Greenversations

I recently returned from the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Convention in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where EPA had a strong presence. Our participation ranged from a “green chat”, a tree dedication, recruiters at the LULAC job fair, a forum on climate change, and, above all, Administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s keynote address.

As administrator Jackson highlighted, EPA is urging all communities “to broaden the idea of environmentalism.” She emphasized the need to ensure that “EPA and the environmental movement in general represent the full spectrum of voices and concerns from across the country.”

In addition to the events surrounding the LULAC convention, Administrator Jackson met with the Governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Fortuño, to discuss many of the environmental challenges facing the islands of Puerto Rico. During their meeting at La Fortaleza, Administrator Jackson announced that the Agency was awarding nearly $72 million to Puerto Rico through the Recovery Act for improvements in wastewater and drinking water systems.

EPA’s community engagement in the islands of Puerto Rico goes well beyond its participation at the LULAC convention. EPA’s presence has greatly improved the conditions of the San Juan Estuary. Stakeholders representing the local government, academia, business, community and environmental groups have collaborated closely over the years to restore and manage that body of water and surrounding land. The collaboration has benefitted the environmental health of San Juan residents. Furthermore, the Agency continues to work closely with local universities to address environmental concerns, such as asthma, air and water quality, to name a few.

EPA’s collaboration with Hispanic organizations and community leaders continues to be a priority for the Agency. The Beyond Translation Initiative is a prime example of the Agency’s efforts to actively engage Hispanic community leaders in this new environmentalism. Stay tuned.

About the author: Lina Younes has been working for EPA since 2002 and chairs EPA’s Multilingual Task Force.  Prior to joining EPA, she was the Washington bureau chief for two Puerto Rican newspapers and she has worked for several government agencies.

Recientemente regresé de la Convención de la Liga Latinoamericana de Ciudadanos Unidos (LULAC, por sus siglas en inglés) en San Juan, Puerto Rico, donde la EPA tuvo una sólida presencia. Nuestra participación incluyó varias actividades entre las cuales figuraban una “charla verde”, una dedicación de un árbol, reclutadores a la feria de empleos de LULAC, un foro sobre cambio climático, y sobre todo, el discurso de la administradora Lisa P. Jackson ante la convención.

La administradora Jackson destacó que EPA está exhortando a todas las comunidades a “ampliar el concepto del ambientalismo”. Ella enfatizó la necesidad de asegurar que la “EPA y el movimiento ambiental en general debe representar una amplia gama de voces y preocupaciones provenientes de todo el país”.

Además de los eventos relacionados con la convención de LULAC, la administradora Jackson se reunió con el gobernador de Puerto Rico Luis Fortuño para discutir muchos de los retos medioambientales a los cuales se enfrentan las islas de Puerto Rico. Durante su reunión en La Fortaleza, la administradora Jackson anunció que la agencia otorgaba cerca de $72 millones a Puerto Rico de la Ley de Recuperación Económica para mejoras en los sistemas de aguas residuales y potable.

La participación comunitaria de EPA en las islas de Puerto Rico va más allá de su participación en la convención de LULAC. La presencia de EPA ha contribuido enormemente a mejorar las condiciones del Estuario de San Juan. Partes interesadas que representan funcionarios y líderes del gobierno local, las universidades, el sector privado, grupos comunitarios y ambientales han podido colaborar estrechamente a lo largo de los años para restaurar y manejar este importante cuerpo de agua y terrenos circundantes. Esta colaboración ha beneficiado la salud medioambiental de los residentes de San Juan. Además, la Agencia continúa trabajando de cerca con universidades e instituciones locales para abordar preocupaciones ambientales como el asma, la calidad del aire y del agua, entre otros.

La colaboración de EPA con organizaciones y líderes comunitarios hispanos continúa siendo una prioridad para la Agencia. La Iniciativa de Más allá de las traducciones es otro ejemplo primordial de los esfuerzos de la Agencia por entablar una comunicación activa con líderes comunitarios hispanos en este nuevo modelo de ambientalismo. Permanezcan sintonizados.

Sobre la autor: Lina M. F. Younes ha trabajado en la EPA desde el 2002 y está a cargo del Grupo de Trabajo sobre Comunicaciones Multilingües. Como periodista, dirigió la oficina en Washington de dos periódicos puertorriqueños y ha laborado en varias agencias gubernamentals.

