With the February 2023 release of Executive Order 14091, “Furthering Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through The Federal Government,” the Biden administration extends the mandate of Executive Order 13985, which called on federal agencies to create equity action plans to assess obstacles to equity in their organizations and how “policies perpetuate systemic barriers to opportunities.” Urban’s Office of Race and Equity Research analyzed the content of those plans and that of related plans (including agencies’ learning agendas, annual evaluation plans, capacity assessments, strategic planning goals, and evaluation policies). The publications in this collection reflect a multifaceted, mixed-methods analysis—they do not evaluate the quality of the plans, but rather identify themes within and across plans as well as opportunities for agencies to focus on implementation to achieve greater impact. 

We will update this page as we publish new products related to this work.

Publications

Our March 2023 brief, “Pathways to Equity at Scale: An Analysis of the 2022 Federal Equity Action Plans and Recommendations for 2023 Plans,” categorizes agencies’ equity commitments into different types of equity concepts and actions, shares agency-specific examples, and proposes recommendations for agencies pursuing their next rounds of equity planning. It synthesizes the equity action plans of 24 agencies that deliver services.

An appendix to the brief features the rubric we used to analyze the plans and shape the agency-specific digests (click on links below).

An October 2022 brief from Urban’s Housing Finance Policy Center offers an in-depth analysis of equity action plans issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and a follow-up report from February 2023 highlights specific equity metrics those agencies could implement.

Digests

For each of the agencies we reviewed, we created a 2-page digest of the equity action plan, highlighting principles, pillars and metrics for equity. A broader team at Urban reviewed equity action plans of more than 20 agencies, using the rubric of equity principles that we designed for this analysis. At least two people from our project team completed the rubric independently, then compared answers. And for each equity action plan, an Urban subject-matter expert also completed the rubric independently. The digests reflect the combined insights of these reviewers.

In addition to coding the equity action plans, we reviewed agency priority goals (also following the rubric), reviewed agency learning agendas for equity-related research questions, and reviewed agency strategic plans for equity-related priorities.

Related content

See our recent Urban Wire blog post, “Advancing Equitable Government 2.0,” in which we explain the opportunity for the new executive order on racial equity to improve practice and outcomes.

See our March 2023 Data@Urban post on an initial text mining analysis of equity action plans, strategic plans, and evaluation plans, among other plans, for insights on how to use (and how not to use) automated methods to understand equity.

• How the White House is Continuing to Prioritize Equity
• Urban Institute and Federal Equity Initiatives
• Response to a Request for Information from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on the Federal Evidence Agenda on Disability Equity
• Comment Letter on OMB's Request for Information on Methods and Leading Practices for Advancing Public Participation and Community Engagement with the Federal Government
• Comment Letter on OMB Request for Information on Responsible Procurement of Artificial Intelligence in Government
• Comment Letter on Equitable Delivery of Climate Services
• Public Comment on Proposed Revisions to Circular A-4, Regulatory Analysis, and Circular A-94
• Public Comment on Department of Transportation's Equity Performance Metrics
• Public Comment on Initial Proposals from the Federal Interagency Technical Working Group on Race and Ethnicity Standards for Revising OMB’s 1997 Statistical Policy Directive No. 15
• Comment Letter on Equitable Data Engagement and Accountability
• How the Federal Government Can Use Data to Make the Most of the Executive Order on Racial Equity
• Comment Letter on OMB's Request for Information on Methods and Leading Practices for Advancing Equity and Support for Underserved Communities through Government