Pipeline transportation for hazardous liquids and natural gas is the safest form of freight transportation. By one measure, the annual number of accidents, the hazardous liquid pipeline industry’s safety record has greatly improved over the past 10 years. (See fig. 1.) From 1994 through 2003, accidents on interstate hazardous liquid pipelines decreased by almost 49 percent from 245 in 1994 to 126 in 2003. However, the industry’s safety record for these pipelines has not improved for accidents with the greatest consequences—those resulting in a fatality, injury, or property damage totaling $50,000 or more—which we term serious accidents. The number of serious accidents stayed about the same over the 10-year period—about 88 every year. The overall accident rate for hazardous liquid pipelines—which considers both the amounts of products and the distances shipped—decreased from about 0.41 accidents per billion ton-miles shipped in 1994 to about 0.25 accidents per billion ton-miles shipped in 2002. The accident rate for serious interstate hazardous liquid pipeline accidents stayed the same, averaging about 0.15 accidents per billion ton-miles shipped from 1994 through 2002. In contrast to the decreasing number of accidents overall for hazardous liquid pipelines, the annual number of accidents on interstate natural gas pipelines increased by almost 20 percent from 81 in 1994 to 97 in 2003. (See fig. 2.) The number of serious accidents on interstate natural gas pipelines also increased, from 64 in 1994 to 84 in 2003, though they have fluctuated considerably over this time. Information on accident rates for natural gas pipelines is not available because of the lack of data on the amount of natural gas shipped through pipelines. For both hazardous liquid and natural gas pipelines, the lack of improvement in the number of serious accidents may be due in part to the relatively small number of these accidents. OPS, within the Department of Transportation’s Research and Special Programs Administration (RSPA), administers the national regulatory program to ensure the safe transportation of natural gas and hazardous liquids by pipeline. The office attempts to ensure the safe operation of pipelines through regulation, national consensus standards, research, education (e.g., to prevent excavation-related damage), oversight of the industry through inspections, and enforcement when safety problems are found. The office uses a variety of enforcement tools, such as compliance orders and corrective action orders that require pipeline operators to correct safety violations, notices of amendment to remedy deficiencies in operators’ procedures, administrative actions to address minor safety problems, and civil penalties. OPS is a small federal agency. In fiscal year 2003, OPS employed about 150 people, about half of whom were pipeline inspectors. Before imposing a civil penalty on a pipeline operator, OPS issues a notice of probable violation that documents the alleged violation and a notice of proposed penalty that identifies the proposed civil penalty amount. Failure by an operator to inspect the pipeline for leaks or unsafe conditions is an example of a violation that may lead to a civil penalty. OPS then allows the operator to present evidence either in writing or at an informal hearing. Attorneys from RSPA’s Office of Chief Counsel preside over these hearings. Following the operator’s presentation, the civil penalty may be affirmed, reduced, or withdrawn. If the hearing officer determines that a violation did occur, the OPS’s associate administrator issues a final order that requires the operator to correct the safety violation (if a correction is needed) and pay the penalty (called the “assessed penalty”). The operator has 20 days after the final order is issued to pay the penalty. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) collects civil penalties for OPS. From 1992 through 2002, federal law allowed OPS to assess up to $25,000 for each day a violation continued, not to exceed $500,000 for any related series of violations. In December 2002, the Pipeline Safety Improvement Act increased these amounts to $100,000 and $1 million, respectively. The effectiveness of OPS’s enforcement strategy cannot be determined because OPS has not incorporated three key elements of effective program management—clear performance goals for the enforcement program, a fully defined strategy for achieving these goals, and performance measures linked to goals that would allow an assessment of the enforcement strategy’s impact on pipeline safety. OPS’s enforcement strategy has undergone significant changes in the last 5 years. Before 2000, the agency emphasized partnering with the pipeline industry to improve pipeline safety rather than punishing noncompliance. In 2000, in response to concerns that its enforcement was weak and ineffective, the agency decided to institute a “tough but fair” enforcement approach and to make greater use of all its enforcement tools, including larger and more frequent civil penalties. In 2001, to further strengthen its enforcement, OPS began issuing more corrective action orders requiring operators to address safety problems that led or could lead to pipeline accidents. In 2002, OPS created a new Enforcement Office to focus more on enforcement and help ensure consistency in enforcement decisions. However, this new office is not yet fully staffed, and key positions remain vacant. In 2002, OPS began to enforce its new integrity management and operator qualification standards in addition to its