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Compliance Assistance Measurement and Results
EPA is focused on producing measurable results to protect public health and the environment. Compliance Assistance is one of the tools the Agency uses alone or in combination with other tools like compliance monitoring and enforcement to achieve these results. In order to assess its efforts to help regulated entities comply with federal environmental requirements, EPA has been developing standard measures, measurement tools, methods for collecting, reporting and analyzing the results of delivered compliance assistance this information.
Measurement
EPA annually reports to Congress on its progress in achieving its compliance assistance performance goals under the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA).
The current outcome measures of compliance assistance are:
- Increased understanding of environmental requirements
- Improved environmental management practices (GPRA)
- Reduced pollution as a result of EPA’s direct assistance to regulated entities (GPRA)
EPA has also developed programmatic measures for its compliance assistance program.
The majority of the measurement tools - checklists, surveys, pre-tests and post-tests - used by EPA have been approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) through the Information Collection Request (ICR) process. The ICR process enables federal employees to request information from more than nine non-federal entities by requesting and obtaining an information collection request approval from OMB. EPA has a generic ICR for conducting compliance assistance surveys (PDF) (16 pp, 173K, About PDF). EPA also uses a Compliance Assistance Conclusion Data Sheet (CACDS) (PDF) June 2005 (6 pp, 91K, About PDF) and cover memo (PDF) (2 pp, 37K, About PDF) to help collect outcomes of compliance assistance activities.
The Guide for Measuring Compliance Assistance Outcomes (PDF) Revised October 2007 (167 pp, 2.35MB, About PDF) has more information on measuring the impact of compliance assistance projects and activities and gives detailed methodologies for analyzing results.
Results
Survey results from EPA's major mechanisms for providing compliance assistance, the Compliance Assistance Centers
and EPA-led activities, show both have served their intended purpose. Respondents indicated that they took action, realized cost savings and made environmental improvements as a result of using these compliance assistance resources.