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Whenever you pay to have someone provide you an IT solution, insist that the software is open source and licensed as "free". Then make that source code available to the public. It not only helps the public; it helps you.
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Rather than post each of my "OpenGov" Ideas at 27 different websites, I have posted them at the GSA's website (since they are in the forefront of the OpenGov initiative). So, by this notice, the members of the OpenGov Team for this agency have been informed of those ideas. (At least, now, you can't say you were unaware of them.)
http://opengsa.ideascale.com/a/pmd/29640-6960
ALSO -- Those OpenGov Team members, and others tasked or involved in those matters, are also notified that news and information about implementation of the Open Government Directive in the various federal agencies will continue to be available through the following sources (see links below).
Therefore, it is YOUR choice about whether (or not) to be "in the loop" about the Open Government Directive.
Email-group --> http://groups.google.com/group/OpenGovernmentDirective
Wiki --> http://www.OpenGovPlaybook.org
Radio --> http://www.OpenGovRadio.com
Blog --> http://www.UStransparency.com
vr,
Stephen Buckley
moderator, OpenGovernmentDirective google-group
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EPA’s mission is a crucial one that is in no small part dependent on honest and open communications with the public. It is in the tradition of our great country that much of that interaction occurs through the public’s proxies, journalists. EPA needs to do a better job in communicating with journalists.
I am a journalist and I have recounted two of my recent problems in dealing with the EPA in blog posts: http://www.invw.org/node/986 and http://www.invw.org/p/8574 . They detail my difficulties in getting EPA comment on a major story, and slow EPA action on an extremely simple Freedom of Information Act request. EPA needs to engage with journalists, meaning have a real conversation. And EPA needs to process FOIA requests much faster.
In addition, let me add that EPA needs to change the following:
+ Requiring Soviet-style “minders” who sit in on interviews of EPA officials by journalists. There is no need for this.
+ EPA needs to respond to reporters with breaking-news deadlines more quickly.
+ The agency needs to provide more lines for reporters to phone in to phone-in press conferences.
+ There has been a disturbing tendency in recent years, unswayed by the arrival of the Obama administration, for many EPA officials – even press officers – to want to do interviews on background. This is particularly an issue at EPA headquarters in D.C. Out here in the real world, journalists need to quote real people. EPA officials are paid by the public, and occasions for going on background should be rare.
+ The agency needs to reassess its communications strategy to be less focused on the big national media and more helpful to the multiplicity of news outlets now springing up around the country. Again, the problems with this are biggest at headquarters in D.C.
+ EPA needs to find ways to provide much of the raw data the agency has to the public with minimal access barriers.
Thank you for this opportunity to comment.
Robert McClure
InvestigateWest
rmcclure@invw.org
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Game
its been invented, just needs new twist, EPA gambit, what we know now, and whatever the future holds for our Nation. The little face-book progressive games, could start as kindergarten, we could play with grandson.
This endeavor, before you will take a life time and money hard fer me to grasp.
President Obama, thank you, sir.
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Application of New Information Technology to the Transparency Objective
of the Open Government Directive
While the Open Government Directive offers an unprecedented challenge to Federal Agencies, information technology is now available to assist Agencies in achieving the Transparency objective of the Directive in a rapid, cost-effective manner. Throughout the Directive, the need to proactively provide easy to use, effective, and comprehensive, yet controlled access to Agency information is emphasized. Various references from the Directive emphasizing this theme include:
• 1.b. To the extent practicable and subject to valid restrictions, agencies should publish information on-line in an open format that can be retrieved, downloaded, indexed, and searched by commonly used web search applications. An open format is one that is platform independent, machine readable, and
made available to the public without restrictions that would impede the re-use of that information.
• 1.c. To the extent practical and subject to valid restrictions, agencies should proactively use modern technology to disseminate useful information, rather than waiting for specific requests under FOIA.
