The Postal Service, the nation’s largest civilian employer, had about 765,000 career employees at the end of fiscal year 1997. Service employees include craft employees, the largest group; EAS; the Postal Career Executive Service (PCES); and others, such as inspectors for the Postal Inspection Service. The Service structure includes headquarters, 11 areas, and 85 performance clusters, with cluster-level employees making up about 96 percent of the Service workforce. For the purposes of this review, we focused on the cluster-level EAS workforce. The EAS workforce consists primarily of employees in EAS 11 through 26 positions. EAS management-level positions begin at EAS 16 and include such positions as postmaster, manager of customer services, and manager of postal operations. At the end of fiscal year 1997, EAS positions totaled 80,238, or about 10 percent of total Service career-level employees. PCES, established in 1979, includes Service senior-level officers and executives in positions such as area vice presidents. At the end of fiscal year 1997, the Service had about 900 employees in PCES positions. We did not include employees in PCES positions in our analyses for this report. According to the Service, one of its corporate goals is a commitment to employees, which includes an effort to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees, take advantage of its diverse workforce, and compete effectively in the communications marketplace. To that end, the Service created its Diversity Development Department in headquarters in 1992, which was to foster an all-inclusive business environment. The head of the Department reports directly to the Deputy Postmaster General. The Department is responsible for, among other things, actively supporting the recruitment, retention, and upward mobility of women and minorities. In addition, the Service’s 1999 Annual Performance Plan includes achieving a diverse workforce as one of its goals. To determine the effectiveness of the Service’s diversity development program, the Postal Service Board of Governors commissioned Aguirre International, a contractor, to undertake a 6-month study (May 2, 1997, to Nov. 2, 1997) of workforce diversity at the Postal Service. The study addressed Service personnel and supplier diversity and was issued in October 1997. The report stated that the Service was a leader in meeting affirmative action goals as well as striving for parity between its workforce and the CLF. It also stated, among other things, that women and minorities appeared to be experiencing problems advancing to management jobs at EAS 17 and above positions. The Board of Governors subsequently directed the Service to develop an action plan for dealing with the diversity issues raised by Aguirre. The Service developed an action plan and briefed the Board on the plan in April 1998. In our previous letter, we reviewed promotions to EAS 16 and above positions at four selected performance clusters. Documentation in the promotion files and our discussions with Service officials provided evidence that the Service’s required promotion procedures we reviewed were followed for the 127 fiscal year 1997 promotions at these 4 sites. In addition, for 117 of these promotions, we provided statistical data on the distribution of the specific EEO groups throughout the promotion process stages—applications received, applicants considered best qualified, and applicants promoted. The specific EEO groups discussed in this report include white, black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American men and women. We did our work from July 1998 through January 1999 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. We requested comments on a draft of this report from the Postmaster General and from Aguirre International’s Director of Operations. The Postal Service’s oral comments and Aguirre’s written comments are discussed near the end of this letter. Further details about the scope and methodology of our review can be found in appendix I. The analyses that follow show how the representation of cluster-level women and minority groups (1) compared with their representation in the 1990 CLF; (2) changed between fiscal years 1993 and 1997 in EAS 17 and above positions; (3) among those promoted to EAS 17 and above positions in fiscal year 1997, compared with their representation in EAS 17 and above positions in fiscal year 1997 (before the promotions); and (4) in EAS 17 and above positions, compared with their representation in EAS 11 through 16 positions in fiscal year 1997. We also made similar comparisons for women and minorities involving the remainder of the Postal Service workforce located at the headquarters and area office levels, as detailed in appendix II. Table 1 shows that when we compared fiscal year 1997 data for the Service’s cluster-level workforce with CLF data from the 1990 decennial census, black and Asian men and women and Hispanic men were fully represented, while Hispanic women, Native American men and women, and white women were underrepresented. Specifically, black men and women comprised 11.3 and 9.6 percent, respectively, of the cluster workforce compared with their respective 5.0 and 5.5 percent representation in the CLF; Asian men and women comprised 3.5 and 1.9 percent, respectively, of the workforce compared