The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is creating a database on employees’ “sexual orientation and gender identity” to measure how well the agency is meeting federal diversity goals.
EPA Chief of Staff Mark Fritz sent an email to all employees asking for “voluntary, self-disclosed sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) workforce data” to “serve as an important resource for developing workforce engagement strategies and improving organizational performance.”
“A professional, productive, and inclusive workplace is essential to our mission of protecting human health and the environment,” Fritz wrote in a Wednesday email obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
EPA will store employee gender identity information, ostensibly, to improve productivity and engagement at the agency. Fritz said EPA was doing this because “nationwide statistics show… lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) employees do not feel included in workplaces and feel compelled to lie about their personal lives at work.”
“Collecting and analyzing SOGI data can help us better understand this situation, and give us a sound basis to explore solutions that enable every employee to be fully engaged at work,” Fritz wrote.
While EPA says its database will be safe, the inspector general has been criticizing them for 5 years over the “long-standing program weaknesses” in the agency’s cyber security efforts.
The IG’s “audit work from the past 5 years continues to highlight actions that remain for the EPA to address cybersecurity challenges (e.g., weaknesses within the EPA’s information security program, and managing contractors that provide key support in operating or managing systems on behalf of the agency),” according to a June report.
EPA’s outreach to LGBT employees comes after months of being hammered by the IG for its “culture of complacency” that allowed agency employees to get away with watching porn at work or sexually harassing female workers.
Congressional investigators revealed in May that EPA paid a convicted child molester $55,000 to retire. EPA was also hit for promoting an employee who sexually harassed at least 16 female employees.
“This is a predator who was fed a steady diet of interns,” Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz said during a July 2015 hearing. “The first time this happened he should have been fired and he should have probably been referred to the authorities for criminal prosecution.”
“This pilot is not only about the LGBT community,” Fritz wrote in his email to EPA staffers.
“We all have a sexual orientation and gender identity, and participation in the pilot by a diverse set of people will enable better analyses,” he wrote. “As an employee, your participation can help ensure a robust data set, which is vitally important to the success of this pilot.”
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