• 1.e.ii. In cases where the agency provides public information maintained in electronic format, a plan for timely publication of the underlying data. This underlying data should be in an open format and as granular as possible, consistent with statutory responsibilities and subject to valid privacy,
confidentiality, security, or other restrictions. Your agency should also identify key audiences for its information and their needs, and endeavor to publish high-value information for each of those audiences in the most accessible forms and formats.
• 3.a.i. A strategic action plan for transparency that ... (3) identifies high value information not yet available and establishes a reasonable time-line for publication online in open formats ...
Communicating the nature of the extraordinary impact upon the Transparency challenge offered by the new technology is best achieved with presentation of the problem, the opportunity, and the solution...
The Problem
For decades the information technology industry has refined our ability to house and retrieve information that is stored on computers in a clearly formatted manner that is generally referred to as structured data. Structured data has ample context associated with its format to allow the computer to present, manipulate, and retrieve it in virtually any manner we have
imagined. We even have tools that permit us to retrieve our structured data in ways not preimagined nor pre-defined, but in an ad hoc manner.
Although the amount of structured information housed within our computer systems continues to increase, it is proportionately decreasing as a subset of the total universe of computer housed information. Certainly there are advantages to housing this ever increasing volume of unstructured information. However, information, like memory, is only of value if it can be
retrieved when needed. Historically, the only way we have been able to retrieve unstructured data is by directly associating it with structured metadata that is created solely for the purpose of more easily locating unstructured data objects. The cost of producing this metadata is high
and it is not a comprehensive solution to the problem of finding our unstructured data. Thus we are left with a situation that allows us to properly manage and expose only a relatively small amount of the information we have collected on our computer systems, as we are not
able to manage unstructured information as handily as we would like.
The Opportunity
Recent advances in separate areas of information technology are enabling an extraordinary convergence of technological innovation that is of significant relevance to the Transparency challenge of the Open Government Directive. Automated text recognition within images and within speech has significantly improved in its ability to discern language from otherwise unstructured media, from standard sheets of paper, to voice recordings, and to multimedia, in general. Meanwhile the explosion of the internet has brought with it the ability to crawl, index, and search through enormous volumes of search-able text.
Unfortunately, not all text is inherently search-able. For text to be search-able on a computer, it must be encoded in a form that is discernible by the computer, such as ASCII, EBCDIC, etc. However, much of our burgeoning information is stored in bit-mapped formats that can be rendered as imagetext and readable to humans, but alas, is not understandable as text to a
computer, and thus is not search-able.
As with an iceberg, we can clearly see the tip of the enterprise's universe of information in the form of structured data. But, as the largest volume of the iceberg residing below the water line is not clearly visible, so too, is our transparency unstructured data limited. Thanks to the advances in search engine technology that can be applied to any search-able data, i.e.
encoded text, we are able to readily peer below the water line and have transparency to a large portion of the information iceberg.
However, there is still a very large portion of the iceberg that is not transparent. Enormous volumes of information are buried in computer files such as images, sound, and video. While the information in these files is render-able to a sighted or non-hearing impaired human, we cannot readily apply our new tools such as search and analytic engines to this vast
information resource. With the convergence of advances in automated recognition and text based tools, the potential exists to tap into vast reservoirs of knowledge and make use of the entire information iceberg. If only we had the remaining pieces to bring to bear these incredible
technologies to our unstructured data repositories.
The Solution
Applying these convergent technologies to our Transparency challenge still requires certain incremental advances...
• Automatic recognition of key words needs to be just a little better to get that last percentage of recognition,
• Automated recognition is extremely computer processor intensive, and thus cannot be done in real time. In fact, its application to large volumes is a challenge in scalability.
• The quantum leap in available information that is theoretically possible is incredibly powerful and for that reason must be done in the context of important privacy and security considerations,
• For universal applicability, open standards and formats are required.
Using our decades of experience managing unstructured data and some recent patent pending innovations we, at SYSCOM, Inc., have developed a complete solution to addressing all of the above issues. SYSCOM's Imagetext Business Intelligence Gateway (IBIG) can produce comprehensive Transparency to all of the information within the “information iceberg”, in a manner that is secure, open, and scalable.
