Meeting of the Federal Exchange on Employment & Disability (FEED)
April 4, 2019
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Note: Opening remarks were provided by Patrick Mannix, Chief of Staff, Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP), U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), and Anupa Iyer, Policy Advisor, Office of Federal Operations, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). These remarks were not captured by the captioner.
Natalie Veeney, Diversity Program Manager, Outreach, Diversity and Inclusion, U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM):
{Note: Captioner was not able to capture Ms. Veeney’s opening remarks} There will be a 60+ Partners Meeting coming up on May 2 from 10:30 a.m. – Noon at OPM headquarters. If you’re not aware of what the 60+ Partners is, send us an email at diversityandinclusion@opm.gov and we’ll get you connected. And with that I think that’s all of the OPM updates I have. Oh, one last thing, we are starting a project on how to increase the use of Schedule A federal-wide. We’re at two percent of federal hires (with disabilities) – two percent – and there’s people who say people are abusing Schedule A. Two percent. So, with the president’s agenda to increase the hiring of people with disabilities, my leadership is committed to getting this number up.
And now I want to introduce Bobby Silverstein. He’s a Principal with Powers Pyles Sutter & Verville PC, and he’s also with the Employer Assistance and Resource Network on Disability Inclusion (EARN). So give him a little bit bigger of a hand than you gave me because he’s our presenter today! [Laughter] Let’s welcome him!
Robert “Bobby” Silverstein, Principal, Powers Pyles Sutter & Verville PC, Employer Assistance & Resource Network on Disability Inclusion (EARN):
Thank you. Just some quick details on my background. I was the former staff director and chief counsel for the Subcommittee on Disability Policy of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources (currently the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) for over a decade. And I’ve had the incredible privilege and honor of working with democrats and republicans on bipartisan disability legislation, including the Americans with Disabilities Act. For the last 15 years or so, I’ve had the privilege of working on various projects identifying promising and emerging practices (in disability employment) both in the public sector and the private sector. So, we’re here today to talk about Federal Agency Employment Strategies: A Framework for Disability Inclusion.
This document, in my humble opinion, should be on every one of your desks or very close by. It’s not a novel. It’s not a document to be read from beginning to end, this is truly a resource. It is a resource that describes the overview of what’s in the 501 regs, organized by six topics. It describes examples gleaned from the regs or from MD-715, and it includes examples from the private sector as well as from our colleagues in the Federal Government. We put it into a useful form organized by topic and subtopic.
So, in the process of figuring out what should be in an affirmative action plan, you’ve got to go through the process of literature review, brainstorming and then you make decisions. Well, this document helps with that. Maybe you say, “How about this – maybe we need to find out more from another agency about how they implemented a particular policy, practice or procedure?”
So, what this is, is an incredible resource that OPM, EEOC and ODEP decided was a very worthwhile endeavor, so you all are not reinventing the wheel. You will be modifying it based on the culture in your agency, but is there is no reason to start from scratch.
So, let me just take a few minutes to highlight some things and walk through this document, and then what we’ll get a little bit more in-depth in each of the topic areas and have a presentation by an agency who will describe the best practices in their agency. So, in terms of how this is structured, we have six topics: starting with agency as a model employer of individuals with disabilities. Then we go to outreach and recruitment, then personnel processes – that’s hiring, advancement and retention. Then we have a section on reasonable accommodation and personal assistance services. And then a section on information and communication tech, including online accessibility. And then continuous improvement, which includes workforce analysis, goals, barrier analysis, improvement and accountability, including recordkeeping and reporting.
So, this is an effort to – in a different order than in the reg, but – the idea is to cover comprehensively the various topics that are included in the updated 501 regulations. Under each of these topics, we have introductory paragraphs that describe an overview in a paragraph of the 501. It’s not comprehensive, it’s not legally sufficient to describe everything, it’s just to try to give you the context. And then if there are examples or requirements in the regs, which is “you shall develop,” we’ve described them. Then if the MD-715 – based on a review of it, it has examples in the MD-715 – we highlight them next. And then the last set of examples is gleaned from a review of various agencies of reports, plans that have been submitted and also from the private sector. So, you see for each topic we have provided descriptions and then examples. Some of you may say I want to prioritize such-and-such in MD-715. You can do that. If you want to see what your colleagues have done, you can do that as well.
At the end of the document, there’s a resource section where we have links, all in one place, to the statutory regs and EEOC guidance, not only with respect to MD-715, but it goes to the next level in terms of things such as the “ABCs of Schedule A” and practical advice for drafting and implementing reasonable accommodation procedures. Everything is in one place so you don’t have to research it and try to identify all of that. We have links to all the applicable Executive Orders. We have links to most of the federal agency toolkits and model strategies that have been developed. We have links to various federal resources like the Department of Defense’s Computer/Electronic Accommodations Program (CAP), the Department of Agriculture’s TARGET Center and the Department of Transportation’s Disability Resource Center. We have links to DOL’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP), a range of resources.
And then there’s a set of links to the EARN resource center, because they have actually developed an online tool that you may or may not know about. There is a Section 501 information center, which has a series of links for FEED members. So there’s that. There’s also a link to a disability self-identification form that has been a big deal, particularly with the requirements for goals. There is a policy guide, a technical assistance guide on self-identification, links to the Job Accommodation Network (JAN) and additional links to state and local government resources.
So again, the purpose here is to make your lives easier, to allow you the opportunity to pick each other’s brains without necessarily trying to get somebody else on the phone, just by having this resource. And let me give you just one example on how we’ve done this – and the topic areas that were covered, Then we’ll jump right in to more in-depth discussion of each of these six topics. But let’s take “Lead the Way: Model Employer of Individuals with Disabilities” as an example of how the document is structured.
The first section will have a description with a reference to the sections in the regs. Then, we have decided structurally to include four topics here: leadership and commitment; external and internal communication; designation of responsible individuals; and anti-harassment policies. If these topics sound familiar, they should because they are consistent with what is in the actual regulation. And then what we’ll have is examples, either gleaned from the rules themselves or from the MD-715, on each of the topics, and then additional examples from other agencies. So, we have leadership and commitment, we have external internal communication, as I said, designation of responsible employees and finally, the anti-harassment policy.
And again, the effort here is to make your lives a lot easier. I’m going to stop there because we’re going to take more time for Q&A at the end and also go into more depth on each of the topic areas. Now, were you going to introduce our speakers.
Dexter Brooks, Director, Federal Sector Programs, Office of Federal Operations, EEOC:
So, we’re going to go through each of the six topic areas now. I’ll give some introduction on what we may see in the sections “Lead the Way,” “Build the Pipeline” and “Hire, Advance and Keep,” and the last section is “Grow Success.” In the document itself, we highlighted some practices by specific agencies, and we asked the agencies to come give us some context about the practice that was highlighted in the document to share with the group. So, we’re going to go in order. The first section is “Lead the Way” and our agency representative is Laura Davis from the Department of Homeland Security. So, Bobby, did you want to give context first and then you can come up, Laura?
