[Federal Register Volume 86, Number 178 (Friday, September 17, 2021)]
[Notices]
[Pages 51949-51951]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2021-20117]


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SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

[SEC File No. 270-666; OMB Control No. 3235-0725]


Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request

Upon Written Request Copies Available From: U.S. Securities and 
Exchange Commission, Office of FOIA Services, 100 F Street NE, 
Washington, DC 20549-2736

Extension:
    OWMI Contract Standard for Contractor Workforce Inclusion

    Notice is hereby given that, pursuant to the Paperwork Reduction 
Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.), the Securities and Exchange 
Commission (``Commission'') has submitted to the Office of Management 
and Budget (``OMB'') a request for extension of the previously approved 
collection of information discussed below.
    Section 342 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer 
Protection Act of 2010 (the Dodd-Frank Act) provided that certain 
agencies, including the Commission, establish an Office of Minority and 
Women Inclusion (OMWI).\1\ Section 342(c)(2) of the Dodd-Frank Act 
requires the OMWI Director to include in the Commission's procedures 
for evaluating contract proposals and hiring service providers a 
written statement that the contractor shall ensure, to the maximum 
extent possible, the fair inclusion of women and minorities in the 
workforce of the contractor and, as applicable, subcontractors.
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    \1\ 12 U.S.C. 5452.
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    In addition, section 342(c)(3)(A) of the Dodd-Frank Act requires 
the OMWI Director to establish standards and procedures for determining 
whether an agency contractor or subcontractor ``has failed to make a 
good faith effort to include minorities and women'' in its workforce. 
Section 342(c)(3)(B)(i) provides that if the OMWI Director determines 
that a contractor has failed to make good faith efforts, the Director 
shall recommend to the agency administrator that the contract be 
terminated. Upon receipt of such a recommendation, section 
342(c)(3)(B)(ii) provides that the agency administrator may terminate 
the contract, make a referral to the Office of Federal Contract 
Compliance Programs of the Department of Labor, or take other 
appropriate action. To implement the acquisition-specific requirements 
of Section 342(c) of the Dodd-Frank Act, the Commission adopted a 
Contract Standard for Contractor Workforce Inclusion (Contract 
Standard).
    The Contract Standard, which is included in the Commission's 
solicitations and resulting contracts for services with a dollar value 
of $100,000 or more, contains a ``collection of information'' within 
the meaning of the Paperwork Reduction Act. The Contract Standard 
requires that a Commission contractor provide documentation, upon 
request from the OMWI Director, to demonstrate that it has made good 
faith efforts to ensure the fair inclusion of minorities in its 
workforce and, as applicable, to demonstrate its covered subcontractors 
have made such good faith efforts. The documentation requested may 
include, but is not limited to: (1) The total number of employees in 
the contractor's workforce, and the number of employees by race, 
ethnicity, gender, and job title or EEO-1 job category (e.g., EEO-1 
Report(s)); (2) a list of covered subcontract awards under the contract 
that includes the dollar amount of each subcontract, date of award, and 
the subcontractor's race, ethnicity, and/or gender ownership status; 
(3) the contractor's plan to ensure the fair inclusion of minorities 
and women in its workforce, including outreach efforts; and (4) for 
each covered subcontractor, the information requested in items 1 and 3 
above. The OMWI Director will consider the information submitted in 
evaluating whether the contractor or subcontractor has complied with 
its obligations under the Contract Standard.
    The information collection is mandatory.
    Estimated number of respondents: Based on a review of the last two 
fiscal years since the most recent approval of this information 
collection, the Commission estimates that 175 contractors would be 
subject to the Contract Standard.\2\ Approximately 102 of these 
contractors have 50 or more employees, while 73 have fewer than 50 
employees.
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    \2\ Unless otherwise specified, the term ``contractors'' refers 
to contractors and subcontractors.
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    Estimate of recordkeeping burden: The information collection under 
the Contract Standard imposes no new recordkeeping burden on the 
estimated

[[Page 51950]]

