Environmental Protection Agency: EPA Needs to Complete a Strategy for Its Library Network to Meet Users' Needs
Released: 2010-11-01T00:00:00

Letter

Background

EPA was established in December 1970 to consolidate a variety of federal research, monitoring, standard-setting, and enforcement activities into one agency to ensure the protection, development, and enhancement of the total environment. To help accomplish its mission, EPA in 1971 established a library network that came to comprise 26 libraries located across the country. The library network functions as a collection of independent local libraries, catering primarily to the needs of local EPA staff and walk-in public patrons. The libraries are funded and managed by several different regional and program offices at EPA (see fig. 1). EPA defines network libraries as those of its libraries with an official membership presence in the global Online Computer Library Center system.

The combined EPA library network collection contains a wide range of general information on environmental protection and management and on basic and applied sciences, as well as extensive coverage of topics related to the statutory mandates that EPA must meet. Several of the libraries maintain collections focused on special topics to support specific regional or program office projects. The libraries thus differ in function, scope of collections, extent of services, and public access. In addition to its physical locations and holdings, the EPA network provides staff and public access to its collections through the following: its online library system, a Web-based database of all of EPA library holdings, also known as EPA’s online “card catalog”; interlibrary loans to another library within the network or to other libraries; a Web site combining two databases—EPA’s National Service Center for Environmental Publications (NSCEP) and its National Environmental Publications Internet Site (NEPIS)—which provide an online gateway for access to available print and digital documents, respectively; and desktop access for staff to online journals, the Federal Register, news, databases of bibliographic information, and article citations.

In addition, librarians are available in each library to catalog and maintain collections and to assist EPA staff and the public with research.

In 2003, EPA began studying options for operating its library network in the future. In August 2006, the agency issued a reorganization plan, titled EPA FY 2007 Library Plan: National Framework for the Headquarters and Regional Libraries. The focus of this plan was a reorganization of the headquarters library and the 10 regional libraries, all of which received substantial funding from EPA’s Office of Environmental Information. The 2007 library plan identified a new model for library services, which consisted of three components: a coordinated library network, instead of stand-alone operations; more electronic delivery of services; and maintenance of existing essential services. During implementation of this plan, EPA closed the Chicago, Dallas, and Kansas City regional libraries and closed its headquarters library to physical access, although the headquarters library remained as one of three repositories for storing print collections. Another library located at EPA headquarters within the Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances (referred to as the “chemical library”) was not subject to budget reductions and was not discussed in the reorganization plan, but, like the headquarters library, was also closed to physical access. EPA also reduced or eliminated the library staff at the closed libraries. Several other libraries reduced their operating hours, and some libraries disposed of their materials or dispersed them to other EPA libraries or to non-EPA libraries. EPA also began to digitize EPA documents not currently in NEPIS, beginning with documents in the libraries being closed. EPA’s reorganization plan also discussed how the closed libraries were to handle their collections, directing them primarily to disperse the collections to other libraries.

EPA’s implementation of its reorganization plan caused widespread concern among its staff, the public, interested parties, and Congress. In response to these concerns, congressional committees directed $1 million in funding to restore the libraries recently closed or consolidated, asked us to review EPA’s reorganization plan and its implementation, and directed EPA to prepare a report regarding actions to restore publicly available libraries. In addition, EPA in January 2007 imposed a moratorium on its reorganization efforts.

Until April 2007, EPA’s library network operations had been guided by EPA’s Information Resources Management Policy Manual, which stated that the library network was to provide EPA staff with access to information to carry out the agency’s mission and that the libraries were to provide state agencies and the public with access to the library collection. The Policy Manual also defined the role of a national library program manager, who was to have responsibility for coordinating major activities of the library network, although not budget authority for the libraries. EPA replaced this manual in April 2007 with an interim library policy and, in May 2009, with its final library policy. The final May 2009 policy also defined key roles and responsibilities, including those of the national library program manager and those of “federal library managers,” who were to have first-line responsibility for operating the physical libraries and providing services.

EPA lifted the moratorium in June 2009, following implementation of its May 2009 policy and 6 of 12 proposed procedures for the library network. After we issued our report in February 2008, Congress held hearings on EPA’s library network reorganization efforts, which were followed by the release of EPA’s March 2008 report addressed to Congress, in which EPA stated that it would reopen the closed libraries by September 30, 2008. In our 2008 report on EPA’s library network reorganization, we assessed the reorganization effort against our past work on key practices and implementation steps to assist mergers and organizational transformations. These key practices include ensuring that top leadership drives the transformation, establishing a coherent mission and integrated strategic goals to guide the transformation, and setting implementation goals and a timeline to show progress from day one.

