A spokesperson for the State Department said it will be appointing a new chief diversity and inclusion officer to replace Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, and is in the process of reviewing candidates \u201cfor that important position.\u201d The Department of Defense has not said whether it\u2019s planning to replace Gilbert Cisneros\u2019 role as chief of the diversity and inclusion office. Cisneros is stepping down in September. A spokesperson declined to comment further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI do think that a lot, or some, of this is well-intentioned,\u201d said Mike Gonzalez,<\/a> a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation. \u201cIt\u2019s people who actually do care a lot about disparities. They care a lot about equality. They do think that racial crimes have been committed in our history, which they have. That\u2019s undeniable. But DEI also reinforces the message to people that are considered \u2018victim categories.\u2019 [It] confines them to that. Ultimately, DEI does not fix the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though DEIA feels like a modern idea, scholars point out that the position of chief diversity officer, at least informally, has roots in the integration movement of U.S. universities <\/a>in the 1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some also worked as compliance or affirmative action officers following the Civil Rights Act of 1964<\/a>, but the idea of chief diversity officer as a built-in function of corporate or government leadership has gotten more attention in recent years<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n President Donald Trump acknowledged in a 2020 executive order <\/a>that \u201ctraining employees to create an inclusive workplace is appropriate and beneficial,\u201d however he cautioned against that which is \u201cblame-focused.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSuch ideas may be fashionable in the academy, but they have no place in programs and activities supported by federal taxpayer dollars,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, in one of his earlier moves as president, Joe Biden, who also promised \u201cthe most diverse cabinet representative of all folks,\u201d directed agencies to consider installing a chief diversity officer as a way to bring leadership to related goals to hire, retain and promote fairly all groups of employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The federal workforce today identifies as roughly 60% white, compared with 75% of the country as a whole, and 55% male. About 30% are veterans and 17% have a disability, according to the latest governmentwide figures from the Office of Personnel Management. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n About a third are veterans, and 6% is a member of the LGBTQ community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the general workforce mirrors racial breakdowns of the U.S. population, critics say that pockets of the federal workforce have greater gaps, like the Senior Executive Service, tranches of Pentagon leadership, the national security workforce<\/a> (particularly for neurodiverse applicants), and the Foreign Service. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEven with decades of progress building a federal workforce that draws from the full diversity of the Nation, many underserved communities remain underrepresented in the federal workforce, especially in positions of leadership,\u201d an OPM spokesperson said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For one, the percentage of persons with disabilities in the intelligence community decreased in 2021 for the first time since 2016. <\/a>The National Security Council did not respond to several requests for comment about its diversity initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Critics of DEIA initiatives have also said they don\u2019t believe the government\u2019s proven there\u2019s a problem, and without that, it\u2019s difficult to buy into solutions, however well-meaning they may be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t think the case has been made,\u201d said Erec Smith, professor and co-founder of Free Black Thought<\/a>, a nonprofit dedicated to highlighting viewpoint diversity and individualism within the Black community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t think if African Americans have 30% of the population, they need to be 30% of every workforce,\u201d he said. \u201cI think when you start doing that, you won\u2019t necessarily throw out merit, but you tend to because you\u2019ve got to find those numbers. You\u2019re not taking into consideration that maybe people don\u2019t want to do that job. Maybe the people who want to do that job complement a certain socio-economic background or something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gonzalez also pointed to the way disparities are measured and evaluated. Instead of lumping people into monolithic groups based often on one race, disaggregate that data to account for other factors, like nation of origin or household income, that might affect outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[Then] you start getting some idea of a policy to help treat the disparities and not just say, which is what DEI philosophy says, [that] all disparities are prima facie evidence of systemic racism,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Getting to those answers requires a level of data granularity that the government is trying to reach. The Government Accountability Office <\/a>has called out the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and OPM for incomplete data on pay disparities and disability rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cData is the core of of any effective accountable DEI strategy or DEI process,\u201d said Lily Zheng, author of \u201cDEI Deconstructed: Your No-Nonsense Guide to Doing the Work and Doing it Right,\u201d a guide for employers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zheng said they\u2019ve seen some indication of government\u2019s willingness to do that in its strategic plans and executive orders, but absent from them is a mechanical understanding of that actually works, which could mean there lacks a quantitative oversight mechanism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone wants to be throwing money at DEI that doesn\u2019t go anywhere, that doesn\u2019t do anything,\u201d Zheng said. \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t be doing the work just for optics\u2019 sake. We see DEI initiatives decoupled or functionally separate from this data piece, when in fact everything should be rooted in effectiveness, impact and data.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A review by Federal Times found a range of implementation of CDOs, not all of which are easy to find on agencies\u2019 websites, a point Mark Hanis of Inclusive America highlighted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGovernment needs to be much more transparent about who these people are, what their authority is, and what are they actually doing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many agencies, like the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Department of Agriculture, and Department of Commerce, all have designated CDOs, and the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior <\/a>are in the process of hiring one. Agencies including the Department of Homeland Security and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said they have an official who functions as the CDO and is embedded in human capital offices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are full-time or acting CDOs in place at 21 of 24 main agencies, Janice Underwood, OPM\u2019s DEIA director, told Federal Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\tWhere did CDOs come from?<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
What the data does, and does not, show<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2023-08-24-at-11.43.43-AM.png.png\")
The state of CDOs<\/h1>\n\n\n\n