NAPA’s April 1995 report recommended, among other things, that EPA establish specific environmental goals and strategies to attain them, use comparative risk analyses to inform the selection of priorities and the development of specific program strategies, consolidate the planning and budgeting functions, use the budget process to allocate resources to the agency’s priorities, and establish accountability by setting and tracking benchmarks and evaluating performance. NAPA’s recommendations on setting goals and objectives and ensuring accountability for meeting them are similar to the requirements for federal agencies established by the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA). Under GPRA, agencies are to develop strategic plans by September 30, 1997. In addition, agencies are to submit to the Office of Management and Budget annual performance plans, including annual performance goals and performance measures. The first annual performance plans are to be submitted in the fall of 1997 for fiscal year 1999. Agencies are also required to submit annual performance reports to the President and the Congress on the extent to which their programs are meeting annual performance goals. The act requires the first performance reports, which are to cover fiscal year 1999, by March 31, 2000. In establishing these planning and performance reporting requirements, GPRA did not specify the management processes that the individual agencies are to use to implement them. In response to NAPA’s recommendations, EPA created a task force in July 1995 to identify ways to improve and better integrate its processes for planning, budgeting, and ensuring accountability. The task force’s February 1996 report recommended a major restructuring of these processes into a “strong, centrally managed” system. The recommended system was envisioned to provide for (1) the more consistent and comprehensive use of science and analysis in setting the agency’s priorities and (2) greater management and fiscal accountability for implementing programs and activities according to budgets and operating plans. In March 1996, the EPA Administrator and Deputy Administrator directed the agency to implement the task force’s recommendations. They announced plans to create a new office by January 1997 to develop and implement the integrated planning, budgeting, and accountability system proposed by the task force. In the interim, EPA established the Planning, Budgeting, Accountability, and Analysis Work Group composed of employees on temporary assignment, to begin to develop the new system. Although approved by the Administrator in January 1997, EPA’s new Office of Planning, Analysis, and Accountability will not be fully staffed until July 1997. The Planning, Budgeting, Accountability, and Analysis Work Group began to develop the new system in March 1996, and its staff has been detailed to the new office until permanent employees are selected. However, the work group was not fully staffed, and much of its time was devoted to preparing the strategic plan due under GPRA by September 30, 1997. Given this level of staffing and focus on meeting the requirements of GPRA, EPA has made progress in designing an integrated system but has not yet implemented all the needed processes and procedures. The Office of Planning, Analysis, and Accountability, which is located in the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, is authorized 47 employees. (An organizational chart for the Office of the Chief Financial Officer is shown in fig. 1.) Division As of May 1997, EPA had filled 17 of the new positions—16 from within EPA and 1 from outside the agency. The remaining positions are anticipated to be filled by July 1997. The Acting Chief Financial Officer told us that staffing could not begin until the Administrator had approved the plans for the office. In addition, time is required to select staff using a competitive selection process. After its formation in March 1996, the Planning, Budgeting, Accountability, and Analysis Work Group began to develop the new planning, budgeting, and accountability system. The work group’s staff, who were detailed to the Office of Planning, Analysis, and Accountability until the permanent staff could be selected, have devoted much of their effort to preparing the strategic plan that GPRA requires by September 30, 1997. Although the work group was to have 40 to 50 temporary employees assigned from other parts of EPA, it has had no more than 27 employees assigned at any one time. Currently, 10 of the work group’s members remain on detail to the Office of Planning, Analysis, and Accountability. According to the Acting Chief Financial Officer, the work group had to compete with other high-priority activities for staff. Because of the work group’s staffing level and focus on meeting GPRA’s deadlines, EPA is in the early stages of developing an integrated system. EPA has a conceptual framework for the new system and has begun to develop the individual components. The agency is reviewing its former accountability process to find out what did and did not work well, contacting other federal agencies to determine how they account for progress in meeting their goals, and examining reporting systems in the agency’s program offices to identify their potential use in the new system. EPA hopes to have the accountability component in place by September 1999. EPA is also preparing the strategic plan that is to be completed in September 1997. On April 25, 1997, the agency provided