SYSCOM's IBIG solution directly addresses the President's Open Government Directive by using modern technology to expose and disseminate useful information to the general public and other federal agencies. As the demand for more government transparency grows SYSCOM's IBIG solution can lead the way. Please consider the use of IBIG to support your Open Government Initiative.
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I understand that the Society of Environmental Journalists also is submitting a list of recommendations. I endorse their comments and add this one:
In the event of an incident, accident, or disaster, attempt to respond
to local media requests for information concerning both reports to the
National Response Center and the agency's responses to those reports in
a timely manner, recognizing that residents of the affected area are
more likely to turn to local media than national media during those
times, and are more likely to be immediately at risk as a result of the incident.
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In an old StarTrek episode the robot Nomad sailed the universe seeking life, and upon finding it, implemented the fatal PrimeDirective. It is imperative that our organizational mission statements comply with a negative PrimeDirective, which may be stated: "It is our mission to improve the conditions for life, to grow in the ability to nurture life, and to explore all realms possibly related to life, universally seeking to sustain biological diversity, to increase individual personal fulfillment, and to create a more stable, peaceful, and just society.
Already-proven engineering and ethical principals need to a greater degree be incorporated into the decision-making process. In particular, given its promise of finding optimal solutions, it is key that Nash Equilibrium models are used to form the daily decisions that determine how limited resources are spent, thus optimizing efficacy. Great care must be made in structuring and reviewing the decision-making and implementation processes so that they, to borrow from perl philosophy, "do the right thing", quantifying and transparently reporting each step along the way, and flexibly accepting feedback without losing sight of the overall goal. It is a challenge and responsibility to build such a system, and we are fortunate that John Nash has already blazed the trail.
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WHAT
Urge governments to publish granular permalinks for all documents on their websites.
WHY
* Enable citizens to reliably cite government websites on their personal blogs, on public sites like Wikipedia, or elsewhere.
* Provide unique identifiers that enable aggregation of citations.
* Make the civic discourse surrounding government websites more discoverable.
HOW
* An easy-to-deploy archival server that can take page snapshots
o Hosts all permalinks
o Could be hosted by the agency or a third party
o Uses a software version-control tool as the primary database
o Allows other parties to replicate the data
o Likely an easy install of a Linux server distribution with the archival tools included
* Quick and easy integration solution
o Include Javascript on each page that ensures the archival server takes snapshots as each page changes
o The Javascript also walks through the HTML DOM to add permalinks to each paragraph
o The "easy integration" method works with even static HTML
* Long-term integration solution
o Option one
+ CMS pushes changes directly to the archival server
+ CMS integrates the archival server's permalinks directly into HTML
+ Most streamlined option
o Option two
+ A proxy server (base on Squid/Varnish?) that pushes changed content to the archival server
+ The proxy server modifies the content passing through it to add permalinks to the HTML
+ Works with any CMS and even static HTML
o More accessible
o No Javascript required
o Broadly applicable integration model (text filtering/formatting plugin) that works with even basic blog and CMS tools
* Mark up documents using paragraph/sectional anchor tags to create nice anchors that go directly to the correct paragraph
* Permalinks are human-readable URLs with timestamps, document ID, and an an anchor to the section/paragraph
o Example: Http://archive.house.gov/HR1586IH/20030318233035#S1b1Bii
o The example would point to section 1, subsection b, chapter 1, paragraph B, clause ii in SB 1234 on May 2, 2009 at 8:26:16 am UTC
WHEN
* We are fund-raising to both hire programmers to write the tools and to have codeathons where programmers donate their time to write Open Source tools they believe in.
* We are recruiting different levels of government implementation one agency at a time. Your support on http://citability.org will illustrate the demand.
* We are asking various proprietary software vendors to implement this standard in their software products.
