Congress enacted RCRA to protect human health and the environment and to conserve energy and material resources. In implementing RCRA, EPA is responsible for developing federal hazardous waste management and disposal requirements and for ensuring compliance with these requirements. Two offices within EPA share responsibility for RCRA—the Office of Solid Waste (OSW) and the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. EPA may authorize states to implement their own RCRA programs, or portions thereof, provided that their programs meet federal requirements. Currently, 46 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam, have been authorized to implement at least some portion of RCRA. States that are authorized receive annual grants from EPA and are subject to EPA oversight. In fiscal year 1994, EPA gave approximately $92 million in RCRA grant money to these states and territories. To help manage RCRA, EPA and authorized states collect and manage data on more than 250,000 hazardous waste handlers, including 210,900 small quantity generators; 15,300 large quantity generators; 19,700 transporters; and 4,300 treatment, storage, and disposal facilities. Day-to-day RCRA activities include assigning hazardous waste handler identification numbers; issuing permits; tracking inspections, violations, and enforcement actions; and maintaining other related data to assess the extent to which facilities are complying with RCRA regulations. In 1985, to overcome problems with the information system it was using, known as the Hazardous Waste Data Management System, EPA began developing RCRIS. Both the states and EPA had reported that the Hazardous Waste Data Management System was not adequately supporting the program in many areas, including permitting, compliance monitoring, and enforcement. In addition, the system was criticized as cumbersome, difficult to use, and confusing, and the database was criticized as excessively complex. The overall goal of RCRIS was to help both the federal government and the states better manage the hazardous waste program. The National Governors’ Association assisted EPA in identifying state needs for RCRIS. EPA determined, based on information collected by the Association, that for RCRIS to be successful, the system had to meet the following four key objectives: (1) provide individual databases for each state, (2) be user friendly, (3) be flexible enough to meet federal requirements, as well as the specific needs of individual states, and (4) provide a mechanism for maintaining highly reliable data. RCRIS became operational nationwide in 1991. The system comprises four key modules that mirror the major RCRA program activities. Table 1 provides the name and purpose of these modules. Although OSW did not maintain information about RCRIS operational costs, a recent report by the EPA Inspector General stated that fiscal year 1993 operational costs were $7.5 million. This figure, however, excludes EPA’s and states’ personnel costs for time spent (1) entering, retrieving, and manipulating data in RCRIS and (2) developing and operating other systems and work-arounds to compensate for RCRIS inadequacies. Officials in OSW said they did not know these costs. Our work was performed at several offices at EPA headquarters, including the Office of Solid Waste, the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, and Office of Inspector General. These offices were located in Washington, D.C., and Arlington, Virginia. We also worked at EPA regional offices in Atlanta, Georgia; Dallas, Texas; and San Francisco, California; and at state offices responsible for RCRA in Tallahassee, Florida; Jackson, Mississippi; Little Rock, Arkansas; Austin, Texas; Carson City, Nevada; and Sacramento, California. We conducted our review from August 1994 through May 1995, in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. We requested comments on a draft of this report from the Administrator of EPA. The Director for the Office of Solid Waste provided us with comments on July 18, 1995. We have incorporated these comments where appropriate. RCRIS falls short of meeting its overall goal of helping EPA and the states manage the hazardous waste program because it has not met three of its primary objectives. While RCRIS provides individual databases for states to use to maintain their data, the system is difficult to use, difficult to tailor to meet individual state and EPA regional needs, and does not provide a mechanism for maintaining highly reliable data. RCRIS provides two databases for each state—one maintained by the state and one maintained by the EPA regional office. These databases are intended to support day-to-day RCRA activities carried out by the states and EPA regional offices. Extracts from these databases are merged to construct a database of required information for regional oversight. A national oversight database for EPA headquarters and national reporting is then formed by merging extracts from the regional merged databases. RCRIS is not easy to use, particularly with regard to data entry and retrieval. Data entry is cumbersome largely because of the design of the four key RCRIS modules. For example, each module uses numerous data entry screens, many of which allow the user to modify data in only a few data fields at one time. The RCRIS user manual shows that a user could possibly interact with up to 150 data entry screens to add, modify, or delete data. Because of this design, users are often required to switch between modules, screens, and files—even when making simple changes to the data. For example, to modify a hazardous waste handler’s information and add data for an inspection of a specific facility, a user must access the handler identification module, enter the handler’s identification number, update the handler information, exit the handler module, enter the compliance monitoring and enforcement module, reenter the handler’s identification number, and then enter the inspection information. Data entry is also difficult because codes are used extensively to represent much of the information that is recorded. These codes are used to describe various aspects of a hazardous waste handler, such as the process code that specifies the current waste treatment, storage, or disposal process being used. RCRIS’ four key modules include about 875 codes. The RCRIS user manual notes that understanding the majority of the codes is essential for successful data entry, maintenance, processing, and reporting. Users have also found data retrieval difficult. While users can obtain several standard reports from the system, these reports are voluminous. For example, up to four cardboard boxes are needed to hold one standard report on facilities. Consequently, users need to query the system to obtain specific information, but creating customized reports is very difficult. For example, to obtain information on a specific facility’s history or status directly from the system, a user must first know which files contain data on the facility. The user must then query each file to obtain the desired data. Finally, the user must know how to merge the extracted data to produce a single report. Users in the six states and the three EPA regions we visited said that creating these customized reports is very difficult. Another primary objective for RCRIS was that it be flexible enough to allow states and EPA regions to tailor the system to meet their individual program needs. However, users in five of the six state offices and all three of the regional offices we visited stated that RCRIS has not met their individual needs. Many of these users said they have no desire to tailor RCRIS to meet their needs because the system is just too difficult to use. We identified users in two EPA regions who said they had been able to better meet some individual needs using RCRIS. For example, because RCRIS’ standard reports do not include the precise information needed, these users developed customized query programs and reports, and have made them available to other users across the country. These users said they were able to do this because they invested a significant amount of time in learning the intricacies of the system and had become expert in using it. In addition, because almost all the states were using or developing their own systems, EPA wanted them to be able to extract the required data from their systems and submit it to RCRIS electronically. Although states can do this, state users told us that creating conversion software to reformat their data into RCRIS’ data structure and then modifying the conversion software each time EPA changes RCRIS’ data structure can be extremely difficult. Consequently, only one state transmits any data to RCRIS electronically. RCRIS does not provide a mechanism for maintaining highly reliable data. While EPA does not require data quality reviews of the data in RCRIS, the few ad hoc reviews that have been conducted have uncovered significant problems. For example, a Region VI (Dallas) review of facility demographic data on about 45,000 hazardous waste handlers identified over 15,000 errors on the location of the handlers. Similarly, Region IV (Atlanta) found anecdotal evidence of discrepancies between the data in RCRIS and the information in hard copy files. According to EPA officials, states have corrected most of these discrepancies. However, users in all regional and state offices we visited consistently expressed concerns about the quality of RCRIS data. In addition, as part of a review of whether land disposal facilities were complying with groundwater monitoring requirements, we found RCRIS data to be unreliable. We selected a random sample of 30 facilities out of RCRIS’ universe of 1,427 classified by EPA as land disposal facilities. For each sampled facility, we reviewed data in 14 data fields that were most relevant to groundwater monitoring requirements. We estimated minimum error rates ranging from 8 to 37 percent for eight of the data fields. These data provided information on the types of violations detected and enforcement actions taken. These data reliability problems can be attributed, in part, to a lack of controls over the quality of data when EPA converted from the predecessor system to RCRIS. Although EPA recognized that the conversion would result in inaccurate data, it did not require verification and correction of the data—a generally accepted practice.