it first started at looking at a graduation rate and the african-americans were not graduating from high school. it made us look at everything else that's happening and the equitiable chances to everyone. there has to be recommendations, not just about our employment and our workers, but really recommendations about what it takes to have a viable life here in san francisco. when you're only less than 5% of the population in the city in which you live, that has an impact on who -- how you feel about who you are and your purpose in life and really how welcoming we are here in san francisco. and it is no surprise that this would bleed over to a workplace

here in san francisco. so i am looking forward to hearing stories today. thank you for coming. i also want to also thank president cohen for having this hearing today and to thank our mayor for the directive that she has executed. but, again, i think it needs to go farther. it needs to go deeper. it needs to be broader for us to fully understand the impact and what is really happening here in san francisco about our retention of even keeping a diverse san francisco. [ applause ] >> thank you, supervisor. >> come on, now. we went through the rules.

>> i have not had a chance to watch the gao hearing, but i've heard how impactful it is and plan go back and watch it. but i'm just wondering, since you have mentioned several times about how you were quite impacted by the hearing, if there's any concrete lessons or policy changes that you have thought of that came out of that hearing that you can share with us today. i'm very much looking forward to public comment and hearing those stories today. >> thank you, supervisor. i think what was the most compelling, when people are talk about how they're treated badly at work, whether it's a coworker or supervisor, and feel like they don't have anywhere to go with it, that nothing has happened, what i don't know is who did they tell? did that person not respond? only about 14 of the people who

spoke, of the 64, had filed an eoo complaint. if they don't feel like their human resources can take it or be fair and follow-up, then we need to look at other options. i know mr. riffkin can speak about it, but they have a numbers person who has been deployed there, an experienced hr professional that's not part of the hr team, who's able to address the team and she's been listening to complaints and coming up with recommendations and dealing with that. probably the biggest impact from my perspective and my team that are here, we need to really pursue for aggressively the conduct complaints and make sure people know where to go with them. >> yeah. and so this person is where? in what department? >> so there is an ombudsman

person, a retired official from the city, who's kept active over the years, and the mayor asked her to go in and assist mta. she's been at mta for long time. she's been doing a lot of listening to employees. did they make a complaint? did they get heard? making sure systems are in place so people have a place to go. to me, it's an combination of ensuring the systems are in place, people have a place to go, and the accountability for when they do complain. sometimes it's just suspicion, but a lot of times it's probably not. and certainly the cases we heard about here, it was pretty awful. so we want to make sure that we know about those and that somebody is doing something about them. >> and why do you think that people aren't filing complaints with the eoc or with human

resources? >> well, we actually get a lot of complaints, and we take them seriously and always follow up, but i think sometimes people may decide not to file one, or they may feel like they don't want to make trouble or it wasn't a big enough issue. a fair number of our complaints we get, which come in through the eeo process -- we can't accomplish it as an eo connection. let's say, for example, we have a supervisor that said you berated me because i'm a female. then we find out that the supervisor berated everyone. so we need to deal with the supervisor. maybe people feel like they don't have a place to go. that's going to be the challenge, figure out how we can do that. i think that's going to be part

of the issue. what is the best way to approach the issue? how is the best way to make sure people feel heard. san francisco cannot afford to lose employees, whether it's because of medical issues or anything else. we invest in training. we value diversity. we don't want people to feel like they can't work here or it's not a good place for them. so it's our responsibility to find out what is going on. with a good data collection, we'll get a better window into it, but also having a process that we can develop with some of the labor and community groups. i think that will help address that issue. >> i'm glad to hear there's an ombudsman person at the mta, but this whole conversation reminds me of why my former -- my predecessor, david campos, tried to pass a measure. the idea was that there was a

separate agency when people didn't feel safe, that was a position to go to the make these sensitive complaint where is people don't feel safe making them in-house. i'm assuming that's what's going on here. you know, in line with supervisor fewer's idea for an office of racial equity, if there was independence from the rest of the city family, i think that's something we should look at. new york has an office of the public advocate, and really having a place where someone can make a complaint that isn't under the same supervision chain as their supervisors themselves. we all know these systemic

issues exist. we have to address them. but we have to do it in a way that there's enough independence that people feel comfortable, and they're not going to suffer further retaliation from bringing these complaints forward. i know you're working on this, supervisor fewer, but maybe considering a component, whether it's an independent complaint mechanism, that would be interesting. >> thank you. >> any other colleagues that would like to get on the record and have a chance to speak to the director? supervisor salve -- safia. >> i think when we have loud voices talking about their experiences on a daily, annual, monthly basis, i think it behooves us to take a deeper dive. i appreciate all the comments from my colleagues.

