Lawmaker: CG civil rights office has history of problems - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Lawmaker: CG civil rights office has history of problems

A Maryland congressman said Wednesday he is troubled that a February report detailing several problems with the Coast Guard’s Office of Civil Rights outlined many of the same problems noted in numerous reports dating back nearly a decade.

The Booz Allen Hamilton report stated that OCR employees did not have the proper skills or training to handle many of the service’s cases, and formal discrimination complaints were not adequately processed. The Coast Guard retained Booz Allen, a consulting firm with offices throughout the country, to review the entire civil rights program in September. The report was released Feb. 19.

“What was perhaps the most disappointing to me was not just the devastating nature of these individual findings, but the fact that the problems they describe have apparently persisted for nearly a decade,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., chairman of the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation at Wednesday’s hearing.

“Put simply, the picture that emerges from the reports available to us shows that despite knowing that its equal opportunity programs did not ensure full compliance with U.S. law and regulations, the Coast Guard has taken little to no action to ensure full compliance.”

A similar report conducted in 2001 by KPMG found that complaints were not being handled efficiently and that the office’s collateral-duty military members showed a “great variation in … quality,” according to Cummings’ prepared statements.

Another report by PricewaterhouseCoopers that is more than a decade old also showed that the civil right’s program is “relatively ineffective,” he said.

Terri Dickerson, director of the Coast Guard’s Office of Civil Rights, said the Booz Allen report validates some of the concerns she had about the office. She is working with Commandant Adm. Thad Allen on ways to get the program back on track.

Dickerson has since proposed a change from the current system of localized staff and collateral-duty military members handling cases.

“I have a plan to address each recommendation and I am executing it,” Dickerson told the subcommittee.

Among the changes proposed, is a move to a national Equal Employment Opportunity program that includes “trained, permanent civil rights providers and a toll-free telephone access number, staffed around the clock, seven days a week,” according to Dickerson’s written testimony.

The Booz Allen report, among others, stated that the Coast Guardsmen assigned to the 40-year-old office often come in with little civil rights experience and serve two-year tours. They then “leave their post just as they are becoming oriented to the position.” The other Coast Guardsmen in the office are on collateral duty with the same limited backgrounds — making the move to permanent positions key.

Dickerson acknowledged that the changes will not happen overnight, saying that although she has the full support of Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security leadership, it will likely take 18 months to two years to roll out a complete action plan. Once the plan is rolled out, Dickerson said, the office will periodically conduct a climate survey to gauge the success within the office.

“I fully believe that the decision to conduct a program review was a worthwhile endeavor,” Dickerson wrote in prepared testimony. “I am confident that I have the commitment and support to carry out service-wide changes.”