The number of materials translated during this reporting period decreased , most notably with Russian and Vietnamese . Meanwhile , the number of bilingual staff across the City increased this year by 124 people , countering the downward trend in bilingual staffing that the City had experienced since FY 2017-2018 . In-person interpretations increased by 153 %, with particularly high increases in non-threshold languages like Russian ( 480 %) and Vietnamese ( 301 %). There was also a 23 % Citywide increase in spending for language services compared to the previous fiscal year .
LEP Client Interactions
LEP Client Interactions track the total number of LEP individuals who used a City department ’ s services . This key data point provides a big-picture look at how many LEP clients each Department served . Departments can use one of three methods to collect this information :
Intake Method ( Recommended ): Information collected during the Department ’ s intake process for all clients ( members of the public who are served by or interact with the Department ), including appointments , walk-ins , public events , and outreach .
Survey Method : Conducting an annual survey of all contacts with the public made by the Department during a period of at least two weeks .
Telephonic Interpretation Method : Calculating the annual total number of requests for telephonic interpretation services .
Departments ’ aggregate interactions with LEP clients decreased by 28 % from the previous fiscal year , from approximately 1.2 million to fewer than 870,000 LEP client interactions . The largest decreases in LEP interactions were with Filipino-speaking ( 94 %), followed by Russian-speaking ( 15 %) and Spanish-speaking ( 10 %) clients . However , some of the changes may be explained by report submissions from specific Departments and updates to the way they collect and track LEP data .
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