Labor looks to AI to tackle accommodation requests from disabled employees
Faced with a backlog of accommodation requests from employees with disabilities and medical conditions, the Labor Department plans to use artificial intelligence to triage the workload.
An internal email obtained by Government Executive states that staff at the Civil Rights Center, which processes reasonable accommodation requests, currently must “engage substantively with every request regardless of completeness or likely outcome, limiting capacity and delaying determinations.”
“The process requires case-by-case judgment, but cases vary significantly in complexity and documentation quality: some are well-supported and straightforward, some require additional documentation, and some are not well-supported by the documentation provided,” the email states.
Labor Department employees told Government Executive that the department is facing a backlog of hundreds of RA requests. Several reported waiting months or, in some cases, a year or longer for for reviews, delays they say have hampered productivity at a department charged with protecting the workplace rights of workers with...
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