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The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) completed 7,211 compliance evaluations in 2001. 36% were found to have violations. 67 referrals were made to the Regional or National Solicitor's office. Solicitors are the government attorneys who take enforcement action when a settlement between the OFCCP and a contractor cannot be reached.
One debarment was reported in 2001. $28,975,000 was collected from 210 contractors; an average of almost $138,000 each! An additional $9,036,000 was assessed in backpay penalties for 6,925 alleged victims, which averaged to about $1,300 per person.
There were 444 Compliance Officers and 332 managerial and administrative staff working for the OFCCP in 2001. Over 60% of the management staff will reach retirement age in the next couple years. While compliance officers continue to have a high turnover rate, the management staff has remained fairly stable. Expect a period of training and some inconsistency while new management personnel are put in place.
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The OFCCP audits approximately 3% of all federal contractors in a year. This ranks second behind the federal Wage and Hour division for total number of actual on-site visits in the workplace by all federal agencies.
An average compliance evaluation, from scheduling letter to final resolution, averages 12 months. The period to complete an audit has been slowly rising each year.
The OFCCP has no efficient way to know how many of a contractor's locations are being or have been recently reviewed. They are working on a solution that should give their compliance officers this information in the near future. This information would limit reviews of multiple locations of the same contractor where one has been recently reviewed and had no problems. Obviously this system would also alert compliance officers to other contractor locations that had problems when they were audited.
In 2002, Field Solicitors began reviewing all conciliation agreements before they were presented to contractors. This
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process checked for enforceability of the agreement and served to train personnel to draft better documents. It is not known whether this practice will continue in 2003.
The United States Census Bureau has decided upon 472 occupational categories for the 2000 Census data. They estimate that the data will be available to the public sometime late 2003.
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FAAPs are affirmative action plans based on functional or business units rather than physical location. Employees from multiple locations may be included in one FAAP.
A Directive explaining how the OFCCP will process Functional AAP (FAAP) applications was published in March of 2002.
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As of November 2002, the OFCCP had received 92 applications for FAAPs and approved 31. Contractors who have gone through the approval process report that it amounts to a mini-audit. Each FAAP is tailored to the particular contractor, no standard FAAP format exists.
Approved FAAP contractors are
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removed from the current audit selection system until procedures for auditing FAAPs have been finalized. Those who have FAAPs can rest assured they will be audited after the procedures are in place!
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