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Integrated Management Systems

Deputy Adminstrator Marcus Peacock explains the importance of performance management at the inaugural meeting of the Performance Management Council. *This video is not yet captioned. Captioning is forthcoming. Go to our contact us page for assistance.

 

The President charged EPA to "accelerate the pace of environmental protection while maintaining our nation's economic competitiveness." This means cost-effectively protecting and enhancing our air, water, and land resources. To achieve this, EPA needs an integrated system that frequently evaluates whether we are achieving our mission and whether there are better ways of getting results. That system is EPAStat.

In 2008, EPA formally integrated its management systems under the single name EPAStat. This action reinforced links between the Agency's management systems. An important part of this integration was providing a "clear line of sight" between day-to-day activities and eventual environmental outcomes. EPA also expanded the scope of our management systems to include external partners who help us achieve our mission, such as State environmental agencies, making them part of our integrated system and sharing our "clear line of sight." Taken together, the integration of these systems underpins our ability to learn, adopt, adapt and change.

EPA's Conceptual Approach to Systems Integration

To make sure what we do day-to-day results in real environmental improvement EPA employs logic models. Logic models explicitly show the connections between EPA's activities and the eventual improvement in environmental and human health we are trying to achieve. The figure below provides an example of such a model.

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EPA Logic Model

In order to test these connections, EPA issues performance reports and other information showing the status of different parts of the model.

These include:

How do these all fit together? At EPA we use a metaphor of a fountain to describe the linkage. Start at the top. The water jets that surmount the fountain represent EPA's mission: To protect human health and the environment. The next level down represents five broad goals that support the mission such as clean air, clean water, and protecting land. The five goals, in turn, cascade down into 20 more specific objectives. The mission statement, the five goals and 20 objectives are all laid out in EPA's long-term Strategic Plan.

Within this framework, we use our integrated performance management system to figure out whether our day-to-day activities are going to achieve our environmental goals and objectives. The objectives further flow down into a pool of many more sub-objectives that have annual goals and measures. These are tracked once a year using the Performance and Accountability Report, Program Assessment Rating Tool and other measures in a system we call "Measures Central". All these pieces add up to a lot of annual measures - well over 300 of them. We then use these measures to not just track what is going on, but also help us learn what is going on so that we can improve how we do what we do. Specifically, we hold quarterly management meetings with program and regional executives to review how we are doing on key subsets of measures. We also publish a Quarterly EPAStat Report that updates the public on about 60 key metrics.

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EPAStat - Integrating EPA's Systems and Processes in Practice

In 2008, EPA formally integrated its performance management system under one banner: "EPAStat." For instance, the quarterly performance meetings are now known as EPAStat meetings and the quarterly performance report is the Quarterly EPAStat Report. While some of these performance and management reports and systems grew up independently, all of the elements are now linked together and have matured to the point where they have been integrated under one system. The EPAStat banner encourages all EPA managers and staff to see the whole system as a way to learn and improve.

EPA is the first Federal agency to create a 'stat' program. The EPAStat Program incorporates existing performance management tools including public quarterly reports, regional meetings (regional office heads), and Headquarters meetings (senior-level headquarters managers and staff). In addition there are meetings on specific topics (e.g., evaluating our performance in recruiting new employees) that provide senior management a better understanding of where progress is being made and how our operations can be improved.

EPAStat helps the Agency regularly answer the questions 'How are we doing?' and 'How can we do our job better?' By testing the connections between what we do every day to meet our mission, EPAStat fosters data-driven policy-making, enhances collective learning, and ultimately works to improve our outcomes.

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Emphasizing a "Clear Line of Sight" in our Processes and Systems

A prerequisite to integrating management systems was establishing a "clear line of sight" along our measurement systems. People should understand how an output measure (e.g., approving a water permit) connects to an environmental outcome (e.g., increasing shellfish populations in the Chesapeake Bay). Such alignment is necessary to test logic models and exploit what we learn from EPAStat meetings. Consequently, EPA has spent considerable effort establishing a "clear line of sight" in strategic planning, establishing environmental indicators (outcome measures) and annual performance measures, creating Measures Central, fostering accountability, and further integrating performance measurement into Agency ongoing innovation efforts.

Here are several examples of how EPA is improving its "clear line of sight":

Strategic Planning - EPA updated its 2006-2011 Strategic Plan to include input from State, tribal and other external stakeholders. The Plan now incorporates annual measures that link to activities performed by our regional offices in concert with States, tribes, and others. In this way, the regions and our external partners are better able to see how their work connects to the Agency's long-term goals and ultimate mission.

Measures Central - Historically, EPA has collected and housed measures and data in different, unconnected repositories. In 2007, EPA consolidated its various systems for storing and accessing data into a central repository now called Measures Central. Each measure is now explicitly linked to one or more specific objectives in our strategic plan.

