The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has adopted new guiding principles and an IT Project Review Process that is focused on ensuring successful mission delivery across the Agency.

The American people have become accustomed to interacting with the government through increasingly complex digital channels presented via simple interfaces such as websites, native mobile applications and other digital communications mediums. Because of this new reality, there is a growing need to realign Federal development standards and capabilities around rapidly delivering high-quality, powerful and meaningful data to the public, other Federal and private entities and internally across EPA.

EPA supports and embraces Federal initiatives that streamline software and system lifecycles toward the goal of delivering user-centric data and value-driven systems. This guide draws upon the principles outlined in the U.S. Digital Services Playbook and the TechFAR Handbook for Procuring Digital Services Using Agile Processes to recommend specific actions and activities that meet EPA’s unique needs and operational constraints while promoting modern system and software development best practices.

EPA Guiding Principles for Digital Delivery

There are five value sets that are most important in guiding EPA forward in digital delivery.

1. Adhere to User-Centered Design Principles and Practices
2. Practice Iterative Development
3. Practice Modular Development
4. Encourage Open Innovation through Transparency
5. Drive to DevOps

Application Development Strategy

When determining an appropriate development strategy, solutions should be considered in the following order.

1. Use existing systems first and contribute to shared resources.
2. Buy off-the-shelf (or open-source) and change business processes to align.
3. Build on development platform.
4. Custom build applications.