102 contractors that have 50 or more employees. Such contractors are 
generally subject to recordkeeping and reporting requirements under the 
regulations implementing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act \3\ and 
Executive Order 11246 (``E.O. 11246'').\4\ Their contracts and 
subcontracts must include the clause implementing E.O. 11246--FAR 
52.222-26, Equal Opportunity. In addition, contractors that have 50 or 
more employees (and a contract or subcontract of $50,000 or more) are 
required to maintain records on the race, ethnicity, gender, and EEO-1 
job category of each employee under Department of Labor regulations 
implementing E.O. 11246.\5\ The regulations implementing E.O. 11246 
also require contractors that have 50 or more employees (and a contract 
or subcontract of $50,000 or more) to demonstrate that they have made 
good faith efforts to remove identified barriers, expand employment 
opportunities, and produce measurable results,\6\ and to develop and 
maintain a written program, which describes the policies, practices, 
and procedures that the contractor uses to ensure that applicants and 
employees receive equal opportunities for employment and 
advancement.\7\ In lieu of developing a separate plan for workforce 
inclusion, a contractor may submit its existing written program 
prescribed by the E.O. 11246 regulations as part of the documentation 
that demonstrates the contractor's good faith efforts to ensure the 
fair inclusion of minorities and women in its workforce. Thus, 
approximately 102 contractors are already required to maintain the 
information that may be requested under the Contract Standard.
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    \3\ 42 U.S.C. 2000e, et seq.
    \4\ Executive Order 11246, 30 FR 12,319 (Sept. 24, 1965).
    \5\ See 41 CFR 60-1.7.
    \6\ See 41 CFR 60-2.17(c).
    \7\ See 41 CFR part 60-2.
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    The estimated 73 contractors that employ fewer than 50 employees 
are required under the regulations implementing E.O. 11246 to maintain 
records showing the race, ethnicity and gender of each employee. We 
believe that these contractors also keep job title information during 
the normal course of business. However, contractors that have fewer 
than 50 employees may not have the written program prescribed by the 
E.O. 11246 regulations or similar plan that could be submitted as part 
of the documentation to demonstrate their good faith efforts to ensure 
the fair inclusion of women and minorities in their workforces. 
Accordingly, contractors with fewer than 50 employees may have to 
develop a plan to ensure workforce inclusion of minorities and women.
    In order to estimate the burden on contractors associated with 
developing a plan for ensuring the inclusion of minorities and women in 
their workforces, we considered the burden estimates for developing the 
written programs required under the regulations implementing E.O. 
11246.\8\ Based on OMWI's review of the plans and other documentation 
submitted by contractors with fewer than 50 employees to demonstrate 
compliance with the Contract Standard, we believe such contractors 
would require approximately 25 percent of the hours that contractors of 
similar size spend on developing the written programs required under 
the E.O. 11246 regulations. Accordingly, we estimate that contractors 
would spend about 18 hours of employee resources to develop a plan for 
workforce inclusion of minorities and women. This one-time 
implementation burden annualized would be 438 hours. After the initial 
development, we estimate that each contractor with fewer than 50 
employees would spend approximately 8 hours each year updating and 
maintaining its plan for workforce inclusion of minorities and women. 
The Commission estimates that the annualized recurring burden 
associated with the information collection would be 365 hours. Thus, 
the Commission estimates the annual recordkeeping burden for such 
contractors would total 803 hours.
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    \8\ According to the Supporting Statement for the OFCCP 
Recordkeeping and Requirements-Supply Service, OMB Control No. 1250-
0003 (``Supporting Statement''), it takes approximately 73 burden 
hours for contractors with 1-100 employees to develop the initial 
written program required under the regulations implementing E.O. 
11246. We understand the quantitative analyses prescribed by the 
Executive Order regulations at 41 CFR part 60-2 are a time-consuming 
aspect of the written program development. As there is no 
requirement to perform these types of quantitative analyses in 
connection with the plan for workforce inclusion of minorities and 
women under the Contract Standard, we believe the plan for workforce 
inclusion will take substantially fewer hours to develop. The 
Supporting Statement is available at reginfo.gov.
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    The Contract Standard requires contractors to maintain information 
about covered subcontractors' ownership status, workforce demographics, 
and workforce inclusion plans. Contractors would request this 
information from their covered subcontractors, who would have an 
obligation to keep workforce demographic data and maintain plans for 
workforce inclusion of minorities and women because the Contract 
Standard is included in their subcontracts. Based on data describing 
recent Commission subcontractor activity, we believe that few 
subcontractors will have subcontracts for services with a dollar value 
of $100,000 or more under Commission service contracts.\9\ These 
subcontractors may already be subject to similar recordkeeping 
requirements as principal contractors. Consequently, we believe that 
any additional requirements imposed on subcontractors would not 
significantly add to the burden estimates discussed above.
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    \9\ A search of subcontract awards on the usaspending.gov 
website showed that three subcontractors in FY 2016 and six 
subcontractors in FY 2017 had subcontracts of $100,000 or more. See 
data on subcontract awards available at http://usaspending.gov.
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    Estimate of Reporting Burden: With respect to the reporting burden, 
we estimate that it would take all contractors on average approximately 
one hour to retrieve and submit to the OMWI Director the documentation 
specified in the proposed Contract Standard. We expect to request 
documentation from up to 50 contractors each year and therefore we 
estimate the total annual reporting burden to be 50 hours.
    On July 8, 2021, the Commission published a notice in the Federal 
Register (86 FR 36167) of its intention to request an extension of this 
currently approved collection of information, and allowed the public 60 
days to submit comments. The Commission received no comments.
    Written comments continue to be invited on: (a) Whether this 
collection of information is necessary for the proper performance of 
the functions of the agency, including whether the information will 
have practical utility; (b) the accuracy of the agency's estimate of 
the burden imposed by the collection of information; (c) ways to 
enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information collected; 
and (d) ways to minimize the burden of the collection of information on 
respondents, including through the use of automated collection 
techniques or other forms of information technology.
    The public may view the background documentation for this 
information collection at the following website, www.reginfo.gov. This 
information collection can be found by selecting ``Currently under 30-
day Review--Open for Public Comments'' or by using the search function. 
Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information 
collection should be sent to: (i) www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain and 
(ii) David Bottom, Director/Chief

[[Page 51951]]

Information Officer, Securities and Exchange Commission, c/o Cynthia 
Roscoe, 100 F Street NE, Washington, DC 20549 or by sending an email 
to: [email protected]. Comments must be submitted to OMB within 30 
days of this notice.

    Dated: September 14, 2021.
J. Matthew DeLesDernier,
Assistant Secretary.
[FR Doc. 2021-20117 Filed 9-16-21; 8:45 am]
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