WHERE
* Http://citability.org - sign up and show your support
* http://citability.pbworks.com - to help promote or to feedback on the internal standards we are suggesting. We are talking various implementations in different software to backups and server failover settings.
Demos at DCcodeathon.eventbrite.com
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la contaminacion, la problematica ambientaL, el sobrecalentamiento global y otras situaciones que se suscitan en consecuencia no reconoce fronteras, ni razas, ni nacionalidades, ni color, ni credos, etc por lo tanto esta forma como lo estan haciendo la EPA en los E.U. ESTA MUY BIEN AHORA DEBERIA DE EXTENDERSE DE MANERA INMEDIATA A LOS DOS PAISES CIRCUNVECINOS
QUE ES MEXICO Y CANADA Y QUE PERMANEZCA AL MENOS TODO EL 2010, YA QUE LA PROBLEMATICA AHI ESTA TODAVIA
ATTE
David Perez Sanchez
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Submitted on behalf of the Society of Environmental Journalists by Christy George, SEJ president (via Ken Ward Jr., SEJ First Amendment Task Force Chairman):
These suggestions are from the Society of Environmental Journalists, the organization that represents reporters, producers, editors,
photographers, and others who cover environmental issues for news media.
News media are still the principal channel through which most Americans
get their information about the environment. Without transparency to the
media, there can be no transparency to the public.
While the Obama/Jackson administration has taken steps to make
government more open and transparent to the general public through
social networking and the Internet, EPA has also continued some policies
and practices of the Bush administration that make it harder for
environmental journalists to get the information they need to do their
jobs.
Specifically we urge EPA to:
1. End the practice that prevents EPA scientists or employees from talking to reporters without press office permission and a press officer present.
2a. Have informed press officers available during extended hours for real-time response to news media questions, including journalists’ complete working day on the West coast. Journalists have to do news 24/7, and we need fast access to authoritative EPA information, position statements, and reactions. EPA could start by simply returning all press calls promptly, within hours, not days. ["We don't know," "We're studying it," "We'll get back to you," and "We can't comment" are all better than "EPA did not return calls by press time."]
2b. In those cases where journalists are working on non-breaking stories, EPA should commit to set up interviews with relevant EPA experts on a given subject within a reasonable period of time -- within a week of the request, except in extremely unusual circumstances. We know of a few cases in which the agency appears to have simply refused to engage with journalists working on non-deadline stories.
3. Improved access to documents without a need to file FOIA requests. Faster response to media (and public) FOIA requests.
4. A presumption that press officers and other officials are talking on the record unless otherwise agreed to explicitly in advance by both sides. "Background" should be the rare exception, not the standard operating procedure.
5. Improve timing of EPA's dissemination of news/info to make sure it does not miss opportunities to be taken up promptly and fully into the news cycle. When news events or releases can be predicted or planned, this means release earlier in the day and earlier in the week (not late Friday pm). It also means giving advisories as far as possible (days) ahead-of-time to the largest feasible group. When a press officer promises to get back to a reporter with an answer or interview, it should come within hours, not weeks.
6. Open up the format of press conferences and conference calls -- to give more information and allow more questions and follow up. For example: more notice, more phone lines, broader criteria for "credentialing," more time for questions, and more quotable officials. After a major news conference, EPA may need to assign several people to telephone follow-up.
7. Improve press office inclusiveness to include routinely a broader spectrum of media types that make up today's changing news media landscape. While big national news organizations may get more attention, EPA also needs to communicate well with regional, state, and local media. Specialty press, trade press, online media, freelancers, minority press, small broadcast outlets, and a variety of others.
8. Improved access to raw data in electronic form by reducing technical, format, media-type, procedural, legalistic, and bureaucratic barriers.
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I recommend a problem solving approach known as systems thinking. A group of scientists (biologists and ecologists), mathematicians and computer science researchers at MIT developed Applied Systems Thinking over 30 years ago to begin to address concerns about world population growth and strain on world resources. It provided the basis for computer modelling used throughout the world in both business and science, most recently in looking at climate changes.