i think it's important to consider the historical circumstances upon which people enter into the workplace, the experiences that they've had in their own communities, and not just what is reflected today, right? i saw the charts about the percentage of the workforce of african-americans as reflected, but also how that percentage is either grown or shrunk over time. i know at one point when the population was a lot larger, it would be interesting to see what was reflected in the workforce then and how it's either grown or shrunk over time. i think that's some of the frustration that's reflected today, not just the workforce overall but what positions they're in, positions of authority and positions to make determinations on hiring as well. i think that's certainly important. and i think once you're in position of making determinations on hiring, i think those are more positions of power and those positions reflect -- not to say that there ends up being bias in an opposite direction, but it also

influences how the direction and the thinking and the department and the sensitivity is. so i think those are all really important things to consider as you move forward. >> thank you. >> i think i can just speak for a minute about the deidentification. why we hope that it's going to make a difference is we've identified situations where there's a group of people who are reachable. they pass the test, and they could be hired. and we look at -- it's a diverse pool. we look at who gets invited to interview, and it's not diverse. that's what we want to go after. that's why deidentification is one of the tools we're using. the other part is to ensure hiring panels and having more training and particularly implicit biassed training. people may not realize they're being discriminated against. it's a combination of policy tools and training. any one of those is not enough.

>> the only thing i would add is what the reflection of the workforce is by department? i think some departments may be doing better than other departments. i don't know if you had that presented in your information. >> actually, it's all up on the website now. >> in today's presentation? >> i don't have it in the presentation. i'm happy to send it. i think some of it depends on the kind of work that's done by the department. transit operators, they have a high african-american, high latino, high asian, low white. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. one thing that struck me when we were discussing about the collection of the data, just to be consistent with the example that i used earlier with the san francisco police department is just that we require the police department to come and report to

us on a quarterly basis. perhaps this is something we need to implement as it relates to dhr and these types of practices, coming back to this body. i know the first report is going to be on july 1st. i'm personally not going to be here, but perhaps one of the members that are going to be here would be able to host the committee of the whole so we can monitor the progress and be supportive and be helpful to you as we move forward. the other thing that i was thinking about, and i said this in the budget committee in june. it was like midnight, and maybe no one caught it, but we need to possibly begin to tie some of the budget priorities and goals to departments. so, for example, nonprofit organizations, when they want to increase public dollars, they have to quantify it. they have to show how many people they've helped, who they've helped, all this data is reported back to the department and then the department makes a determination through their

process as to how much they're going to continue to fund. departments come here. they ask for money. some of which has to do with rfps to fill these recs and positions. we don't know who they're recruiting to. it's left to the department head. i would be curious what departments are doing well and which ones are not. i understand we don't have all of that data at our hands, but i hope we begin to move in that direction so there's some kind of direction and accountability that as we're trying to move people out of poverty, move people out of homelessness, and move people into a better position that our departments, if they're not meeting their marks, that perhaps we shouldn't be funding them at the level we're asking. that's just me thinking as the chair of the budget committee, and that's a little bit out of scope of the budget and economic issues we're having today.

