Return to Home PageFollowing the format specified in the August 25, 2006 Office of Management and Budget Memorandum for Chief Information Officers entitled "FY 2006 E-Government Act Reporting Instructions", the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) hereby submits our E-Government Act Report for FY 2006.
1. Provide a brief overview of your agency’s implementation of the Act including a description of an internal agency-specific E-Government initiative. The description of the initiative must: describe how the initiative is transforming agency operations; Explain how your agency maintains an ongoing dialogue with interested parties to find innovative ways to use information technology for the initiative; identify external partners (e.g. Federal, State or local agencies, industry) who collaborated on the initiative; identify improved performance (e.g., outcome measures) by tracking performance measures supporting agency objectives and strategic goals; quantify the cost savings and cost avoidance achieved through implementing the initiative (e.g., reducing or eliminating other investments in information technology); and explain how your agency ensures the availability of government information and services for those without access to the Internet and for those with disabilities.
The EEOC is committed to improving service and government efficiency through the use of electronic government (e-government). Over the past several years, EEOC has implemented several major e-government projects that automated internal processes, reduced paperwork burden, integrated data, and provided electronic alternatives to obtain service and interact with the agency. Benefits related to these projects include:
During FY 2006, EEOC’s major e-government project was the deployment of EEOC’s Integrated Mission System (IMS) for use by State and local government Fair Employment Practices Agencies (FEPAs). The IMS provides a centralized web-based database tool for receiving, processing, and managing charges of employment discrimination. Through extensive collaboration with our FEPA partners, EEOC customized the IMS to met unique state and local government requirements, while ensuring consistency with EEOC federal processes. A workgroup that included participants from seven FEPA offices was established to document these requirements, establish priorities, and set implementation plans. In addition, EEOC attended various state and local government FEPA conferences to demonstrate the IMS and obtain feedback. As a result, EEOC’s IMS is now in use with 96 FEPA offices. This deployment has transformed agency operations by providing both EEOC and FEPA offices with a centralized, shared database for processing charges of employment discrimination. EEOC field offices now have the ability to conduct real-time searches of nationwide charge information, including charges being processed at Federal, State, and local government agencies. Through use of the IMS, FEPAs now have the ability to integrate charge information with automated desktop tools such as word processing and spreadsheets; create ad-hoc reports, forms, and letters to better analyze and work with data; view linked or related EEOC charges; and monitor/process their workload at the individual staff level. Data integrity is also improved in IMS through the use of automated edits, validation checks, and data lookup/retrieval features. Data reliability is improved as there are no longer any discrepancies between data maintained at the local and national levels. Finally, there are many timeliness and efficiency savings - charge processing transfers and contract credit entry between EEOC and FEPA offices is now instantaneous instead of taking the previous 3 to5 days to complete. The deployment of the IMS to EEOC FEPA partners was referenced in EEOC’s Strategic Plan as a “means and strategy” to support EEOC’s Five-Point Plan for “Proficient Resolution” under our strategic objective, “Justice and Opportunity.”
In addition to the above referenced efficiency savings achieved at both the EEOC and FEPA levels, EEOC has realized a physical cost savings of approximately $700,000 by retiring the legacy Charge Data System (CDS) that previously supported the FEPA charge processes. This previous system required maintenance of a server and related software in over 92 FEPA locations, nightly batched communications to an EEOC centralized CDS server, data conversion to the EEOC IMS, and personnel resources to maintain and support the CDS operations.
The EEOC considers universal accessibility to information a priority for all its employees and external customers, including individuals with disabilities. Therefore, the IMS was successfully tested for compliance with the accessibility requirements of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
2. Describe your process for determining which information will be made available on the Internet as described in Section 207(f)(2) of the Act and OMB Memorandum M-05-04 “Policies for Federal Agency Public Websites”. Your description must: describe your process for determining which government information the agency intends to make available and accessible to the public on the Internet and by other means; include a copy of the priorities and schedule for making your information accessible; explain how and when such final determinations, priorities, and schedules were available for public notice and comment; provide a link where the final determinations, priorities, and schedules can be found on your principle Federal agency public website; and identify progress to date for permitting searching of all files intended for public use on the website, displaying search results in order of relevancy to search criteria, and providing response times appropriately equivalent to the industry best practices.
Content that EEOC distributes publicly is generally made available on the EEOC public web site. Agency information is posted to EEOC’s web site as soon as it is approved and prepared in a fully accessible (HTML) format. When deadlines apply, information is posted on or before the deadline. Priorities and schedules are listed on EEOC’s web site at http://www.eeoc.gov/abouteeoc/plan/webinventory.html.
EEOC’s web site is hosted by the US Government Printing Office (GPO). All files made available to the public are fully searchable within 24 hours of posting and search response times are equivalent to industry best practices.
3. Describe how your agency's information dissemination activities are coordinated with its FOIA operations in order to improve both access to and dissemination of government information to the public. Your description must include a link to your agency’s Information Resources Management (IRM) Strategic Plan and FOIA Improvement Plan. You must also describe specifically how you are fulfilling your responsibilities under three provisions of the Act: Section 207(d), “Categorizing of Information;” Section 207(e), “Public Access to Electronic Information;” and if your agency funds Federal research and development (R&D) activities, Section 207(g), “Access to Federally Funded Research and Development,” including how your R&D information is available through Radius, Science.gov, or other means.
With regard to section 207(d) of the E-Government Act, Categorizing of Information, EEOC categorizes information concerning information dissemination in accordance with the requirements of the FOIA, 5 U.S.C. § 552, as amended by the E-FOIA amendments of 1996. All of the information required to be made available to the public since November 1996, is available in EEOC's conventional and electronic reading rooms. As required by 5 U.S.C. §§ 552a(2)(D) and (E) of the FOIA, frequently requested records are indexed on the EEOC website.
Section 207(e) of the E-Government Act, Public Access to Electronic Information, is addressed in the Report and Plan of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission pursuant to Executive Order 13392: Improving Agency Disclosure of Information at http://www.eeoc.gov/foia/foiaplan.html. The EEOC FOIA Improvement Plan calls for enhancement and improvement of accessibility and availability of information on the EEOC website. Items already implemented include 1) making more frequently requested records available without the necessity of a FOIA request; 2) providing user-friendly FAQs on topics including: how to make a FOIA request and disclosure of charge files; and 3) updating and revising the EEOC FOIA Reference Guide to make it more user-friendly with short explanations of how the nine exemptions and three exclusions to the FOIA are applied to EEOC records.
EEOC’s IRM Strategic Plan is available at http://www.eeoc.gov/abouteeoc/plan/irm/2006/.
This page was last modified on October 18, 2006.