United States General Accounting Office

GAO Testimony

Before the Subcommittee on VA, HUD, and Independent

Agencies, Committee on Appropriations, U.S. Senate

To Be Released

at 9:30 a.m., EDT,

Thursday

April 29, 1999

ENVIRONMENTAL

PROTECTION

Status of EPA’s Efforts to

Create a Central

Information Office

Statement for the Record by

Peter F. Guerrero

Director, Environmental Protection Issues,

Resources, Community, and Economic

Development Division

GAO/T-RCED-99-177

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

We appreciate the opportunity to present this statement for the record,

which discusses our preliminary observations based on our ongoing work

for this Subcommittee concerning the Environmental Protection Agency’s

(EPA) information management initiatives. Specifically, this statement

provides information on (1) the status of EPA’s efforts to create a central

office responsible for information management, policy, and technology

issues and (2) the major challenges that the new office needs to address in

order to achieve success in collecting, using, and disseminating

environmental information. Our final report will be provided in

August 1999.

EPA estimates that its central information office will be operational by the

end of August 1999 and will have a staff of about 350 employees. The

office will address a broad range of information policy and technology

issues, such as improving the accuracy of EPA’s data, protecting the

security of information that EPA disseminates over the Internet, developing

better measures to assess environmental conditions, and reducing

information collection and reporting burdens. EPA recognizes the

importance of developing an information plan showing the goals of the

new office and the means by which they will be achieved but has not yet

established milestones or target dates for completing such a plan.

Although EPA has made progress in determining the organizational

structure for the new office, it has not yet finalized decisions on the

office’s authorities, responsibilities, and budgetary needs. Nor has the

agency performed an analysis to determine the types and the skills of

employees that will be needed to carry out the office’s functions. EPA

officials told us that decisions on the office’s authorities, responsibilities,

budget, and staff will be made before the office is established in

August 1999.

On the basis of our prior and ongoing reviews of EPA’s information

management problems, we believe that the success of the new office

depends on the agency’s addressing several key challenges as it develops

an information plan, budget, and organizational structure for that office.

Most importantly, EPA needs to (1) provide the office with the resources

and the expertise necessary to solve the complex information

management, policy, and technology problems facing the agency;

(2) empower the office to overcome organizational challenges to adopting

agencywide information policies and procedures; (3) balance the agency’s

need for data on health, the environment, and program outcomes with the

Page 1 GAO/T-RCED-99-177
call from the states and regulated industries to reduce their reporting

burdens; and (4) work closely with its state partners to design and

implement improved information management systems.

Background In October 1998, the EPA Administrator announced plans to create an

office with responsibility for information management, policy, and

technology. This announcement came after many previous efforts by EPA

to improve information management and after a long history of concerns

that we, the EPA Inspector General, and others have expressed about the

agency’s information management activities. Such concerns involve the

accuracy and completeness of EPA’s environmental data, the fragmentation

of the data across many incompatible databases, and the need for

improved measures of program outcomes and environmental quality.

The EPA Administrator described the new office as being responsible for

improving the quality of information used within EPA and provided to the

public and for developing and implementing the goals, standards, and

accountability systems needed to bring about these improvements. To this

end, the information office would (1) ensure that the quality of data

collected and used by EPA is known and appropriate for its intended uses,

(2) reduce the burden of the states and regulated industries to collect and

report data, (3) fill significant data gaps, and (4) provide the public with

integrated information and statistics on issues related to the environment

and public health. The office would also have the authority to implement

standards and policies for information resources management and be

responsible for purchasing and operating information technology and

systems.

Progress Is Being

Made, but Key

Questions on

Resources and

Strategies Remain

Unresolved

Under a general framework for the new office that has been approved by

the EPA Administrator, EPA officials have been working for the past several

months to develop recommendations for organizing existing EPA personnel

and resources into the central information office. Nonetheless, EPA has not

yet developed an information plan that identifies the office’s goals,

objectives, and outcomes. Although agency officials acknowledge the

importance of developing such a plan, they have not established any

milestones for doing so. While EPA has made progress in determining the

organizational structure of the office, final decisions have not been made

and EPA has not yet identified the employees and the resources that will be

needed. Setting up the organizational structure prior to developing an

Page 2 GAO/T-RCED-99-177
information plan runs the risk that the organization will not contain the

resources or structure needed to accomplish its goals.

Information Plan Is

Needed

Although EPA has articulated both a vision as well as key goals for its new

information office, it has not yet developed an information plan to show

how the agency intends to achieve its vision and goals. Given the many

important and complex issues on information management, policy, and

technology that face the new office, it will be extremely important for EPA

to establish a clear set of priorities and resources needed to accomplish

them. Such information is also essential for EPA to develop realistic

budgetary estimates for the office.

EPA has indicated that it intends to develop an information plan for the

agency that will provide a better mechanism to effectively and efficiently

plan its information and technology investments on a multiyear basis. This

plan will be coordinated with EPA ‘s agencywide strategic plan, prepared

under the Government Performance and Results Act. EPA intends for the

plan to reflect the results of its initiative to improve coordination among

the agency’s major activities relating to information on environment and

program outcomes. It has not yet, however, developed any milestones or

target dates for initiating or completing either the plan or the coordination

initiative.