Bobby Silverstein:
Great. So, let me take three or four minutes to introduce what we have here. Again, under this section is leadership and commitment, external and internal communication, designation of responsible individuals and anti-harassment policy. So, we have a number of examples. Some are gleaned from the rules, some are gleaned from the MD-715, some are gleaned from your colleagues.
So, we’re going to share examples that are included here. One example is appointment of disability program managers (DPMs) and appointment of selective placement program coordinators (SPPCs) who have sufficient training and who also have sufficient gravitas within the agency comparable to those folks who are doing similar things in the race and gender area. Training, training, training! And Laura will be talking about what DHS is doing in terms of training, not only for all of the staff, but also some of the specific training for DPMs and SPPCs, as well as the EEO folks. We have issues about how to establish an infrastructure that works, and developing a team approach, so you are having human resources, EEO and people with disabilities all working together for monthly meetings, change agent programs, having a summit, conducting surveys, having workplace flexibility and accommodation programs, work-life programs, etc.
In terms of external communication, examples would be pictures of people with visible disabilities included in agency publications, and participating in job fairs and career days. Or having a policy statement, recruitment initiatives, mentorships, job shadowing programs, etc. included on your external website, along with information about hiring goals and progress that is being made. For internal communication, the third category, examples include an agency-wide leadership network, a community of practice, internal communications highlighting employees with disabilities, a one-stop-shop within the agency on how to get information on disability employment policy, disability management and prevention programs, designation of responsible employees, designating a disability program manager, assigning specific people certain responsibilities, holding them accountable in their performance measures in an anti-harassment policy, that sort of thing. So that’s just an example of kinds of practices that folks either aspire to or are doing.
Dexter Brooks:
We want to bring up Laura Davis with the Department of Homeland Security now. Laura has to lead the way because she is sharing the building with us at EEOC, so we’re constantly looking over her shoulder to make sure she has a decent program. [Laughter].
Laura Davis, Disability Employment Program Manager, Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Department of Homeland Security (DHS):
Thank you so much, Dexter for that introduction, and before I start, I just want to thank FEED and the Department of Labor for recognizing DHS. We are honored to be recognized as an important resource for sharing employment strategies regarding employment of individuals with disabilities in the federal workspace. So, I’ve prepared some speaking points so that I don’t lose my way and miss any important information that I would like to convey with you today, so please bear with me. DHS was one of three agencies to be recognized for best practices under “Lead the Way: Model Employer of Individuals with Disabilities,” and that was for our council, as well as for our selective placement training that we provided to all the coordinators, as well as our DPMs throughout DHS.
I’m located within the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity, and that’s within the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the department level. As the departmental DPM, I provide training, resourcing and technical guidance on an ongoing basis regarding employment matters through a variety of forums, including using the Disability Employment Advisory Council (DAC) for that effort. My realm of responsibilities includes providing guidance and oversight to over ten operational exempts. As I lead the Disability Employment Advisory Council, which meets on a quarterly basis, I want to start with just taking it back to 2017 when then-Deputy Secretary Elaine Duke announced a Unity of Effort, which continues today. So, with that, and using that Unity of Effort framework for the DAC, membership across DHS has expanded over the last few years, which includes both departmental- and component-level participants.
So, to give you an idea of what those participants look like, we have disability program managers, reasonable accommodation program managers and coordinators, selective placement program coordinators and operation coordinators. We have representation from our Human Capital Office with the Office of Strategic Recruitment, Diversity and Inclusion, Policy and Programs, and the Office of Health and Wellness. In addition to that, we have our representation from the Office of Accessible Systems and Technology, which has the responsibility for 508 compliance under OCIO. And more recently this fiscal year – of perhaps it was late FY18 – we invited a new employee resource group (ERG), which is the deaf and hard of hearing resource group, to also participate on our calendar.
So moving along, now that you understand the makeup of this council, one of the things that I implemented during our meeting is an opportunity for at least two components to brief us on their best practices and/or challenges during each meeting, and this can cover anything related to their disability employment program, whether it be good or bad. We want to hear about their best practices, any new initiatives and/or areas of opportunity and challenges, too so that we can work together to try and help each other.
Similar to the community of practice that you mentioned earlier, I believe it’s important for components to share and contribute their strategies in resolving the problems, as well as strategies for program growth and development. It’s important to me to also engage and involve other federal agencies, to hear and share their best practices so we’re not just taking it from within DHS, we’re also going to hear what other government agencies are doing. So as an example, over the last two years, we brought in members from EEOC, thank you Anupa, and I think you’re all in here today. So, thank you all for your support. We’ve also brought in guests from the National Disability Mentoring Coalition – Mr. Shields, thank you for your support.
So, as you can imagine, these topics range from updates and guidance on the final rule implementing section 501, personal assistance services best practices, Schedule A and strategies for establishing a mentoring program for employees with disabilities. Additionally, I’ve also invited the Office of Accessible Systems and Technologies to provide training and demonstrations on our in-house accessibility compliance management system. And to encourage components to utilize that system to track reasonable accommodation requests, so this system not only provides a module to track reasonable accommodation requests, but it also helps program managers with compliance. And in addition to having guest speakers, we spend a lot of time on reviewing and sharing disability workforce demographics. I think it’s important for all of our stakeholders to understand the makeup of our workforce, where we are, the progress that we’ve made and where we still need to go.
So, let me back up. I’m not sure if everyone is familiar with DHS, but DHS is a predominantly law enforcement and security agency with many of our positions having statutory physical and medical requirements. As you can imagine, it can be really easy for us to just sit back, rest on our laurels and not do anything because, hey, it’s too hard, right? However, we continue to make progress and some of the areas that we do this in is we try to emphasize the importance of targeted outreach and recruitment of qualified persons with disabilities for our Management, Administrative and Professional (MAP)-related positions across the department. We also stress the importance of training managers and supervisors, as well as our human capital professionals, on using the benefits of Schedule A, as well as reasonable accommodations.
Some of the data that I mentioned that we share on a regular basis with our members includes quarterly disability workforce participation, without excluding our law enforcement and security occupations. When I say security, I’m talking about the transportation security officers that you see at the airport, there are over 40,000 of them. So, we had a DAC second quarter meeting yesterday – it was a little delayed due to the furlough. We reported for the first quarter of FY19. We were looking at our workforce demographics, we had almost 11 percent representation of individuals with disabilities, but when we compare that and excluded our law enforcement and security positions, that participation rate rose tremendously to 16 percent. So, it’s really important for us to dig deeper into our data and to identify what areas we’re having challenges with and where we can maybe focus more attention towards. So likewise, for the targeted disabilities, our participation also rose when we filtered out the law enforcement security positions from one percent to 3.2 percent, so meeting the two percent goal for people with targeted disabilities.
