United States General Accounting Office
GAO Testimony
Before the Subcommittee on VA, HUD,
and Independent Agencies,
Committee on Appropriations,
U.S. Senate
For Release
on Delivery
Expected at
MANAGING FOR RESULTS
9:30 a.m. EDT
Tuesday
April 8, 1997
EPA’s Efforts to Implement
Needed Management
Systems and Processes
Statement for the Record by
Peter F. Guerrero, Director,
Environmental Protection Issues,
Resources, Community, and Economic
Development Division
GAO/T-RCED-97-116
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
We appreciate the opportunity to present this statement for the record,
which discusses the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) efforts to
improve its methods of establishing priorities, allocating resources, and
measuring performance. As you know, EPA is currently developing a new
approach for managing its strategic planning, budgeting, and
accountability processes. The new approach, known as the planning,
budgeting, and accountability system, responds to the National Academy
of Public Administration’s (NAPA) April 1995 recommendation that EPA
improve and integrate its management processes.1
In response to this Subcommittee’s continuing interest in how EPA sets
priorities and helps to manage the nation’s environment, we reviewed the
status of EPA’s efforts to (1) establish an Office of Planning, Analysis, and
Accountability to develop and implement an integrated planning,
budgeting, and accountability system and (2) ensure that the agency has
comprehensive scientific and environmental data and appropriate
environmental measures of progress in carrying out its strategic planning,
budgeting, and accountability processes. Our testimony today is based on
the preliminary results of our ongoing work for the Subcommittee. A final
report on our work will be provided to the Subcommittee this summer.
In summary, our preliminary findings are as follows:
• In March 1996, the EPA Administrator announced plans to create a new
Office of Planning, Analysis, and Accountability. The office was
established in January 1997. In the interim, an EPA work group composed
of employees on temporary assignment started to develop the new
planning, budgeting, and accountability system. However, the work group
was not fully staffed, and the development of the new system is still in the
early stages. The new Office of Planning, Analysis, and Accountability will
not be fully staffed before July 1997.
• EPA faces long-term challenges to obtain the scientific and environmental
data needed to fully support its new system. Although much
environmental information has already been collected, many gaps exist
and the data are often difficult to compile because divergent data
collection methods have been used. Likewise, much effort is still required
to identify, develop, and agree on a comprehensive set of environmental
measures to link the agency’s activities to changes in environmental
conditions. Without environmental measures, EPA has to rely solely on
1
Setting Priorities, Getting Results: A New Direction for EPA, NAPA (Apr. 1995).
Page 1 GAO/T-RCED-97-116
administrative measures, such as the number of permits issued or
inspections made, to measure its performance or success.
In an April 1995 report, the National Academy of Public Administration
Background recommended that EPA establish specific environmental goals and
strategies to attain them, and use comparative risk analyses to select
priorities and develop strategies for specific programs. NAPA also said that
EPA should consolidate its 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. The NAPA study’s recommendations are similar to
the requirements for federal agencies established by the Government
Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA). Under GPRA, agencies must
establish strategic plans by September 30, 1997. GPRA also requires
agencies to submit to the Office of Management and Budget, beginning for
fiscal year 1999, annual performance plans, including annual performance
goals and performance measures. The first annual performance plans are
to be submitted in the fall of 1997.
In response to NAPA’s recommendations, in July 1995, EPA created a task
force to study ways to improve the agency’s management processes. In its
report, the task force recommended an integrated system composed of
strategic planning, budgeting, and accountability processes. In the
planning process, EPA was to develop a strategic plan that would be based
on the agency’s goals. During the budgeting process, each goal in the
strategic plan would be considered, and an annual performance plan
would be prepared showing the agency’s progress to date and plans for
future expenditures. During the accountability process, EPA would
determine progress under the annual plans and use the data on progress to
make corrections in the strategic and annual performance plans.