Last fall, I wrote about this blog’s Twitter account, @greenversations. Since then, several folks across EPA have been trying out Twitter, with varying approaches.  Today, I got this question from Randa Williams, a researcher at the University of Washington who’s looking into best practices for businesses on Twitter:

I wonder when you will start having conversations rather than just broadcasting on twitter…Lots of EPA broadcast channels on Twitter, exceptionally few conversations. I know, engagement is more work, wondering if you had thought about expanding into this area.

It was such a good question, I thought I’d respond publicly as well as emailing her.

Randa is right: the gold standard is conversing on Twitter and other social media sites, not just broadcasting. But she’s also right that it takes resources.  Not just someone’s time, but also having the right person, who’s plugged into what’s going on around EPA and who knows how to speak to the world on EPA’s behalf.

There are also different ways to use Twitter, and we’re experimenting with most of them.  For example, we’ve done a little live tweeting, with plans to do more.  There are also different approaches to who to follow, how frequently we can commit to posting, etc.

We do have a couple of good examples of interaction for content on a smaller scale than “all of EPA:”

• @EPAregion9 - Wendy Chavez in our San Francisco office.  I think Wendy is our best tweeter at the moment.
• @EPAespanol - Lina Younes at headquarters.  Lina leads our multilingual communications task force (have you seen all the languages in the upper right corner of our home page?), and she tweets in Spanish.

While we figure out the gold standard (interaction), we’re doing what we can on what I call the tin standard (broadcasting). Given the number of followers, it seems a decent number of people appreciate even that.  Here are some of our other accounts:

• @EPAgov - our main account.  Primarily our automated news release headlines and blog posts, plus a few web updates and manual tweets.  This account combines content that’s also split into individual accounts, and is also available on normal Web pages:
  • @EPAnews - news releases (same info as shown in our newsroom)
  • @greenversations - blog (same as the blog itself)
  • @EPAweb - updates to epa.gov (same info as shown on our recent additions page)
• @EPAlive - we’re occasionally experimenting with using this for live tweeting
• @EPAowow - Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds
• @EPAairmarkets - market-based regulatory programs to improve U.S. air quality
• @EPAregion2 - regional office in New York
• @EPAregion3 - regional office in Philadelphia

We’re also working up some conventions, like starting our account names with “usepa” and using the same seal as the avatar.

Not quite in the same category, some of us are also tweeting professionally. We’re not “representing” EPA per se, but we’re using it as a professional network and information source.  For example:

• @levyj413 - this is my Twitter account, and I use it to discuss social media in government (especially EPA)
• @suzack777 - this is Suzanne Ackerman on our web team.  Suzanne uses Twitter to research projects like blogger outreach, and uses Twitter to make contacts and discuss related issues.

So thanks, Randa, for reminding me that we need to communicate more about what we’re up to.  Stay tuned for updates about our other social media efforts, too (in the meantime, join us on Facebook!).

Jeffrey Levy is EPA’s Director of Web Communications.

About the author: Jeffrey Levy joined EPA in 1993 to help protect the ozone layer. He is now the Director of Web Communications.

A couple of weeks ago, EPA Administrator Jackson issued a memo calling for maximum transparency in everything we do. The memo put into EPA terms the ideas first espoused in the memo President Obama issued on his first full day in office, saying that government must be transparent, participatory, and collaborative.  The overarching theme is that you, the public, are entitled to know what we’re up to.

Those of us in EPA’s Web community really took notice, because our site and various social media tools (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) offer so many ways to serve those goals.  We have several projects underway.

One of the first is that the Administrator publishes her daily working calendar showing meetings with the public.  Next, she directed her senior management team to do the same.

We’re now setting up the process, and you’ll soon be able to see who’s meeting with top EPA leaders.

It occurs to us, though, that we could do better than simply giving you a calendar in table form. What if you could download multiple calendars across EPA and other agencies, and then create mashups as you saw fit?

So we want to publish machine-readable formats, too. And that’s where you can help us. Please let us know what works best: comma delimited, something else?

Also, please help us understand how you’d use the info; that’ll help us figure out how to make it easier.

We’ll be coming back to you to ask for your help on other questions, too, so here’s to a long, collaborative discussion!

