U.S. Department of Agriculture

Civil rights at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has long been a troubled area. Over the years, internal and external reports have cited problems in USDA's delivery of services to program beneficiaries, such as minority farmers, and in its treatment of minority employees. USDA's newly consolidated Office of Civil Rights made one of its top priorities the resolution of the agency's large backlog of program and employment complaints. However, GAO found that USDA's efforts to process discrimination complaints are falling short of its goals for closing its complaint backlog. Despite USDA's initial goal of closing its backlog of discrimination complaints by July 1, 1997, as of October 1998, USDA had closed only 44 percent of its 1,088 backlog program cases and 64 percent of its 2,142 backlog employment cases. USDA has provided additional resources to help address discrimination complaints, but several problems are impeding its efforts to process complaints more expeditiously. These problems include long-standing issues, such as continuing management turnover and reorganizations in the Office of Civil Rights; inadequate staff and managerial expertise; a lack of clear, up-to-date guidance and procedures; and poor working relationships and communication within the Office of Civil Rights and between the office and other USDA entities. Moreover, the Department is not consistently using alternative dispute resolution techniques, such as mediation, to address workplace and other disputes before they become formal complaints.

GAO noted that: (1) USDA's efforts to process discrimination complaints are falling short of its goals for closing its complaint backlog--one of the Secretary's top priorities; (2) the dates USDA established for closing its backlogs of program and employment discrimination complaints have been extended several times beyond its initial target date of July 1, 1997; (3) as of October 1, 1998, USDA had closed only 44 percent of its 1,088 backlog program cases and 64 percent of its 2,142 backlog employment cases; (4) its most recent goal was to close all remaining backlog cases by December 31, 1998--the fourth deadline it has set for backlog program cases and its third deadline for backlog employment cases; (5) in addition: (a) many of USDA's new program cases are missing interim milestones and are therefore not on track for being closed in a timely manner; and (b) the time spent processing its employment cases continues to far exceed federally mandated time frames; (6) for example, on October 1, 1998, 82 percent of the 397 employment cases being investigated by USDA had already exceeded the 180-day mandated time frame for investigations; (7) although USDA has provided additional resources to enhance its capabilities to address discrimination complaints, a number of problems are impeding its efforts to process complaints more expeditiously; (8) these problems include such long-standing issues as: (a) continuing management turnover and reorganizations in OCR; (b) inadequate staff and managerial expertise; (c) a lack of clear, up-to-date guidance and procedures; and (d) poor working relationships and communication within OCR and between the office and other USDA entities; (9) furthermore, the Department is not consistently using alternative dispute resolution techniques, such as mediation, to address workplace and other disputes before they become formal employment complaints; and (10) federal law and regulations encourage the use of alternative dispute resolution in resolving federal workplace and other disputes.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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