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By: FEDweek StaffConcerns about lack of diversity in the intelligence community date back more than three decades but the publicly available information makes it difficult to gauge the impact of numerous initiatives since then, a Congressional Research Service report has said.
Some IC-wide diversity information has been publicly reported annually since 2016 but those reports provide “only an amalgamation of demographic percentages” and not “demographic data for each element or specific data on the number of people entering, remaining, and leaving an element. More detailed data and information would be required to identify the sex, race, and ethnicity composition of each IC element’s workforce and its longitudinal changes,” the report said.
It said that those reports show that women and minorities are under-represented in those agencies compared with the federal workforce overall—in 2018, for example, 38.8 percent vs. 43.5 percent for women and 26.2 vs. 37.3 for minorities. However, intelligence community agencies have higher percentages of people with disabilities, 10.5 vs. 9.2 percent. Representation of all three categories increased slightly from 2015 although the ratios remained about the same.
Further, it said that a 2017 intelligence community-wide report on barriers to hiring, retention, and career development in the IC that affect women, minorities, and persons with disabilities found that “minority representation in leadership positions is lacking, supervisors offer little support for work-family conflicts, lack of inclusiveness in the IC leads to less diverse senior officers, minority groups think the promotion and advancement process is unfair, and middle management often fails at promoting diversity and inclusiveness.”
However, it added that based on available data regarding EEO complaints, “it is not possible to make an empirical inference or draw an evidence-based conclusion about unlawful discrimination in these elements.”
The report suggested that Congress could look into issues including whether diversity-focused recruiting and outreach or retention and advancement programs are not meeting their stated objectives.
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