  The US professional astronomy and astrophysics fields are not representative
of the diversity of people in the nation. For example, 2017 AIP reports show
that in 2014, women made up only about 20 percent of the faculty in astronomy
and physics departments, and the numbers for under-represented minorities (men
and women) were, and remain, low. However numerous studies have demonstrated
that diverse groups (in both cognition and identity) outperform groups that are
more homogeneous, even when the homogeneous group is comprised of all "high
achieving experts." (Hong and Page, 2004, Kleinberg and Raghu, 2018). This has
been shown to be the case on a variety of complex tasks. Thus, if we want the
best opportunity to make progress on and answer the research questions of the
2020s, we must employ diverse teams who bring different heuristics and
perspectives to those problems. However, currently in the field there are few
tangible motivations to encourage projects, missions or programs to employ
teams that are diverse in both cognitive areas and identity to take on these
complex problems. Managing groups and organizations contracted to run these
efforts are currently not required or incentivized to employ an identity
diverse workforce.
  In this position (white) paper, we recommend that agency funding (from NSF,
NASA, DOE, etc.), especially for missions, projects and programs, encourage the
development and retention of diverse teams by requiring documentation of and
progress on metrics related to diversity, inclusion and equity. We further
recommend that documented progress on diversity and inclusion metrics should be
monitored in reviews alongside project management and budget reporting.
Managing groups and organizations proposing to administer projects on behalf of
agencies should be required to demonstrate competency with respect to diversity
and inclusion metrics.
