§19195 Interagency working group

Summary

The Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy must set up an interagency working group through the National Science and Technology Council to coordinate federal research agencies on reducing sex-based and sexual harassment involving people who get research awards. The group must work with the STEM inclusion working group, the Safe Inclusive Research Environments Subcommittee, each federal research agency, the civil rights offices at HHS and Education, and the EEOC. Not later than 90 days after August 9, 2022, the group must send an inventory of agency policies, procedures, and resources for preventing and responding to such harassment to the House Committees on Science, Space, and Technology; Education and Labor; and Energy and Commerce, and to the Senate Committees on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Within 6 months after that inventory, and after talking with outside stakeholders, the group must create consistent policy guidelines and send a report with those guidelines to the same committees. The group must encourage and track agency efforts to use the guidelines, the OSTP Director must report to Congress on implementation 1 year after the inventory and every 5 years after that, and the guidelines must be updated as needed. The guidelines must require recipients to report to their funding agencies about decisions to open formal investigations, administrative actions that affect award activities, counts of investigations with no findings, and findings or final outcomes, and must allow sharing, updating, and archiving those reports yearly and on request. The guidelines must be consistent with FERPA, protect individuals’ privacy, and not force recipients to send interim reports. The Director should also consider requiring or encouraging climate checks (surveys, focus groups, exit interviews), public posting of non‑identifying, disaggregated results and annual counts of harassment reports, regular review of policies, a public code of conduct for applicants, support and reintegration help for people harmed by harassment, and efforts to build an inclusive, harassment‑intolerant culture. Each federal research agency must adopt or keep and use policies that match the guidelines, protect privacy as much as practicable, and widely share those policies within 270 days of receiving the guidelines.