Marcus Peacock is EPA’s Deputy Administrator. This speech was written a year ago to be delivered next week. It didn’t need to be changed one whit.

A teacher once asked her third grade class if any of the students had heard of Julius Caesar. “Yes,” said one girl in the back of the classroom. “What do you know about him?” the teacher asked. “Well, I know he lived a long time ago and he was really important.” “Anything else?” the teacher prodded. “Yeah, he gave really long speeches . . . and they killed him.”

(pause)

I don’t intend to talk for long.

For over three years I’ve been in charge of making EPA run better. I think it’s the best job I’ll ever have. It’s tough to say ‘good-bye.’

It’s been an exciting 42 months. First we set up a system for governing at the ‘corporate’ level by creating quarterly management reports and meetings. Building off this I believe we have become the best-managed Agency in the Cabinet. Look at what we did in 2008 alone. We were:

• the second Agency to achieve, and keep, the highest possible score on the President’s Management Agenda
• the only Agency to create a new organization, the Program Analysis Division, whose full-time job is to look for ways to improve operations and outcomes.
• one of a few agencies to systematically capture, disseminate, and validate best practices;
• the first Agency to internally broadcast, live, regular senior management progress meetings;
• the only Agency I know of to have our senior career managers regularly meet to make decisions regarding improving our operations and management systems;
• and the first federal Agency to win the President’s Quality Award for overall management back-to-back.

Part of this success is due to the fact we used measures to manage rather than just using them to report. Since 2005 we’ve reduced the number of measures by 20 percent making those that remain more vital. In 2008:

• EPA, for the first time, corralled all our performance measures into one central repository;
• all EPA offices were able to access all our measures electronically and some offices were able to create tailored electronic dashboards; and
• managers were not slaves to measures but constantly asked the key question, “What are the outcomes we are really trying to achieve?”

We accomplished these things because hundreds of people at this Agency understand that when EPA works better, public health and the environment improve faster. Management initiatives are gobbledygook unless they lead to cleaner air, water, and/or land. It’s that simple.

I’ll miss working on EPA’s operations and on EPA’s mission. But most of all, I’ll miss working with people who get up every morning, look themselves in the mirror and ask, “How can I improve what we do today?”

Thanks and farewell.

About the author:  Jenny Robbins is on the EPAStat Quarterly Report team, which produces the report with partners across EPA to evaluate and improve performance.

“The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.”
- George Bernard Shaw

As George points out, fresh and frequent data is a must for any successful endeavor, including pants. At EPA we want to make sure our pants fit. To this end, EPA uses a quarterly report (the EPAStat Quarterly Report (EQR) to be exact) to see how we’re progressing on selected performance measures - both environmental and internal management benchmarks. We just released the latest installment. This fourth quarter report is particularly exciting (go with us here) as it gives us a chance to review our progress over the course of the entire year and compare that to how we’ve done in years past. Where have we had the greatest successes? Where have we fallen behind and why? Most exciting of all, how can we take advantage of existing opportunities for improvement?

So, how did we fare in FY 2008? Overall, EPA had a successful year with notable achievements in enforcement and compliance, air pollution reductions, and water quality protection, and for the most part, EPA had several improvements over FY 2007 performance. Our work is by no means done but, in the spirit of continuous improvement, we’re feeling up to the challenges that FY 2009 will bring.

One of the year’s more sizable achievements is the whopping 3.9 billion pounds of pollution expected to be reduced, treated or eliminated as a result of concluded enforcement actions and audit agreements in FY 2008, significantly exceeding the year’s 890 million pound target. Billions of pounds of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, pathogens, and storm water pollutants will be impacted.

In terms of the nation’s air quality, EPA also made great progress in reducing diesel emissions. One of the ways EPA addresses the significant amount of pollution still being emitted from old diesel engines is by awarding grants for diesel emission reduction projects and retrofitting or replacing old engines. In FY 2008, the number of diesel projects funded with EPA grants nearly tripled from last year thanks to efforts by EPA Regions to establish clean diesel coalitions with the states. These projects are resulting in considerable reductions in air pollutants such as particulate matter, nitrous oxide, and hydrocarbons.

