Civil Rights on Deck (Volume 1, Issue 7.1)

Coast Guard Office of Civil Rights Update

• Latest Periodic Progress Update on the Booz Allen Hamilton report - NONE
  • The Commandant Ordered Periodic Progress Updates on 19 February 2009
  • Four months later, …
    

• Latest edition of Civil Rights Space – Directors Newsletter is February 2009

• Latest edition of Civil Rights on Deck – Directors Newsletter is May 2009

President Obama Proclaims June African-American Music Appreciation Month

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2009 as African-American Music Appreciation Month. I call upon public officials, educators, and all the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate more activities and programs that raise awareness and foster appreciation of music which is composed, arranged, and performed by African Americans.

Solicitation for the 2009 Blacks in Government (BIG) Meritorious Service Awards

ALCOAST 309/09 announced solicitation for the BIG Meritorious Service Awards.  Nominations must be received by the Office of Civil Rights (CG-OOH) not later than 19 June 2009.

Blacks in Government 2009 National Training Conference

The 2009 Training Conference will be held in Baltimore the week of 24 to 28 August 2009.

Coast Guard Employees Should Enter Class Action Civil Rights Complaint

Admiral Thad Allen - Leads the Only Branch of the Military with an Embattled Civil Rights Office. Allen commissioned a third party review of his Civil Rights Office which found it to not fully comply with Civil Rights Law. Congress held a hearing which noted that the report listed the same issues in previous reports going back a decade. Allen stands staunchly behind his Civil Rights Director of three years.

Earlier today Coast Guard Report wrote on the only other federal agency to be audited by GAO in last decade for failure to comply with the civil rights law.  One reader pointed out that it took a class action to finally force the agency (U.S. Department of Agriculture) to resolve its issues.  We decided to report a little deeper on the USDA case and find it far too similar to Coast Guard.  Possibly the answer here for the aggrieved employees at Coast Guard to enter into a class action against the agency.  Months after the release of the Booz Allen Report, the Commandant has taken no affirmative action to resolve issues inside his agency.

Recommendations and Options to Address Management Deficiencies in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights

Why GAO Did This Study: For decades, numerous federal reports have described serious weaknesses in USDA’s civil rights programs—in particular, in resolving discrimination complaints and providing minority farmers with access to programs.  In 2002, Congress authorized the position of Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights (ASCR) at USDA to provide leadership for resolving these long-standing problems. GAO was asked to assess USDA’s efforts to (1) resolve discrimination complaints, (2) report on minority participation in farm programs, and (3) strategically plan its efforts.  GAO also reviewed experiences of other federal agencies to develop options for addressing the issues.  This report is based on new and prior work, including analysis of ASCR’s discrimination complaint management, strategic planning, and interviews with officials of USDA and other agencies, as well as 20 USDA stakeholder groups.

What GAO Found: ASCR’s difficulties in resolving discrimination complaints persist—ASCR has not achieved its goal of preventing backlogs of complaints. The credibility of USDA’s efforts has been and continues to be undermined by ASCR’s faulty reporting and disparities in ASCR’s data. Even such basic information as the backlog of complaints is subject to wide variation in ASCR’s reports to the public and Congress. For example, ASCR’s public claim in July 2007 that it had successfully reduced a backlog of about 690 discrimination complaints in fiscal year 2004 and held its caseload to manageable levels drew a questionable portrait of progress. By July 2007, ASCR’s backlog had surged to  885 complaints and ASCR officials were in the midst of planning to hire attorneys to address that backlog. Also, some steps ASCR had taken to speed up its work may have sometimes been counterproductive and adversely affected the quality of its work. ASCR does not have a plan to correct these problems.

USDA published three annual reports on minority farmers’ participation in farm programs, as required by law. However, USDA considers much of its data to be unreliable because they are based on employees’ visual observations about participants’ race and ethnicity that may not be correct.  USDA states that it needs the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) approval to collect more reliable data. ASCR started to seek OMB’s approval in 2004 but, as of August 2008, had not followed through to obtain approval.

