. Nearly 15 percent of the agencies did not offer diversity training to employees. "One is left to wonder how effective diversity programs could possibly be implemented under such circumstances," the report's authors wrote. To get at the issue in more detail, Naff and Kellough studied seven agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, which began its workforce diversity initiative in 1995 and has a diversity council made up of different communities within the agency. NIH emphasizes the difference between managing diversity and EEO and affirmative action, the report said. "There are disputes that may arise from cultural differences, occupational status perceptions, or between scientists and nonscientists," the authors wrote. "An EEO program would not recognize conflict from such differences to be unlawful discrimination." Conversely, the Commerce Department's Economic Development Administration has no formal diversity program, though it does have a diversity council and is developing a diversity action plan. Naff and Kellough recommended that agencies continue to develop diversity programs suited to their specific needs, but suggested such programs include training, a council or board to air and resolve issues, performance measures and mentoring opportunities. Agencies should also gather data and evaluate the effectiveness of program goals, the report said. However, agencies' diversity programs should be separate from EEO and affirmative action programs, the report said. "Even if housed in the same office, they should be seen as distinct programmatic efforts that have different general purposes and methods, even while sharing common goals," the authors wrote.