EPA Has Not Completed a Strategic Plan for Its Library Network Identifying an Overall Strategy for the Network

Although it has been preparing a strategic plan for its library network for 3 years, EPA has not completed a plan identifying its overall network strategy, with implementation goals and a timeline for what it seeks to accomplish. In our 2008 report, we stated that EPA was developing a library strategic plan for 2008 and beyond, which was to detail library services for staff and the public and lay out a vision for the library network’s future. EPA has had a draft outline of this strategic plan since July 2007. We reported that in October 2007, EPA’s Office of Environmental Information asked local unions throughout the agency to comment on a draft of the plan.

The draft outline of the strategic plan envisions the library network as “the premier environmental library network that provides timely access to information and library services to its employees and the public” and proposes to realize this vision by increasing emphasis on electronic resources and using new information technologies. The draft outline of the strategic plan also lists several principles as the foundation for present and future directions of the library network: setting overall goals and objectives and a direction for implementation; periodic review of the plan to evaluate progress and update strategies to respond to new opportunities or challenges; soliciting input from internal and external stakeholders; and developing the plan in a transparent manner by reporting progress and soliciting input from interested parties. According to EPA officials, since 2007, EPA has been in the process of assessing library users’ needs, which is to be completed before they believe they can finish the strategic plan. EPA officials have stated that a working group led by the national library program manager is to resume work on the plan later in 2010.

The draft outline of the strategic plan is largely a list of current and planned EPA activities—primarily placeholders to be completed. For example, under the heading, “Digitization,” the text states that the digitization procedures will outline the methods to be used by EPA libraries to prepare and send EPA documents for digitization and inclusion in NEPIS; no goals or timeline for implementing these activities—which we previously reported are among the key components of successful organizational transformations—are given. We have found that an organization’s transformation is strengthened when it publicizes implementation goals and a timeline to build momentum and show progress. Despite an emphasis on the central role to be played by electronic library resources, the draft outline of the strategic plan briefly describes procedures for packing and shipping documents to be digitized, without describing actions to be taken to digitize holdings or target dates for accomplishing those actions. EPA holds an enormous amount of environmental information, including publications generated by its program offices, as well as research publications generated under contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements. A large portion of this information exists only in print form. As part of its vision for the library network, according to the draft outline, EPA is seeking to convert this information into a digital format to make it more widely available and readily accessible to users. Yet the draft outline of the strategic plan does not describe criteria for deciding what documents should be digitized, for deciding whether or how to digitize copyrighted documents of value, or for scheduling the funding needed and a time frame for completing the digitization. Without such criteria, EPA cannot ensure that it is digitizing the most valuable or important documents or providing users with information most relevant to them.

Furthermore, although the draft outline of the strategic plan includes a placeholder for a section describing a funding model for the network, it contains no detail. Under the heading, “Funding Model,” the text states that this section in the plan will address how EPA will ensure that the network libraries have “adequate funding” and will discuss how funding decisions are made, along with the Office of Environmental Information’s role in the funding process. But the draft outline of the strategic plan does not define what constitutes adequate funding, although inadequate funding has been a concern for the library network since fiscal year 2007. Until then, library spending had remained relatively stable, ranging from a high of $9.2 million in fiscal year 2002 to a low of $8.2 million in fiscal year 2006. In fiscal year 2007, when EPA’s budget was reduced, library spending was $6.3 million.

The draft outline of the strategic plan also does not set out the details of how funding decisions are made. Setting out details for how such decisions are to be made, to ensure that they are informed and transparent, is especially important because of the decentralized nature of the library network. The library network’s funding remains subject to uncertainty in the future because the several different program and regional offices responsible for EPA’s libraries generally decide how much to spend on their libraries out of funding available in larger accounts that support multiple activities. EPA’s Office of Environmental Information, the primary source of funding for the regional libraries, typically provides funding through each region’s support budget and generally gives regional management officials discretion on how to distribute this funding among the library and other support services, such as information technology, utilities, and mail room support. EPA officials told us that, starting in fiscal year 2010, they are increasing the amount of funding allocated to the libraries in the regions. The regions also obtain a much smaller portion of their library funding from other program offices. For example, the Superfund program office funds the storage and maintenance of information on the National Priorities List, EPA’s list of the most seriously contaminated sites in the United States. The extent to which other program offices provide funding to the regional libraries varies. Thus, without a detailed strategy for how decisions are made to acquire, deploy, and manage funding resources across the library network, EPA may find it difficult, particularly in an era of declining budgets and competing national priorities, to achieve its vision for the library network and to fully meet the needs of library users.