ASCR’s strategic planning does not address key steps needed to ensure USDA provides fair and equitable services to all customers and upholds the civil rights of its employees. For example, strategic planning should be based to a large extent on the perspectives of stakeholders, but stakeholders’ views are not explicitly reflected in ASCR’s plan. Also, ASCR could better measure performance to gauge its progress. ASCR’s strategic plan also does not link funding with anticipated results or discuss the potential for using performance information for identifying USDA’s performance gaps.

The experience of other agencies in addressing significant performance issues provides important insights and options that are relevant for addressing certain long-standing ASCR issues. First, Congress required executives at three federal agencies to be subject to statutory performance agreements.  Such an agreement for ASCR could be used to achieve specific expectations by providing additional incentives and mandatory public reporting. Second, Congress has authorized oversight boards for a variety of purposes, including one for the Internal Revenue Service to oversee performance. A USDA civil rights oversight board could be authorized to oversee USDA’s activities to identify weaknesses that need to be addressed and to provide transparency.  Third, an effective USDA ombudsman—one who is independent, impartial, fully capable of conducting meaningful investigations and who can maintain confidentiality—could assist in resolving civil rights concerns at USDA. USDA has some authority to establish an ombudsman but has not done so.

Lockheed and Northrop Grumman should be debarred

By Michael DeKort

Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman should be debarred from bidding future Deepwater ship projects, like the OPC, until the refund and fraud issues are resolved and the NSC’s classified communication systems are complete, the system thoroughly tested by an independent source that would report its findings back to congress and the events surrounding the funding of the effort to, include the SCIF, are look in to. (Given the large defense contractors are so integral to the nation’s security it may not be practical to debar the companies as a whole. Of course those companies know this. While that would send the strongest message, one that is certainly maybe the more practical option and the one that sends almost the same message is to debar people. There are several dozen engineering, program management, senior leadership and ethic personnel in these companies who are responsible for these problems. They personally profited from the shoddy workmanship and fraud that was perpetrated on this effort. As the companies would continue on without these people and the nation wouldn’t suffer a bit maybe all of these people should be fired and their 401k company contributions and pensions should be stripped. That might send the loudest and most practical message of all? In future blogs I may start listing the names of the personnel I am speaking about – all the way through to the CEOs and Board of Directors)

To date all the Coast Guard has said is that the future bidding will not include ICGS and may include parties outside of Lockheed and Northrop. Given the contractors have yet to resolve the $96m 123 refund issue, they are now facing charges of fraud filed on behalf of the US government and there are serious questions about the actual capability of the NSC to meet secure communications requirements I am calling for all of this to be cleared up in order for LM and NG to be allowed to bid on future ship projects. The contractors have not only taken no responsibility for the 123 issues but Lockheed for example – still maintains all of the issues were reviewed by their internal ethics process and there was absolutely no wrong doing.

Given these circumstances it is not enough to simply state that ICGS is no longer in the loop. That is a reuse. While it keeps Lockheed and Northrop from picking themselves it does not preclude the Coast Guard from picking them.

The contractors on Deepwater were given and paid for an unparalleled amount of trust on the effort and not only squandered it and profited from it but is put the nation in serious jeopardy post 9/11. As Lead System Integrator’s they were asked to be trusted agents of the US government, the Coast Guard and the citizens of the United States after 9/11. The CG admitted it did not have the right expertise to run the program and more importantly they admitted they didn’t have the expertise to figure out what needed to be done and eventually test the systems to see if they were acceptable. The contractors professed to be able to leverage world class talent and world class ethics to accomplish those tasks – all post 9/11. They were paid for that advertised capability and didn’t deliver on either. They backed the CG in to a corner be not informing them of what was really going on until the program was so far down the road it would be almost impossible to stop. They held the Coast Guard and the country hostage. They took advantage of the Coast Guard’s admitted lack of expertise and conned them into accepting systems they should not have. The contractors withheld important information and lied about what they did tell them in order to ensnare the Coast Guard. These contractors abused the trust of the nation. Their performance, refusal to accept responsibility and pay for their actions should be intolerable.

