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David A. BloomDeputy Chief Financial OfficerOffice of the Chief Financial Officer
FY 16-17: Agency Priority Goal
Strengthen environmental protection through business process improvements enabled by joint governance and technology.
Priority Goal
Goal Overview
The evolving relationship of the EPA, states, and tribes over more than four decades is reflected in environmental programs developed under statutes that used different approaches and funding mechanisms to address varied environmental problems. While these programs have achieved dramatic improvements in environmental quality during this period, challenges remain. To tackle these complex environmental challenges, EPA, states and tribes have an opportunity to transform the way we implement these programs, as a shared responsibility, into an integrated national enterprise for environmental protection.
Additionally, environmental regulators face ever growing needs to share information within and across agencies, reduce staff burden of data entry, reduce regulatory reporting burdens, and improve environmental and human health protection. There is also an increasing expectation from the public and regulated community for the use of on-line systems and the desire for data transparency and personalized access. Both federal and state agencies recognize that easier access to and use of environmental data will facilitate better environmental protection and decision-making while also increasing overall data transparency.
E-Enterprise for the Environment is a joint initiative of states and EPA to improve environmental outcomes and enhance service to the regulated community and the public by maximizing the use of advanced monitoring and information technologies, optimizing operations, and increasing transparency. E-Enterprise will enable new environmental management approaches by modernizing EPA programs and regulations while streamlining and improving existing business processes. E-Enterprise will use the transformational capabilities of technologies to identify and implement programmatic and service improvements.
Strategies
As a state-EPA joint approach to environmental management, E-Enterprise is led and managed by the E-Enterprise Leadership Council (EELC). The EELC’s responsibilities include identifying, soliciting, reviewing, and prioritizing E-Enterprise projects, harmonizing state and EPA resources (existing and new investments) to support these projects, resolving policy issues impeding E-Enterprise project implementations, chartering and overseeing appropriate teams as necessary, and taking other actions as deemed necessary to achieve the vision of E-Enterprise.
The EELC selected five projects in 2014 out of 85 proposals with the potential to streamline business processes and promote improved collaboration through enabling-technology. In FY2015, teams of EPA, States and Tribes formed for each project. Those teams scoped the potential projects to define the “to be” states and conducted return-on-investment analyses to determine if the project is warranted based on cost savings. In FY 2016 and FY 2017, two EELC-selected projects will begin development: 1) the Local Government Portal and 2) the Combined Air Emissions Reporting. The Local Government Portal will provide local government stakeholders with information and resources to effectively comply with environmental regulations. The Combined Air Emissions Reporting project will consolidate air emissions reports which are currently governed by various regulations and reporting systems.
EPA is working on several initiatives that are expected to add to the reduced burden hours for state and EPA as well as the regulated community including the launching of SDWIS Prime. EPA will track progress toward the goal of reducing burden by one million additional hours by September 30, 2017. EPA is working on several initiatives that are expected to add to the reduced burden hours for state and EPA as well as the regulated community. To reduce burden hours, EPA plans to launch SDWIS Prime, develop electronic reporting rules in work aligned with E-Enterprise or in collaborative E-Enterprise projects with the states, and will track process towards reducing burden by one million additional hours by September 30, 2017.
During FY 2016 and FY 2017, the E-Enterprise Portal will gain additional functionality with the integration of CEDRI, the Local Government Portal, Air Now, and two state systems.
Progress Update
The E-Enterprise agency priority goal is on track to meet and exceed the indicators related to the E-Enterprise portal and jointly-selected projects. Although the indicator for burden reduction will be just short of the goal at the close of FY 2017, the cumulative burden reduction will greatly exceed the initial goal of one million burden hours once the projects reach full adoption in subsequent years.
EPA also continues to strengthen joint governance with our state and tribal partners. In Q4, the E-Enterprise Leadership Council charter was updated to formally include tribes, with signatures of the EPA Administrator, the President of the Environmental Council of the States, and a representative of the Swinomish Indian Senate. Joint governance meetings continue to be convened regularly, with at least two in-person meetings per year for the main leadership council and each of the sub-groups. Project teams are also integrated, with representatives from EPA and a state or tribe acting as co-chairs for joint leadership.
Two year goal: Reduce burden by one million hours
• Status: On pace to reduce 972,686 hours of burden by end of FY 2017, with more than 1.1 million of annual burden hours upon full adoption of the services by end users
• Overview: Quantifiable burden hours will be reported from the Safe Drinking Water Information System modernization (SDWIS Prime), Fuels Reporting System (DCFuel) electronic registration and reporting and Interoperable Watersheds Networks. Additional burden hours are possible from other projects
o SDWIS Prime (estimated savings of 867,000 hours in FY 2017 with more than 867,000 burden hours saved per year starting in FY 2018 upon full adoption): The Compliance Monitoring Data Portal (CDMP) will be the first component of SDWIS Prime to go into production. CMDP will alleviate 783,000 hours per year of burden for states and 84,000 hours per year for labs and public water systems. Currently compliance sample results are reported by laboratories and public water systems to primacy agencies using paper. This project modernizes and streamlines this process through electronic reporting. In Q4, CMDP moved into production with an initial base of approximately 5000 users. System usage is expected to quickly grow to about 25,000 users. In Q4, software development for primacy agencies also began.
o DCFUEL (estimated savings of 90,200 hours per year): Paper-based reporting from 40 C.F.R. Part 79 will be automated to electronic registration and reporting, and a single interface will consolidate and streamline reporting across Parts 79 and 80. In Q4, the E-Enterprise staff in the Office of the Chief Financial Officer and representatives of the Office of Environmental Information committed to expanding the research and development to explore how these new application technologies can be integrated into a broader cloud-based Platform-as-a-Service to assist the Office of Transportation and Air Quality and other program offices with all aspects of delivering streamlined mission services.
