Greenversations

About the author: Molly O’Neill is EPA’s Assistant Administrator for the Office of Environmental Information and Chief Information Officer

Recently, I attended a government leadership summit that focused on collaboration. It was represented by state, local and federal leaders. I was there not just to speak but also to learn. I am always looking for ideas outside of EPA that we might take advantage of in our business. Sometimes, you see something special and it opens your eyes to future benefits.

At an evening session, I saw a demonstration of something called “Virtual Alabama”. I had been hearing the buzz around this for several weeks and it didn’t disappoint. Now, from a technology perspective this wasn’t a big deal to me. It is simply a well orchestrated Google Earth implementation from a statewide perspective. The impressive part was the incredible collaboration that occurred to bring almost all the government related information together visually. And it was at the state and local levels! In one application, the user could view environmental information, crime information, land use information, etc. all at once.

Alabama has effectively engaged a small team of people whose job it is to harvest this data and make it available to decision-makers. They are constantly consuming more data and adding new functionality. For example, universities and colleges are now sketching on the maps to show what the insides of their buildings look like. Another cool example involves historical aerial photography. After a recent tornado, officials could look at pictures of towns before and after the tornado to respond to emergencies and also to help insurance companies estimate damage. I also saw how they incorporated a tool EPA uses called “Aloha” into their application to look at toxicity dispersion modeling with just a few lines of code!

At EPA, I talk about how owning data is passé, but using it is not. There are data sources outside of EPA that are very important to our Mission and we need to access them. That’s why building partnerships to share information is so important. If one agency collects the data, technology today allows it to be shared pretty easily. Federal government needs to shift the paradigm from data owners to data collaborators and to embrace technology as the enabler.

Virtual Alabama started as a Homeland Security project that has been adopted by the entire state. I believe its success lies on the fact that there is an organization in place well adapted to constantly harvest data – a data fusion center. This is my take away from another insightful leadership summit in seeing Virtual Alabama as a best practice… something we at EPA can certainly learn from.

Since March, EPA has been reaching out to the public and specific stakeholder groups during our National Dialogue on Access to Environmental Information, and the comment session is now over. I would like to thank those who contributed their ideas during this time. I learned about great examples of information sharing, including Virtual Alabama. Check out the National Dialogue website for summaries of the stakeholder sessions and more on the upcoming strategy document that compiles what we’ve learned.

About the author: Molly O’Neill, EPA’s Assistant Administrator for the Office of Environmental Information and Chief Information Officer.

It is no secret that I believe Web 2.0 technology has a place in government. This new generation of technology (e.g. wikis, blogs, etc.) is not all that technically complex, but it’s web-based which means it can be used to build communities easily over the Internet. It is an amazing leap forward in how all of us interact with information.

However, I would hazard that most people are more interested in the quality and product of the experience with their government and with each other rather than with the enabling technology. So, we need to think about how best wikis, blogs, and discussion boards can be used to interact inside of government or with citizens. When we roll these new technologies out, we need to do so understanding we are learning and evolving. The transformation of Marcus Peacock’s blog “Flow of the River” into this Agency-wide blog “Greenversations” is a prime example. I am not exactly sure where this technology will ultimately take us at EPA, but I can say we should not be paralyzed by it or chase the leading edge to the extreme. It does, however, allow us to truly invite and integrate citizen, community, scientific, and regulatory contributions in new ways.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal highlights how Web 2.0 is changing the way government does business “From Wikinomics to Government 2.0”. The Federal CIO Community is working together on establishing Best Practices in Government 2.0 (Gov 2.0). And, understanding that these new collaborative tools might have in impact on policy, many of us in the federal government are addressing these issues together as well with help from the National Academy of Public Administration.

At EPA, our mission requires an intense level of collaboration with partners in our shared mission. I can see the future as not too far off where Gov 2.0 tools are used to share vast amounts of information between levels of government from all over the world and for government to engage citizens in new ways. This is a critical step in evolving government services to become more agile, responsive, and inclusive.

Please let me know your thoughts on how Gov 2.0 tools can be effective in enhancing access to environmental information by visiting our National Dialogue on Access to Environmental Information website.

About the author: Molly O’Neill, EPA’s Assistant Administrator for the Office of Environmental Information and Chief Information Officer.

In my first job after college, I was an environmental biologist/analyst. I spent some of that time taking surface water, sediment, groundwater, soil, and biological samples in the field. Of course, I followed the EPA standard sampling procedures and believe me they are quite extensive – 14-hour days were common and much of that time was to ensure that the quality of the sample was not compromised. There is a lot of documentation that goes along with each sample taken. After those long days in the field, I used to think, does all this documentation really make a difference?

