Equal Employment Opportunity: The Postal Service Needs to Better Ensure the Quality of EEO Complaint Data
GGD-99-167
Published: Sep 28, 1999. Publicly Released: Sep 28, 1999.
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Highlights
GAO reviewed certain discrepancies in the complaint data that the Postal Service reported to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the need for the Service to take additional steps to ensure that such data are complete, accurate, and reliable.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| United States Postal Service | To help ensure that the EEO complaint data submitted to EEOC are complete, accurate, and reliable, the Postmaster General should review the Postal Service's controls over the recording and reporting of these data, including evaluating the computer programs that generate data to prepare the EEOC form 462, Annual Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Statistical Report of Discrimination Complaints. GAO recognizes that recording and reporting issues raised in complaints are matters that cannot be completely addressed until EEOC resolves the methodological flaws in part IV of form 462. |
Closed – Implemented
The Postmaster General reported in a December 20, 1999 letter to oversight committees, that all but one of GAO's observations had been addressed. The one exception concerned the reporting of issues--the specific conditions or events that are the subject of the complaints. GAO reported that the Postal Service included only the primary issue in an EEO complaint, although EEOC required all issues raised by the complaints to be reported. The Postmaster General's letter said that the complaint data base was to be modified to address this problem by March 2000. On September 15, 2000, the Complaint Data Systems Specialist, Office of EEO, told us that the current system has been modified to accept all issues raised in employees' complaints. This change went into effect for fiscal year 2001.
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Topics
Data collectionData integrityEmployment discriminationFair employment programsInformation systemsInternal controlsPostal service employeesReporting requirementsStatistical dataEqual employment