Improving the timeliness of Equal Employment Opportunity complaint processing in Department of Defense

The Department of Defense (DoD) employs hundreds of thousands of full-time civilian employees, and federal laws and executive orders stipulate that it is illegal to discriminate against these persons on the basis of several protected categories, including race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, and disability. The Offices of Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity (ODMEO) and Civilian Personnel Policy (CPP) aim to ensure that DoD abides by these laws and orders, thereby allowing DoD civilian employees to work in an environment that is free from discrimination. If a DoD civilian employee perceives that he or she has been discriminated against, the employee can contact the local Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) office to discuss the discrimination experience(s). If the complaint cannot be immediately resolved, the individual may subsequently file a formal EEO complaint with the local EEO office. Once a person files a formal EEO complaint, federal regulations stipulate that, barring specific circumstances, the complaint should be processed within 180 days. This 180-day time period encompasses the time of formal filing to the time an EEO office mails the report of investigation (ROI) for the complaint to the complainant. Since at least 2005, 38 percent to 53 percent of EEO complaints filed each year in DoD have not been processed within this regulated 180-day time frame. This report aims to provide information that will assist DoD in addressing this lag of formal EEO complaints.