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Under the leadership of Director Craig Leen, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) advanced four thematic foundations of Certainty, Efficiency, Recognition and Transparency (the CERT principles) to improve governance and ensure federal contractors understand agency expectations. Now readying for the upcoming administrative transition, the OFCCP continues to rapidly issue rules and directives to further solidify its guidance. On December 15, 2020, the OFCCP issued the Certainty Directive as its fourth and final directive under the CERT principles. The Certainty Directive reaffirms the agency’s commitment to a number of its initiatives and principles and establishes a process to streamline the ongoing delivery of clarity and certainty in OFCCP policies and practices. In addition, the Certainty Directive extends the moratorium applicable to Veterans Affairs Health Benefits Program (VAHBP) providers.
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
Under the leadership of Director Craig Leen, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) advanced four thematic foundations of Certainty, Efficiency, Recognition and Transparency (the CERT principles) to improve governance and ensure federal contractors understand agency expectations. Now readying for the upcoming administrative transition, the OFCCP continues to rapidly issue rules and directives to further solidify its guidance. On December 15, 2020, the OFCCP issued the Certainty Directive as its fourth and final directive under the CERT principles. The Certainty Directive reaffirms the agency’s commitment to a number of its initiatives and principles and establishes a process to streamline the ongoing delivery of clarity and certainty in OFCCP policies and practices. In addition, the Certainty Directive extends the moratorium applicable to Veterans Affairs Health Benefits Program (VAHBP) providers.
Nondiscrimination Obligations of Federal Contractors and Subcontractors: Procedures to Resolve Potential Employment Discrimination Final Rule.
The only new component of this Directive is the promise to conduct ongoing reviews of the Agency’s policies and procedures to “ensure they are clear and certain to the stakeholder community, and to provide for a process by which a member of the stakeholder community can seek clarification or disclosure of a policy or practice to ensure greater certainty.” The Directive goes on to explain the internal process for these reviews.
Wrapping Up CERT
Director Leen first publicly announced the Agency’s CERT principles (i.e., Certainty, Efficiency, Recognition and Transparency) before the
Quick Hit: On December 15, 2020, OFCCP
announced the release of Directive 2021-02,
Certainty in OFCCP
Policies and Practices (the Directive ). The
Directive generally reaffirms a number of certainty
initiatives previously announced in agency publications, such as
timely and efficient progress of compliance evaluations,
professional conduct by OFCCP staff, and neutral scheduling of
compliance evaluations. The only additional commitments made by the
agency in the Directive are to conduct ongoing reviews of its
policies and practices to ensure they are clear and certain to the
stakeholder community, and to provide a process by which
contractors can seek clarification or disclosure of a policy or