i know for a fact that bias manifests in different areas. it's not just in the police department and the hiring and recruitment. again, on budgets, what nonprofits are getting funded and which are not. so that's a lot that we've dedicated to the director of dhr. thank you. i see no other names on the roster. so we're going to continue with the presentation. i think we've got mta up next. all right, director, welcome back. >> you. t the -- thank you. >> okay. the floor is yours. >> thank you, president cohen and members of the board sitting as the committee. director of transportation. just two quick slides to walk through to give you an overview of kind of what we're doing as it relates to the topic of the hearing. i thank you for the opportunity to have this opportunity to present and for the discussion, which i think is an important

one for the city. so, first, with regard to the strategic plan, we have a strong ethic of strategic planning to give us framework for policy, budget, operational decisions that we're making as an agency. we had a strategic plan that we put in place in 2012. it was a six-year plan. so in the last few years, we were -- we went through a process of updating our strategic plan. and recognizing some of the issues that are the subject of this hearing as being important and perhaps not as explicitly present in our strategic plan. we did a couple of things. one is that we had a much more deliberate process of establishing values from the agency. one is a definition that

includes promoting a diverse and fair workplace. i realize that should go without saying, but we thought it important to make it explicit values of the agency. this was approved by the board of directors. there are four goals within the plan. one of the goals is create a workplace that delivers outstanding service. what we did in this round -- or in this update of the plan, was add an explicit objective around creating a more diverse and inclusive work force. again, it's something that i think we were doing somewhat ad hoc or always felt was important, but i felt that it was important to elevate it into an explicit objective of the strategic plan so it provided very clear direction to all of our hiring managers, to all of our employees, that this is an important and explicit objective of the department. so there are a number of new

things that we'll be starting to do as a part of this and to the earlier conversation about data, trying to make sure that we have good data upon which to build the changes that we need to make to realize this objective. there was already a lot of talk in your last conversation about targeting recruitment. i think we have in the past been a little bit more passive. we post the job and who applies applies. so in the last year, even before this strategic plan got adopted, we started focusing and targeting recruitment such that at acbu and at the trade associations. there's one called the council on minority transportation officials. we've been engaging with them, national association of black

engineers, those kinds of groups so we can make sure more people are aware of the opportunities we had. director callahan mentioned we have jobs in the agency that are overrepresented by african-americans and people of color, but by looking at the data of the agency there's areas where that's not so much the case. using that data to target recruitment and making sure we have diversity within the various levels of the agency that are reflective of the people we serve is something that we're focusing on. as i said, the strategic planning is an important part of the agency. it's something we report on regularly to the board that, we make the data available publicly. it's not just a document that sits on a shelf. it is an integral part of what we do at the agency.

other thing we've done, we've stepped up. there was mention of training. we've done training for maybe 70 or 80 folks. a great source from human resources came in and did bias training for all the leadership. now we're expanding it to others in the organization, particularly including those in public contact positions, like parking patrol officers, station agents, customer service folks. starting to expand that out. there's other types of training we're doing and under the executive directive, we'll be expanding within the agency. we have an internal function within the agency as a federal grantee. we have certain requirements under federal regulations for any eeo program that we have to have, including having an eeo

officer and doing some of the kind of data collection that's called for in the executive directive, but that function also sets kind of eeo policy and does things such as ensure diversity of panels. reviews the candidate pools, the final selection of candidates. to make sure we're following equal opportunity. there's underlying cultural issues that can create problems that then go into a complaint process. so a number of years ago, we established what we called outstanding workplace committee.

that is representative in terms of demographically and classificati classification-wise, people who have been advising me and the agency on what we need to do to improve the culture of the agency to root out some of the issues that you maybe heard about in the previous hearing. in the last few months, i've started myself meeting with employees, sometimes in small groups, sometimes in large groups, to understand what some of the experiences that are having are, what they think are kind of the underlying characteristics of the agency that create those experiences, and then as well some of their frustrations with the process, like, what do you do to your question before of, you know, why don't people report things or why are people frustrated? so to try to understand that so that we can fix those things.

