June 2017

Effective June 12, 2017, executive branch agency employees, contractors and subcontractors who have access to classified information or hold sensitive positions must report personal trips abroad as well as a wide range of foreign contacts. This new security directive, “Reporting Requirements for Personnel With Access to Classified Information or Who Hold a Sensitive Position,” was issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and establishes fundamental reporting requirements while still allowing agency heads to impose additional reporting requirements in accordance with their respective authorities.

As previously reported, the Trump Administration’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2018 includes a plan to merge the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (“OFCCP”) into the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”). Pragmatically, this would add the OFCCP’s broad responsibilities to an already overburdened EEOC, without providing the EEOC any additional funding to accomplish its newly added workload.

On June 7, 2017, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta testified at a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing in support of the proposal. The Labor Secretary touted the merger as a “commonsense change” that “combines two civil rights agencies that already work together closely.”  The merger, according to Secretary Acosta would achieve a cost saving without reducing enforcement.