The EDR Website is also your source for Standard Update back issues and a vehicle for reader comments. The Council operates under the auspices of ECOS, a national nonprofit, nonpartisan association of state environmental commissioners. Through delegated federal programs and state-developed programs, states and tribes issue most of the permits, initiate most of the enforcement and compliance actions, and develop many of the innovative ideas for dealing with environmental issues. Action Teams, made up of representatives from EPA, states, and tribes for each of these data standard areas, are meeting and making progress in scoping, defining, and developing data elements, or adopting existing sources of naming conventions as standards, for each data standard area. The QIC also agreed on the business rules supporting these two data standards.
Business rules describe the procedures, timelines, and implementation guidelines for the standard.
The finalization of these standards represents a significant partnering accomplishment by state and EPA work group participants. If you haven t visited the EDR recently, you ll notice some changes. These revisions support the Agency s information integration activities, including the Blueprint for a National Environmental Information Exchange Network. The blueprint, developed by an integrated team of participants from EPA and ECOS, defines a network that enables environmental agencies to establish and adopt a common format or template for data exchange. Once established, the template will improve the traditional way that states feed information to EPA s national data systems.