Jackie Rodriguez, director of operations at the Community Investment for Families Department, and a senior program manager identified in the record as Ivy (senior program manager, Community Investment for Families Department), presented the citywide fiscal year 2023–24 Language Access Annual Report to the Civil Rights, Equity, Immigration, Aging and Disability Committee on June 20.

Rodriguez said the report provides baseline data across 41 city departments and nine key areas of the city’s language-access plan. Key findings read into the record included that more than 3,900 certified bilingual staff are placed in 38 departments, staff reported roughly 34 different languages citywide, and departments identified about 2,000 vital documents for translation. The presentation also said 28 of 41 departments reported providing interpretation services by phone, in person and by video; the report noted about $3,800,000 in language-access expenditures reported for the year.

Rodriguez and the senior program manager explained short-term recommendations including a citywide public-awareness campaign (“Know Your Rights”) offered in 29 languages, a request for qualifications (RFQ) to establish a vendor bench for interpretation and translation services that departments can use without a separate RFP, and expanded outreach for indigenous languages (including audio/video materials where written translations are not appropriate). The presenters emphasized that technology such as machine translation can be a useful tool but must be validated by human reviewers for accuracy, especially for nuanced or less-common languages.

Committee members asked whether non–public-facing departments reported vital documents; staff said 11 departments either were still identifying documents or had none to translate. Members also asked about legal implications of a recent federal executive order on English; staff said they convened with other municipal language-access coordinators and were not instructed to stop providing language access and that civil-rights law continues to protect limited-English-proficiency residents.

The committee concurred with the Personnel and Hiring Committee to note and file the CIFD report; the item was approved with four recorded ayes.