The Buzzz April, 2009

By Penny Reeder

Washington, DC:  On Tuesday, March 31, the National Council on Disability released a report on the state of employment for people with disabilities in the federal government.  The report, which is available in accessible formats at the organization's web site, http://www.ncd.gov, here, http://tinyurl.com/cagfva, examines with some depth the current status of employment of people with disabilities in the Federal Government and makes ten recommendations for improving federal hiring and advancement of employees with disabilities.  Five recommendations address the need for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to examine personnel practices that continue to present barriers to hiring and advancing qualified people with disabilities. Four recommendations call on Congress to request the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct studies on Schedule A, supervisor practices, and the veterans' preference system; and to expand the authority of the Computer/Electronic Accommodations Program (CAP). One recommendation is directed toward job seekers, encouraging people with disabilities to take advantage of available information about employment opportunities in the Federal Government. 

NCD found that, despite an executive order in 2000, which announced the Bush Administration's goal of employing 100,000 people with disabilities in federal jobs, federal employment of people with disabilities actually dropped 14.42 percent between 1998 and 2007.  in 2007, the last year for which data was able to be collected, less than one percent of federal employees, just 0.92 percent, identified themselves as having a disability, and only five of the twelve federal agencies reported employment rates of people with disabilities higher than one percent.  Meanwhile, employees with disabilities are leaving federal service jobs at twice the rate of workers who do not report having a disability.

According to Susan Parker, director of policy development at the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP), who was asked to react to NCD's findings and recommendations at the organization's annual meeting, if the employment situation for people with disabilities is dismal in the federal government, where incentives for hiring people with disabilities, including veterans' preferences and "Schedule A" letters from the vocational rehabilitation agencies, abound, then, because the federal government serves as a model for the rest of the country, we can assume that the employment situation in general for people with disabilities is likely to be equally dismal, or worse.

Parker said, "the federal government is a model for the rest of the country.  They set the tone for the rest of the country, bringing along private corporations who do most of the hiring."

Parker said that, it is not because of a lack of incentives or stated intent at the executive level (Note the 2000 executive order) that federal agencies have failed to hire significant numbers of people with disabilities, it is, in large part, because of a failure to build consensus across the 17 executive agencies of the federal government.  Each agency has its own culture, she said, and recruitment of people with disabilities will follow if top management at each agency sponsors an effective recruitment program.

"When the communication starts from the top, and you have willingness down the line, you can get the two together," Parker said.

The reports states that in 2007, 23,969 people with targeted disabilities were employed by the federal government, well below the Bush administration's stated goals or federal employment levels for people with disabilities in decades past, and at a time when the federal government was growing in size.

"Did the initiative demand sufficient attention so that it came up on the agendas at the cabinet meetings?" Parker asked, and answered rhetorically:  Apparently not.   Parker said, "That could, and can, be easily achieved.  We need a communications strategy that can be absorbed and understood, across all the federal agencies, and down the line."

Parker said that we have no way to tell  if the numbers of federal employees with disabilities might, in fact, be somewhat higher than the reported total, since the statistics are based on self reported data.  "People with disabilities do not necessarily identify themselves as disabled," she said.  Particularly with respect to the so-called hidden disabilities, "They do not want to report it out,  because [they know that]not all of the individuals in supervisory positions understand that they need to take that information and use it in a supportive way."

The fact that there could be some under-reporting with respect to the number of federal employees with disabilities notwithstanding, no one on the Council, or in the Department of Labor, or within the community of people with disabilities, or the organizations who advocate on their behalf believes that the federal government is meeting expectations with respect to providing employment for people with disabilities. In addition, no one seems to be collecting the data or sharing that information between agency heads, supervisors, or Human Resources departments, to improve  the status quo, via effective feedback mechanisms. The Office of Personnel Management has an annual responsibility to report to Congress on the representation of minority groups in the federal workforce and whether or not best practices are being undertaken and utilized to facilitate recruitment and retention of members of minority groups, including women.  However, people with disabilities are not included in the definition of minority groups which the OPM is required to report upon, and one of NCD's recommendations is to require reporting of federal employment data with respect to people with disabilities along with other minority groups.

Parker said that she often hears from people with disabilities who tell her that they have followed all the steps which they believed would logically lead to finding jobs within the federal bureaucracy.  "They tell me that they never hear back from anyone," Parker said.  Sometimes, Parker believes, this is because the HR workers simply don't know how to read the applications that are coming through.  In addition, HR staffs are chronically over-worked and under-funded because a major function within government that has taken a beating under mandates to cut operating costs has been the "hours department, Parker said."  Managers have erased slots in the HR departments, and people with disabilities, in particular, have paid a price for that.

Parker said, "Federal agencies need to make the initiative to hire people with disabilities a priority, and it needs to become a management priority that is reported upon, to the Secretary, every week."  Parker said that HR workers complain that it takes too much time to make applications accessible, or to screen applications for information about disabilities, but if the federal government is committed to improving the percentages, then HR departments need to spend the time it takes to do these things, and feedback mechanisms need to be put in place to inform and document for managers and department heads how well, or not, every federal agency is doing.

"Solutions," she said, "Will involve prioritization of time by administrative staff."

Another category of data that is in desperate need of collection concerns why people with disabilities choose to leave federal service at twice the rate of their colleagues without disabilities.  We need to understand why, Parker said.

Another of NCD's recommendations in terms of retaining federal employees with disabilities involves the Computer/Electronics Accommodations Program (CAP).  This Department of Defense agency, the report says,  has   done an excellent job of providing assistive technology to federal   employees in agencies which partner with CAP and would be a logical  place to house the expertise needed to provide support to supervisors who may not be familiar with job structuring, telecommuting, and job-sharing arrangements."

NCD's recommendations to people with disabilities who want to secure employment with the federal government boil down to networking and becoming familiar with information about current agency practices and predictions for future employment trends.  The report recommends these strategies to people with disabilities,

"Investigate employment opportunities in agencies with critical hiring needs and agencies that have shown a commitment to hiring people with disabilities. For example, almost 80 percent of projected new hires will be in five professional fields: security, protection, compliance and enforcement; medical and public health; accounting, budget, and business; engineering and sciences; and program management/analysis and administration. Among agencies with 500 or more employees, those with the highest percentage of people with targeted disabilities in FY 2007 were the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (2.65 percent of a workforce of 2,192); Social Security Administration

(2.06 percent of a workforce of 62,407); Defense Finance and Accounting Service (2.03 percent of a workforce of 12,449); Defense Logistics Agency (1.89 percent of a workforce of 21,394); and Department of the Treasury (1.70 percent of a workforce of 102,787).