If we could get not only our government agencies but our legislators to begin problem solving from a systems approach we could address multiple problems much more effectively and more sustainably. Look up Jay Forrester, Donella (Dana) Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Limits to Growth, Dynamic Systems Thinking and the Sustainability Institute for ideas on what steps to take next.
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While Superfund has made a commendable effort in trying to keep the environment clean, the pace of cleanup has been slow and the cost quite exorbitant. New sites have been added to the program’s priority list. As of 1994, a total of 1,286 sites were on the priority list, but only 58 had been properly cleaned out. In 2009 the list had increased to 1,596 sites.
One way to enhance transparency and collaboration is for the EPA to prepare comprehensive annual reports stipulating not only the achievements and progress being made by the Superfund program, but the challenges and needs being faced by the program as well. The report should not only be available to stakeholders, it should also willingly seek their input.
Reigh Simuzoshya, PhD
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Below are several specific recommendations for EPA's open government directive to enhance access and transparency in EPA decision making and data availability.
Joseph Foti, Carole Excell and Alisa Zomer
World Resources Institute (www.wri.org)
-Search Function-
EPA should add quick sort tabs that would allow users to narrow search results by: 1) geographic region 2) topic, and 3) release date. This will greatly assist in site navigation and increase the accessibility and usability of information. It would also be helpful if EPA added a live help option where a user can chat with EPA staff to help find information, similar to how libraries have set up online chat assistance mechanisms. Additionally, members of the public should be able to sign up for email alerts using the same search criteria as well as for RSS feeds.
-Public Meetings-
The EPA should establish a clear one stop shop search feature on its website which announces public hearings by region on all issues within its jurisdiction. After hearings are held EPA should post power point presentations made, speeches prepared and handouts distributed. Where video is taken, this should also be archived on the website with chapter headings on the video and summaries of each presentation.
-Minutes of Meetings-
The EPA should list all meetings for which minutes will be posted proactively. Minutes which contain confidential information contained within a Freedom of Information Act exemption or privileged information should also be posted with the information redacted which is exempt and the exemption stated in the minutes. It is currently difficult to access any minutes containing evidence of decision-making on the website.
-Disclosure Log and Permanent Publication of documents-
EPA should publish a list of Freedom of Information requests made by year and topic and the decisions made on each FOI request (i.e granted, partial grant, refused, etc). Any documents granted access should be placed on line in xml format. This would reduce the number of FOI requests made for the same documents and allow the public greater access to documents proactively.
-Response to Public Comments-
Currently all federal Environmental Impact Assessments must include a categorization of public comments. In addition to this set of comments, EPA should work with the Council on Environmental Quality to require project proponents and action agencies to respond to each category of comment, explaining why the comment was or was not incorporated into the final draft EIA.
-Disclosure of Enforcement and Compliance Actions-
Currently, the public can see evidence of violations of the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and non-reporting under various disclosure requirements. However, the ability of the public to follow up on monitoring actions is relatively limited. While there is some disclosure of ongoing enforcement actions, databases are unclear as to the type and progress of enforcement and compliance actions. Individuals should not have to file numerous Freedom of Information Requests in order to identify the current status of such actions, as happened in the recent New York Times Toxic Waters series.
-Rationalizing the Environmental Impact Assessment Process-
Currently, ease of access to environmental assessments [EA] and environmental impact statements [EIA] varies widely by action agency. We suggest a universal docket system for all projects and programs not listed under categorical exclusion. This system, to be hosted by EPA, would include all project-relevant documents: EA, EIS, FONSI, permissions from Fish and Wildlife under Endangered Species Act, State Historic Preservation Officers, etc., monitoring and mitigation plans, and records of public participation. These would be easily searchable, listed by project phase, and would be accompanied by information on opportunities for participation in planning, construction, operation, decommissioning of projects.
-Grants Decision Making and Monitoring-
EPA should provide additional information about the grant selection process as well as a reporting mechanism to assess the progress of ongoing grants.
