OFFICE OF SURFACE MINING
RECLAMATION & ENFORCEMENT

For Release July 22, 1997

                 Jerry Childress (202) 208-2719
                                jchildre@osmre.gov

OSM OVERSIGHT TEAM WINS VICE PRESIDENT'S HAMMER AWARD

     Assistant Secretary of the Interior Bob Armstrong presented the Oversight Steering
Committee of Interior's Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) with
Vice President Al Gore's Hammer Award today at ceremonies in the OSM Director's office in
Washington, D.C.

     The Oversight Team, composed of seven OSM employees and three state surface mining
regulation representatives, was honored for "reinventing" the process OSM employs to meet its
responsibilities for oversight of state regulatory programs as required by the Surface Mining
Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA), according to Armstrong.  The government-wide
reinvention program is coordinated by the Vice President's National Performance Review (NPR).

     Armstrong called the Oversight Steering Committee's new results-based oversight
strategy "a model of what President Clinton and Al Gore have in mind when they  talk about
reinventing government."

     Armstrong pointed out that the initial NPR recommendations in 1993 called for OSM, in
consultation with state surface mining regulators, to develop national standards of excellence for
regulatory programs, establishing goals, performance measures, and a process for evaluating
effective performance.

     OSM's initiative to reengineer its oversight policies and procedures took off in May 1995
when an OSM/state team developed the framework of a new oversight strategy.

     Under the new strategy, which went into effect in 1996, oversight is no longer rigidly
formulated or driven primarily by centralized mandates based on arbitrary processes and
procedures.  Instead, based in part on input OSM actively seeks from various interest groups and
the public, OSM and the states develop state-specific evaluation plans tailored to the unique
conditions of each state program and governed by performance agreements worked out by each
state and OSM Field Office.

     Under the new results-based oversight strategy, OSM's oversight evaluation activities
primarily focus on end results and the on-the-ground success of states in meeting SMCRA's
environmental protection standards, especially protection of the environment and public from
off-site impacts resulting from surface coal mining operations and prompt and effective
reclamation of land mined for coal.

     The new oversight guidance follows the principles of the National Performance Review:  
eliminating unnecessary paperwork, reducing excess procedural detail, and limiting data
collection to what is needed and useful for measuring whether the public protection requirements
and environmental protection standards are being met.

     "The Oversight Team's work is a model of collaborative effort by federal and state
representatives, just what the Vice President wants from our regulatory agencies," Armstrong
added.

     The award is a framed hammer decorated in red, white, and blue ribbon with a
hand-written note from Vice President Gore.  Awardees are selected by the Vice President's NPR
office from among teams of federal employees nominated by agencies.  NPR officials said Gore
chose as a reinvention symbol the ordinary $6 hardware-store hammer as a vivid contrast to the
$400 cost-overrun hammer that came from the outmoded procedures of yesterday's government. 
Each Oversight Team member receives a hammer lapel pin and an award certificate signed by
Gore.

                              -DOI-