Moreover, although the draft outline of the strategic plan contains a section on communication among network libraries, it makes no mention of a strategy or a formal outreach plan to ensure that EPA communicates with and obtains feedback from users about improvements to its library network in a way that would allow it to measure whether such improvements are meeting users’ needs. The section lists communication methods EPA is using, such as monthly network teleconferences among staff and federal managers. In addition, the section identifies comment cards, questionnaires, and a Web presence for how it solicits users’ feedback, but there is no mention of how EPA plans to assess feedback on what is important to users or what improvements are working well or poorly. EPA has another draft document, titled “EPA Library Network Communication Strategies,” whose purpose is to establish procedures by which libraries in the network are to communicate both internally and externally. Most of this document focuses on communication within the library network itself, explaining how the library network is coordinated and detailing mechanisms for internal communication, including annual meetings for library network staff and federal library managers. One of the final sections in this procedures document lists several means of communicating externally, including Web sites and various local options for libraries to reach out to local patrons, such as tours, signs, comment cards, and online feedback mechanisms. Beyond listing such mechanisms, however, this document, like the draft outline of the strategic plan, does not lay out a systematic communication strategy with communication and feedback performance goals that can be measured to determine progress. Without such a strategy, communication with library users is likely to remain piecemeal and reactive.

Since 2008, EPA Has Reopened Closed Libraries and Taken Other Actions

EPA has reopened all of the libraries it closed in 2007 and has taken other actions to improve library operations. In its 2008 report addressed to Congress, the agency stated its commitment to have libraries in each region and at headquarters open to the public. EPA also committed to reestablishing on-site libraries for its staff and the public in the three regions where the libraries had been closed and at the combined headquarters and chemical library. EPA reopened all five closed libraries by September 2008, although the agency had to find new space for two of the three closed regional libraries and their collections, and all three of these regional libraries are operating on reduced schedules. Each of the reopened libraries was staffed with a professional librarian and required to maintain a collection of core reference materials and additional library resources to meet local needs and to ensure that staff had access to core library services and the public had access to the library and its collections. With the reopening of the closed libraries, one other regional library that had not been closed also began operating on reduced schedules, as compared with its hours before reorganization (see table 1). As of September 2010, about half of the 10 regional libraries were operating 4 days a week, rather than 5 days as they were before EPA’s reorganization efforts—a reduction in hours due largely to funding constraints, according to library officials. All of the libraries are staffed with at least one full-time or part-time librarian, with several libraries having more than one librarian or additional library staff.

In addition to reopening the closed libraries, according to EPA officials we spoke with, EPA developed standards for the regional and headquarters libraries’ use of space, on-site collections, staffing, and services. These standards specify, for example, that the libraries make adequate space available for in-person interactions between library staff and users, that on-site collections and materials should address local and regional needs, that staff and the public have certain minimum hours of access per week (at least 4 days per week on a walk-in or appointment basis in the regional libraries and at least 5 days per week on a walk-in or appointment basis in the headquarters library), and that the libraries provide interlibrary loans and reference or research assistance.

One of the key actions taken by EPA in May 2007 was to hire a national library program manager, a position that had been vacant since 2005. Housed in EPA’s Office of Information Analysis and Access, within the Office of Environmental Information, the national library program manager is charged with carrying out day-to-day activities of the library network and with bringing focus and cohesion to the network. Part of this charge involves agencywide responsibility for public information access, including strategic planning for the library network, and participating in policy formulation regarding access to EPA’s public information. To fulfill this leadership role, EPA officials said, the national library program manager is to work closely with the management of EPA’s Office of Environmental Information to set in motion a number of actions meant to improve library network operation and communication. To communicate with and gather feedback internally, the national library program manager initiated monthly teleconferences and annual meetings for all library managers and staff. Seeking to get the most out of the experience and knowledge of these library managers, librarians, and staff, the national library program manager established internal working groups to research improvement activities, address concerns, and recommend improvements. For example, the national library program manager established working groups on digitization, staff information needs, and development of the final May 2009 library policy and related procedures (see table 2). In addition, the national library program manager serves as the EPA- appointed representative in working with outside library professionals, specifically an external board of advisors created by the Federal Library and Information Center Committee, which advises EPA on future directions for the library network.