Organizational Structure Is

Not Yet Determined

In early December 1998, the EPA Administrator approved a broad

framework for the new information office and set a goal of completing the

reorganization during the summer of 1999. Under the framework approved

by the EPA Administrator, the new office will have three organizational

units responsible for (1) information policy and collection, (2) information

technology and services, and (3) information analysis and access,

respectively. In addition, three smaller units will provide support in areas

such as data quality and strategic planning.

A transition team of EPA staff has been tasked with developing

recommendations for the new office’s mission and priorities as well as its

detailed organizational and reporting structure. In developing these

recommendations, the transition team has consulted with the states,

regulated industries, and other stakeholders to exchange views regarding

the vision, goals, priorities, and initial projects for the office.

Page 3 GAO/T-RCED-99-177
One of the transition team’s key responsibilities is to make

recommendations concerning which EPA units should move into the

information office and in which of the three major organizational units

they should go. To date, the transition team has not finalized its

recommendations on these issues or on how the new office will operate

and the staff it will need.

Needed Resources Are Still

Unknown

Even though EPA has not yet determined which staff will be moved to the

central information office, the transition team’s director told us that it is

expected that the office will have about 350 employees. She said that the

staffing needs of the office will be met by moving existing employees in

EPA units affected by the reorganization. The director said that, once the

transition team recommends which EPA units will become part of the

central office, the agency will determine which staff will be assigned to the

office. She added that staffing decisions will be completed by July 1999

and the office will begin functioning sometime in August 1999.

The funding needs of the new office were not specified in EPA’s fiscal year

2000 budget request to the Congress because the agency did not have

sufficient information on them when the request was submitted in

February 1999. The director of the transition team told us that in June 1999

the agency will identify the anticipated resources that will transfer to the

new office from various parts of EPA. The agency plans to prepare the

fiscal year 2000 operating plan for the office in October 1999, when EPA has

a better idea of the resources needed to accomplish the responsibilities

that the office will be tasked with during its first year of operation. The

transition team’s director told us that decisions on budget allocations are

particularly difficult to make at the present time due to the sensitive

nature of notifying managers of EPA’s various components that they may

lose funds and staff to the new office.

Furthermore, EPA will soon need to prepare its budget for fiscal year 2001.

According to EPA officials, the Office of the Chief Financial Officer will

coordinate a planning strategy this spring that will lead to the fiscal year

2001 annual performance plan and proposed budget, which will be

submitted to the Office of Management and Budget by September 1999.

Page 4 GAO/T-RCED-99-177
EPA’s New

Information Office

Will Face Significant

Challenges

The idea of a centralized information office within EPA has been met with

enthusiasm in many corners—not only by state regulators, but also by

representatives of regulated industries, environmental advocacy groups,

and others. Although the establishment of this office is seen as an

important step in improving how EPA collects, manages, and disseminates

information, the office will face many challenges, some of which have

thwarted previous efforts by EPA to improve its information management

activities. On the basis of our prior and ongoing work, we believe that the

agency must address these challenges for the reorganization to

significantly improve EPA’s information management activities. Among the

most important of these challenges are (1) obtaining sufficient resources

and expertise to address the complex information management issues

facing the agency; (2) overcoming problems associated with EPA’s

decentralized organizational structure, such as the lack of agencywide

information dissemination policies; (3) balancing the demand for more

data with calls from the states and regulated industries to reduce reporting

burdens; and (4) working effectively with EPA’s counterparts in state

government.

Obtaining Sufficient

Resources and Expertise

The new organizational structure will offer EPA an opportunity to better

coordinate and prioritize its information initiatives. The EPA Administrator

and the senior-level officials charged with creating the new office have

expressed their intentions to make fundamental improvements in how the

agency uses information to carry out its mission to protect human health

and the environment. They likewise recognize that the reorganization will

raise a variety of complex information policy and technology issues.

To address the significant challenges facing EPA, the new office will need

significant resources and expertise. EPA anticipates that the new office will

substantially improve the agency’s information management activities,

rather than merely centralize existing efforts to address information

management issues. Senior EPA officials responsible for creating the new

office anticipate that the information office will need “purse strings

control” over the agency’s resources for information management

expenditures in order to implement its policies, data standards,

procedures, and other decisions agencywide. For example, one official

told us that the new office should be given veto authority over the

development or modernization of data systems throughout EPA.

To date, the focus of efforts to create the office has been on what the

agency sees as the more pressing task of determining which organizational

Page 5 GAO/T-RCED-99-177
components and staff members should be transferred into the new office.

While such decisions are clearly important, EPA also needs to determine

whether its current information management resources, including staff

expertise, are sufficient to enable the new office to achieve its goals.

