STATE OF LOUISIANA

DEPARTMENT OF STATE CIVIL SERVICE

BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA

 

 

 

General Circular No. 001535

 

To:                   Heads of State Agencies and Human Resource Directors

 

Subject:            Changes to Race/Ethnicity Categories

 

Issue Date:       July 7, 2003

 

 

The federal government has issued new standards for recording the race and ethnicity of employees and job applicants.  Previously, individuals have been asked to simply identify themselves as belonging to one of several single “Race” categories.  Now, individuals will be asked to indicate BOTH their “Ethnicity” as either “Hispanic or Latino” or “Non-Hispanic or Latino” AND to indicate their “Race” as one or more of the following categories: “White” and/or “Black or African American” and/or “Asian” and/or “American Indian or Alaskan Native” and/or “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander”.  Thus, all individuals are asked to indicate their “Ethnicity” as either Hispanic/Latino or Not Hispanic/Latino.  And at the same time, individuals are now able to identify themselves as multi-race if they choose to do so.

 

To reflect these new demographic categories, the official State Pre-Employment Application (SF-10) has been changed to read as follows:

 

Ethnic Origin:  (Please check one)

____    Hispanic or Latino       

____    Non-Hispanic or Non-Latino

 

 

Race: (Please check all that apply)

____    White

____    American Indian/Alaskan Native

____    Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander

____    Asian

____    Black or African American

 

Effective Monday, July 14^th, the new version of Infotype 0077, Additional Personal Data, will be available in the ISIS HR production system, at which time agencies will have the ability to designate Ethnicity and Race Category (multiple allowed) for all new hires.  (Ethnic Origin will be grayed out and no longer accessible for maintenance.) 

 

ISIS HR staff will handle the actual conversion of Ethnic Origin to the new Ethnicity and Race Category values for both active and withdrawn employees.  This conversion, scheduled to begin the week of July 14, 2003, will be run on a statewide basis in personnel number order and is anticipated to take several days to complete. 

 

Attached is a chart which depicts how existing Ethnic Origin values will be walked over to the new Ethnicity and Race Category fields.  ISIS HR will send out a notice to the Employee Administrators once this conversion is complete.  This notice will also contain additional information about reports affected by this change as well as guidelines for agency validation of this data conversion.   

 

All state agencies are encouraged to begin modifying their own record-keeping systems to reflect these changes.  No specific deadline is yet required for full implementation of these new categories.  However, we encourage agencies to incorporate the use of these new demographic categories as rapidly as resources allow.

 

If you have questions regarding these new demographic designations, contact Jean Tozer, Staffing Administrator at 225-342-8536.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

 

Allen H. Reynolds

Director

 

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