EPA Has Resumed Digitizing Unique EPA Documents but Has Not Inventoried Its Holdings

EPA has restarted its process of digitizing some of its libraries’ holdings, but because the agency has not completed an inventory of its holdings, it does not know the total number of documents to be digitized. According to EPA data, which our limited testing found to be insufficiently reliable, EPA had digitized 16,175 documents from its libraries as of January 2010. Creating an electronic copy of a document by means of digitization is relatively simple—essentially the same scanning process for making photocopies—although it can be time-consuming and expensive if the document contains special features such as foldout pages, cannot be taken apart, or needs to be digitized at a high level of resolution or in color. After the resulting electronic files are uploaded to EPA’s Web databases, the administrator of EPA’s online library catalog is to ensure that links to the digitized documents are included in the bibliographic records for each document. According to EPA officials, the present digitization effort will expand NEPIS, EPA’s sole electronic archive of published material, which, according to EPA officials, contains 40,000 publicly accessible digital documents as of June 2010, up from 4,000 in 1996.

According to EPA documents, the digitization process is to take place in three phases: Phase 1 covered unique EPA documents held by the libraries that were closed under the reorganization plan. EPA data show that 15,260 documents were digitized during this phase, which was completed in January 2007.

Phase 2 is to cover all remaining unique EPA documents except those larger than 11 by 17 inches. According to EPA officials, this phase is scheduled for completion in December 2010 and should produce 10,102 additional digitized documents, bringing the total number of digitized library documents available to the public to over 25,000.

Phase 3 is to include EPA documents of which more than one copy exists in the library network, plus unique EPA documents larger than 11 by 17 inches. As of July 2010, EPA was beginning to plan this phase.

As of September 2010, the total estimated cost for digitizing EPA’s library holdings remained unclear, in large part because EPA has not completed an inventory of its holdings and has therefore not determined the total number of documents that need to be digitized. When it began digitizing documents from the closed libraries in 2006 under phase 1, EPA estimated that the project would cost $80,000—$78,000 for scanning and $2,000 for uploading the digital files to the Web databases—although, according to agency officials, the agency did not track the actual costs. For phase 2 digitization, which began in fiscal year 2009, EPA estimated the cost at about $327,000. EPA has not estimated the cost or a completion date for its final, phase 3 digitization effort, in part because the agency is still cataloging all its library holdings in a single database so it can inventory all the documents that need to be digitized. One regional librarian we spoke with, for example, told us that about 2,000 documents in the regional library’s catalog were not in EPA’s online library system, and it is still unknown which or how many of these documents will need to be digitized. Without a complete catalog or inventory of its holdings, EPA cannot determine which documents, or how many, will need to be digitized and, consequently, cannot accurately estimate the total cost of digitization or how long it will take. According to the national library program manager, an EPA workgroup is currently drafting a new cataloging procedure for the libraries and expects the procedure to be approved and implemented before the end of 2010. This procedure requires each network library to inventory its collection on a regular basis, either the entire collection every 3 years or one-third of the collection each year.

In addition, EPA library officials observed that a significant number of the documents in EPA libraries are copyrighted, and to date EPA does not plan to digitize them. EPA, like other federal agencies, often contracts with entities in the private sector to do work. In addition, EPA provides financial assistance in the form of grants and cooperative agreements to various recipients, such as state, local, and tribal governments; educational institutions; hospitals; and nonprofit organizations. Such assistance is documented in an assistance agreement. Both contracts and assistance agreements may result in the production of copyrighted documents. In the case of contracts, federal regulations provide that when a contractor is permitted to assert a copyright in any document(s) produced, the government has a license to display the copyrighted work publicly, which includes posting it on a Web site accessible to the public. In the case of works produced under assistance agreements, on the other hand, the government has a right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use a copyrighted work for federal purposes, but EPA’s Office of General Counsel has determined that inclusion in EPA’s online public library would not constitute a federal government purpose.

