the point we are now talking about, to the multiplicity of agencies and the divergence of policies in the administration of affirmative action. by each of the 17 agencies that there are to which we delegate.

Mr. HAWKINS. I would like to correct the record. According to the GAO report, the letter was written more than a year ago. You say an answer is expected within 60 days.

Secretary DUNLOP. A year ago, Mr. Chairman, I wasn't here.
Mr. HAWKINS. We are not holding you accountable, Mr. Secretary.
Secretary DUNLOP. Let us see if somebody can straighten the issue

out.

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Chairman, what you are making reference to is the letter which the General Accounting Office did send to the Department of Labor on certain portions of order 4. I thought that the Solicitor's Office has had several meetings with the General Accounting Office people to make some determinations and decisions as to what we do. I don't think we are making reference to the entire GAO report.

Mr. HAWKINS. For the clarity of the record, the Comptroller's request was dated July 2, 1974. It had to do with revised order No. 4. I assume that we are talking about the same one, are we not? Is that the one you refer to, Mr. Davis?

Mr. DAVIS. I am making reference to a letter of the General Accounting Office concerning only order No. 4.

Mr. HAWKINS. Is that the one that was written on July 2, 1974, then?

Mr. DAVIS. As far as I can recall, that is the one.

Mr. KILBERG. No. That is not the report. The report that GAO did was referred to a little less than 2 months ago. There was correspondence with GAO in July 1974, I believe, on the matter involving the Illinois plan. The State of Illinois wanted to impose its own affirmative action program in construction.

The Comptroller General said that that Illinois plan would be violative of Federal procurement regulations. Because of that report, we were compelled to reject the State of Illinois plan. At that same time the Comptroller General did raise some general questions about order No. 4 and his procurement regulations, and we have had some ongoing discussions with personnel from the GAO on that matter.

In the introduction to the most recent report, the General Accounting Office raised that matter again.

Mr. BUCHANAN. Mr. Chairman, would you yield briefly?
Mr. HAWKINS. Yes, Mr. Buchanan.

Mr. BUCHANAN. In further clarification of the chairman's question, there is embodied in the April 29, 1975, GAO report, as a part of its substance, the reference to the letter about which the Chair is talking.

Mr. KILBERG. That is correct.

Mr. HAWKINS. Will you respond specifically to the material contained in the GAO report on page 3 concerning the revised order No. 4 at the same time? Could we get all of that together?

Mr. KILBERG. I am sure we will. I have not seen a draft of our response as yet, but I am sure we will.

Secretary DUNLOP. Well, let us make a point to do it.

Mr. HAWKINS. The Chair has other questions concerning what I believe to be really the thrust of this hearing. I think we have not really been discussing them, to get to the heart of the problem about the monitoring of the agencies and compliance procedures.

However, at this time I will defer to the ranking minority member, Mr. Buchanan.

Mr. BUCHANAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, people who live in New Jersey inform me that gangsters sometime refer to their lawyers as "mouthpieces." This is confirmed by people who live in Chicago. In this instance, sometimes members serve as mouthpiece for attorneys. It is not true of the Chair. It is true in my case. This morning, counsel has prepared some questions for you, Mr. Secretary and gentlemen. We would appreciate making them a part of the record.

Mr. Secretary, section 3501 of the Federal Reports Act clearly states that "Information needed by Federal agencies" is to be obtained with a "minimum burden on business enterprises." Is the spirit of this act currently being carried out by OFCC in conjunction with the other Federal contract compliance agencies, or is the field overrun with multiple recording and recordkeeping requirements?

Secretary DUNLOP. Mr. Chairman, I will try to answer that question without benefit of a mouthpiece.

I would say to you, first of all, that you are aware that any forms that the Department of Labor uses has to be cleared by the Office of Management and Budget which has a peculiar responsiblity of helping to enforce the objective you are talking about. More directly, and that is one of the reasons I met earlier, as I testified, with the key procurement agency people and I believe it is the first time that a Secretary of Labor has done that, I wanted to get into precisely this type of system problem.