We also share disability new hires by component, and we want to do that as a group effort instead of just issuing a report individually to each component, because we want them all to see how we’re doing across the board. Because if we have CBP (Customs and Border Protection), and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) may have some struggles also, maybe they can see what they can do differently.
Another data set that we share on a regular basis, and this is pretty much to support retaining employees with disabilities, but we’re looking closely at our Schedule A workforce, which includes a report of all employees eligible for conversion, so we really want to track and monitor and include the overall rates of conversion. Last year we were at just over 50 percent, so we hope to increase that this year with these efforts.
Lastly, the DAC members also volunteer on working groups. So, if we have a new assignment or a special initiative that comes up, we do break off into working groups. Currently, we have a working group through the DAC to support our efforts on developing the standard operating procedure for handling and addressing 508 complaints. So, we have members from the DAC but also members from other areas within DHS working on that assignment.
And lastly, I know we were a recognized for the selective placement program coordinator training that we conducted in 2017. This was shortly after I came on board at DHS. And in this area, I noticed very early on that many of our selective placement program coordinators were responsible for that program area as a collateral duty. Some of them did not have formal training, there wasn’t much out there. They could have gone to HR University and utilized the SPPC training that’s available on the website, but I thought it was extremely important for us from the department to work with all of our components and bring them together and to deliver that training either in person or through webinars, to just give them an opportunity to ask questions and really engage with the training. And I do want to thank OPM for assisting us with that training. It was a great success. Thank you.
Dexter Brooks:
Thank you, Laura. We appreciate the work that you’re doing.
Bobby Silverstein:
The next topic that we’ll focus on is “building the pipeline.” I don’t know about you folks, but I have heard more and more, “We want to hire people with disabilities, but we don’t know where to find them.” And that is either a true statement or an excuse – it depends. So, there is a section in the document on building the pipelines and the focus is on the regulatory provisions dealing with outreach and recruitment. And here’s one of those examples where the reg itself says that there has to be outreach recruitment, that you must take specific steps and “steps shall at a minimum include…”
So, we’ve highlighted the steps specified in the regulation using special hiring authorities, including programs and qualifications necessary for a particular position, databases of individuals with disabilities, training and internships, making sure that contracts with organizations specializing in the placement of individuals with disabilities are in place. These are the examples that are specified in the regs. And then there were additional examples, borrowed, stolen, shared from other agencies, so this is your colleagues, what they’re doing, first in terms of sources for recruitment, and secondly strategies for outreach. So, this includes public recruiting sources and there are hyperlinks in there for those that are available, such as education institutions, nonprofits and private recruitment sources. Each of these has a hyperlink with examples, and then there are different kinds of strategies. For example, one agency used a hiring team made up of EEO and human resources folks and current employees with disabilities. Other agencies adopted special recruitment programs, or the appointment of SPPCs and training them using that HR University curriculum. Michael? Is Michael still here? That was his labor of love. And hopefully it is being used throughout the Federal Government.
Other ideas include holding briefing sessions of disability groups at the agencies, making sure that online applications are accessible, developing career groups for disabled veterans, using the Wounded Warrior internship program and developing a “Why Hire a Disabled Veteran” campaign. All these are included in the document, and a number of them include links to resources. Another idea is having an email distribution center so that if you have an opening at the agency, information about it goes to the disability groups. You can use social media platforms to do something similar. These are just some examples of what agencies are doing.
Dexter Brooks:
And now let’s go to our speaker on building the pipeline, Maurice White. Maurice White is the Associate Director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Operations at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Maurice had the misfortune of working with me for 15 years before finally escaping and going to work at the Department of the Treasury. [Laughter].
Maurice White, Associate Director, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Operations, IRS:
Good afternoon. I’d like to also thank you, Dexter, for recognizing the hard work and efforts that IRS puts toward making individuals with disabilities on an equal plane with everybody else, because that’s a very serious commitment that our commissioner really believes in. And I would like to start off by saying at the Internal Revenue Service, what’s really been helpful for my office, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, is the commitment from the deputy commissioner. The deputy commissioner is a veteran, I think he’s currently Navy Reserve, and he’s holding webinars on a regular basis when it comes to making sure that the veterans and the individuals with disabilities within the Internal Revenue Service understand their rights and responsibilities and the commitment from the IRS commissioner, who he reports to.
It is a very, very strong message that has been sent out throughout IRS managers, routinely trained when it comes to the laws and the rules and their responsibilities as they pertain to reasonable accommodation requests. And what we’ve seen over a period of years is that this is working, and it has increased the participation rate of people with disabilities, as well as people with targeted disabilities, at the Internal Revenue Service. As a matter of fact, I think our current numbers for people with disabilities is at 11.3 percent, so we’re almost at 12 percent for FY18. And for people with targeted disabilities, it’s three percent.
So, from the efforts that we have put forth, the impact is really last- causing those numbers to increase and to stay as stable as possible. The other things that we leverage, we have a very good partnership with the ACL’s (Administration for Community Living) Human Capital Office. We strategize with them on different types of programs, and actually the commissioner, when we brief him at our State of the Agency briefing, we discuss programs that we feel require a little bit more effort towards sustaining the high percentage that we have in hiring people with targeted disabilities. So that relationship between EDI and ACL is really working well in terms of outreach and recruitment.
Managers also routinely receive Section 508 training by our reasonable accommodation coordinators and by the disability program manager and her staff in order for them to understand the importance of ensuring that these employees are provided whatever is necessary in order for them to perform their duties in their positions within the Internal Revenue Service. So that relationship, and the buy-in from managers, has been very lucrative for us at the Internal Revenue Service.
As I mentioned earlier, the deputy commissioner hosts webinars quarterly, and during the webinars he himself is always at these webinar sessions, he leads from the front in terms of the things that IRS is doing to recruit more, or as many people as possible, into IRS’s workforce.
Now, we do have the Criminal Investigations Section within the Internal Revenue Service, and unfortunately because of the nature of the work and the physical requirements to be a criminal investigator (CI), we were having some difficulty initially in recruiting as many CI agents as possible. But when we looked at the non-CI agents, we were able to capitalize on bringing more of those administrative staff personnel into the criminal investigation environment that did not meet the physical requirement to become a criminal investigator. So, when we began to focus our efforts in that area, we were able to actually bring our numbers up. That also assisted us in maintaining the 12 percent workforce inclusion rate for persons with disabilities and three percent for persons with targeted disabilities within the Internal Revenue Service for a span of, I believe, four or five years.
We also partner with other organizations as well, such as Gallaudet University and others, to find qualified individuals with disabilities for a lot of the IRS positions that we have available. I believe the special hiring authorities, though, are what we’re leveraging the most – bringing people in under Schedule A, VRA (Veterans’ Recruitment Appointment), VEOA (Veterans Employment Opportunity Act) and any other special hiring authorities that permits the agency to be to hire individuals with disabilities. So this has been an incremental part of establishing a reputation of letting individuals who apply for positions understand that these special hiring authorities will be applied if this is a career choice that they’ve chosen with the Internal Revenue Service.
