OFCCP publishes Federal Contractor User Guide and Admin Guide

On August 31, 2021, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) gave Final Notification that the OFCCP’s Affirmative Action Program Verification Interface (AAP-VI) was approved. OFCCP has not updated its AAP-VI landing page; however, it has published a Federal Contractor User Guide and an Admin Guide.

The User Guide provides sample pages that walk the contractor through the login process. The user will have to provide their Employer Identification Number (EIN), Headquarters/Company number, and the establishment/unit number. They will also be required to create the parent company by providing information about the legal business name, company ID, DUNS number, NAICS code, and EIN number.   Next, users will be directed to their dashboard to provide the AAP certification.

As explained in our previous blog, requiring contractors to certify that they have their required AAPs in place, will allow the agency “to run a comprehensive and informative report identifying the AAP status of covered federal contractors.” In addition, the AAP-VI will also provide contractors with a “secure method” for submitting affirmative action plans during a compliance evaluation.

Annually contractors and subcontractors will be required to certify compliance with 41 CFR Chapter 60 and indicate if they have:

• • • Developed and maintained affirmative action programs at each establishment or for each functional or business unit.
    • Have been party to a qualifying federal contract or subcontract for 120 days or more and have not developed and maintained affirmative action programs at each establishment.
    • Become a covered federal contractor or subcontractor within the past 120 days and have not yet developed affirmative action programs.

We will await more information from the OFCCP as to the implementation of this Interface. Since the User Guide shows snapshots of actual pages, we can only assume that the Interface has been created as a test mode.

OutSolve’s Take

Despite the fact that the OFCCP has been working on the AAP-VI for over a year, it doesn’t appear as though they consulted with the EEOC in order to coordinate EEO-1 Report data. For example, our collaboration partner, Alissa Horvitz with Roffman Horvitz shared,

 “For organizations that prepare multiple affirmative action plans, it seems from the User Guide that OFCCP will allow one person to certify on behalf of all of the establishments that prepare AAPs, which should reduce the amount of time and burden imposed on federal contractors as part of the certification process. It was unclear in the original proposal whether OFCCP was going to require a single, employer-wide certification or separate establishment certifications. There still are many unknowns, though, and we need to wait and see what additional instruction and guidance OFCCP issues, including most importantly when the portal will be open to contractors and when will be the first deadline to certify.”

In addition to providing for a single individual to certify, the Admin guide also refers to what appears to be the ability to import an “EEO-1 Import feed”. While the guide describes a certification process that involves manual entry of data establishment by establishment, a tedious and time-consuming process, but for that import feed entry, which appears to be a file upload. At this point, it’s not clear as to whether this would be the EEO-1 batch upload file contractors provide to the EEOC site, which would include employee data, or if it’s something new that will be pulled from the EEO-1 site after it’s been certified, but at least there may be a bulk process available to make certification of multiple locations in one step.

As a final note, there is always the possibility that a “parent company” may, in a short time, be merged with or acquired by another company, or even spun off on its own. Notifying the EEOC of such changes is currently a manual process. There is no mention in the Admin guide of any of these eventualities.

We expect this process to change, evolve, and move through several phases that will extend beyond the initial scope of the verification interface. OutSolve will work with customers to minimize the administrative burden of this new certification process, ensuring compliance, consistency, and adapting to new reporting requirements. If you are an existing or future client, we will complete the AAP-VI setup on your behalf. We will keep you up-to-date as more information on the AAP-VI becomes available. Please contact us at info@outsolve.com.