One of the problems we brought up on the top of the table in that meeting is a clear recognition that each one of these procurement agency people has a different set of systems for requiring data. Interior uses one method, Defense Department another, and so on around the 17 agencies.

Now that is further complicated in the area to which you refer in the fact that at the present time companies' responsibilities are distributed among agencies according to a single code. You may have a given single company reporting to more than one Government agency which in turn has more than one data system. That is a problem which was pointed out to me in this meeting as one which required a certain amount of attention.

One of the consequences of this, and I don't wish to make this overly technical although there are aspects of it that are, is that as a common ordinary fellow I want to know what were the employment statistics for minorities, women, and so forth by occupation in company A 5 years ago or 10 years ago and what is it today. It is very difficult to get that information by virtue of the multiplicity of these data reporting systems.

I can agree that we have some work to do in that area.

Mr. BUCHANAN. What effort do you think can be made to improve the system? This is one, as you have indicated, of the very great prob

lems involved in business in affirmative action. Reporting and data requirements are really quite different.

Secretary DUNLOP. I am personally sensitive to that, Mr. Chairman. May I ask Mr. Davis to indicate to you some of the things that he and his associates have begun to do in that area?

Mr. DAVIS. One of the things we have begun to do, Mr. Chairman, is the issuance of order 14 last July. We have now required the compliance agency to send to us a coding sheet which would indicate to us how much progress an individual contractor had made over a given period of time. My office, once it receives the coding sheet, analyzes that information and will be doing research studies and releasing those studies in the immediate future. As a matter of fact several months ago we released our first study, 655 firms, which indicated without question that progress has indeed been made as it relates to the hiring and promotional opportunities for minorities and women.

But the coding sheet is the primary source which we are presently using.

Mr. BUCHANAN. Mr. Davis, in September 1974, this subcommittee conducted an intensive review of the functions and effectiveness of the EEOC. What coordinating efforts now exist between your office and EEOC and how effective has the memorandum of understanding been between EEOC and OFCC?

Mr. DAVIS. Of course, Mr. Buchanan, as you know on September 11, 1974, the Department of Labor did sign a new memorandum of understanding which is designed to promote better efficiency between these two agencies as well as to prevent duplication and inconsistency and better coordination across the board.

What that memorandum of understanding does basically is four things. One, it provides that indeed there will be consultation on target selection of industries that both agencies will be involved in. It requires that there be coordination of compliance reviews and plan of investigation. It requires that we will share information with each other. It further requires that we will develop implementing procedures and investigative procedures that will be mutually acceptable to both agencies.

Thus far, I will have to say that by and large this memorandum of understanding has been successful. We are now in the process of finalizing these implementing procedures and as the Secretary has testified earlier, he will be sitting down with Chairman Perry for the purpose of refining these issues more closely and having more cooperation from EEOC and also with the Department of Labor.

Mr. BUCHANAN. Does EEOC inform you promptly each time it closes a case?

Mr. DAVIS. There have been some problems in communication but. there is no question that it is greatly improved.

Mr. BUCHANAN. Mr. Davis, are the complaints now filed with your office and the data collected on Federal contractors recorded in computer banks within the Department?

Mr. DAVIS. I am sorry, I did not hear the latter part of it.

Mr. BUCHANAN. Is the data collected recorded in computer banks within the Department?

Mr. DAVIS. The complaints and order 14 coding sheets that we receive are coded and processed through Mr. DeLury's office management.

Mr. BUCHANAN. Is such information up-to-date?

Mr. DELURY. Some of these coding sheets, Mr. Congressman, have to be worked over. They are not completely accurate or they are not filled out correctly. We are having a better batting average right now. The rejection rate I think is down somewhat.

Mr. BUCHANAN. Mr. Chairman, I have a long series of questions. I don't want to overextend my time. I will be glad to rotate back if

I may.

Mr. HAWKINS. We can alternate if you wish. If you wish to pursue your questions now, you certainly can do so.

Mr. BUCHANAN. As you wish.

Mr. HAWKINS. Let us shift.