We’ve done a very good job of marketing that, and over the years, we’ve actually seen incrementally that those numbers go up even though we’ve been maintaining a high rate of workforce participation of individuals with disabilities, both people with disabilities and people with targeted disabilities, and that’s primarily due to the strong message that the commissioner puts out and the message that my office puts out to managers to support recruitment of individuals with disabilities. Those individuals who are sitting on selection and hiring panels understand that these individuals should be given the same consideration as people without disabilities, and that has worked very well at the Internal Revenue Service.
So, we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing in terms of having the buy-in from the leadership. We’re going to continue our outreach efforts and our efforts ensuring that applicants, as well as internal employees with disabilities, understand that the commissioner and others are committed to ensuring that they have an equal opportunity and an equal chance of not only being hired into the IRS’s workforce, but also advancing into the higher, senior grades in the organization.
Dexter Brooks:
Thank you so much, Maurice. We appreciate you. The next topic on the agenda is “hire, advance and keep the best” and this involves the personnel process.
Bobby Silverstein:
Thank you, Dexter. When you get a chance to look at the Federal Framework, you will notice that about 20 percent of the document deals with the application process and hiring. What’s also important, in terms of specific best practices, is to determine how to advance people with disabilities, to determine the best practices for advancement, not just hiring, and to look at the career development strategies your colleagues have adopted. And also, the issue of retention is important. Retention is a separate, distinct topic within the document, and there are best practices listed for this area. Because it’s one thing to open the door, but there are issues about folks being promoted, and trying to determine if they are leaving for various reasons, including whether it’s attitudinal or institutional biases, some unintentional failure to provide accessible technology, failure to provide a process for speedy accommodations, etc. The process for folks who are hired and need accommodations is important to look at. If they show up on the first day and are told, “Oh, we’ll get to it” and four months later, nothing is happening, will they stay?
All these issues are critical and we thought it was helpful to all of you to divide these topic areas into subtopics. Within hiring, for example, in addition to the application process, we have a section on qualification standards, a section on job announcements, a general section on hiring, and a specific subtopic on Schedule A. For example, what are some of the best practices for Schedule A? It also covers best practices for youth with disabilities. And keep in mind, Schedule A is not only the hiring part, but also best practices in terms of conversion.
Under the subtopic of advancement and career development, there is information on everything from apprenticeships, to on-the-job training, to SES candidate training, to mentoring, to coaching. There is a set of examples of best practices that have been adopted over time. And in every case, a best practice would include tracking how you’re doing, monitoring how you’re doing as part of a best practice.
In terms of retention as a separate category, the regs specifically include developing specific steps, such as exit interviews. The Framework includes a set of specific examples that are gleaned from a review of MD-715, so for example, document the number of folks who have been converted from Schedule A. Use the inclusion rate as a bench mark. Use exit interviews as a way to identify triggers. This is, again, one way of just simply saying you can go to this document as a crib sheet. Many of you in this room are old enough – I don’t know, do they still have CliffsNotes? [Laugher] This is a CliffsNotes version to help you get a sense of what’s required and a set of examples. So, that’s a kind of overview of the examples, practices and best practices in this section.
Our presenter on this topic is Jenese Portee from the Peace Corps. What’s she’s going to share is important because the first two speakers are from bigger agencies. Maurice is from the IRS and they have all the money.[Laughter] But Jenese comes from a smaller agency. So, throughout the document, you’ll see highlighted practices not only from the large agencies but also from the smaller agencies that don’t have the same level of resources. So, we would like Jenese to come up and share her information.
Jenese Portee, Acting Disability Program Manager, Peace Corps:
Well, I would like to start by saying thank you so much for thinking of a smaller agency. You make a very valid point – the Peace Corps is quite unique. I’m not sure is everyone is familiar with the Peace Corps, however it’s the U.S. government’s volunteer service focused agency. We do send volunteers to about 65 different country throughout the world. Currently we have about 914 employees. However, our volunteer corps is around 7,000. So, as you can imagine, the weight of ensuring that our employees and our volunteers, who are typically our future employees, are accommodated and feel that they can come and work and serve here in the U.S., just as they did abroad. It’s a huge point for us all.
About 50 percent of our staff are actually returning Peace Corps volunteers. So, a large portion of our pool comes from those who have served. We are making great strides to make sure that the diversity of our volunteer corps reflects the diversity of our staff. We do that by looking at the people. We talk so heavily about the numbers, two percent for people with targeted disabilities – we are looking at the individuals.
So, we have volunteers that have vision loss. We have deaf or hard of hearing volunteers. We have had volunteers serving in the Peace Corps since six years after the Peace Corps was established. Our first deaf volunteer volunteered in 1967. So, with that being kept in mind, we have had deaf staff, and we do currently have deaf staff at the Peace Corps. We have staff who do use screen reader software and those who have mobility needs. And we focus on these for our discussion today simply because we want to acknowledge and share that it can be done. There are so many agencies, even some of the larger agencies who struggle, but the key point is making sure that you have the special skills and the ability to ensure that everyone is able the come to work each day and perform to the best of their ability.
I’m here before you today as the disability program manager. I’m in the Office of Civil Rights and Diversity. We are small but mighty – there’s currently three of us. We were originally an office of five. Our selective placement program coordinator is actually in our HR office, but we do work closely together. We don’t actually have Schedule A, but we do have an equivalent. So, we work to ensure the accommodations that are needed are established. We work with our accommodations team so they are regularly available in the office. So, this can be equipment or it can be something as simple as an American Sign Language interpreter. I am a certified American Sign Language interpreter and I do provide this service in the office as well. This is a special and very unique thing that we have been praised for. We have had people come in to interview for a job and we didn’t have to call and schedule an interpreter and wait two weeks and put the bid out because we have someone on staff who is a subject matter expert when it comes to compliance access. Just so happens to be me, what can I say? [Applause] I appreciate that. I got a little love from the audience for those who aren’t here.
A few additional things that we do is to ensure that our Office of Staff Learning and Development is involved when it comes to the advancement of people with disabilities. That includes our Section 508 coordinator. This is a newly established role – we did not have anyone who was a designated 508 coordinator up until recently, and our office recognized this as a gap. So, we went to our leadership, we researched and requested, and we had someone who has been appointed, albeit collateral duty, to serve in that 508 role. Now that we have someone that is in that role, we are able to justify that this role needs to not be collateral duty, it needs to be stand-alone. But once we have someone there, they can also say “I’m not Office of Chief Information and I have five other things to do and this is vitally important and it’s a law that we need to be adhering to.”
So, given the justification of a person and giving life examples, not just the numbers, is one thing the Peace Corps has been able to do that I’m proud of. We have a Volunteers with Disabilities working group. This was recently put together so we can again ensure that our volunteer corps, who will later on turn into our staff, are supported and they’re able to complete their service. At the end of volunteer service, you do get awarded with noncompetitive eligibility. So those who may have Schedule A may also have noncompetitive eligibility if they are returning Peace Corps volunteers.
