OFCCP Director Patricia Shiu officially discontinued the agency's Active Case Management (ACM) process on December 2, 2010 by rescinding Directive Number 285 as recommended by the National Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force in July, 2010. The Task Force reported to President Obama and was comprised of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Labor (DOL), and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
The ACM process, which was detailed in Directive Number 285 issued on September 17, 2008 but actually had been adopted by the agency back in 2003, was designed to concentrate agency resources on identifying and remedying cases of systemic discrimination (defined as cases with a potential affected class of 10 or more people) and enable the agency to conduct compliance evaluations as efficiently as possible.
Included in the 2008 ACM directive as "quality control" measures were stipulations that full desk audits would be performed in every 25th review, and onsite evaluations in every 50th review. These evaluations were performed whether or not any indicators of discrimination were identified during the initial review of submitted desk audit information.
Director Shiu's rescission notice stated that although "ACM has identified a number of systemic cases since its implementation," the process "caused OFCCP to narrow [its] focus... and has eroded OFCCP's enforcement authority."
Rescinding the ACM directive continues OFCCP's recent efforts to reverse policies that were established under the previous administration, including:
- Rescinding the 2006 interpretive standards and voluntary guidelines on evaluating systemic compensation discrimination;
- Implementing Executive Order 13496 requirements, which replaced the Executive Order 13201 requirements from 2005; and
- Plans to publish an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) in early 2011 for the purpose of reinstating the Equal Opportunity (EO) Survey that was rescinded in 2006.
