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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

EPA’s management challenges are to strengthen its reputation for unbiased, sound science and to focus on health-based program results. As can be seen by across-the-board green progress ratings, EPA is making progress on all five management initiatives.

Initiative Status Progress

Human Capital — EPA has continued the innovative Senior Executive Service mobility program, which allows managers to rotate to different jobs in the agency, improving program knowledge and skill sets. EPA remains red in status because its human capital strategy is not aligned with the agency’s strategic plan.
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Competitive Sourcing — EPA has not yet met the competitive sourcing goal of 15 percent to get to yellow. To get to green, EPA must meet a 50 percent goal. However, EPA’s progress is green as it has exceeded its 2002 goal, and is on target to meet the 2003 goal. Competitions are underway for scientific and technical functions that perform risk assessment and analysis.
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Financial Performance — EPA has corrected all material weaknesses, begun implementation of grants competition, and reviewed its State Revolving Fund erroneous payments.
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Enhancing E-Government — EPA was recently chosen to be the managing partner for the online rulemaking initiative.

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Budget/Performance Integration — The absence of valid outcome performance data has hindered EPA in evaluating the impacts of its programs on the environment and public health.
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Program Assessments

Eleven EPA programs were reviewed using the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). The programs included four grant programs, six direct federal programs and one regulatory program. The purpose of each of the eleven programs is clear and most are well designed. Program management is generally good. However, the lack of measured results and appropriate outcome measures pulls overall ratings down. In terms of patterns within this sample, strategic planning is much stronger for direct federal programs than it is for the grant programs. But insufficient performance measures affected all programs about the same. As with many other agencies, to improve accountability further work will continue to focus on developing outcome-oriented performance measures, including efficiency metrics.

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