What is the OFCCP's Equal Opportunity Survey?

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program's Equal Opportunity (EO) Survey was implemented in 1999 (41 CFR 60-2.18; 64 FR 54056, Oct. 5, 1999), with initial mailings to 7,000 selected contractor establishments in April 2000. The three-part survey, which collected general information on the status of federal contractors’ affirmative action plans and aggregated personnel and compensation data by gender and minority status, had three major objectives:

1. To increase compliance with equal opportunity requirements by improving contractor self-awareness and encourage self-evaluations.

2. To improve the deployment of scarce federal government resources toward contractors most likely to be out of compliance.

3. To increase agency efficiency by building on the tiered-review process already accomplished by OFCCP's regulatory reform efforts, thereby allowing better resource allocation.

However, after two studies that focused on the predictive ability of the EO Survey, the OFCCP concluded that the lack of utility of the EO Survey, the contractors' burden of completing the EO Survey, and the burden to OFCCP to collect and process EO Survey data that will yield such a poor targeting system are too significant to justify its continued use. Accordingly, the OFCCP eliminated the requirement that federal contractors file the Equal Opportunity (EO) Survey (71 FR 53032, Sept. 8, 2006). The OFCCP estimated that elimination of the EO Survey will reduce federal contractors' costs by almost $5.5 million per year, and save the agency $356,000 annually in processing costs. It emphasized that [r]escission of the EO Survey requirement should not be viewed in any way as demonstrating a lack of commitment to equal employment opportunity.