the Congress with a detailed outline of the plan, including a draft of its mission statement and goals. It provided its draft objectives on May 21, 1997. The Congress is scheduled to receive a complete draft of the plan for review and consultation in July 1997. Once the strategic plan is completed, the development of the new budgeting component will begin. According to EPA officials, the agency plans to seek approval from the Office of Management and Budget and the Congress to restructure its fiscal year 1999 budget along the lines of the goals in the strategic plan. (A more detailed discussion of the framework and the status of EPA’s implementation of the system is contained in app. I.) EPA’s new planning, budgeting, and accountability system depends on the availability of credible information to identify environmental problems, establish priorities among competing needs, develop effective strategies to achieve goals and objectives, and assess progress or performance in meeting the goals and objectives. Although EPA continues to make improvements, the environmental data that it compiles have substantial shortcomings, including gaps and inconsistencies in quality. In addition, the agency’s information systems are not integrated. To evaluate the impact of its programs on the environment and determine whether they are achieving the desired results, EPA will need a comprehensive set of environmental measures. Although the agency’s efforts to develop such measures have been valuable, focusing these and future efforts could enable EPA to more effectively address scientific and technical obstacles and reach agreement with the states on the measures that will be used to assess their performance in carrying out environmental programs at the local level. The need to assess EPA’s performance in terms of changes in environmental conditions substantially increases the demand for high-quality environmental data. Such data are also needed to identify and respond to emerging problems before significant damage is done to the environment. Although EPA has tried to improve the quality of its data, these data are often unreliable, and the agency’s many disparate information systems are not integrated. These shortcomings have been raised in various external and internal reports on EPA, including the Vice President’s report on reinventing government. In its April 1995 report, NAPA identified the lack of high-quality data on environmental conditions as a particularly important problem for EPA. NAPA specifically noted the limited amount of information based on the real-time monitoring of environmental conditions. NAPA also concluded that much remains to be done to improve the agency’s overall management of environmental information. It noted that EPA had numerous information systems and that the agency’s program offices, which are responsible for their own data, use different methods and definitions to gather data. In addition, EPA relies on data compiled by other federal agencies and the states. According to NAPA, these agencies and the states also use divergent methods of collecting data. More recently, a 1996 EPA report concluded that the agency needs to redesign its many disparate fiscal and environmental data systems so that it and others can measure its success in meeting environmental goals and can determine the costs of doing so. The difficulty EPA has had in demonstrating its performance or the impact of its actions is illustrated by the findings of a team of agency personnel, which was formed in 1995 to evaluate the agency’s needs for environmental information. The team identified various problems with the information needed to report on environmental goals, such as gaps in the data and inconsistencies in the methods of collecting and/or reporting data across states or federal agencies. Specific examples include the lack of (1) national reporting on risk reduction at waste sites, (2) reliable data on the nature and cause of pesticide poisonings, (3) effective reporting on progress in improving the nation’s water quality, and (4) complete data on air pollutants. Although EPA and state officials recognize that measures of activities are still needed, they believe that environmental measures are more useful for assessing programs’ performance and for informing the public about environmental conditions. However, they understand that scientific and technical issues have to be addressed before EPA can widely use indicators of environmental conditions and trends. Greater use of these measures also depends on agreement with the states—EPA’s partners in implementing environmental programs—specifying the measures that will be used to assess their performance. EPA and the states have various efforts under way to develop and use environmental measures. According to EPA officials, these efforts have been valuable but disparate. Furthermore, at a conference convened by EPA in September 1996 to better coordinate these efforts, as well as in interviews conducted by EPA staff to prepare for the conference, regional and state representatives cited several concerns. They said, for example, that (1) clarification is needed on EPA’s and the states’ direction in developing indicators; (2) some qualities of a good indicator are not well understood; and (3) in some cases, determining whether the best indicators have been chosen will take many years. The representatives also believed that the data and resources needed to develop and use environmental indicators are inadequate.