we've sent a number of folks through the training, the hrc has been a great partner and really supporter, kind of consultant to us in terms of bringing racial equity lens to policy decisions that we're making. there's a whole framework that they've introduced to our agency, and we're getting more folks, putting for folks through the successive cohorts. not just how we deal with things internally, but how we deal with the public. there's racial considerations as we go into a neighborhood to talk about a bike lane or bike share situation. as director callahan mentioned we're working with the office of workforce development and other stakeholder groups as well as some of the professional associations with regard to

recruiting to make sure that we are doing our best to take advantage of the great asset that president cohen mentioned, people who know the city, care about the city, who could be great candidates for city employment. and then, finally, director callahan mentioned mayor breed assigned or deployed the seasoned hr professional to the agency to kind of give us an outside look. we're having a lot of various issues in the agency. i actually was going to try to get a consultant to come in, much better and faster was mayor breed's deployment of somebody who already understands how the city works, who knows the city, who has respective folks in the city but is outside the city to come in and get a sense of what's going on inside the agency and particularly deal with complaints. >> is that under way? >> it is under way.

she started a month or so. >> who is this personal? >> delores blanning. she was with the city for a few decades. spent time at the airport and a number of different agencies. she's come back as a retiree employment -- employee to help fix things. she's in charge of process improvement, but she's serving an ombudsman process role. employees are going to her to say, here is what my issue is, and here is how the system is not working for me. she's looking at our process, at the eeo investigation complaint process, and really coming up with a number of recommendations, which i think will be very helpful. her options have been very helpful, anticipating what will be coming out with that, what i recognize is that our own -- we have not given our own managers

and supervisors the training that they need to be effective in dealing with some of these issues before they become bigger issues or to not be the issues themselves. so i've started working with director callahan and her staff, as well as the city attorney's office to develop a series of trainings for hr professionals within the mta but then for all managers and supervisors. anybody who supervises anybody else in terms of kind of a catch-up course as well as a bit of process change so that we have kind of a better business process, and then we're training our folks in the process so we don't have issues that aren't getting addressed, which is what i've been hearing a lot from my employees has been the case. we're starting that and hoping to get something up and running by the beginning of the year. we'll fold in whatever recommendations come in from the

alm busman person. so this lot we have moving in that area, we recognize there's a lot of need for and opportunity. we appreciate the opportunity for this conversation that this hearing provides. i will be happy to answer any questions. >> thank you. does that conclude your presentation? >> it does. >> i appreciate it. colleagues, i don't see any names on the roster. i don't think we have any questions for you. thank you for your presentation. i do have one question. you can answer from the staff box. why -- how come there's no uniform hiring process? why is it every department has its own process? why is it just uniform? -- why isn't it uniform? >> they're governed by policy, but within the authority granted them under their charter there's latitude for how to do it. we do, for example, if a job is

posted and it looks like it's targeted for one person, we'll take it down and consult with the department, but the structure is basically decentrali decentralized processes for the larger departments. they have the ability to make decisions about using the practices we've trained them in about what kind of exam they want to use, for example, or what recruitment would be the best. we were just talking about when we get our recruitment resource, we're going to create a diversity tool kit, building on some of the work that some of the more advanced departments have done in this area to provide to all departments and say, these are places to go to ensure diverse recruitment, but in terms of the process itself, it's going to depend on the kind of job, whether you expect 1,000 applicants or you're hoping to get five. the process will depend on that. >> thank you.

next we're going to hear a presentation from the department of public health. then we will hear from human service agency. and then we will hear from representatives from sciu 1021. >> good afternoon, madam president and members of the board. greg wagner, acting director of the department of had been health. so we have in our priorities for the department and our strategic goals, one of our goals being public health is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace where all employees are treated with fairness, dignity, and respect. and i will tell you about some of the things that we are working on, but i also want to be clear that we have a long way to go. there's a lot of work to do over time to get us to where we need to be. we have a list of items up on

that screen here. we've added two new fge recruiters, and part of the role of those recruiters, as was discussed in the hearing, was to discuss outreach when we have positions, to increase the pipeline of black and african-american applicants into the department. so those recruiters are reaching out to particular areas. examples: the black nurses association. the association of black social workers, and really making a concerted effort to try to encourage applicants that will improve the diversity of the department. we have, as also has been discussed in this hearing, a hire progress where -- process where hiring managers need to go through training and review