minimum safety standards. Initially, while operators were gaining experience with the new, complex integrity management standards, OPS primarily used notices of amendment, which require improvements in procedures, rather than stronger enforcement actions. Now that operators have this experience, OPS has begun to make greater use of civil penalties in enforcing these standards. OPS has also recently begun to reengineer its enforcement program. Efforts are under way to develop a new enforcement policy and guidelines, develop a streamlined process for handling enforcement cases, modernize and integrate the agency’s inspection and enforcement databases, and hire additional enforcement staff. However, as I will now discuss, OPS has not put in place key elements of effective management that would allow it to determine the impact of its evolving enforcement program on pipeline safety. Although OPS has overall performance goals, it has not established specific goals for its enforcement program. According to OPS officials, the agency’s enforcement program is designed to help achieve the agency’s overall performance goals of (1) reducing the number of pipeline accidents by 5 percent annually and (2) reducing the amount of hazardous liquid spills by 6 percent annually. Other agency efforts—including the development of a risk-based approach to finding and addressing significant threats to pipeline safety and of education to prevent excavation-related damage to pipelines—are also designed to help achieve these goals. OPS’s overall performance goals are useful because they identify the end outcomes, or ultimate results, that OPS seeks to achieve through all its efforts. However, OPS has not established performance goals that identify the intermediate outcomes, or direct results, that OPS seeks to achieve through its enforcement program. Intermediate outcomes show progress toward achieving end outcomes. For example, enforcement actions can result in improvements in pipeline operators’ safety performance—an intermediate outcome that can then result in the end outcome of fewer pipeline accidents and spills. OPS is considering establishing a goal to reduce the time it takes the agency to issue final enforcement actions. While such a goal could help OPS improve the management of the enforcement program, it does not reflect the various intermediate outcomes the agency hopes to achieve through enforcement. Without clear goals for the enforcement program that specify intended intermediate outcomes, agency staff and external stakeholders may not be aware of what direct results OPS is seeking to achieve or how enforcement efforts contribute to pipeline safety. OPS has not fully defined its strategy for using enforcement to achieve its overall performance goals. According to OPS officials, the agency’s increased use of civil penalties and corrective action orders reflects a major change in its enforcement strategy. Although OPS began to implement these changes in 2000, it has not yet developed a policy that defines this new, more aggressive enforcement strategy or describes how it will contribute to the achievement of its performance goals. In addition, OPS does not have up-to-date, detailed internal guidelines on the use of its enforcement tools that reflect its current strategy. Furthermore, although OPS began enforcing its integrity management standards in 2002 and received greater enforcement authority under the 2002 pipeline safety act, it does not yet have guidelines in place for enforcing these standards or implementing the new authority provided by the act. According to agency officials, OPS management communicates enforcement priorities and ensures consistency in enforcement decisions through frequent internal meetings and detailed inspection protocols and guidance. Agency officials recognize the need to develop an enforcement policy and up-to-date detailed enforcement guidelines and have been working to do so. To date, the agency has completed an initial set of enforcement guidelines for its operator qualification standards and has developed other draft guidelines. However, because of the complexity of the task, agency officials do not expect that the new enforcement policy and remaining guidelines will be finalized until sometime in 2005. The development of an enforcement policy and guidelines should help define OPS’s enforcement strategy; however, it is not clear whether this effort will link OPS’s enforcement strategy with intermediate outcomes, since agency officials have not established performance goals specifically for their enforcement efforts. We have reported that such a link is important. According to OPS officials, the agency currently uses three performance measures and is considering three additional measures to determine the effectiveness of its enforcement activities and other oversight efforts. (See table 1.) The three current measures provide useful information about the agency’s overall efforts to improve pipeline safety, but do not clearly indicate the effectiveness of OPS’s enforcement strategy because they do not measure the intermediate outcomes of enforcement actions that can contribute to pipeline safety, such as improved compliance. The three measures that OPS is considering could provide more information on the intermediate outcomes of the agency’s enforcement strategy, such as the frequency of repeat violations and the number of repairs made in response to corrective action orders, as well as other aspects of program performance, such as the timeliness of enforcement actions.