Semiannual Report: Oct-Mar 2016

This semiannual report is issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC’s) Office of Inspector General (OIG) pursuant to the Inspector General Act of 1978, as amended. It summarizes the OIG’s activities and accomplishments for October 1, 2015, through March 31, 2016.

During this period, the OIG issued 4 final audit/evaluation reports, completed 1 investigation, and received 246 hotline inquiries, of which 102 were charge processing issues, 73 were Title VII complaints, and 71 were other investigative allegations.

The OIG’s completed, newly initiated, and ongoing audit, evaluation, and investigative projects include the following:

• The Government Charge Card Abuse Prevention Act of 2012 requires inspectors general of executive agencies to conduct periodic assessments of audits of purchase card and travel card programs to identify and analyze the risks of illegal, improper, or erroneous purchases and payments. Based on our risk assessment, we determined that the risk of illegal, improper, or erroneous use in the EEOC’s purchase card program is low.

• The OIG received a congressional request to review a Commissioner’s charge (a charge filed by an EEOC Commissioner against a private sector respondent).  We will report our findings in the third quarter of FY 2016.

• The OIG received an allegation of someone impersonating a charging party during the mediation of a charge of discrimination, and wrongfully accepting $5,000 from the respondent as a settlement in the charge of discrimination. The OIG investigation established there was no criminal intent by the party involved in the mediation hearing.

• The OIG contracted with Brown & Company CPAs, PLLC (Brown & Company), to conduct an independent evaluation of EEOC’s compliance with the provisions of the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 (FISMA). Based on the results of the evaluation, Brown & Company concluded that the agency has made positive strides in addressing information security weaknesses, but that it still faces challenges to fully implementing information security requirements as stipulated in various federal guidelines and mandates.