with their respective 1.5 and 1.3 percent representation in the CLF. However, white and Hispanic women were underrepresented, comprising 22.1 percent and 2.0 percent, respectively, of the workforce compared with their respective 35.3 percent and 3.4 percent CLF representation. White men were represented in the workforce similarly to their level of representation in the CLF. In addition to the cluster-level workforce data presented in table 1, we analyzed similar data for the Service’s headquarters-level and area office- level workforces. Table II.1 in appendix II shows that white and Hispanic women and Native American men were underrepresented among the three workforce levels. Native American women were underrepresented among cluster employees and headquarters employees, but not among area office employees. Hispanic men were underrepresented among headquarters and area office employees, while white men were underrepresented among area office employees. Black and Asian men and women were fully represented in all three workforce levels. Figure 1 shows our analysis of the representation of women and minorities at the cluster level in EAS 17 and above positions in fiscal year 1993 compared with fiscal year 1997. As the figure shows, generally, the representation of women and minorities increased over this period; black men’s representation decreased 0.6 percent over this period. Also, white men’s representation decreased over this period by about 2.0 percent. Table II.2 in appendix II shows this same type of comparison between the 2 fiscal years for women and minorities in EAS 17 and above positions at the headquarters and area office levels. At the headquarters level, in addition to the slight decrease in representation of black and white men as happened at the cluster level, representation of Native American men also showed a slight decrease. At the area office level, the representation of black men, Asian men, and Native American men all generally decreased. Also, at the headquarters and area office levels, the representation of white men decreased. As shown in figure 2, we compared the representation of each EEO group at the cluster level promoted to EAS 17 and above positions in fiscal year 1997 with their representation in EAS 17 and above positions at the cluster level in fiscal year 1997 before the promotions. Our analysis showed that the representation of women and all minority groups among those promoted was higher than the representation of women and minority groups in EAS 17 and above positions, with the exception of Asian women. Also, the representation of white males in promotions to these higher EAS positions was lower than their representation in the cluster-level workforce. Table II.3 in appendix II shows the same type of information for the same period for the headquarters and area office workforce levels. At the headquarters level, representation of women and all minority groups among those promoted was higher than their representation in EAS 17 and above positions, with the exception of Asian women and black and Native American men. However, at the area office level, representation of white women; Hispanic men and women; and Native American men and women was lower than their representation in EAS 17 and above positions. Also, white men were promoted at a rate lower than their representation at the headquarters and area office levels. Table 2 shows our last comparison, the fiscal year 1997 representation of women and minorities in EAS 17 and above positions with their representation in EAS 11 through 16 positions. We made this comparison because employees in EAS 11 through 16 positions represent the workforce pool from which selections for promotion to EAS 17 and above positions would likely be made. Our analyses in table 2 show that among cluster-level employees, the overall representation of women and minorities in EAS 17 and above positions was lower than it was in EAS 11 through 16 positions in fiscal year 1997—42 percent compared to 61 percent. Table II.4 in appendix II shows variation in the representation of women and minorities in the higher EAS positions at the headquarters and area office levels compared with their representation in EAS 11 through 16 positions. Based on our own standards for designing studies and developing methodologies to evaluate programs, we believe that the methodologies used by Aguirre International were generally reasonable, appropriate, and relevant given the established study parameters, including the 6-month time frame in which the study was to be completed and the complexities associated with addressing the sensitive issue of diversity in an organization as large as the Postal Service. In addition, limitations resulting from the study’s parameters, as well as cautions regarding the study’s findings, were noted throughout the report. However, in our review of the Aguirre report, we noted one area of concern: The report stated that it appeared that a glass ceiling impeded the progression of women and minorities to EAS 17 and above positions, but in our opinion, the report did not explicitly define the term glass ceiling or present convincing supporting evidence. At the direction of the Postal Service Board of Governors, the Service contracted with Aguirre International to study the Service’s diversity program.