roles on nepotism and hiring. we're continuing that and expanding that under the mayor's executive directive. that's a tool that will help keep issues of bias front and center in people's mind when they're going into the hiring process. we don't move forward with the panel until each panelist has certified that they've gone through that training. we have been working for some time on our racial humility training. this is a program we've had 500 dph staff go through. this encourages and gives people tools to talk about issues of race in the workplace. this is aimed less at the mechanics of the process and maintaining a culture in the department where we're identifying issues of race and talking about them and keeping them up front and center in the decisions that are being made at the department. we're continuing that program

going forward and expanding the number of people trained. we have our trauma informed systems program. the trauma is an important way for us to view some of the issues that our patients and staff are dealing with in the department of public health workplace. we've trained 8,600 staff at the department of public health. other city departments in our community-based organizations. that program is expanding. we have the black american health initiative. we've been working on this. this is to help reduce disparities in health outcomes. as part of the initiative, we have a series of workplace components that are meetings, lunches, speaker series to highlight issues of race in the department. >> so what is the department --

how do you handle -- i've heard a lot of complaints specifically from the department of health. you know, you've presented a little bit of the softer side of the social elements. yes, you've had a fantastic black history celebration. i've been there. beyond that, where are we with dismissals? you know, there's recent cases that come from your department that has triggered this entire conversation. maybe you can speak with a little specificity on exactly what is happening in the department of public health. >> yes. thank you for that question, president cohen. so we have a number of processes that are happening as part of the mayor's executive directive, we'll be gathering the data and using the data to change our practices -- >> so prior to the directive, did you collect data? >> not on dismissals and probationary period ending. >> thank you. >> so we've collected over forms of data and used that data to

improve our practices. we have career coaching and retention program that we're working on to help assist individuals prior to getting to that point, and we'll continue that effort, and we also have new hr team that's in place, a number including our labor relations directors, managers, operations, merit, our eeo programs, all of those individuals, as part of their charge with the department, have the goal of prioritizing the -- changing the culture of the department of human resources to focus on that mission of focusing on racial equity and improving the diversity of the staff and the department of public health to match the communities. >> another strategy that has been documented is that if you want to start to change the culture of a department, you start to change a the decision makers look like. ha is the strategy of the --

what is the strategy of the department of health in order to bring diversity into the higher echelons of dph, the higher staffing level? >> that's absolutely a good point. all the initiatives that we're working on are not just at the entry level, and that discussion came up earlier in the conversation. the work is throughout every level of department from line staff to executive leadership. so in all of our hiring decisions, we have the process of anybody who sits on those panels has to go through that training. they have to review the implicit bias videos. we have the practice of hr approves the hiring panels to ensure we have the diversity on the hiring panels, and that is through every level in the organization. >> are the hiring panels consistent. are they uniform? >> well, there will be different

people on different panels, but they will be consistently reviewed to ensure there's diversity on the panels. so for each different position, you will have a different mixture of people on those panels, but we're actively working to increase the dive diversity on our panels. >> we met about this. with the diversity, you have someone within the department, within the line staff, you have someone who knows the role of the immediate supervisor. what does the components of your salve -- staff -- interview panel. >> you would have to have the subject matter experts from the area. in other cases, we'll add staff from our hr department or other divisions. for example, we may pull in somebody from a sister department that has a similar function and bring somebody in from that department to be kind

of an outside -- provide an outside view on our hiring process. so it varies over time depending on what we're doing, particularly the areas where we're hiring a large number of employees. for example, right now we have an active effort to hire registered nursing staff. that's one of our areas that is targeted for improvement. >> i hear anecdotally that there's always preferential treatment shown in the hiring of the nursing staff within dph. and when i look at the numbers, it seems pretty lopsided. seems like there's one ethnicity that is pretty dominant. how do you account for that? >> well, i would say that that is not acceptable for that to be the case. >> yeah, but it's the case. >> okay. we know it's not exemptible. so how do we move forward? >> so what we do need to do, a

couple of things, there's deidentification of the c candidates that are coming in through the hiring process. there's the composition of the hiring panels. so we have a panel that's actually participating in the hiring. i think there's -- really importantly creating this larger departmental culture where we're talking about issues of diversity and race and putting that at the forefront of our decision making, making sure that's present even prior to the point where we get into the process of sitting on those panels, going through resumes, and just making it clear to everybody in the department that this is one of our strategic priorities, and we expect that it will be at the forefront. >> how long has this been a strategic priority? >> it's been a strategic priority for a couple of years. we started the black initiative -- >> but that's not for employees.