We were able to host an agency-wide workshop on how to work with people with disabilities and this was specific for hiring entities and managers who may not fully understand their ability to pull someone off our Schedule A equivalent list. Luckily enough, Anupa, who seems to have disappeared, was able the come to our building and sit with our director and was able to give a really wonderful presentation that was really eye opening for several folks. We were able to go to small offices and to give one-on-one discussions with our volunteer recruitment and selection team to make sure they have a better understanding of what it means to interview a person with a disability. Our HR teams have something very similar. So, we are working from the ground up to make sure everyone is of the same page when it comes to addressing the person and not the disability. Thank you.
Bobby Silverstein:
Thank you, Jenese!
So, our fourth topic is reasonable accommodations and personal assistance services. As you know, reasonable accommodations are a non-discrimination requirement. The requirement has been around for a long time. It’s a core requirement under the ADA, but personal assistance services are a new requirement. It is part of affirmative action and it was deemed absolutely critical for some individuals with targeted disabilities. So, the section on this is included in the document. The examples of best practices are included, but this is certainly one of the sections that will be dynamic. You’ll also recognize that in the past, some of these requirements were from an executive order, some of them were from MD-715. Well they’re all now in the requirements and they’re the new rule. And there are 20 specific steps that need to be taken and need to be part of the procedure, and that’s described here.
Then the MD-715 has, if you look deeply, a set of examples of practices that you all need to be considering as part of your policies and procedures, ranging from assessing the effectiveness of accommodations, to the timeliness of requests and the timing of approvals, to the training and monitoring of accommodations to make sure what was promised is being provided, and that it is effective in providing true opportunity. The centralized accommodation fund, you know the issue, the EEOC decided it’s not required as a specific strategy, but the Framework discusses coming up with a strategy if your agency doesn’t use a centralized accommodation, that the approach should work like a centralized accommodation fund, so that is the described in the document.
And then there are a number of additional examples of best practices with respect to personal assistance services policy and personal assistance service providers, and a lot of these are gleaned from the EEOC FAQ, the frequently asked questions, on the topic. Again, as I said, this section will evolve as additional practices are developed.
Dexter Brooks:
So, our next presenter is Katherine Griffin from the Health Resources and Service Administration, and she’s going to talk about the practices that are going on at her agency.
Katherine Slye-Griffin, Accessibility Team Manager, Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA):
So, I’m going to mix it up and stand since everybody’s been sitting, and in the world of accommodations, we like to change thing up a little bit. So, if anybody else needs to stand, feel free to accommodate yourself, because everybody should be comfortable. So, thank you for having me today. Thank you for recognizing the work that we’ve within doing at HRSA. We have a lot of other wonderful programs, too. Our diversity and inclusion team has an employee resource group on disabilities. We do a lot of different work at the agency to talk about disability in a lot of different ways, but what I’ve found is that it’s actually reasonable accommodations that have to be strong to keep your workforce going. You are going to have a revolving door of employees if you don’t have a really strong accommodations program. And so, I’ve taken a lot of time to really revise and revamp our program over the past number of years. And I think there’s a couple of really critical points. One of those is certainly the policy. And the EEOC in Section 501 has done a phenomenal job of laying out the piece you need to have put together to have a policy, but you have to understand your process.
One of things that I love about reasonable accommodations and this is, I know I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to this area, but one of the things I love about it is this isn’t just legalese. This is where we make people’s lives better by taking the law and making it reality. So, you have to understand your practice and how you’re actually going to do that for people. I’m a process person, I like to tell my staff that I think in flow charts, so I think a little different than some people and see processes differently. But you have to analyze that, and I took a lot of time to do that. We had a cross agency work group. We have had a lot of time sitting down and literally just drafting out different versions of how we move from step A to step B to ensure we have an effective program for people. So, you have to look at the policy, you have to look at your process, you have to look at your funding.
So, Bobby mentioned centralized accommodation funding. It is critical to how you operate. Centralized accommodation funding was the backbone I stood on. Because even if your timeliness is not so great, even if you don’t feel like you have the staff, if you have centralized accommodation funding, it’s one less barrier to deal with. And it makes a really big difference. So, I want to stress that’s an important, critical aspect of what you need to have a strong program.
But I also want to stress training and that’s what I would like to talk more about right now. So, there’s two types of training. There’s staff training, but also training for your managers and supervisors that you work with, and they’re both equally important. I like to say, “Nobody went to college to do reasonable accommodation.” You don’t graduate with a degree in reasonable accommodation. So, on my team we have “Reasonable Accommodations University” where, at times, my entire team is gathered in my office like sardines and we’re going over aspects of a requirement that wasn’t clear to everybody. There’s a lot that has to do with reasonable accommodation, not just the Rehabilitation Act and understanding each section within that, but also GINA, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. You have to understand the PDA, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. You have to understand FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act). You have to understand a lot of different laws to understand reasonable accommodation. And so, you have to be able to sit down with your team and teach them how to do that.
I instituted a multi-tier process to do that. Our cases are actually divided into tiers. Simple cases just involve equipment, nothing else, they’re very easy. For example, “I need an ergonomic chair. I have medical documentation that says I needs an ergonomic chair because I’ve got scoliosis and I’m functionally limited in sitting.” So, we can get that person a chair. When you move up the chain – we have four tiers – the top tier, tier four – is issues like reassignment, things where the cases get very complex and difficult, where there are a lot more players or there’s sometimes a lot of animosity between the parties. So, I start my team on tier one cases when they start processing reasonable accommodations. I can pull somebody off the street kind of. I have one of my team members here and she agrees. [Laugher] You can pull somebody off the street, and you can teach them RA at a basic level, understanding provision of an ergonomic chair and help them work their way up. And I think it’s super important that everybody identifies ways to help train your staff and improve what they’re doing in that way, in a reasonable way, rather than in inundating them with cases they’re not prepared to do.
I also want to say the PNUPs and PDs (?) are important. The other part that I can’t stress enough is the training for your supervisors and clients. We have reasonable accommodation training for employees, but I teach eight hours. I can stand up here all day as needed to teach on reasonable accommodation for manager supervisors. And it is a long day and we make it fun and by the time you manage to train the managers and supervisors and really have a consistent day, a real day to teach them, their response changes dramatically and they actually learn to enjoy it. Instead of throwing darts on a dart board at your face, which they sometimes do, [Laughter], they are actually learning to enjoy reasonable accommodations. They actually learn how to work with you, and I can’t stress that enough.
You can’t just have lip service to training on reasonable accommodations. You have to break it down in a meaningful way and that way you can go through and identify how and where you need to improve your process beyond that. You can chart out if the manager is responsive or is it necessary to work on this, or is it the clients who need to understand the process? But we need to have everybody trained in order to make that work. So, thank you very much for having me, I appreciate it and I look forward to learning from everybody else.