Coast Guard Administrative Law Judges Fare Well with GAO

Coast Guard: Administrative Law Judge Program Contains Elements Designed to Foster Judges’ Independence and Mariner Protections Assessed Are Being Followed

GAO-09-489 June 12, 2009

The United States Coast Guard’s Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) program is designed to, among other things, promote safety at sea while protecting mariners’ rights and is composed of judges whose duties include presiding over cases involving mariners’ credentials. If a mariner does not meet certain requirements related to safety and security at sea, Coast Guard investigative officers are to serve the mariner with a complaint that lists the allegation(s) and initiate proceedings that can result in the mariner’s credential being suspended or revoked. GAO was asked to review elements of the ALJ program and this report addresses (1) the extent to which the ALJ program contains elements designed to foster the decisional independence of ALJs, (2) the extent to which the ALJ program includes protections for mariners and whether complaints and decisions include elements required by program regulations, and (3) the outcome of mariner suspension and revocation cases in recent years. To conduct this study, GAO analyzed the laws, regulations, and policies governing the ALJ program. GAO also reviewed all suspension and revocation cases opened and closed from November 10, 2005, through September 30, 2008, to determine outcomes, and further reviewed a representative sample of these cases to determine whether complaints and decisions included the required elements. GAO supplemented these case reviews with interviews of Coast Guard ALJ program officials.

The Coast Guard’s ALJ program contains elements designed to foster the decisional independence of its judges by following Office of Personnel Management regulations governing the ALJs’ hiring and employment. These regulations are designed to ensure that the ALJs are not subject to undue influence from Coast Guard officials. For example, personnel actions against a judge, such as the removal of an ALJ, may only be taken through an independent agency, the Merit Systems Protection Board. The Coast Guard’s ALJ program contains protections for mariners–such as the right to a hearing and representation–and complaints filed by the Coast Guard and decisions issued by ALJs that we reviewed generally included the required elements. In particular, GAO reviewed cases opened and closed from November 10, 2005, through September 30, 2008, and determined that (1) regulations governing complaints, which are intended to notify mariners of the allegations against them; and (2) regulations requiring ALJs’ decisions to contain certain elements, such as finding of fact, were being followed. Based on GAO’s review of the 1,675 suspension and revocation cases opened and closed from November 10, 2005, through September 30, 2008, the majority (62 percent) resulted in settlement agreements; for example, a mariner may give up his or her credential while completing safety training. In these cases, the outcomes were determined through negotiations between the mariners and the Coast Guard. In contrast, 3 percent of the cases resulted in a hearing before an ALJ that ended with a decision and order–a decision presents the ALJ’s findings, while an order states the sanction, if any, imposed on the mariner. The remaining 36 percent of cases had a variety of outcomes. The disposition of all cases reviewed is shown below. In commenting on a draft of this report, the Coast Guard generally concurred with the findings and believes that the report is both complete and accurate.

Maybe the Answer to Coast Guards White Landscape

One of our contributors was on Webster Smith’s Blog “Friends of Webster” and came across a video of Nate Silver’s address on race affect on votes.  You need to watch the video  beginning to end and think about the direct correlation to Coast Guards vastly white service.

The Number of Times the Government Accountability Office has Monitored an Agency Civil Rights Office

Only once prior to Coast Guard based on a search of the GAO archive.  The GAO has been asked by Congress only twice in the past to decade monitor a  Civil Rights Office, the Department of Agriculture and now the U.S. Coast Guard.

U.S. Department of Agriculture: Recommendations and Options to Address Management Deficiencies in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights
GAO-09-62 October 22, 2008

For decades, numerous federal reports have described serious weaknesses in USDA’s civil rights programs–in particular, in resolving discrimination complaints and providing minority farmers with access to programs. In 2002, Congress authorized the position of Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights (ASCR) at USDA to provide leadership for resolving these long-standing problems. GAO was asked to assess USDA’s efforts to (1) resolve discrimination complaints, (2) report on minority participation in farm programs, and (3) strategically plan its efforts. GAO also reviewed experiences of other federal agencies to develop options for addressing the issues. This report is based on new and prior work, including analysis of ASCR’s discrimination complaint management, strategic planning, and interviews with officials of USDA and other agencies, as well as 20 USDA stakeholder groups.