Of course, a number of challenges remain for FY 2009. An area in which the Agency hopes to improve is the timeliness of key regulatory actions. EPA is continuing to work on getting those regulatory actions furthest behind schedule back on track so that the public and the environment can benefit from them sooner.

This year also brought EPA more causes to celebrate. In early December, EPA was awarded the Presidents Quality Award (PQA) for the second year in a row - a first in the history of the award! The award recognizes a number of management innovations we’ve made over the past year including the launch of EPAStat.

We aim to continue our work as a performance leader in the federal govermment. Here’s to EPA’s continued success and improvement in FY 2009!

The EPAStat Quarterly Report Team

About the author: Marcus Peacock is EPA’s Deputy Administrator.

Congratulations. Here are ten suggestions from a former Deputy:

1. Be your agency’s Chief Operating Officer. No one else has the scope of authority to do this job.
2. Listen. Within the first 15 days interview 10 to 20 people who know the agency well. Ask them:

• What are the best things about the agency?
• What are the top few things that should be changed?
• Who are the most respected people in the agency? (Make sure you interview these people.)
• If you were in my shoes, what would you work on?
• What are the major obstacles to successfully finishing the work you suggest and how can they be overcome?

3. Plan. Take what you learned from the interviews to your boss. With your boss, write down what you will accomplish in your first year. Include items 4 through 8 below. Include specific mid-term goals. This is your personal performance plan. Your inbox will relentlessly try and knock you off your plan. Don’t let it.
4. Learn. Have key agency performance measures reported to you at least every quarter (shoot for every week). The measures must reflect the President’s priorities. After two reporting cycles you will know more about the agency than anyone else.
5. Get help. Establish a team that can help you interpret the performance data. They should look for trends, anomalies, and best practices.
6. Manage. Regularly meet with the head of every major office (e.g., the Under Secretaries) to review the office’s performance. Use performance data to improve operations, formulate budgets and make policy decisions. Measures for reporting don’t mean much. Measures for managing are vital.
7. Motivate. Link awards, promotions, pay increases, bonuses, and other recognition to the agency’s performance. Personally recognize people who exceed expectations.
8. Show the world. Publicly release performance data at least every quarter (shoot for every week). Accountability is your best friend.
9. Be honest. In Washington DC, reputation is the coin of the realm.
10. Have a blast.

One last thing, if a former Deputy calls, always take the call.

“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.”– Benjamin Franklin

Last fall, Benjamin Franklin spent a few minutes with EPA and State environmental leaders at a meeting in Philadelphia (No Really!) Ben related how Philadelphia addressed some of the environmental challenges it confronted during his day and noted a number of improvements (see the video to the left, or read the transcript below). At EPA, we also want to know how we’re doing in addressing some of today’s challenges.

The EPAStat Quarterly Report (EQR) (formerly known as the Quarterly Management Report) provides part of the answer. Every few months – quarterly, not surprisingly – EPA produces a report characterizing how we’re progressing on selected performance measures. The report includes both environmental measures and internal management benchmarks. For example, measures about how we’re working with our partners and stakeholders to improve air and water quality and other measures about how we’re running the agency.

OK…so how are we doing? This quarter’s report indicates two important things. First, from a national perspective we’re on track to meet our goals for the fiscal year. Second, a few results really stood out – in a good way and a few in a not-so-good way. Overall, while performance in many areas is roughly the same as it was last year, during this past quarter EPA and its partners have made a number of impressive gains. We have improved air quality, improved water quality and increased land restoration. In particular, the SmartWay program continues to bring in new partners to reduce transportation-related emissions, which results in measurable air quality and/or greenhouse gas improvements and cost savings (Box 30). On the not-so-good front, there are also a few areas where performance is lagging, but we anticipate significant gains during the fourth quarter, which will enable us to meet our targets in areas such as increasing the number of homes along the Mexico border with improved drinking water services (Box 28) and the completion of assessments of high and moderate production chemicals (Box 42).

Also note that this quarter’s report — in keeping with Ben’s advice about continual growth and progress — reflects a couple changes. First, the report has a new name, EPAStat Quarterly Report. The new title more accurately places this report in the ‘context’ of EPA’s overall performance management activities and EPAStat program (our internal performance management program). Second, we’ve improved the web navigation of the report. The new approach, we think, helps readers get to the data they want more quickly.