Overcoming Problems

Associated With EPA’s

Decentralized

Organizational Structure

EPA will need to provide the new office with sufficient authority to

overcome organizational obstacles to adopt agencywide information

policies and procedures. As we reported last September, EPA has not yet

developed policies and procedures to govern key aspects of its projects to

disseminate information, nor has it developed standards to assess the

data’s accuracy and mechanisms to determine and correct errors.1

Because EPA does not have agencywide polices regarding the

dissemination of information, program offices have been making their

own, sometimes conflicting decisions about the types of information to be

released and the extent of explanations needed about how data should be

interpreted. Likewise, although the agency has a quality assurance

program, there is not yet a common understanding across the agency of

what data quality means and how EPA and its state partners can most

effectively ensure that the data used for decision-making and/or

disseminated to the public is of high quality. To address such issues, EPA

plans to create a Quality Board of senior managers within the new office in

the summer of 1999.

Although EPA acknowledges its need for agencywide policies governing

information collection, management, and dissemination, it continues to

operate in a decentralized fashion that heightens the difficulty of

developing and implementing agencywide procedures. EPA’s offices have

been given the responsibility and authority to develop and manage their

own data systems for the nearly 30 years since the agency’s creation.

Given this history, overcoming the potential resistance to centralized

policies may be a serious challenge to the new information office.

Balancing the Need to

Collect More Data and

Efforts to Reduce

Reporting Burdens

EPA and its state partners in implementing environmental programs have

collected a wealth of environmental data under various statutory and

regulatory authorities. However, important gaps in the data exist. For

example, EPA has limited data that are based on (1) the monitoring of

environmental conditions and (2) the exposures of humans to toxic

1

Environmental Information: Agencywide Policies and Procedures Are Needed for EPA’s Information

Dissemination (GAO/RCED-98-245, Sept. 24, 1998).

Page 6 GAO/T-RCED-99-177
pollutants. Furthermore, the human health and ecological effects of many

pollutants are not well understood. EPA also needs comprehensive

information on environmental conditions and their changes over time to

identify problem areas that are emerging or that need additional regulatory

action or other attention.

In contrast to the need for more and better data is a call from states and

regulated industries to reduce data management and reporting burdens.

EPA has recently initiated some efforts in this regard. For example, an

EPA/state information management workgroup looking into this issue has

proposed an approach to assess environmental information and data

reporting requirements based on the value of the information compared to

the cost of collecting, managing, and reporting it. EPA has announced that

in the coming months, its regional offices and the states will be exploring

possibilities for reducing paperwork requirements for EPA’s programs,

testing specific initiatives in consultation with EPA’s program offices, and

establishing a clearinghouse of successful initiatives and pilot projects.

However, overall reductions in reporting burdens have proved difficult to

achieve. For example, in March 1996, we reported that while EPA was

pursuing a paperwork reduction of 20 million hours, its overall paperwork

burden was actually increasing because of changes in programs and other

factors.2

 The states and regulated industries have indicated that they will

look to EPA’s new office to reduce the burden of reporting requirements.

Working More Effectively

With State Counterparts

Although both EPA and the states have recognized the value in fostering a

strong partnership concerning information management, they also

recognize that this will be a challenging task both in terms of policy and

technical issues. For example, the states vary significantly in terms of the

data they need to manage their environmental programs, and such

differences have complicated the efforts of EPA and the states to develop

common standards to facilitate data sharing. The task is even more

challenging given that EPA’s various information systems do not use

common data standards. For example, an individual facility is not

identified by the same code in different systems.

Given that EPA depends on state regulatory agencies to collect much of the

data it needs and to help ensure the quality of that data, EPA recognizes the

need to work in a close partnership with the states on a wide variety of

2

Environmental Protection: Assessing EPA’s Progress in Paperwork Reduction (GAO/T-RCED-96-107,

March 21, 1996).

Page 7 GAO/T-RCED-99-177
information management activities, including the creation of its new

information office. Some partnerships have already been created. For

example, EPA and the states are reviewing reporting burdens to identify

areas in which the burden can be reduced or eliminated. Under another

EPA initiative, the agency is working with states to create data standards so

that environmental information from various EPA and state databases can

be more readily shared. Representatives of state environmental agencies

and the Environmental Council of the States have expressed their ideas

and concerns about the role of EPA’s new information office and have

frequently reminded EPA that they expect to share with EPA the

responsibility for setting that office’s goals, priorities, and strategies.

According to a Council official, the states have had more input to the

development of the new EPA office than they typically have had in other

major policy issues and the states view this change as an improvement in

their relationship with EPA.

Observations Collecting and managing the data that EPA requires to manage its programs

have been major long-term challenges for the agency. The EPA

Administrator’s recent decision to create a central information office to

make fundamental agencywide improvements in data management

activities is a step in the right direction. However, creating such an

organization from disparate parts of the agency is a complex process and

substantially improving and integrating EPA’s information systems will be

difficult and likely require several years. To fully achieve EPA’s goals will

require high priority within the agency, including the long-term

appropriate resources and commitment of senior management.

(160489) Page 8 GAO/T-RCED-99-177
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