EEOC extends customer service center pilot project

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Thursday agreed to extend a two-year test run of a contractor-operated customer service center for another year, but commissioners expressed reservations about the project's success so far.

House lawmakers had requested that the EEOC vote on the extension and postpone considering whether to make the center permanent until the National Academy of Public Administration can complete an evaluation to supplement a recent review by the agency's inspector general. Pearson Government Solutions won the initial, $4.9 million two-year contract to run the center, in September 2004. That agreement had three option years at least one of which will now be exercised.

In a June 30 letter to EEOC Chairwoman Cari Dominguez, Reps. Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., leaders of the appropriations subcommittee that handles the agency's funding, said the request was in response to concerns from Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, and other members. In exchange for efforts to delay making the center permanent, Jones agreed to withdraw an amendment to the fiscal 2007 Science-State-Justice-Commerce spending bill that would have pulled the center's funding.

At Thursday's meeting, Dominguez urged fellow commissioners to vote in favor of the extended test, acknowledging that the center's performance has been flawed but arguing that pilot projects by their nature expose shortcomings. Dominguez said the agency will be able to address challenges identified in a June 29 study conducted by Job Performance Systems Inc. of Alexandria, Va., for the IG, including a lack of communication between call center and field office staff.

Dominguez argued that the agency's quality of service would be worse if it abandoned the project and went back to the days when some calls simply went unanswered. The center started accepting inquiries nationwide in March 2005 and is intended to improve response time for general questions and allow field offices to focus on investigations and litigation.

Commissioners Leslie Silverman and Christine Griffin joined Dominguez in supporting the one-year extension, while Naomi Earp, commission vice chairwoman, voted against the plan, reversing her stance nearly two years ago in support of the trial run.

Commissioner Stuart Ishimaru, who opposed the center at the outset, also voted against the extension, though his opinion of the project appeared to have softened somewhat. He noted several positive developments, including the center's ability to answer questions asked in foreign languages and to respond to e-mail inquiries.

Earp said she still supports the concept of a national customer service center, but believes the current project has flaws too great to fix in a year, making the extension an unwise investment. The project should be placed on "pause" until problems can be worked out, she said. Earp and Ishimaru also said they were hesitant to move ahead given the agency's tight budget and the mixed results from the center so far.

Those results, highlighted in a customer satisfaction survey and the IG-commissioned evaluation, indicated that the center is not handling the volume of calls originally intended and thereby not reducing field office work as much as anticipated. That's partly due to the agency's decision to limit initial calls during the test phase.

The IG-commissioned report said the customer service center "has the potential to make a significant contribution to the EEOC; however, as presently operated, it is not effective."

Employees answering the phones need more training in "soft skills," the report found, and better ways of interacting with field offices to eliminate duplicative work and improve efficiency. Confusion regarding the service center's role with respect to the field offices is partly responsible for communications problems, the report stated. On the positive side, customer satisfaction rated higher than average compared to similar services offered by other federal agencies and private companies, and some field offices reported reductions in call volumes. Pearson, the service center contractor, met all of its performance standards consistently, except for one regarding the speed of answers to inquiries. Even that issue has been resolved, officials noted at Thursday's meeting.

Dominguez said she is committed to implementing many of the recommendations in the report. She also said she will ask NAPA to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the project as part of the evaluation that members of Congress have requested.

But Gabrielle Martin, president of American Federation of Government Employees National Council of EEOC Locals No. 216, said she is skeptical the EEOC will be able to fix the center's problems during the extension. The IG-commissioned report illustrates that the center is "handling less than a third of the calls that they anticipated handling and that they're not doing that well in terms of errors and creating barriers to people contacting EEOC," she said.