On the advice of EPA’s general counsel, EPA’s digitization workgroup has recommended digitizing documents created under contract but not those created under EPA’s assistance agreements. According to EPA’s grant awards database, these agreements have resulted in more than 21,000 grants valued at over $40 billion in taxpayer dollars. Some of these grants led to publications, resulting in a substantial body of publicly funded written material. According to EPA’s general counsel, EPA may digitize such documents so that staff and others may use them for federal government purposes but may not disseminate them for other purposes. EPA may also seek permission from copyright holders to digitize and disseminate online copyrighted documents produced under assistance agreements, although some costs may be associated with obtaining such permissions—tracking down copyright holders after years, or even decades, have passed, for example—further complicating any estimation of total digitization costs. An alternative practice has been in use by the Federal Library and Information Network, the business arm of the Federal Library and Information Center Committee: permission to use copyrighted material produced under assistance agreements is sought at the time an agreement is established. If the prospective copyright holder grants permission, then a statement to that effect is incorporated into the assistance agreement, incurring minimal, if any, additional costs. Without permission from copyright holders, however, documents prepared under EPA assistance agreements, using taxpayer dollars, will remain unavailable online to the public.

EPA Has Taken Steps to Communicate with Staff and Other Stakeholders about Its Network, but Its Staff Survey Was Flawed

EPA has taken steps to communicate with staff and other stakeholders about its library network—including providing information about the libraries as well as soliciting information from library users—but a 2009 survey about its staff’s information needs was flawed. In general, EPA staff and external stakeholders told us the agency is doing a better job of communicating with them and soliciting input on the operations and future direction of the library network, particularly at the local level. Representatives from EPA’s employees’ unions and regional science councils stated that communication about the library and its services— such as new resources, training, and open houses—is primarily done at the regional level, either through e-mail or the region’s intranet page. Although staff have not been directly solicited for feedback, according to the representatives, no outstanding issues regarding the libraries have been raised, except that a few representatives said they would like to see the libraries open 5 days and 40 hours per week.

To keep library managers and staff engaged in improving library operations, EPA has adopted a number of techniques to communicate with them and solicit their input. These techniques have allowed EPA to gather staff input for policies and procedures, operational issues, and Web page improvements. Examples include the following: The national library program manager holds monthly network teleconferences with library managers and staff on matters of interest to the entire network or on operational topics, such as the library policy and procedures.

The national library program manager also holds ad hoc teleconferences with library managers elsewhere in the network to discuss their libraries’ needs.

Managers and staff use mailing lists to communicate with one another about daily library operations or requests for assistance.

For the last 3 years, EPA has held an annual network meeting in different locations for library managers and staff to foster collaboration, provide training, and share information about the network. At the last meeting, in October 2009, participants discussed ways to address results of the 2009 staff survey, prepared for the next round of digitization, and discussed ways to improve library services. The next annual meeting is scheduled for March 2011.

EPA and the union representing EPA staff agreed to create a union- management advisory board with six members—three union representatives and three from EPA management. The board reviews and makes recommendations on library network policy and procedures and will review the library network strategic plan once it is completed. In December 2009, EPA instituted a pilot program, an “ask a librarian” live chat. Ten libraries are participating in the program, which lets users contact a librarian through an electronic link to request services. As of July 2010, the “ask a librarian” pilot was available only to EPA staff.

To begin to realize its vision of effectively implementing new information technologies and making documents readily available electronically, EPA in 2007 engaged a contractor to review the user-friendliness of the combined Web page, or gateway, to the NSCEP and NEPIS online databases. The review identified ways to improve the site’s effectiveness and overall functionality for users. EPA implemented many of these improvements. For example, the gateway home page now describes the purpose of each database (NSCEP for print materials and NEPIS for electronic documents) and what types of publications they contain, noting that they contain only EPA publications. EPA made several changes to the document display page as well, such as placing a navigation bar at the top and bottom of the document with large icons and providing a button that allows users to obtain a copy in one of three formats. The display page allows users to put a copy of frequently used documents in a holding area for later retrieval. Work is also under way to integrate Google search capabilities into this gateway, as well as the ability to refine the precision of searches with user-friendly “clouds” of related keywords. In addition, EPA has added easy ways for users to offer feedback, which EPA may then incorporate to make improvements. For example, the navigation bar on the document display page now includes a “report an error” button, and every page has a “contact us” link. Furthermore, the left frame of the site contains a link to a customer satisfaction survey, and the site also has a separate page for user feedback.

