About The Project
Start-up
The Veterans Equal Opportunity Action Project is a lean start-up support and advocacy initiative launched in early 2023. It is a direct response to feedback from vocational rehabilitation counselors and disabled veterans struggling to resume their Federal careers as civil servants.
The project is piloting its approach to service-delivery and agency engagement. The project is also dynamically updating its tactics, techniques, procedures and operating model as the situation develops and lessons are learned.
Efforts to scale a resource and support network are rolling out to build capabilities; for catalyzing systemic improvement through multi-stakeholder initiatives and action; for better laws, regulations, agency practices; and, ultimately, better vocational, readiness, and employment outcomes for disabled veterans.
Aims
Implied in our mission is a desire to add the most value by aiming our efforts on exceptionally difficult and challenging circumstances, and being extremely practical and supportive to veterans. And this may translate into assistance productively engaging organizations and people anywhere along the hiring process chain.
Purpose
The project exists to protect rights and advance the interests of disabled veterans who wish to resume Federal careers as civil servants. Specifically, the project focuses on helping veterans with service-connected disability ratings of 30% or higher, veterans who receive or who have received Chapter 31 Veterans Readiness & Employment (VR&E) training and development services from the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and veterans who may also have another medical condition or disability which might make them eligible for a Schedule A non-competitive special appointment to the Federal civil service in the Executive Branch.
Mission
Severely disabled veterans of the armed services experience subtle and not so subtle forms of discrimination everywhere every day in Federal hiring processes despite the existence of well-meaning laws, policies, and agency programs.
One driver of this, for example, is outsourcing of Federal hiring selection and other processes. Some firms contracted to do this work in turn rely on temporary contract employees who operate in anonymity with deficient knowledge, skills, and fluency with applicable reinstatement and anti-discrimination laws and policies designed to help disabled veterans transition into the Federal civil service.*
The project's tactical mission is to assist and advocate for disabled veterans seeking to return to Federal service as civilians. As might be appropriate, advocacy may entail assisting with interactions with applicant screening specialists and managers, special placement coordinators, interviewing with selecting and approving officials as part of job search, applications, and other informal and formal administrative and other processes. The object is to boost positive veteran vocational readiness and employment outcomes and improve awareness of applicable laws, regulations, and policy. The project also aims to, among other things, help agencies meet their commitments and obligations related to EEOC's Management Directive 715 Part J (Special Program Plan for the Recruitment, Hiring, Advancement, and Retention of Persons with Disabilities), the Veterans Employment Opportunities Act of 1998, and 5 CFR Part 307 (Veterans Recruitment Appointments).
The project's strategic mission is help navigate and to continuously improve the legal, regulatory, and agency operating environment so to move the needle on increasing the proportion of severely disabled veterans in seats at every table at all levels of the Federal civil service.
---
*Source: Sworn statements of a contract employee working for the Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This person was responsible applicant screening and qualification and denied at least one qualified veteran's right to apply and be considered for civil service position. The statements were made under penalty of perjury in March 2023 and were obtained in the course of ongoing investigation and advocacy work. The VEOAP has been accumulating case example information like this as part of a public interest research project .
Our Services
We offer a variety of advocacy and empowerment services to help qualifying disabled veterans as federal job-seekers, employees, and former employees. Services range from providing education and training to referral and other representational services on a case-by-case basis.