that's for people again fitting for the services of dph. i'm only looking -- an introspective moment, if you will -- at dph and hiring. if you're failing, there seems to be a disconnect. what i want to hear from you is what are you going to be doing that's different. >> thank you for that question. >> so we're getting a different result. >> thank you for that question. so the latest strategic planning effort where we have historically done strategic plans at the division levels, hospitals, primary care, the divisions within the system, our latest strategic planning process, we did a departmentwide strategic planning process and identified equity as one of our departmentwide priorities, and that will be pushed down through each of the individual level plans. that's a new component to it where we're taking it and

elevating it to the department level and pushing it down through the divisions. so i certainly acknowledge that at least a lot of work for us to do. we're not where we need to be, but it is a priority for the department and it will continue to be a priority for us. >> we need to work on this department. we need to work on the department of public health. >> when we get our diversity recruiter and develop a tool kit, we'll share it with all departments, and we'll absolutely reach out to public health. i do think we should think about growing our own workforce and promoting people from within and getting training so they can stay with the city. it will be a more stable workforce for us. they won't leave for other job, and we can benefit from people who have long services at the city. there used to be programs back, i think when there was more of a

nursing shortage where people -- we had programs to support people going from, let's say, nurse's assistant to lvn or from lvn to rn. i would like to talk to the department to see if there are resources to support that. >> mr. greg wagner, i want to acknowledge that i know this is not a reflection of you and your priorities. you've been on the finance side of the house and have recently stepped in due to the departure of former director barbara garcia. so these are questions that are poignant and not to be taken as personal. i think the purpose of this entire hearing is to ask very difficult and straightforward questions. and the fact that this has been the department's priority, but they've been missing the mark, we can't sweep it under the rug. we have to address it. i just want to acknowledge that i know it's not you, but it is a larger systemic problem, and we're going to be working with the department of human resources to help correct all of this. >> thank you, madam president.

i don't take nit -- take it in a personal perspective. i understand. >> we're going to talk to the director of human service agency. >> good afternoon, supervisors. trent brewer, director of the human services agency. we have just a couple of slides that will be up. since i didn't have an opportunity to present at the committee, i thought i would just start with the slide that shows the breakdown of the human services agency staff by ethnicity. i should say sort of at a minimum, one of the things that's important to me and that we track is that our employees, the ethnic breakdown of our employees mirrors and reflects that of the clients we serve. and what you see in this chart is sort of realigned. the green is a citywide

percentage, and then the blue would be a percentage of hsa employees who fall within each category. and then the orange represents our percent of clients or customers. we serve about 250,000 san franciscoens a year. it's a pretty representative sample of those who are in the city. so you can see on api -- and across the spectrum -- we're pretty close to on the mark. i want to clarify, in case i mumbled at the beginning, this is the standard representation of our agency. we're meeting it on this level. pointing particularly to the african-american population of employees, about 15% of hsa employe employees. moving to the right, hispanic,

latino, 20% of our employees and almost 20% of clientele. and 19% of hsa employees are white and 20% of our clientele. so that just gives you a little framework to give you a picture of our 2,400 or so employees, what the breakdown is. so the next slide is really just a representation on what we have embarked upon. really, this is over the past two to three years. what we're calling it internally and externally is the dvi. it embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion, dei. it produces more creative and

innovative processes for the agency. one area of training is around employee conduct and employee performance with the equity inclusion lens. and that's all staff have mandatory nine hours of training that includes appreciating diversity. we have connecting multigenerational issues, age differences, and then we have a three-hour training on lgbtq, promoting respect among hsa as well. the supervisor training sort of falls in two buckets. one is skill to do their job, supervising line workers generally, but the other is in an area around advancement in the agency and promotion, sort of ensuring that supervisors have the opportunity to improve

their skills an abilities as a supervisor but also with an eye of moving up within the organization. so all supervisors go through harassment and bullying prevention training as well as ethics training. and then the additional training i'm talking about, one is to be better supervisors, right, so that entails coaching your employees rather than disciplining them. coaching them and training them on how to write improvement plans. training on emotional intelligence, coaching for execution. then on the promotion track, we offer a management academy that allows sort of supervisors and other mid level employees of the agency to get training skills of management and moving up -- with an eye towards moving up. >> in your training module, do you include implicit bias is this. >> we do. >> thank you. >> thank you for the question.

