San Francisco passed an ordinance on Tuesday to allow the city government to request information regarding the gender identity and sexual orientation of employees and candidates for job openings.

The city government’s human resources department can request the information through anonymous surveys from job applicants and current employees through surveys that collect data on a range of demographics within the city government workforce. Information will be provided on a voluntary basis and the data will be kept confidential.

The ordinance repealed Chapter 12E of the City Employee’s Sexual Privacy Ordinance. Under that ordinance, information about employees of the city government’s gender identity and sexual orientation could not be collected. Chapter 12E did not apply to job applicants whose data could be collected anonymously. Chapter 12E was considered necessary when it was enacted in the 1980s to protect LGBTQIA+ city employees from discrimination and harassment during the HIV epidemic.

The ordinance explained two reasons for repealing chapter 12E. First, discrimination and harassment on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation are prohibited under federal and state law and internal policies, which were not in force when chapter 12E came into force. Secondly, San Francisco can only improve equity issues within its workforce by having access to the information.

Due to chapter 12E, the city government has long operated without a clear picture of its employees’ key demographics. Passing the ordinance allows San Francisco access to a large volume of data. The city government employs approximately 37,000 staff, all of whose data can be collected with the consent of individual employees.

The move follows efforts by the city government over the past four years to monitor its progress towards achieving equity in its services by reporting anonymized data on key demographics.