In March 1996, the EPA Administrator and Deputy Administrator endorsed
the task force’s recommendations for developing an integrated planning,
budgeting, and accountability system and directed that the
recommendations be implemented. In making a commitment to
substantially revise the agency’s management systems, EPA officials
recognized that the effort would take several years to complete. The EPA
Administrator and Deputy Administrator also announced plans to create a
new office by January 1997 to consolidate the agency’s planning,
budgeting, and accountability processes. In the interim, a work group
Page 2 GAO/T-RCED-97-116
composed of employees on temporary assignment was established to
begin developing the new system.
In January 1997, the EPA Administrator approved the structure and staffing
EPA Is in the Process plans for the new office, called the Office of Planning, Analysis, and
of Staffing Its New Accountability. The interim work group that had been assigned to develop
Office the new system was detailed to the new office to continue its work. The
work group has 21 employees, fewer than half the number that EPA had
planned for the group.
The new office is authorized 49 employees. As of the end of March 1997,
EPA had published job announcements to fill 26 of the new positions. EPA
officials told us that these announced positions, which are open only to
current EPA employees, will be filled in May 1997. The remaining positions,
which are to be announced governmentwide, are not likely to be filled
before July 1997. The officials told us that the office was not fully staffed
when it was established because time was required to determine the most
appropriate types of skills and work experiences needed and to implement
a competitive process for selecting staff.
Given the office’s limited staffing, the development of an integrated system
is in the early stages. For example, EPA is reviewing the agency’s 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. According to EPA officials, the development of the new
budgeting component will begin after the agency completes its strategic
plan in September 1997. They said that EPA’s fiscal year 1999 budget will be
structured along the lines of the goals in the strategic plan.
Thus far, the work group members have spent most of their time
developing a strategic plan, which is required by September 30, 1997,
under GPRA. An important part of the new strategic planning process is the
selection of goals and objectives that can be used to guide the agency’s
actions and to measure its performance. Although EPA is making progress
toward developing its strategic plan, it has not completed two studies that
are intended to identify the most appropriate goals for the agency and to
Page 3 GAO/T-RCED-97-116
provide the latest scientific information on environmental risk.2 EPA
officials told us that the September 30, 1997, strategic plan will be updated,
as appropriate, to reflect the final results of these studies, which are likely
to be completed in late 1997 or early 1998.
Although EPA continues to expand and improve the environmental data it
EPA Must Overcome compiles, it still needs to fill data gaps; improve the quality of its data;
Information integrate information systems; and build the capability to compile,
Challenges to organize, and analyze the data in ways useful to EPA managers and
stakeholders. In addition to the measures of outputs or program activities
Implement Its New that it currently relies on to assess its performance, EPA is working to
System develop environmental measures that enable the agency to evaluate the
impact of its programs on the environment and determine whether they
are achieving the desired results.
EPA’s Environmental Data The need to assess EPA’s performance in terms of changes in
and Systems Need to Be environmental conditions substantially increases the demand for
Improved high-quality environmental data. Such data are also needed to identify
emerging problems so that they can be addressed before significant
damage is done to the environment. Despite EPA’s efforts 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.3
In its April 1995 report, NAPA also 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. Without monitoring
data, EPA must rely on estimates and limited, site-specific data. NAPA also
concluded that much remains to be done to improve the overall
management of environmental information in the agency. It noted that EPA
had over 500 information systems and that program offices, which are
responsible for their own data, use different methods and definitions to
gather data. Furthermore, EPA relies on data compiled by other federal
2
One of the studies, EPA’s National Environmental Goals Project, is being performed to establish a set
of long-range national environmental goals with realistic and measurable milestones for the year 2005.
The other study, the Integrated Risk Project, is being performed to rank the relative risk of
environmental problems, and to develop methodologies that EPA can use to make future risk rankings.
3
Reinventing Environmental Regulation, National Performance Review (Mar. 16, 1995).
Page 4 GAO/T-RCED-97-116
agencies and the states. According to NAPA, these agencies and the states
also use divergent methods of collecting data.4
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
determine the costs of doing so.5 The agency’s difficulty 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.