• Decision Making: Statistics on the number of grants submitted versus percentage that were accepted would be useful in understanding the scope of the grant selection. Additional detail as to why certain grants were accepted and others declined would bring greater transparency to the grant selection process and serve to strengthen the quality of future applications.
• Reporting Criteria: EPA should publish a set of reporting criteria in order to assess whether grants are meeting set goals. By sharing the successes and challenges of grants, the grants program will be able to capitalize on its giving strengths and identify possible gaps in funding. Furthermore, publishing outcomes will demonstrate effective use of EPA funds.
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Please consider banning C&D Incineration ( Biomass )
Due to the unknown content and constantly changing waste as fuel, the toxic effects of the stack gases can not be accurately predicted, thus all permits based on speculated emmisions are faulty. This serious risk to human health and to the environment is not in line with what the EPA stands for.
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Redesign the “Public Information Office” to “Public Involvement Office”.
Two major components to “openEPA”:
• Knowledge Empowerment
• Stakeholder Empowerment
Knowledge Empowerment:
o What are the issues?
o Why are they important?
o Why you should care?
Implementation Strategies for Knowledge Empowerment:
Transfer of knowledge with the understanding that in general there will be three target groups:
Not too technical
Technical
Super technical and/or possibly focused on very specific issue/agenda
Design knowledge transfer mechanisms to address the above listed target groups, i.e, a layered structure for information delivery – start with simplified information packaging and build it up as needed [starting with EPA websites]
“Open House” meetings with the public/community/private sector on at least quarterly basis by regional management team and staff. There can be many variations on this e.g., geographic; by states, tribal, territories, or all combined or thematic/divisional; water, land, air etc. Provide a toll free call in number for the folks not physically located with the regional office.
Allow regional staff to “Adopt a City/Neighborhood” [like “Sister Cities” or “Adopt a Highway” concept] and work in conjunction with state and local officials as an “environmental ombudsman” or “environmental conduit” or “environmental ambassador”. Meet with the City/Neighborhood community groups on at least monthly basis possibly with specific themes like; water in your community; land contamination in your community; air issues in your community etc.
Reach out to the community instead of telling them come to our regional office. For example, have public information brochure at kiosks in heavy pedestrian foot traffic areas; downtown, tourist attractions, universities, high schools, middle schools, downtown, grocery stores, cafes, community centers etc. [I have seen this work very well in many European cities]. Potentially partner with the local universities, community colleges, high schools etc to use interns at these kiosks or have dedicated staff.
On the regional websites the big block [at least 20 point font size] could be “For any environmental issue in AZ, CA, HI, NV, GU, CNMI, or AS you can contact Joe Smith or Jane Doe at 415.xxx.xxxx or via e-mail at xxxx.xxxx@epa.gov. The service agreement is to provide response with in 24 hours.” Joe Smith or Jane Doe could coordinate with the individual divisions or staff to get back to the concerned party. At the present time, the public has to navigate thru the stove pipe website to find the right division and then play the roulette game with about 10 different calls with in the division and they might or might not get the right person.
Stakeholder Empowerment:
o Seat at the table
o Meaningful participation
during policy development discussions
during rules/regulations development
during guidance development
o Provide help/grants to organize/develop citizen/neighborhood groups/environmental groups so that the “seat at the table” is meaningful.
This will help alleviate one particular group pushing an agenda/issue
Help organize community voice and make it coherent
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The EPA library OPAC could use some enhancements, to make it more user-friendly in the Web 2.0 environment. Given that a lot of information is born digital, and librarians are trained to field requests and perform outreach, a 2.0-enabled catalog could be an efficient gateway for access that would perhaps keep the website from getting overcrowded (as it already is in some areas of the site).
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Disruptive Technologies: A Holistic, Pragmatic Approach
New technologies are emerging at a faster pace than Agencies can swallow. The rate of obsolescence outpaces the rate of change.
Despite the new technology flood, Agencies lack a strategy to on-board these disruptions. As a result, they often react, flounder, or simply ignore them.