Dexter Brooks:
Thank you, Katherine.
Bobby Silverstein:
The next section of the resource deals with accessible information and communication technology, which in 2018 is becoming a civil rights issue for people with disabilities. So much information and data is shared through websites, through online systems, through mobile apps, and if we do not take this into account in the initial design stages, and in the procurement of vendors, and if we don’t hold vendors accountable, there are people who are not going to have the opportunity that others take for granted, and this becomes a very key issue.
The rule recognizes the interplay between 501, the rule, as well as 508 and 504. And the document breaks down the issue into four subtopic areas – leadership and team approach; needs assessment and requirement priorities; adoption of formal policies, practices and procedures; and, critically, the infrastructure. How do you implement this in a way that maximizes the fact that folks will embrace the concept and make it a reality for people with disabilities?
So, our speaker for this section is John Sullivan, he’s the director of government-wide IT accessibility programs and also government-wide policy for GSA. And we have had GSA come in and support the work we do with information technology, so I would like John to come up and share some information.
John Sullivan, Director, Government-wide IT Accessibility Program, Office of Government-wide Policy, General Services Administration (GSA):
Hi everyone, thanks for having me. This is my first meeting, so thank you for seeing that I got here. Bobby was right in terms of accessibility becoming a critical issue for us, and certainly out there in the rest of the world with ADA lawsuits, etc. And your website is your place of business, it is where people come, and it’s also a lost opportunity if you’re missing some of your possible market. But that comes home to us here in government. Technology is both the exciting answer and the problem at the same time. So, there’s more and more mainstream technologies that are happening that you know, stumbled into it helping those with disabilities. The Comcast remote control that is voice activated, for example, although I can’t figure out how to work the thing. [Laughter]. So, the ability to have voice activation is wonderful.
But what we do is a small part of GSA. We are an appropriations part of GSA, we’re not a fee for service operation, which a large chunk of GSA is. We understood where OMB is in a lot of the cross federal issues. The policy, cyberdata center and accessibility, all of those areas. Our goal is to provide technical assistance, along with our friends at the Access Board, to all the federal agencies, and our material reaches a lot of other agencies.
So, we kind of work in three areas. Our goal is that what the Federal Government buys in terms of IT is accessible – hardware, software, it includes everything, down to the documents you create, because what you’re creating needs to be accessible. And in general, your environment needs to be accessible. It doesn’t do any good to hire a bunch of people and they get in the office and nothing works for them. And like Bobby mentioned, waiting four months for things to happen doesn’t work. And oftentimes security and accessibility are at cross paths with each other, but the answer is not, “No, you can’t have this for security reasons.” We have to have all those things out there.
Our current focus is in the acquisition implementation stream and in the developer stream. In the acquisition stream, we are monitoring business operations and as part of this process, we reviewed how many federal contracts out there have any accessibility requirements included in them. The results from this monitoring were deplorable, the number was very low. So, we are in the middle of rebuilding this artificial intelligence tool called FedBizOpps. We try to find out who the contracting officer is and the program manager and contact them to say, “Hey, we know you can’t look at all of your solicitations, but here’s a list of those that need to be looked at.” And we monitor if they get the changes done in time so they can do something about it. They may have to issue a modification or something, but we try to make sure they get those accessibility requirements into the contact.
Moving on, we’d like to see more refined accessibility requirements, but we’ll settle for any requirements right now. So we have a tool that’s available to everyone to actuality go through the 508 standard and build your requirements right into your solicitation (the Accessibility Requirements Tool). But it doesn’t matter if you’re just putting requirements in the solicitation, but don’t define the contract relationship, because it doesn’t do you any good if you put the requirements in, but there’s no testing going on or there’s no ramifications if they don’t deliver. So, all the rest of the requirements you put in the contract need to comply. And we’ve been trying to work with people to up that number and make those things happen.
On the other side, we’re trying to bring back Section 508, which has been around since 1998. But since then, we have customer experience teams, we have human centered design teams, we have developers. It’s all good design, folks, and we’re working to bring those disciplines together to say, “Design this from the get-go to be accessible. This is what will help you.” And there’s the new legislation, the 21st Century Act, which was passed in December. There’s nothing new in it, but it brings all those other issues and policies together to say how to design with accessibility in mind. I’m happy to report we see accessibility as the first thing out of the box, and I’m happy to see that. As for where that’s going, the guidance on that, it is not done yet. I’m not speaking on behalf of OMB, for the record, but it’s another piece that helps to bring this together, that helps determine how we work together and support the development teams and focus on accessibility from the get-go.
So, what you do with our existing stock of stuff that’s out there that’s inaccessible? How you handle that is a different frontier. We manage the whole dot gov domain. You think of all the PDFs that are on every dot gov site – we’re never going to be able to make them all accessible, but it’s much better than it was. So that’s where we’re looking in terms of new technology. But our principal thing, whether we’re talking about development or procurement, is what do you do to build an effective accessibility program in your agency, and how do you manage it?
And so, there’s some reporting that goes on to OMB, and we’re working with agencies to redefine what that means. There’s a big meeting on Monday and GSA will be part of that conversation. But, it’s important to determine what does your agency need to do to mature? How do you make time to focus on this, while also making sure that you’re connected to those you need to be connected with? You need to be able to talk to the acquisition world. You need to be able to talk to the development world up and down your agency, and that’s a big part of the skill of procurement professionals.
And on that note, one of my goals is this – we actually built something that is an accessibility professional track, and much like in the acquisition world, you’ve got all these other credentials, so how do we credential accessibility professionals and how do we make it a career track? So, I’ve started some dialogue in OPM and would like to pursue that a little further. As an old guy, I brought paper, so there’s some paper copies of what we do here.
Dexter Brooks:
Thank you. We’re going to take questions after this last section. This last section is going to be quick. We’ll have Bobby introduce it and then we’ll go into the Q and A.
Bobby Silverstein:
Thank you, John. What I heard from your presentation is “team, team, team” and communication, and it’s not just the procurers, it’s not just the HR developers, and again, look at that document after the fact and look at the stuff on technology as a check list. As to your policy practice and procedure, does it have the team approach, leadership, evaluation, etc.?
The last section is on continuous assessment and improvement and accountability. And this section highlights the requirements for workforce analysis, agency-wide goals, barrier analysis, taking specific steps to facilitate progression towards achieving goals, record keeping and reporting and investigating and resolving complaints. And each of these topics is included separately so you have promising and emerging practices for each of those topic areas. And the goals are now a requirement, so that’s not new in one sense because you always had goals, but now it’s expectation of the 12 percent goal for people with disabilities, two percent for people with targeted disabilities, for everyone not making up your own. The barrier analysis, there’s so much stuff in MD-715 in terms of specific kind of examples dealing with disability policy, identifying triggers, etc.
