Countdown underway for contractors to comply with OFCCP verification initiative

March 30, 2022, is the deadline for federal contractors and subcontractors to register in the contractor portal recently launched by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). Then they will have until June 30 to verify compliance with the OFCCP’s affirmative action and nondiscrimination regulations.

Why is verification necessary?

A 2016 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) outlined a number of recommendations for improvements to the OFCCP’s process for selecting contractor establishments for review. In doing so, the GAO identified a number of concerns:

• The OFCCP didn’t have a comprehensive list of covered prime and subcontractors;
• The majority of contractors scheduled for review required extensions to submit a response to the standard scheduling letter indicating they weren’t preparing affirmative action plans (AAPs) for all establishments annually;
• The OFCCP reviewed only a small fraction of covered contractor establishments each year; and
• Of the limited number of establishments reviewed, only two percent of audits resulted in adverse findings.

In response to the findings, the GAO recommended the “OFCCP develop a mechanism to monitor AAPs from covered federal contractors on a regular basis. Such a mechanism could include electronically collecting the [plans] and contractor certification of annual updates.” The OFCCP’s newly launched compliance verification process is a direct response to the recommendation.