EPA has also made outreach efforts to library professionals outside EPA— primarily by presenting and exhibiting at professional library association trade shows and conferences, attending external training, visiting other federal national libraries, and interacting with its external board of advisors. Ties with the external board have been a particularly important part of EPA’s response to concerns over the agency’s library reorganization. From June 2007 through February 2010, the national library program manager met with the board approximately 20 times, working with it on the full range of key issues, from policy development to funding models to communication with stakeholders. The external board also advised EPA on the development of a survey to assess the information needs of EPA staff.

One of the principles in the draft outline of the strategic plan is soliciting feedback from internal and external stakeholders about their information needs. To solicit such feedback from staff, EPA in early 2008, under the direction of the national library program manager, engaged a contractor to conduct interviews, hold focus groups, and conduct a Web-based survey. The survey was made available for approximately 1 month in 2009 via a secure Web site only to EPA staff (about 17,000 individuals), not all of whom were library users. After the survey was completed, the contractor conducted a series of focus groups and one-on-one interviews with EPA managers, focusing on significant issues identified in the Web-based survey; according to EPA officials, these in-person discussions were to help ensure that a comprehensive perspective of user needs was captured. EPA officials stated that the Web-based survey results corroborated what the agency learned in an earlier survey, done in 2004 to 2005. On the basis of the survey results, focus group discussions, and management interviews, the contractor developed recommendations for EPA’s consideration. EPA received the results of the survey and discussions, along with the contractor’s recommendations, in August 2009 and has assigned working groups of library staff to review the findings and suggest how EPA could address them.

We found, however, that this survey had flaws, similar to those we identified in the 2004 to 2005 survey and discussed in our 2008 report, which greatly reduce its usefulness. First, in both the earlier and the 2009 surveys, the response rate was 14 percent, far lower than the 80 percent response rate that Office of Management and Budget guidance recommends for a survey to increase the likelihood that it adequately represents a universe of respondents. Neither EPA nor the contractor for the 2009 survey analyzed the results for the nonresponse bias that may occur at response rates lower than 80 percent, particularly if the group of respondents differs significantly in relevant ways from nonrespondents. Thus, EPA cannot be assured that either survey accurately described staff needs for information or their uses of the library. Second, respondents to both the 2009 and the earlier survey were self-selected, a methodology that often leads to biased samples, since the traits that affect a person’s decision to participate in the survey—such as strong opinions or substantial knowledge—may be correlated with traits that affect survey responses; the result is an unrepresentative sample of possible respondents. The risk of potential bias through self-selection is increased by the fact that neither EPA nor the contractor for the 2009 survey instituted any safeguards to prevent respondents from submitting more than one survey each. Thus, there is no assurance that the survey results are unbiased and reflect a broad range of EPA staff perspectives and experiences. Third, in neither survey did EPA gather views from or determine the needs of other significant users of EPA libraries, such as state and local environmental organizations or the public at large. Although EPA officials told us that EPA is planning to assess the needs of public patrons, an assessment that does not correct the methodological weaknesses we found in EPA’s two previous surveys of its staff is unlikely to produce results that accurately reflect the needs of public patrons.

Conclusions

In the 4 years since EPA issued a reorganization plan for its library network, the agency has taken a number of steps to better communicate with, and meet the needs of, library users. EPA’s lack of a completed strategic plan identifying its overall strategy for the network, however, leaves unclear how the agency will translate into reality its vision of a “premier environmental library” with an “emphasis on electronic resources.” Steps the agency has taken, including hiring a national library program manager and establishing a uniform policy and some procedures for the libraries, have led to some improvements in library services and will undoubtedly enhance network cohesion. But without a completed strategic plan that contains implementation goals and timelines, neither EPA nor users of its libraries can have a clear view of what EPA plans to do, when EPA plans to do it, and whether EPA’s actions will ultimately meet users’ needs. In particular, without a strategy for acquiring, deploying, and efficiently allocating library funding, the library network could have difficulty maintaining high-quality service in the digital age. Moreover, EPA’s approach to digitizing copyrighted works in the future— as well as the fact that the agency has not yet inventoried all library holdings—could, if not revisited, detract significantly from the utility of the library network. Specifically, unless EPA revisits its decision not to digitize documents prepared with taxpayer dollars under assistance agreements, it may be missing opportunities to make these documents more readily available to users, including other federal users, who need them to better carry out their work. Finally, improvements to the library network’s Internet gateway offer new means of seeking feedback from library patrons about their use of and need for library services. Nevertheless, EPA does not have a valid method for assessing those library users’ needs. If, in future assessments of users’ needs, EPA fails to correct the flawed methods of its previous staff surveys, the agency is unlikely to obtain accurate information that would enable it to make appropriate decisions on the corrective actions that would best address those needs.