Mr. Clay.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Davis, what official or officials do you report to in the Department of Labor?

Mr. DAVIS. To the Assistant Secretary for Employment Standards, Mr. DeLury.

Mr. CLAY. Who does he report to?

Mr. DELURY. I report to the Secretary.

Mr. CLAY. Who has the final authority on policy matters involving contract compliance?

Mr. DAVIS. The ultimate authority has been delegated directly to the Secretary from the President.

Mr. CLAY. To whom do the field contract compliance personnel report?

Mr. DAVIS. The field contract compliance personnel report to the assistant regional director for the Employment Standards Administration in the various 10 regions of the country.

Mr. CLAY. Why don't they report to the Director of OFCC?

Mr. DAVIS. The decision was made in March 1972, that there be a reorganization of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance and the program would become more decentralized.

Mr. CLAY. In terms of decentralizing does that mean diminishing the authority of the director of OFCC?

Mr. Davis. It does not mean that we are diminishing the authority of the Director of OFCC.

Mr. CLAY. It means that the field operation reports to another individual.

Secretary DUNLOP. Mr. Clay, I would like to comment on that problem because, as you are aware, I came to the Department to find the situation between the field and offices, and the Washington office of the Department to be one in which there is a very considerable range of misunderstanding. The field people have one view of that relationship and I think the Washington people sometimes have another. It has been one of our objectives to try to clear that up.

The reason I intervened, with your permission, is to say to you that there is a very considerable range of problems that arise in doing the work of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance in my view by virtue of the fact that the degree of centralization within the 17 agencies to whom we delegate authority is very, very different. Some of those agencies, for example, only permit decisions on these matters to be made in the Washington, D.C., area. Some of the other agencies

permit their regional offices to handle the problems with our regional people.

So, there is often times, until one is very clear about it, a situation in which one kind of problem can be handled in San Francisco or in Dallas involving one agency but it can only be handled in the event of another.

There is another matter, of course, which is that the regional configurations of these various agencies often differ markedly. Some have 10 regional offices as we do. Some have three and some have various others and some have none, Mr. Davis advises me. That range of administrative matters is, itself, an independent source of difficulty in this area in my judgment.

Mr. CLAY. How does the delegating of authority comply with the regulations?

Secretary DUNLOP. I am not sure, Mr. Clay, that we fully understand your question.

Mr. CLAY. Let me clarify what I am attempting to get at. The Director of the OFCC reports to the Assistant Secretary. Don't the regulations specify that he should report to the Secretary of Labor?

Mr. KILBERG. Mr. Clay, I am not sure what section of the regulations you are referring to.

Mr. CLAY. I just read it a few minutes ago. Let me see if I can find it: 61-1.2.

Mrs. MINK. Will the gentleman yield?

In connection with the questions that have just been asked by my colleagues, what concerns me is that as I read the authority of the Secretary of Labor he is to be responsible for the execution and implementation of the Executive order. In line with that responsibility it has been the decision of the Secretary of Labor to delegate that authority to the various agencies of Government, 13 initially and 11, I believe,

now.

Secretary DUNLOP. Seventeen.

Mrs. MINK. Seventeen?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes.

Mrs. MINK. Well, whatever the figure; that really is not the point of contention. But the decision to delegate the responsibility given the Secretary is a decision made by the Secretary of Labor; isn't that correct? So that the power and responsibility still lodges in the offices of Secretary of Labor? The difficulties that you have cited, Mr. Secretary, with regard to the variations in structures of regional offices, the various ways in which the agencies have decided to implement the delegated authority which you have given them is a problem which the Secretary of Labor might very well correct, since in that authority the Secretary of Labor has the responsibility to effectively implement the Executive order.

It seems to me that the problems that you cite are problems that could be corrected by the issuance of guidelines and requirements and specifications to these agencies so that you might have some orderly system for implementing the Executive order which the ordinary public at large might better understand.

Secretary DUNLOP. May I respond to that very fair question this way. Coming into this situation now, I have quite a flexible view about that. I have often thought that my problems as Secretary would be