So, this document, again, will help you glean from the MD-715 some of those processes for identifying different triggers to help decide on the strategies that are working, those that aren’t working, and then what needs to be refined.
Dexter Brooks:
So, I want to thank Bobby for going through the document and really laying it out for us. Bobby puts in a lot of work here. He put in a lot of work doing the original framework document, gleaning through practices, twisting all of our arms to help him find practices for the community to utilize. So, I really appreciate all the work you’ve done, Bobby.
Now Monica is here and she’s going to talk about the things she’s doing at FDIC, so Monica, you’re on.
Monica Flint, Disability Program Manager, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC):
Great. I think this presentation is a real honor. So, I’m the disability program manager at FDIC. My primary duties involve the reasonable accommodation process agency-wide, as well as implementing the FDIC’s Disability Employment Program Strategic Plan. My office is located in the Affirmative Employment and Diversity Employment Branch. I’ll just talk briefly about the things that we’ve done to improve how we track data related to employees with disabilities.
When I first came on board, the FDIC was about 5.5 percent in terms of people with disabilities on board, and that was right before OPM released the updated SF-256. So, what we did before the updated SF-256 was official, was we went through the data that we had on hand and we realized that FDIC has never converted people from the 1980s SF-256 to the current form. So, we did huge data scrubs and discussed how they should be appropriately coded. That was a collaborative effort between my office and our “data people,” as we lovingly call them. It was a huge effort and when OPM issued the updated SF-256, we were able to publicize that and promote the resurveying of our workforce.
Our goal is to resurvey the FDIC workforce twice every year, once in September to catch the data for the year-end and once at midyear, so in March, to catch the data for the mid-year. We also worked with our data and HR folks to make sure that people could confidently self-report through the My EPP system, the internal processing system. And so that way they didn’t have to deal with the forms, with the perceived lack of confidentiality, and we didn’t have to rely on another office acting as HR, having to manually input that data into the system. So, in updating the SF-256, we were able to improve on our processes.
The promotion of the resurvey started out small. We started out with a local email that went to all employees and a few different awareness campaigns on the internet. And we made sure we posted a how-to guide on how to update that information electronically. From there, we started to promote it a little bit more by using posters in all the kitchenettes of the D.C. area offices, as well as the regional and field offices.
We’re now starting to use different language when we’re promoting the resurvey. At first it was about needing to update the data and make sure it’s accurate. But we wanted to move a little more towards showing the diversity of the data or showing the diversity of the agency. So, it’s a “help us help you” type of thing, essentially, because I know there’s still a lot of people out there who either don’t consider themselves as having a disability, even though they’re diagnosed with a disability, or maybe that disability isn’t on the form, or they have a lack of confidence in the confidentiality of the information. So, we really want to impress upon the employees that the more accurate information that we gather will only help the diversity and inclusion of individuals with disabilities at the agency.
So, through that resurvey, we also promote the goal of the 12 percent workforce participation rate for people with disabilities, and the two percent rate for people with targeted disabilities. Because of the efforts around the resurvey, over 190 people changed their disability status. So, it was a testament to the effectiveness of the resurvey to see that people went in to verify that they had the correct data in there, or to change information or add a different type of disability. And from 2016-2019, we increased our participation rate from 5.6 to 11.6 for people with disabilities and 2.3 percent for people with targeted disabilities. So we highlight that progression any chance we get.
So, being in the role that I’m in, I’m constantly reminding people and executives and anyone else that I can that diversity and inclusion also means people with disabilities. So, inserting that information more and more often is helping increase the resurveying efforts and also increasing our numbers. For places where we advertise goals or promote accountability, we have the Disability Employment Program Strategic Plan in which we identify specific tasks and goals, which offices and managers can use to help promote the employment of people with disabilities. We’ve issued that twice so far and we will do that every two years from now on. We also have a mandatory EEOC training for managers which changes every two years, so this year, this cycle, focuses on two large sections – the reasonable accommodation process at FDIC and disability etiquette – so how to interact with people with disabilities. And somebody from my office is present at each training to answer questions from the managers.
We use all the tools we can to promote messaging, so contacting managers and supervisors through our HR messaging system, reminding them about the disability hiring goals, and reminding them that they can use different special hiring authorities and different tools and processes that are in place in the agency to be able to help them meet those goals. And most recently, which I think is really great, our managers and supervisors have a performance rating factor in their yearly performance plan that evaluates whether or not they took steps to promote diversity and inclusion amongst their staff. So we have a Diversity 101 training to get staff members or FDIC employees to take the training that we provide to managers and supervisors. With a few quick sentences, they can tell their staff that this training is available, and that it promotes diversity and inclusion, and they should take it. By doing little things like that, they are able to include this effort in their annual performance plan.
So, that’s the quick and dirty. I’m sorry I’m not there in person to show examples on the screen, but the goal of my role in the agency is to make this aspect an everyday part of the conversation, so by doing this through the disability employment program, and different tasks that we’re doing, this will help that initiative.
Dexter Brooks:
Monica, thank you so much. So, now to the Q&A. The first question in the room is from Allison.
Allison Levy, Manager, Disability Resource Center, U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT):
Thank you. I’ll try to keep it short. I actually have a question for John. I’m wondering if you have any insight on this. I’m now in a different department, and I now have two employees who are blind. And it really opened my eyes to how many federal-wide systems are still not accessible. So, I don’t know if you have access to the federal wide council, I wonder if that’s on their agenda or radar at all. For example, time and attendance systems and the bulk of the e-learning software that many of our large departments are buying, even as they update their e-learning systems, are either completely inaccessible or have glitches. So, 50 percent of our staff can’t access that. I’m sure people have other examples, but I’m just wondering if you have any suggestions of perspective?
John Sullivan:
I know certain people are looking at learning management systems across the board. This was the goal of the Enterprise Architecture group, which looks at major types of systems, so federal-wide services like payroll. We made sure that as part of the process and review that the accessibility requirements were put in the contracting, It’s all set up to make sure accessibility is part of that. And as we update, the migration will go towards that. For example, Microsoft is a stellar company in terms of accessibility if you buy the newest version, but they’re not going to go back and retrofit those that are using Microsoft Office 2013 or 2010. But if you’re buying the current version of Microsoft Office 365, you get a lot more accessibility features in there. Yes, we have access to the council and no, I do not think any of this is on their radar screen, but let’s discuss.
The other follow-up point is that, in addition to that issue, as the large software companies are coming together and now it’s Future Forecast 2019 (?), they’re all being combined into one software update and it would seem to make sense if systemically, we go to the council and say “Look, here’s the big push on this very important software that all people with disabilities who use assistive technology are going to be using. How can we make sure this is a smooth transition to the current version?” I know everybody has the same software in terms of Microsoft, but what version they’re using may be different. There needs to be a higher understanding because to have to navigate through our offices at every level, for our people with disabilities, particularly those who are blind, they’re rendering their machines inoperable, and we’re having to jump through all these hoops. And so, I think if there was more awareness at the top, it would help.