Recommendations for Executive Action

To ensure that EPA’s library network continues to meet its users’ needs, we recommend that the Administrator of EPA take the following six actions: Complete EPA’s strategic plan for the library network, including implementation goals and timelines. In so doing, EPA should outline details for how funding decisions are to be made, to ensure that they are informed and transparent.

Complete an inventory of the library network’s holdings to identify what items remain to be digitized.

For assistance agreements already in place, EPA should digitize documents produced under the agreements and make them available to federal employees and other authorized users for federal government purposes. In future assistance agreements, make explicit that EPA can include in the agency’s public online database, without obtaining prior permission from the copyright holder, any documents produced under the agreements.

For future assistance agreements where EPA cannot make such an arrangement, EPA should digitize documents produced under the agreements and make them available to federal employees and other authorized users for federal government purposes.

Ensure that the data analysis protocols used for conducting surveys of users’ needs—including sampling procedures and response rates—are sufficiently sound methodologically to provide reliable information on which to base decisions and allocate resources efficiently.

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation

We provided EPA with a draft of this report for review and comment. With clarifications, the agency concurred with our recommendations. EPA acknowledged that the planning document available on the agency’s Web site—which our report refers to as the draft outline of the strategic plan— has provided more of a working agenda than a strategic plan to guide the rebuilding of the library program. In responding to our recommendations, EPA wrote that it believes it now has enough information to develop an effective strategic plan for the library network and that it is time to complete and publish a formal plan identifying an overall network strategy, with implementation goals and a timeline for future accomplishments. The agency stated that it is moving forward with the strategic plan, which it aims to complete in fiscal year 2011. In addition, EPA said it will address the inventory of library holdings, completing a schedule for cataloging the inventory by November 1, 2010, and striving to complete the cataloging by September 30, 2011. The agency further agreed to take the necessary steps to ensure that any future assessments of users’ needs employ methodologically sound data protocols and provide reliable information.

Regarding our recommendations on the digitization of copyrighted documents produced under assistance agreements, EPA said it would address the feasibility and legality of digitizing products resulting from such agreements. For future assistance agreements, the agency said it will develop options for gaining advance permission to digitize products from these agreements and take these options to senior agency managers by mid-2011 for consideration and action. For existing assistance agreements, however, EPA wrote that, because of legal and technical constraints, it does not plan to digitize products produced under existing agreements. In further clarifying the agency’s written comments, EPA officials told us that because the documents produced under existing assistance agreements are copyrighted, the agency cannot include them in its public online database. In the agency’s view, EPA would therefore need to develop a forum for disseminating the documents to EPA staff and determine whether other federal employees needed access to the documents for federal government purposes. EPA officials also said that digitizing these documents was constrained by several factors, including agency priorities for which documents are to take precedence and efforts to identify which of the many types of assistance programs are likely to produce documents of most value to EPA staff. We have clarified the wording of our recommendations to eliminate any implied reference that EPA should make the copyrighted documents available to the general public in its online database, and we maintain that making copyrighted documents resulting from assistance agreements available solely for federal government purposes is permissible, feasible, and desirable.

EPA’s written comments appear in appendix II. EPA also provided technical corrections, which we incorporated.

As agreed with your offices, unless you publicly announce the contents of this report earlier, we plan no further distribution until 30 days from the report date. At that time, we will send copies of this report to the appropriate congressional committees, Administrator of EPA, and other interested parties. in addition, this report will be available at no charge on the GAO Web site at http://www.gao.gov.

If you or your staff members have any questions on this report, please contact me at (202) 512-3841 or stephensonj@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made major contributions to this report are listed in appendix III.

