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Department Updates
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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
Promoting the President's Management Agenda at EPA
In May 2002, Governor Whitman and I met with all of EPA's
members of the Senior Executive Service to reinforce our common
commitment to the President's Management Agenda. Since then the
Agency's leaders have been making great progress in a number of
areas.
SES Mobility Program
We found a creative way of dealing with
one of our human capital issues by instituting EPA's SES
Mobility program. Many of our senior executives wanted to expand
their opportunities for career growth by applying their skills
in new areas, and we recognized that this would also be good for
the Agency. EPA needs to deal with integrated environmental
issues-ones that concern more than just one of our program
areas-and senior managers with experience in more than one
program can contribute to more effective solutions. By rotating
SES members among our major programs, we broaden their
experience and bring their influence to the full range of our
operations. SES Mobility assignments also enhance our individual
program areas by addressing impending retirements and diversity
issues.
National Environmental Information Exchange Network
EPA is
actively involved in nine of the President's initiatives for
E-government but we have also developed our own business case
for E-government at EPA. Like other agencies, we depend on a
great deal of information generated by the states to keep track
of the results of the work we do together. Collecting and
working with that information has been complicated and
time-consuming. Working with the states, we've developed a
project to improve the quality of environmental data; make data
flow more efficiently between EPA, the states, and other
partners; reduce reporting burden; and improve access. The
National Environmental Information Exchange Network is supported
by a $25 million grant program in the President's FY 2002
budget.
Commercial Services Management
EPA's work on competitive sourcing has
earned us a "green light" for progress on the last two Executive
Branch Management Scorecards. Our initial approach concentrated
on the most likely opportunities to meet competitive sourcing
goals, and we had relatively good success. Now that those most
likely candidates have been identified, however, we're adopting
a more strategic approach to yield better results. We're putting
together an interoffice team to work with our program and
regional offices to identify similar functions, across the
Agency, that could be "bundled" for competitive reviews. The
team will also consult with other agencies to learn from their
best practices. We think this approach can help us find real
efficiencies for the Agency.
Performance Measurement
As is the case throughout the
Administration, we are focused on results. Environmental
improvements are the result of efforts by Federal, state, and
local governments, and it is challenging to identify which part
of the improvement can be attributed to EPA. Because
improvements can take many years to become evident, it's also a
challenge to associate one year's funding with a result that
might appear several years later. EPA is working on a set of
environmental indicators and a State of the Environment Report
to discuss the nation's ecological and human health conditions
and the quality of our air, water and land. We would be
interested in learning how other agencies are measuring
performance, and whether they have solved problems similar to
EPA's.
Costs and Results
As we improve our ability to describe
results, we're also developing better approaches to cost
information. EPA's flexible account structure lets us create
accounts for specific purposes, as we did when responding to
anthrax contamination on Capitol Hill. We were able to associate
costs with specific sites and break out payment information on
different activities-and we did this on a real-time basis to
produce accurate spending reports for Congressional requesters.
EPA has also invested in a business intelligence product that
will bring this up-to-date financial information direct to our
program managers for decision-making purposes.
These are the kinds of practical initiatives EPA is working on
to promote the President's Management Agenda for government
reform.
Yours truly,
Linda Fisher
Department Updates:
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