Dexter Brooks:
So there is one question from online from Amanda Tempel, and Amanda’s question, which is not directed to anyone in particular, says, “I like the idea of an accommodation career tract.” She is asking how do you mentor and train for this? She is asking if anyone know of any continuing education, mentoring, job shadowing, details to other agencies or other opportunities that can be offered related to this. I think she’s suggesting something like accreditation of a disability program.
Katherine Slye-Griffin:
So, this is Katie from HRSA. There is an ADA Coordinator Training Certification Program that’s run through the ADA National Center. It’s a great program, I actually completed it last summer. It really does get you into architectural barrier issues, it gets you into cyber accessibility issues. So that is one option for your staff. The Mid-Atlantic ADA Center also offers trainings in the D.C. area, and a lot of them are free. I can’t stress this enough to my team, I have them all go through ADA training. I would say there is maybe a little bit of a gap on reasonable accommodations, specifically, and I would guess 508, there’s a 508 gap there, too. There are more in-depth trainings, too so there are ways you can fill that with some existing resources.
Anupa Iyer:
Perhaps you can send a link to those resources to us so that we can them with the group?
Katherine Slye-Griffin:
Yes, I can.
Meeting Participant:
And don’t forget the training for SPPCs is on HR University.
Dave Rice, Disability Program Manager, National Institutes of Health (NIH):
My name is Dave Rice and I’m the disability program manager for NIH. I have a question for Monica at the FDIC. I’ve been the DPM for a year and a half and when I started, we had a very big data mine, so we did a resurvey, I noticed that a good number of people who completed the survey indicated that they had a disability, but didn’t want to disclose what that disability was. So how can I strategize around this, because OPM uses the “01” code in one way, and EEOC uses it another way? And as a person with a disability – I have a hearing loss – it comes from a perspective of, how can I make the employees say what they’re disability is? So, I can just say I am deaf or hard of hearing and be able to check that number/code, versus selecting a code that you can’t really report on.
Monica Flint:
Okay, so I don’t think we’re ever going to get away from that. And it’s not a problem; it is a concern. That’s why I want to start focusing the promotion and the awareness campaign through the resurvey to try to encourage people to self-identify and make them aware that it’s completely confidential and try to encourage them to be more comfortable with reporting. And that’s where having conversations about disability will help. People will eventually be more comfortable, but it’s going to be a long process.
One of my goals as a disability program manager is to have something about disability on our internal websites every month, whether that’s an awareness program, whether it’s a disability etiquette training, whether it’s just saying “Hey, did you know this month was this type of disability awareness month?” We’re not there yet. We probably have something up there every other month. But if we’re really on top of it, having disability as part of the conversation, I think through that we would get people to be more comfortable identifying their specific disability and reinforce that the manager doesn’t see it and we don’t see it. We just see the code and that’s all we’re concerned with. We don’t care what section they’re in. We don’t care what jobs they’re in. For these purposes, it’s really getting cumulative data information, and I think these efforts will help that happen. We also do use our disability resource group and they are helpful in sending out the message or working with people in that resource group who have friends who don’t want to self-report. So, there’s a lot of good grassroots efforts on that level, too.
Bobby Silverstein:
Just quickly, I would like to draw your attention to this document prepared by EARN (the Federal Framework). [Laughter]. This document again breaks down by topic area and subtopic area practices used across agencies, and one of the subtopics is the potential benefits of self-identification, in order to try to explain to employees why they should self-identify, and there’s a list of ten practices adopted by various federal agencies, and working with agency employee resource groups (ERGs) is listed as one of them. Also, one of the things I’ve learned based on interviewing a lot of agencies, is that the culture of the agency is very important. It doesn’t matter what else you do if the culture is not embracing disability inclusion and diversity, people won’t feel comfortable self-identifying So, if you could look at this document and then get back to us and let us know if you think this was helpful in addressing your question.
Dexter Brooks:
Thank you, everyone. Now I want to bring up Brett from EARN to close this meeting out and talk about future meetings and other things that EARN is working on.
Brett Sheats, National Project Director, EARN:
Thank you, Dexter. Thank you all for coming. A couple quick things before we all head out. First, thank you to all the folks that are joining us online or by phone. I know you can’t make it in person. Many of you are across the country. We appreciate you attending via web or phone. If you want to continue this conversation, we have a FEED Community of Practice page on MAX.gov, which we have talked about in previous meetings. We will send a follow up email after this meeting with a link if you’re not signed up yet. On that page, you can post your observed best practices. I’ve talked to a lot of people in this room who weren’t speakers that have great practices in their own agencies. Use the FEED Community of Practice to tell us what you’re doing, join the conversation and ask questions. We can continue the conversation there and even perhaps in a future meeting in person or online or over the phone.
Another thing I wanted to talk to you about is that the federal framework document that we’ve been talking about lives on the EARN website, AskEARN.org. There’s a lot of good info on there, take advantage of this. I think at the beginning of the meeting Bobby listed out the resources that are at the end of this document, and I think the challenge is going through all those, gleaning what is the most important what is useful for you, but it is all there. That is going to be the most concentrated group of resources that you’re going to be able to find anywhere.
So, we think this is a document that could not have come into being without the help of all of you here, all of you online and on the phone, many different groups of people, and we can’t thank you enough. It is our honor to be able the put it together. Bobby, we can’t thank you enough.
Now I want to bring up Paul Lloyd. Paul is with the USDA TARGET Center, and he is going to take a minute here to talk about an upcoming event that you’ll all be invited to and you’ll find a link to more information about the event in the follow-up email we’ll be sending.
Paul Lloyd, Program Manager, Technology and Accessible Resources Give Employment Today (TARGET) Center, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA):
You guys are so close to getting out of here and now you have one more minute, sorry about that. Great to be here. I just want to let you know, the CSUN conference in California, with amazing technology, great workshops in a nice big conference center. Picture that, we’re going to shrink that down and put it in USDA on May 15, and we’re working on getting Microsoft, Freedom Scientific, and all the companies with assistive technology for a great technology showcase, so please, we’re going to send out a save the date. Register, get it on your calendar, and we look forward to seeing you there. So, thank you.
Dexter Brooks:
Thank you everyone for coming out. There are a few people I’m going to thank that have been working behind the scenes – Diana at the front moment desk. Let me say this – we’ve had the vision to have this type of Community of Practice and been fighting to have this for 20 years, so he’s concerted force, it’s a large group. This has been really a collaborative effort, there’s no one driver. There is OPM. I think EEOC gets too much credit because we have a room, but most of the work is done by ODEP. So, we appreciate that partnership and look forward to continuing this conversation. We’re looking to have more meetings that are more hands on with brainstorming on topics that you all have raised so we can learn from each other, because lot of the answers are not in documents or here at EEOC, it’s with the practitioners that we highlighted today, who do this kind of thing every day. So, thank you all for the work you do.