okay. and then customized training upon request is important. if at least a third-party training -- you see davis has an extensive curriculum, if staff sees those, we very often send individuals or cohorts of staff to that. and the next thing is around competency model and a successful roadmap. what that means, what it attempts to do is make transparent the skills and knowledge required for successful performance in a job. it's a framework that's accessible to all staff. competencies try to be clear and measurable and observable so it's not just this sort of -- when i'm applying for a job, it's nebulous. i don't know what areas to focus on. it's this is what we're looking at for an entry level social

worker? the purpose is to be fair, consistent, build trust, increase accountability and maybe, most importantly, combat inequity that can rear itself in the hiring process. what are success roadmaps? this is trying to -- it lays out, for employees passed for promotional opportunities -- a huge agency, 2,400 employees, it's not clear when you enter as an entry level eligibility caseworker what opportunities there may be to promote. the analyst path, supervisor, mid manager. we try to lay out what things look like and what the skills are that people need to have to build on and promote up. in terms of success roadmaps -- i mentioned this just now -- ready accessible roadmaps for obtaining education and help

fost foster inclusion of an agency. i'm a big believer in promoting from within. i think you look at private sectors that thrive, and it's about culture at the beginning and having that -- as long as it's the right culture and pervasive and it's the right culture, having that bleed through the organization from the bottom up. i think that contributes to a healthy organization. the next is sort of what do we do to ensure fairness in hiring? we do more than that. we determine that the criteria for screening before any of the applications are reviewed. i talked about the competencies.

what are we looking at? the efficiencies in excel or supervising other staff. whatever. it's a filter that ensures when every application is screened, the screener is looking at the same things. >> uniform. >> it's uniform. we review and evaluate the filter criteria to make sure they're job-related and merit-based and not discriminatory. these are things people need to have to succeed in the job. the interview process itself, make sure it's consistent and based on competencies. we review and develop all of those competencies with the review panel saying, this is what you're looking for and even prior to the interview panel, talking about how implicit bias can get in the way of you evaluating someone's competencies, and so we ensure that. we also ensure that our panels are diverse in composition while maintaining the integrity of the

subject knowledge. we want our panels to look like what our staff looks like and what our customers and clients look like. i mentioned that the training around implicit bias and common rating errors, when hiring managers or when interview panels make and then post reviewing the processes, making sure they're in compliance with fairness and equity in our hiring principles, and that's reviewing the notes and the ratings and are they consistent. the next is data collection. i think this is the one where we're most behind, largely due to the systems. you've asked these questions. do we look at differences in folks in terms of performance plans, folks who are dismissed, probation. we're moving and thanks to the executive directive from mayor

breed and changes in people soft, we're going to be able to do this. critically important, right? is there a particular group getting disciplined? does it fall under a supervisor or manager? all that stuff to look at so we're not flying blind and sort of guessing on some areas that are vitally important to a health -- healthy organization. the last, it was mentioned about the gar project. we chose to focus on gar internally. we want to address internal operations in the agency related to hiring, professional advancement, leadership development, and culture. we've convened a work group. it's 15 staff from the agency. so it's through volunteers. making sure one public face from

each staff is there so folks interact with the public. and then focus groups with over 80 staff. trying to do the quantitative analysis of some of our bigger classifications. we have hundreds of 2905 classification eligibility workers, for example. 2940 master's in social work, folks that work in our child protective services and adult protective services, kind of the bigger groups and are there trends there we're seeing. that's all to inform what we're going to do. that's going to -- and we don't know yet, right? we're going to use data and staff to inform what our racial equity plan looks like. that will hopefully be finished in january of 2019. so very soon. and we're entering the second part of the gar project. one of the things we're thinking about doing, and i think supervisor ronen or maybe fewer