So if we could talk with Ben …we’d tell him that we continue to grow and progress. We hope you agree. In any case, we’re trying out some new ideas and we hope that you’ll let us know your ideas for ways to keep improving. Please use the “feedback” link on the webpage and let us know what you think!

See you next quarter,

EPAStat Quarterly Report Team

Transcript of Ben Franklin’s remarks shown in the video above
Ben Franklin: But the thing was, we had some real problems in the early days. Pollution was our biggest problem here in Philadelphia. The wells and the privy pits were too close together. You didn’t dare drink the water in Philadelphia. The river was so badly polluted that when we wanted to cut ice we had to cut it from the school hill and bring it across town. Anything beyond 6th or 7th Street was out in the country.

We had a terrible problem with the air. Our city was heated with wood fires for the most part. During the winter you could barely breathe, but even during the warmer months, we were still cooking with those fires. It was a dusty, dirty city, because the streets were not paved. You couldn’t breathe. Most of the people in Philadelphia slept sitting up because the air quality was so bad that you couldn’t breathe if you were lying down.

Now my friends, I tell you that little story because, my friends, you are the drivers. You need to know the best way to do things, the safest places, the cleanest places, because you’re in charge of it. If we are not creative, if we are not innovative, if we are not working towards solutions, we are going to be left behind as all of the new things come on and as they happen. And your agency is responsible for an awful lot. You basically are responsible for the quality of life in this nation.

About the author: Karen Reshkin manages the Web site in EPA’s Chicago office. She’s been there since 1991, and can still remember life before the Internet.

I’ve worked at US EPA since the early 90s. I must enjoy my work, because I’m always surprised to watch the years mount up.

A more unsettling surprise comes when people ask me about EPA’s policies or recent actions that get into the news. More often than I like to admit, my answer is, “I don’t know.”

Why not? Well, I don’t follow news as closely as I probably should. But also, my job at EPA is mainly concerned with our Web site. I can help you find info on epa.gov, or tell you all about our Web standards (though you might never ask), but I can’t always tell you what was in the news release I posted yesterday.

One of the things I know best, oddly, is what we don’t do. Michelangelo is credited with saying that when creating a sculpture, he’d start with a block of stone and chip away everything that didn’t look like a horse (or an elephant, or an angel, depending on who’s telling the story). When I worked answering our hotline, I found that many calls and emails were “wrong numbers” – people contacting us for things we don’t do. For example, if you can’t renew your license plates because you didn’t get an emissions test for your vehicle, you’ll need to contact your state transportation or environmental department, not US EPA.

When I was invited to write for this blog, I decided to repair my ignorance. I plan to find out about some of the things that EPA does and tell about them as plainly as I can. It’s sort of the “inside outsider” approach. I’ll also do some sculpting and tell you about a few things you might think we handle, but we really don’t.

About the author: Marcus Peacock is EPA’s Deputy Administrator.

EPA’s Quarterly Management Report (QMR) for the second quarter of FY 2008 is now available at http://www.epa.gov/ocfo/qmr. A comparison of mid-year data for FY 2008 versus FY 2007 indicates mixed results and that, overall, EPA is currently performing at about the same level as we did last year. We are clearly improving in some areas. For instance, the SmartWay program has more than doubled the amount of greenhouse gas emissions avoided (700,000 metric tons in 2008 vs. 300,000 tons in 2007, see graph). It also reveals areas where we may be challenged. For instance, there has been a dip in the number of significant water discharge permits issued in the Chesapeake Bay watershed (61 in 2008 vs. 150 in 2007). That’s important because fewer revised permits means pollution limits may not be getting tightened as quickly as last year. We need to find out if this is a problem (perhaps someone from the Chesapeake Bay Program wants to comment on this). I encourage you to look up, question, and use the measures, if any, that reflect what is going on in your area.

EPA is still the only federal agency which issues quarterly performance results to the public. While everyone at EPA should have a good idea of how we are doing, I think we are obligated to show the public how we are performing on a regular basis.

The QMR itself continues to improve. This report came out two weeks earlier than prior quarters. There is also now a Web-based version providing more contextual information and some ‘drilling down.’ The Web-based version, which we will continue to improve, can be found at http://iaspub.epa.gov/qmrpub/qmr_rpts.qmr_reports.