The lack of detailed data critical for a meaningful analysis leaves open to question how the Massachusetts Gaming Commission is working to ensure the diversity of its work force.

Segmenting data by employee job category is considered to be an essential component of analyzing for diversity; in fact, it is something the state does for all of its secretariats as well as for various other administrative units.

When asked about the diversity in its workplace, the commission said that of its 53 employees, 79 percent (42) are white, 6 percent (3) are black, 4 percent (2) are Hispanic, and 11 percent (6) are Asian/Pacific. But the agency does not collect statistics for determining whether minorities are fairly represented at the various levels of the administrative hierarchy, so the question becomes: What kinds of jobs are the 11 minority individuals working at the commission holding?

As to the lack of this critical information, Stephen Crosby, the chairman of the gaming panel, said, “I never really thought about this. Our HR people collect the data the way they collect the data.”

Crosby is the founder of the Commonwealth Compact, a nonprofit organization that seeks to promote greater diversity in Massachusetts “especially in management, senior management and board governance.”

The commission also does not have a written plan for how to make its workforce more diverse.

“The way they collect the data is meaningless,” said Thomas Saltonstall, a former head of the Boston office of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “This is particularly so given the patterns we’ve historically seen where people of color are over-concentrated at the bottom of the salary scale and highly under-represented at the top.”

A look at the pictures of the commission’s ten 10 “executive staff” members shows that nine are white and one is black; there are no Asians or Hispanics. And the person who is black is the director of workforce, supplier, and diversity development. Crosby did not take issue with these findings, but he did point out that Enrique Zuniga, one of the five commissioners, is Mexican American.

Under the law, the commissioners are appointed by the state’s constitutional officers. The governor, the attorney general, and the treasurer each have one appointment, and the three of them select the other two commissioners by majority vote.

Crosby argues that the commission numbers are too small to develop rich diversity data. But the state’s annual comprehensive workforce diversity report shows that small commissions such as the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (64 employees) and the Public Employee Retirement Administration Commission (50 employees) report hierarchal diversity data.

“It is critical that the commission start gathering data by job category that can be used to assess whether there is fairness in its work force,” said Saltonstall. “Right now, they don’t know, or they’re not telling us.”