Last week I participated in a listening session with a stakeholder group as part of the National Dialogue for Access to Environmental Information. One of the important themes that kept coming up during the discussion was the necessity to have access to quality data. This means that the data sample and results are not compromised and that the information about the data sample is not lost or forgotten along the way. For example, a community may take water samples at a local beach for a specific place and time, and then post the results to a website. These results are then consumed by other interested parties and made available to the public in a variety of ways. The data about the data, or “metadata”, doesn’t always convey with the data set and therefore, secondary users of this data may draw the wrong conclusions. In this case, without the time/place data with the sample an assumption that a local beach is currently contaminated may not be accurate.

Along that same theme, there was concern that while new mapping tools allow almost anyone to grab data sets (including some of EPA’s) and plot them on a map, combining data sets doesn’t always make sense. Data Set A + Data Set B doesn’t necessarily = Conclusion C. These are good cautions and the takeaway for me was that while providing access is good, we need to ensure that access to the metadata is equally as important. We also need invest in describing the data set and why it is collected.

Getting back to my first job and the question about whether the documentation with a sample is important, you bet the answer is yes! If you have comments on how we might enhance access to environmental information, please checkout our National Dialogue web site.

About the author: Molly O’Neill is EPA’s Assistant Administrator for the Office of Environmental Information and Chief Information Officer.

I just made that up… is it catchy? My friends and family are always catching me making up new words. Last week, my blog entry described the National Dialogue for Access to Environmental Information and I have been busy listening to several groups of stakeholders. We had a media related focus group who described both their frustrations working with EPA on tight deadlines, as well as what types of information they look for on a frequent basis. To this group, one of the most important access vehicles is finding the right expert at EPA quickly. We need to work on this and this group gave suggestions on how we might address this issue. Thanks!

I also attended the Exchange Network National Meeting and invited these participants to not only join in the Dialogue, but also to listen and learn with us. The National Environmental Information Exchange Network (Exchange Network) is a partnership between states, tribes, and EPA that exchanges environmental data securely over the Internet using web services. I like to think of it as an environmental information superhighway where these partners can exchange data more easily and more often because they are not bound by format. Not surprisingly, this partnership came together because of information access and sharing challenges. Building this Exchange Network is important because it is putting information in the hands of federal, state, and tribal regulators more quickly than ever. While the Exchange Network is still growing and maturing, this community is finding great uses of available data.

One of my favorite examples of this is where the Washington Department of Ecology is exchanging their data with not only other state environmental agencies, but also with the Washington Department of Health. Health scientists and officials can more easily determine if metals found in fish tissue samples might relate to health issues reported in specific areas of the state.

I look forward to hearing more thoughts on the future applications of the Exchange Network to improve access to broader audiences. For those reading this blog, I invite you to submit your comments on how we might enhance access to environmental information on our National Dialogue web site.

About the author: Molly O’Neill is EPA’s Assistant Administrator for the Office of Environmental Information and Chief Information Officer.

As the Agency’s CIO, people ask me questions all the time. And some of the time they are questions that any good steward of the environment should know the answer to. Or at least, know how to find the answer.

Recently a friend of mine asks, “Molly, I wanted to support Earth Day, so I got some of those energy efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs. What happens if it breaks? It’s got mercury in there!”

Off hand I didn’t know the answer, but figured a quick search on epa.gov would get me the answer. After I popped in the search field “flourescent light bulb” my results started with the question, “Did you mean: fluorescent light bulb?” Why yes, I did… thanks for catching that typo! I clicked on the link epa.gov/mercury/spills and pretty quickly found the info my friend was looking for.

The good news is there’s a lot of information out there. Navigating through that information is the challenge. Thanks to some new search capabilities on epa.gov, finding information has become easier. But we can do more.

And what if the “how do I” question isn’t so straightforward? I had a recent inquiry from a Shenandoah Valley community group leader asking how to find comprehensive environmental information to better assess their ecosystem. That question is a bit tougher and you’re not going to find the answer with a simple search engine inquiry.

I pointed my colleague to EPA’s Window to My Environment, Envirofacts, and the Toxic Release Inventory web sites; all great tools to help them get started with assessing the Shenandoah Valley. Also, I mentioned that states are important partners in our mission to protect human health and the environment.

Providing the resources to answer these complex questions is something I’m striving to do better with the Office of Environmental Information. For several weeks now, we have led a campaign called the National Dialogue for Access to Environmental Information to hear from stakeholders and our own employees about ways we can improve. Through this effort - and I’m inviting all readers of this blog to participate - we will be addressing ways to make information more readily available.

Also, come chat with me this afternoon from 2-3, where I’ll be taking your questions live in Ask EPA, our online forum where you can talk to senior officials.

I look forward to hearing your ideas!