recommended sort of a city department of equity. i i think it's important for large departments to have an office of equity or office of racial equity there's three different departments in a single agency, but having a single office with staff and a manager who can look at this process and say, hey, why do we appear to be racially underrepresented at the managerial levels? is it every step? it may not just be hiring at the interview. are we recruiting? where are we recruiting? where are people not doing well? exams? experience? background? is it the interview process? who is on the panel? it's breaking down the very large process at which has several points at which each can

contribute to a lack of diversity at the upper levels of an organization. so that's the closure of my report. >> you must be doing something right. i don't hear very many complaints from not only clients but city employees. >> i appreciate that, president cohen, but i assure you we have a long way to go. >> okay. there's nothing wrong with bettering our best. [ laughter ] >> director, i have a question for you. >> yes, president. >> are all departments gare participants? >> participants in the executive directi directive? >> no. it's an optional thing. most of our department is -- i know planning is and you've heard from several hours. it's sponsored by the human rights commission. >> which departments are not? >> i don't have that list. i can get it from them.

>> i think i saw sheryl davis in the audience? is she still here? she may not be. i'll get that information. i'm curious to know which departments are not participating. >> i think they tend to be departments that are a little larger because it requires you typically sending two people and they're out of the office for weeks at a time -- or for a significant amount of training over a two-year period, so i think a very tiny department is likely to participate just because of resources. >> you have an example of a very tiny department? >> probably four employees or five, and they're unlikely to have the resources to send somebody for that amount of time. it's very -- a very significant training program. it requires a lot of investment. >> does dcyf participate? >> i do not know the answer to that. i will find out. >> okay. i appreciate it. okay, folks. we're going to continue to move forward.

let's hear the other element and voices of today's hearing. i want to recognize and call up the reverend dr. amos brown. he's a former member of this body, and he is on a team of speakers. we'll hear from reverend brown first and then joseph bryant, teresa jones, canton, and burrows. reverend brown, welcome. oh, my goodness. also, just to acknowledge the hearing speakers, mr. david canon has requested a 20-minute time for presentation. welcome, reverend brown. >> madam chair, thank you very much. to all the members of the board of supervisors, i, first of all,

very grateful that you have given the leadership along with the mayor to deal with this very serious matter. you know, back in the early 30s, 40s, 50s, there was a commentator named gabriel heater. he will come on during those war years particularly, saying, good evening. there's good news tonight. [ laughter ] >> well, i was on my phone because i just got some good news. would you believe that mr. charles johnson, one of the major owners of the giants, sent me a letter indicating that he

made a misstep. the ball was fumbled. but we're going to retrieve that ball and make a touchdown for justice in this town. with the giants. >> audience: yes. >> reverend brown: i hope i can say that's good news with the city in this regard, regarding how black employees have been treated, so grossly unfair, but this is not the first time, friends. if you study history, in the 1858, this town was such an unjust, bigoted town until over 800 blacks got on the commodore ship that was owned by brother

negley. he said, if they won't let you have housing in san francisco, if they won't let you serve on juries, if they won't let you have a job, get aboard my ship. all of you can go up to canada, and there you will find freedom and dignity and opportunity. and, friends, i hope that this night we can have the commitment to make some good news for san francisco in these times that we live. for it's long overdue. we don't need any more analysis. we don't need any of these false narratives comparing the populations. we had 17%. that's what we ought to be going by. there was a time when we had up to 100,000 african-americans in this city. now we don't have enough left to even feel -- fill the old 49ers

stadium, candlestick park. we can turn this around. let us be like charles johnson. retrieve this ball and make a touchdown. we made a touchdown for people who wanted to come to this country and breathe free when we made san francisco a sanctuary city. [ applause ] >> reverend brown: we made a touchdown when the governor and my friends, gavin newsome. if we can make touchdown on wga marriage and a touchdown on --