Cost Benefit and Ethics in Government

EEOC Review

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is far and away the most prolific and omni-present agency that exists in the United States, at least at the federal level, that regulates employers and protects employees from discrimination and other unlawful and/or unethical employment practices including inequity in who is hired, who is fired, who is promoted and why, who is given raises and why and so forth. While budgetary constraints and some of the EEOC's recent decisions certainly deserve attention and scrutiny, the EEOC's status as the ultimate arbiter of employee rights in the United States is not going to change anytime soon.

The mission statement of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is to "stop and remedy unlawful employment discrimination" (EEOC, 2014). The vision statement of the EEOC is "justice and equality in the workplace." The EEOC states quite clearly on their website that they know full well, or at least acknowledge the grumblings of others, that eliminating all employment discrimination is not possible as there will always be someone somewhere violating the law even with the most diligent and expansive work by the agency. However, the EEOC has certainly tried including looking not only at explicit and provable results but also at broader issues like disparate impact whereby minorities and other protected classes are impacted even when the discrimination is not explicitly and/or easy to see, such as with felons or when minorities more commonly do not meet the required expectations of hiring managers than with non-minorities when comparing "apples to apples."

This tangent leads to the next topic, and that is overall ethical considerations when budgeting for and spending money from the agency. Indeed, the EEOC has tackled some fairly controversial topics as of late including discrimination based on felon status with prospective or current employees (Knafo, 2013). Certainly, being a felon is entirely different than being black or female as the latter is something bestowed at birth and is not changeable whereas the other (felon status) is based on at least one bad choice made earlier in life. Business and legal advocates of many stripes argue that requiring the hiring of felons (or at least not discriminating against them) is a double-edged sword because the businesses can be held civilly liable if a criminal reoffends and an employee is injured (ISO, 2014). However, the other side of that coin is that felons should get the chance to rebuild their lives and expunging of records/diversions is not always possible or practical. Thus, the record tends to follow them a long time if not the rest of their life. Indeed, some people hold that criminals of any stripe are of a bad character while others hold that redemption should be made possible when a pattern of good behavior and compliance takes hold (Khimm, 2013).

This is but one example of where the EEOC has to be a bit careful from a spending and overall ethical standpoint because of situations where discrimination is being stamped out but sometimes at the expense of law-abiding people who are not trying to be racist but yet seem to be accused of being racist or at least perpetuating the bad outcomes faced by minorities and other protected classes. The problem is that the EEOC is very much driven and controlled by who holds power at the federal level, the office of the President in particular, and this can be said of many other agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and others. Some harken back to Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover wielding such agencies in very vindictive and selfish ways, or at least politically motivated ways, and much the same thing is said of agencies like the EEOC in the modern era (NixonTapes.org, 2014)(FoxNews, com, 2014)(Lengell, 2014).

As far as technological considerations, there are two major ones that relate to the EEOC. The first is the advent of the ability to track and follow people online and the security of the information collected from prying eyes both within and outside of the relevant organizations or applicable regulatory bodies. The general attitude and attention paid towards information technology security is often at a fever pitch when things go wrong in public or private agencies and the last few months and years are a good example of that fever pitching being easy to notice and observe. Private and public agencies/businesses alike are being compromised left and right in some manner or form with some recent examples including Target, Michael's, and so on (Forbes, 2014). However, information leaks and general vindictiveness (as noted before) seems to be at foot in federal agencies like the IRS and others.

The other aspect of technology that the EEOC takes seriously is the ability of people to report and collect data on abuses of power/hiring such as email message, phone message and the overall ability to report the same. However, some reports of abuses are completely or at least partially fictitious as employees can be vindictive as well and employers are often condemned for being too aggressive and pressing in monitoring activities. These accusations can hold weight with the employer even if employee equipment/technology is being used during the communication in question. Privacy advocates argue that people should have privacy relating to personal/private matters even if company equipment is being used but employers (and their advocates) argue that anything/everything that happens on their equipment is subject to review and that the people involved should understand that if/when they use company equipment for private matters. Obviously, the EEOC weighs the totality of the facts in any given case but there are obviously areas that are gray and motives alone are often not enough to condemn or redeem someone in the eyes of the EEOC. Given that, it is quite easy to see why ethical considerations and how they dovetail with technological matters in general would be a bit dicey to handle and manage.

Speaking of dove-tailing, the above talk of technology can easily segue into or otherwise blend with talk about legal statutes and regulations and how easy it can be to run afoul of such regulations even when intentions are good and employee privacy is not directly violated through access to their personal social media accounts or cellular phones, just to name a few. However, there is a line that many draw between acceptable company surveillance up to and including that which relates to detecting illegal behavior including employment discrimination and going too far. Generally speaking, the EEOC will require proof of a transgression but if/when evidence is found, the employee is generally given the benefit of the doubt unless clear-cut proof exists. However, the EEOC has their own standard to meet and they should keep themselves operating ethically in a technological and ethical sense. This is because they cannot enforce legal and ethical guidelines with employers if they themselves are ignoring them in whole or in part.