We can solve these problems in four major areas of practice:
Leadership and Management: How must leaders change with new technologies? How will this transform Agencies from the inside out?
Customer Strategy: How is the public behaving differently online? How can I reach them where they are?
Enterprise Strategy: Internal systems are connecting with external - How will I keep up with the dizzying pace? Employees are adopting collaboration and social tools without my control - How should I manage?
Innovation and Design: Experimenting on the general public is a bad idea, so how can I learn in a safe place? What vendors and providers should I lean on?
Here is a great slideshare webinar to get you started:
http://www.slideshare.net/charleneli/developing-a-social-strategy-webinar
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EPA's FACA committees should maintain informative web pages like the wonderful site that EPA had up for the TMDL rulemaking and FACA committee during the Clinton Administration. This is a good way for the public to learn about issues and these could be Webcast.
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The agency should create a docket of materials for important rules listed in Unified Agenda that reflect development documents the agency and/or a contractor have developed for the rule topic. At a minimum this should at least cover all economically significant rules and rules in the regulatory plan.
This should also include comments and documents submitted by major players whom EPA has met with like industry, trade groups, states, and ngos. This allows the playing field to be more level and provides greater access to groups and individuals outside the beltway.
As the agency rule makers are well aware, very few changes are made after a rule is proposed. Therefore the more valuable opportunity for offering imput is pre-proposal.
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Many chemical compounds that are sold on the US market do not fully disclose the contents. Many dangerous chemicals are hidden behind the "inert" label. EPA should force companies to fully disclose all inert ingredients and EPA should test for the synergistic and cumulative impacts of all ingredients.
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For each open government project, EPA should seek opportunities to leverage the information collection, use, and disclosure to achieve improvements in environmental quality. The agency should clearly explain how it plans to use data to meet the agency's mission and how it plans to put its information to work. One such example is the "33/50" program that was part of the Toxics Release Inventory program in the mid-1990s. With the successful 33/50 program, EPA identified 17 toxic chemicals and worked with industry to reduce releases 33 percent below 1988 levels by 1992 and 50 percent by 1995. EPA used the data it was collecting to drive its pollution prevention goals. EPA should identify additional ways it can use the environmental information it possesses - along with the help of the public - to meet its environmental goals.
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As the government shifts to greater use of online tools and the complexity of data being disclosed increases, it is incumbent on the agency to assist its stakeholders in keeping pace with the changes. The agency should provide help for community and citizens' groups on how to use new technologies (such as GIS mapping software) to better exploit EPA data to serve their public interest goals. EPA could provide classes, webinars, or other tutorials to give groups the skills needed to analyze, manipulate, and apply the vast quantities of valuable information held by the agency. Such help would enable thousands of citizens to better participate in EPA's mission to protect the environment, especially as the complexity of both technology and the data increases.
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While the EPA gathers input from the public on the importance of releasing various data holdings the agency possesses, the agency should also seek input on what important information is not being collected. EPA should design a system to identify data gaps, prioritize those in most need of filling, and create a plan to collect the information. This plan should also disclose reporting loopholes and identify whether the agency has authority to close the loopholes or whether Congress must act.
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The agency should develop a system for identifying and reporting not only the errors present in data sets, but flaws in the reporting process, as well. It is clear that the agency will continue to disclose datasets to the public on both the agency website as well as data.gov. Increased public review and scrutiny of these datasets will almost certainly uncover errors and systemic flaws. Having a proper system established to handle the reporting of these problems will allow the agency to actually improve databases and reporting processes based on quick resolution of discovered problems.
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EPA should identify what technical and jurisdictional barriers exist to integrating data sets across programs at EPA, and also with data sets in other federal and state agencies. EPA should disclose these barriers to the public and explain what actions may be required to remove them, such as action by Congress, adoption of new data standards, etc. This should include creating a uniform system across programs and agencies to identify reporting facilities and changes in facility ownership through time.
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