Annual Measures - A "clear line of sight" also requires having meaningful measures. Too many measures and/or poor measures obscure a "clear line of sight." EPA internally reviewed and streamlined our measures. As a result of both efforts, EPA has reduced the number of measures being reported by 15% compared to FY 2005. More importantly, we have made it easier to see what we are doing and how it affects our mission. In addition, EPA launched complementary efforts with States to review the value of all reporting requirements. States were asked to identify the top five most burdensome, least value added reporting requirements and any measures that should be modified or eliminated. In addition, the improvement in measures will not stop. All of the measures in Measures Central will now be scrubbed once a year as a part of an annual target setting process. In addition, in 2008 EPA formed an agency-wide senior staff-level "Performance Management Workgroup" which meets regularly to increase collaboration, improve the agency's measures and enhance performance-based management on an ongoing basis.

Environmental Outcomes - Recently EPA released its first Report on the Environment and Highlights of National Trends. The report focuses on the state of the environment - environmental outcomes - taking measure of conditions at one end of EPA's logic models. This work helps EPA focus on priorities and sets a benchmark for testing whether our future work leads to concrete environmental results.

Performance Management Council - To make sure all senior managers share and use the "clear line of sight," EPA established the Performance Management Council (PMC). Led by the Agency's Performance Improvement Officer, Deputy Administrator Marcus Peacock, this senior-level management group's mission is to set direction, oversee, champion and communicate the Agency's efforts to use measures for stronger program and organizational accountability. For example, at the inaugural PMC meeting, the Deputy Administrator and senior leaders from the Offices of Water, Research and Development, and Enforcement and Compliance Assurance discussed how performance measures and results can be used to establish the "clear line of sight" that EPA's leaders need to manage programs effectively and achieve better environmental results.

The PMC provides policy direction, shares best practices and helps achieve stronger central governance of performance systems. Recognizing that innovation is an essential component of performance management, the inaugural meeting of the PMC was jointly held with the Innovation Action Council (IAC), a network of senior-level managers focused on promoting and dispersing innovative practices throughout the Agency. Joint PMC/IAC meetings create the institutional structure for further integrating innovation and performance management in EPA's management system.

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Expanding our "Line of Sight" Definition to Include External Partners

EPA's success relies on its relationships with key partners. For example, States actually implement many of EPA's programs. Over the past few years, EPA has incorporated these partners into its management systems. For instance:

1. EPA is working with the States.

  1. State Grant Template:
    EPA partnered with the Environmental Council of States (ECOS) to design a "State Grant Template" to increase accountability and transparency of the results achieved by EPA grants that go to States.
  2. Joint Training Workshops:
    EPA holds joint training workshops with States to improve program implementation and management. In 2007, EPA Region 7 and four States (Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas) used a 'Kaizen' process, first developed in Japan, to systematically look at ways to improve how the government approves water quality standards. The training was a success - the number of steps in Region 7's approval process was almost cut in half - but more importantly, EPA's Region 7 and these States now have a mutual understanding of the motivations and restrictions in each other's processes.

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2. EPA is working with Tribes.

In July 2007, EPA launched the American Indian Tribal Portal, a single point of access for all tribal information. This is the Federal website designed to assist tribes and the public in locating tribal environmental information through a single access point. The site includes a calendar and contact system that facilitates faster communication among all the Tribes. For instance the National Tribal Conference on Environmental Management (NTCEM) used the Tribal Portal to seek and organize attendees. At NTCEM, EPA trained tribal members on everything from proper garbage management to reducing air pollution. The Agency has also worked with Tribes to adopt tribal performance measures, such as the number of uncontrolled dumps that have been closed, to better track progress and identify areas for improvement.

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3. EPA is working with its federal partners.

Over the last year, EPA has become the leader in identifying how to manage research dollars efficiently. EPA collected best practices from around the government and then worked with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to pilot a new approach for measuring research program efficiency. This effort was critical to EPA's success in achieving a green rating on the PMA scorecard for the Performance Improvement Initiative.

At the same time, EPA and OMB asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to identify the 'state of the art' in measuring the efficiency of federal research programs. The report was delivered to EPA in January 2008 and included novel recommendations that will be instrumental in helping research programs across the government improve their ability to assess and improve research efficiency. EPA is currently implementing the NAS recommendations. For example, EPA will be engaging our Board of Scientific Counselors in assessing the efficiency of investments in the Homeland Security Research Program resulting in cost savings. Demonstrating our leadership in this area, in April 2008, EPA and OMB sponsored an interagency panel at which NAS shared its recommendations with other federal agencies and science-based organizations. EPA continues to lead a cross-government dialogue about how best to implement the NAS recommendations at forums such as the Washington Research Evaluation Network and the Interagency Task Group on the Science of Science Policy.

These examples illustrate how EPA integrates the perspectives and expertise of key partners into the Agency's "clear line of sight."

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