As for the overall budgetary process, that is obviously controlled by the federal government with Congress and the President being the easy people to point out. The budget situation right now is fairly stable as current figures are basically locked in through the rest of Obama's administration, which runs through early 2017. However, there was a time where no budget at all was passed and the funding levels were extended only through stop-gap measures to avoid the debt ceiling being reached and/or the government in general being shut down because the funding levels were not extended beyond a certain date. However, while the EEOC has been controversial in some of their decisions and opinions, their funding has never really been in doubt as much of the talk of spending cuts has related to things like military spending and entitlement spending, the latter including programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and so forth. Even so, government spending and the deficit is a very high-end concern in the eyes of many so this could very well change in the coming months and years. However, things are probably going to be fine for at least the next two years or so.

However, the status quo for the EEOC was apparently not all that great. It was noted by the Chairman of the EEOC in the FY 2014 report that the capability and reach of the EEOC was severely affected and they are only now getting back up to the level of preparedness necessary to address the fact that the number of EEOC complaints has edged up quite a bit over the last 20 years. The chair also notes that they have made significant investments in upgrading systems and the overall structure of how the agency is run so as to better serve the public and the victims of discrimination. The Great Recession and its aftermath caused a significant spike in complains as there was a ten percent jump from 2010 to 2011 alone (EEOC, 2014).

One major sliver of the EEOC's funding that is deemed to be important is that of Inspector General, which gets about $2.4 million by itself with nearly $2 million of that going to just salaries and benefits. However, the activity of the private sector seems to be leveling off after topping out in the FY 2012 period. There was a fall from 2013 and it supposed to be flat between now and at least the 2016 fiscal year. The amount of mediations created and administered by the EEOC has also trended down. It was at just under 10,000 in 2010 and then edged up to 10,000 in 2011 but has since edged down under 8000 where it was in 2013, is projected to be in 2014 and where it should remain in 2015 and 2016 (EEOC, 2014).

Cost-benefit analysis is the next topic up for discussion and it can be a fairly odd bird when speaking of a government agency, with law enforcement agencies of any sort (which his really what the EEOC is, in a manner of speaking) being the best example. There is a spectrum of high enforcement to low enforcement with a correlating set of results that happens with each level of enforcement. However, there also the considerations of diminishing returns and becoming too punitive on agencies and businesses that are not doing anything wrong. The aforementioned talk about hiring felons is a good example. There is a valid concern about how prior felons and return to society but recidivism rates and civil lawsuits for negligent hires can make businesses very gun-shy even if they see the point made by advocates for the prior felons.

Coming back to the point to be made, the EEOC must find a proper balance between not being too lackadaisical and being too aggressive. They obviously want to crack down on people who engage in illegal behavior but not at the expense of businesses that are being fair and proper with their hiring practices. What is important is to define what the "cost" and what the "benefit" is. Obviously, the cost is money but that money comes from taxpayers and the funding levels are determined by Congress. The "benefit" is less discrimination and thus more equal opportunities for minorities and other protected classes. Since it's not a simple matter of looking at revenues and profit, it is not nearly as easy to see the "benefit" as it would be with a regular business. However, one can certainly track things such as the number of EEOC cases brought, the quantities of legal cases in general that are brought, how many are successful for either type and so forth. That itself can be hard to pin down since not all cases brought have any substance (and the bringer of the case often knows that full well) but cases in which the EEOC brings the matter themselves or is otherwise involved can obviously be a good yardstick as to whether the spending by the agency is efficient and to what degree (or not). This whole prism and dynamic is really the alpha and omega of whether the firm is managing their cash correctly and properly. The EEOC, like most agencies, pulls their money from the general budget and it will tend to go up slightly from year to year as the overall employment/regulatory pool gets bigger from year to year. As noted before, the budgetary noose is constricting on other agencies and parts of the government but the EEOC has escaped such scrutiny at least for now. However, the IRS, EEOC and EPA are all getting assailed for being a little careless and/or overly accusatory (or even favoring one group or people over another for no good reason) and if a Republican President is elected to go with a Republican House (the House being where budget bills start), then things could get rocky quite quickly. If the Senate, which currently favors the Democrats, goes 50/50 or even tips Republican in the 2014 mid-terms, then things could be even worse. However, there is a lot of time between now and then so it remains to be seen who wins those elections and how the winners (and the prism of public opinion) react to this change (or non-change) in power.

However, to return to the real numbers and how the cost/benefit plan is working out, the overall workload is trending down. At any given time from 2010 (actual data) to 2016 (projected), the overall receipts of new cases is expected to edge down from the high 40,000 range to the low 40,000 range with total reslutions outnumbering that. This will cause the overall pending workload to edge down from the low 50,000 range to the low 40,000 range. This will cause the cost/benefit ratio to swing for the better so long as the spending per case and overall remains commensurate and consistent. If the spending remains level while receipts are going down, then cost/benefit may be deemed to be out of whack. However, there is something to be said for other factors such as the overall turnaround being less and the overall visibility of these turnarounds causing more compliance and better performance by private employers thus negating the need for EEOC involvement.