Efforts to Develop EPA and the states are devoting considerable attention to developing
Environmental Measures environmental indicators or measures for use in assessing programs’
Need Focus performance and better informing the public about environmental
conditions and trends. Some efforts are just starting, while some of the
agency’s program and regional offices and some states have begun to use
these measures in reporting on their programs’ performance. Although EPA
and state officials believe that environmental measures are more useful
than measures of activities for assessing programs’ performance, they
recognize that scientific and technical issues have to be addressed before
indicators that really measure environmental conditions and trends can be
widely used. Developing and using environmental indicators for an entire
program presents significant challenges.
The scientific and technical challenges include identifying (1) a range of
health or environmental conditions that can be measured and (2) changes
in these conditions that can be linked to a program’s activities. These tasks
are especially difficult because natural causes, such as changes in weather
patterns, and other factors outside a program’s control can affect
environmental conditions. In some cases, data or indicators are not
4
In Environmental Protection: EPA’s Problems With Collection and Management of Scientific Data and
Its Efforts to Address Them (GAO/T-RCED-95-174, May 12, 1995), we testified that our previous
reports had identified long-standing data quality and data management problems at EPA.
5
Managing for Results, EPA’s Planning, Budgeting, and Accountability Task Force (Feb. 23, 1996).
Page 5 GAO/T-RCED-97-116
available for a specific aspect of the environment because of high costs or
technical difficulties. Thus, it could be some time before EPA is able to
develop and use a set of environmental indicators that accurately reflect
the impact of its programs or their results.
According to EPA officials, the agency’s and the states’ efforts to develop
and use environmental measures 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 goals and indicators, (2) the
qualities of a good indicator are not well understood, and (3) 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.
An additional challenge will be to reach agreement within EPA and among
its stakeholders on the specific environmental indicators that will be used
to measure performance. A consensus may be difficult to reach because of
the potential for debate on what is important about individual programs
and whether a relatively small number of measures can adequately reflect
the effects of an agency’s or a program’s activities. EPA will need a set of
measures common to all the states to report to the Congress and the
public on the agency’s performance and the state of the nation’s
environment. At the same time, the development of national measures, to
the extent that such measures drive the implementation of environmental
programs, will reduce the states’ flexibility to tailor the programs to meet
local needs and conditions, a major concern of the states. Reporting on
new measures will also increase the states’ costs unless other reporting
requirements are eliminated or reduced.
In May 1995, EPA signed an agreement with state leaders to implement a
new system of federal oversight for state environmental programs. This
new National Environmental Performance Partnership System
fundamentally changes EPA’s working relationship with the states because
it places greater emphasis on the use of environmental goals and
indicators, calls for environmental performance agreements between EPA
and individual states, and provides opportunities for reducing the agency’s
oversight of state programs that exhibit high performance in certain areas.
As of March 1997, about half of the states had signed performance
partnership agreements to participate in the system.
Page 6 GAO/T-RCED-97-116
EPA’s Office of Regional Operations and State/Local Relations is developing
a set of core performance measures, including some environmental
indicators, that the agency’s regional offices are to use in negotiating
annual work plans and agreements with the states. The core measures are
to be focused and limited in number, representing measurable priorities
for each of EPA’s national program managers. They are to serve as the
minimum measures in performance agreements with the states, which may
develop additional measures to represent their own environmental or
programmatic issues. In addition, a particular core measure may not be
required if a state can demonstrate that the measure does not apply or
cannot be addressed. According to EPA, its national program managers will
finalize their core measures in April 1997 and its regional staff will begin
negotiations with the states to incorporate the measures into the
agreements for fiscal year 1998. At this point, it is too soon to know how
extensively EPA’s regional offices will be negotiating measures that reflect
programs’ direct effects on human health and the environment.
(160395) Page 7 GAO/T-RCED-97-116
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Address Correction Requested
Managing for Results: EPA's Efforts to Implement Needed Management Systems and Processes
Published by the Government Accountability Office on 1997-04-08.
Below is a raw (and likely hideous) rendition of the original report. (PDF)