o Interoperable Watersheds Networks (estimated savings of 15,486 in FY 2017): This project supports the advancement and proliferation of watershed-based monitoring networks to gather, organize, and reconcile water data and information from multiple and diverse sources into a single, interoperable and accessible data platform. Benefits are projected to accrue in FY 2017 at 15,486 burden hours saved per year (based on a 10%/year adoption rate), reducing burden by an additional 15,486 hours every year thereafter (i.e., FY 2018 benefits total 30,971 burden hours saved, FY 2019 46,457 burden hours saved, and so on) for a total savings of 154,858 annual burden hours saved upon full adoption. Benefits are derived from improvements in reduced time spent conducting three major types of watersheds analysis activities: watershed quality assessment, TMDL/permit analysis, and effectiveness monitoring analysis. An initial version of the platform was released in July 2016, and initial implementation continued in Q4.
Two year goal: Add five new functionalities to the E-Enterprise Portal
• Status: On track to add five functionalities by the end of FY 2017
• In Q4 of FY 2016, the integration with the Compliance and Emissions Data Reporting Interface (CEDRI) and the E-Enterprise Portal was completed, replacing hard copy reporting with electronic reporting. This streamlines aspects of Clean Air Act Stationary Source reporting under the New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) of 40 C.F.R., Part 60, Electronic Reporting Rule.
• In Q4, completed the integration of the Assessment TMDL Tracking and Implementation System (ATTAINS) into the E-Enterprise Portal. ATTAINS acts as the prototype use case for allowing users to be seamlessly handed off to other IT applications without having to log in a second time
• In previous quarters, the EPA completed the following functionalities in the E-Enterprise Portal:
o Centralized “to do” list of compliance activities for regulated entities
o Centralized local government access to relevant environmental information and resources
Two year goal: Begin development on two projects selected through E-Enterprise Leadership Council joint governance
• Status: On track
• Pesticide Label Matching: The goal of this project is to develop a prototype mobile application to assist with inspections of pesticides labels. In Q4, the project team continued to develop a prototype for a mobile app can be used as is by states, tribes or others, or could be modified to fit specific needs. This prototype began in Q1 and is expected to reach completion by the end of FY 2017. The results of the work will form the basis of a modernization roadmap for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention and various state partners.
• Interoperable Watersheds Networks: The goal of this project is to gather, organize, and reconcile water data and information from multiple sources into a single, interoperable and accessible data platform. This project began in Q2 and is expected to reach completion by the end of FY 2017.
Next Steps
Two year goal: Reduce burden by one million hours
• SDWIS Prime: In Q1 of FY 2017, the subsequent phase of development for the Safe Drinking Water Information System will focus on streamlined reporting for primacy agencies.
• DCFUEL: In Q1 of FY 2017, development work for fuels reporting modernization will continue. This includes a goal to coordinate with the Office of Environmental Information as a case study for e-Reporting Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). The solution architecture for the PaaS is targeted for completion by Q4 of FY2017.
Two year goal: Add five new functionalities to the E-Enterprise Portal
EPA will continue to add functionalities to the portal, and will likely exceed the APG goal of five functionalities before the end of FY 2017. The next set of functionalities will be prioritized and selected from existing research on user and mission needs. In parallel, EPA will continue to focus on the underlying platform, including a transition to Cloud.gov infrastructure and platform services in Q2 of FY 2017.
Two year goal: Begin development on two projects selected through E-Enterprise Leadership Council joint governance
• Projects satisfying the goals of the APG are already under development, and they will continue to progress.
• EPA will exceed its goal by beginning work on additional projects. In Q1 of FY 2017, EPA and States will collaborate to extend the State Plan Electronic Collection System (SPeCS) IT system to support Section 110 of the CAA, which imposes similar requirements on states. SPeCS currently automates the submittal of state plans and annual reports under the Clean Power Plan (Section 111(d) of the CAA).
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Performance Indicators
Burden hours reduced
EELC-selected projects
E-Enterprise Portal Functionality
Contributing Programs & Other Factors
E-Enterprise is a cross-agency effort with program offices and regions reviewing new and existing regulations and technology needs to identify opportunities for process improvement and efficiency gains. The E-Enterprise leadership council (EELC) is chaired by the EPA Deputy Administrator and includes senior managers from the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, Office of Office of Environmental Information, Office of Water, Office of Air and Radiation, Office of Research and Development, Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, and two regional administrators.
E-Enterprise is a collaborative effort and seeks to take advantage of the shared vision between states, tribes and EPA to improve environmental outcomes and dramatically enhance service to the regulated community and the public. In September 2013, EPA’s Administrator and ECOS President signed the charter for State and EPA E-Enterprise Leadership Council. As E-Enterprise moves forward, the EELC is making efforts to broaden the collaboration to more fully include tribes.
E-Enterprise will also invite input from the regulated community, non-governmental organizations, educational institutions and the public. Specifically, the public, industry, and trade associations will be informed and involved through proposed regulation comment periods, and websites in support of rules. Also, EPA will be encouraging private sector development of reporting tools to drive innovation, reduce costs, and help regulated entities to comply through increased transparency and access to environmental data.
For E-Enterprise, it will be challenging to maintain the effort and priority to streamline and improve services and automate processes, and to collaborate with states and tribes on these projects and activities in a continuing and fully engaged manner. While the collaborative streamlining and automation of programs will improve program efficiency and effectiveness, these collaborative modernization efforts will require EPA to work in a more proactively and regularly integrated and coordinated manner than has generally been the case for existing program operations. Also, without new resources dedicated to support these efforts, work must be done among existing priorities.
No Data Available
