Last Friday, OFCCP issued its first three directives of the 2019 fiscal year. With its new Compliance Review Procedures Directive (2019-01), OFCCP rescinds the Obama administration’s Active Case Enforcement (ACE) Directive (2011-01). ACE brought with it a fundamental shift in OFCCP audits with more focus on deeper dive audits that tended to take longer and impose significant burden and cost on contractors. Among other things, the ACE Directive required OFCCP to increase the frequency of random, mandatory onsite audits. 

OFCCP’s new Compliance Review Procedures Directive seeks to improve the efficiency of audits and increase the number of audits.  To further efficiency, the Directive requires early proactive corrections to resolve non-material violations. The Directive also clarifies that during an audit OFCCP may limit onsite reviews to the nature and scope of the indicators or concerns identified in the initial desk audit phase. 

Consistent with other recent directives issued by OFCCP, this new Directive emphasizes transparency. The Directive requires OFCCP to publish its scheduling methodology, much like it did earlier in the year with CSAL letters. The Directive also exempts contractor establishments from audit for 24 months from the date of closure of a neutrally scheduled audit for that establishment, unless OFCCP and the contractor have agreed to a different exemption period.