No Agreement on Solution

Subcommittee members, as well as the leaders of several of the appeals agencies, said that while they are open to the idea of consolidating appeals routes, much study would be needed before they would be ready to take such an action. Several said that they would prefer identifying the most troublesome areas and trying to improve those, possibly through changing procedures. Several witnesses indicated that the main problem regarding federal employee appeals is the length of the equal employment opportunity process-in particular, the time agencies spend conducting internal investigations even before a hearing officer becomes involved–not the MSPB or other appeals channels or the complexity of the system. They also stressed that for the most part, employees must choose one route or another for a challenge, characterizing the various routes as more like alternatives than duplicates.