Human Capital: Building Diversity in GAO's Senior Executive Service

As our transformational diversity efforts have been implemented, the diversity of GAO's workforce and leadership team -- SES/SL and Band III level staff -- has improved. In 2000, minorities represented about 14 percent of the SES/SL corps. As of fiscal year 2007, about 18 percent of the SES members were minorities. Similarly, the representation of minorities at the Band III level -- the SES feeder pool -- increased from nearly 12 percent in 2000 to nearly 19 percent in 2007, and the representation of women in the SES as well as at the Band III and Band II levels increased. While we have made progress, we still have work to do. We are committed to improving the representation of all minority groups in the leadership team and in particular, representation of Hispanic and Asian American staff should be improved. The percentages of GAO's Hispanic staff members at the SES level and Asian American staff at the Band III level were lower than governmentwide percentages. However, for both of these groups, the percentages in the feeder pools -- staff at the Band III and Band IIB levels -- either equaled or exceeded the governmentwide percentages.