Appendix I: Scope and Methodology

To complete our work, we reviewed relevant Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funding and inventory documents, policies, plans, guidance, and procedures, as well as related regulations and requirements pertinent to the library network and efforts to improve its operations. We limited our review to the 26 libraries belonging to EPA’s library network, that is, libraries that are members of the Online Computer Library Center system. We focused on EPA’s headquarters library, the 10 regional libraries funded in part by EPA’s Office of Environmental Information, and the Office of Administration and Resources Management libraries in Cincinnati, Ohio (which is responsible for EPA’s digitization and Web site maintenance), and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. We compared library operations before, during, and after attempted reorganization in fiscal year 2007; obtained and reviewed library network policy and procedures; reviewed the agency’s draft outline of a strategic plan for the library network; obtained and reviewed documents on EPA’s digitization process; and reviewed EPA’s efforts to communicate with and solicit input from users. We interviewed EPA librarians and library managers in selected EPA libraries, as well as Office of Environmental Information officials knowledgeable about EPA’s library network and budget; when possible, we corroborated information provided to us during interviews with relevant documentation. We also interviewed management officials from the federal employees’ union representing EPA staff and spoke with representatives from EPA’s regional science councils, which consist of EPA scientists and technical specialists. We further sought information from library professionals, including representatives from the Library of Congress; the National Agriculture Library; and, through visits and interviews, from Lockheed Martin and Integrated Solutions and Services, contractors involved in digitizing EPA documents.

In addition, we obtained information on library funding from each of the 26 libraries in the network from fiscal year 2002 to fiscal year 2010. Because EPA does not specifically track funding for the libraries, the information provided contained a mix of outlays for some fiscal years and budget authority for other fiscal years. In addition, the information provided by each of the libraries reflected only spending by the library and not funding sources. For example, a large portion of funding for regional office libraries comes from the Office of Environmental Information, but these libraries also receive funding from other EPA program offices, such as Superfund. Also, funding data from the libraries contained a mix of funding for contract support; library staff salaries; and acquisition costs for books, journals, and other materials. We interviewed EPA budget officials to assess data reliability and performed a limited test to verify the accuracy and completeness of the data provided by the libraries. On the basis of this test and discussions with EPA officials, we concluded that the data were not reliable enough to include in our report.

We also obtained data on the number of EPA and other documents that have already been digitized and the number still to be digitized. After limited testing and discussions with EPA officials, we determined that EPA’s data on library funding and on the number of digitized documents and those scheduled to be digitized were not sufficiently reliable for our purposes. Because these data were the only data available, however, we used them to some extent, noting their limitations in our report as appropriate. We also reviewed documents about EPA’s digitization process, guidance on what documents should or should not be digitized, and digitization contracts, and we discussed the contents of these documents with EPA and digitization-contractor officials. We also discussed EPA’s future digitization plans with Office of Environmental Information officials.

In addition, we assessed EPA’s survey of library users, examining the adequacy of the survey methodology, including response rate, sampling methodology, security measures, survey questions, and processes. To determine the adequacy of the response rate to EPA’s survey, we followed an 80 percent response rate as a criterion, as Office of Management and Budget guidance recommends and we apply in our own surveys to increase the likelihood of sufficiently representing a universe of respondents. For surveys with response rates lower than 80 percent, we also perform an analysis to determine the existence of nonresponse bias. To generate its survey sample, however, EPA relied on self-selection, using a Web site to make the survey available to approximately 17,000 EPA staff; the response rate achieved was 14 percent. We performed a limited nonresponse analysis of EPA’s survey data and determined that some staffing categories were represented in proportions different from those found in the population of EPA staff. Given the 14 percent response rate to EPA’s survey, the nonrandom methodology that generated the sample, and the results of our limited analysis for nonresponse bias, we found EPA’s survey results to be inadequate for EPA’s purpose of obtaining a representative view of EPA library users. We also interviewed local union representatives from headquarters and some of EPA’s regional offices. Furthermore, we interviewed regional science council representatives from some of the regional offices. The science councils are located in each regional office and consist of EPA scientists and technical specialists. To determine the extent to which EPA communicated with and solicited views from outside stakeholders, we interviewed representatives from several professional library associations and other external stakeholder groups, such as the American Library Association, the Library of Congress, the Federal Library and Information Center Committee, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. We also reviewed information EPA provided to the public via the EPA Web site or, when applicable, Federal Register notices.

We conducted this performance audit from October 2009 through September 2010, in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Appendix II: Comments from the Environmental Protection Agency

Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments

GAO Contact

Staff Acknowledgments

In addition to the contact above, Ed Kratzer, Assistant Director; Ellen W. Chu; Pamela Davidson; Les Mahagan; John C. Martin; Ben Shouse; and Jeannette Soares made key contributions to this report.