Environmental Information

Since the mid-1980s, the federal government and several states have introduced public "right-to-know" initiatives on environmental issues. These initiatives require industries to report on their use and discharge of potentially harmful substances and require government agencies to make this information available to the public. Companies, however, have questioned the appropriateness of publicly disclosing increasingly detailed facility-level information. Specifically, they are concerned that their submissions contain "sensitive business information" that, if released, could harm their competitiveness. This concern is heightened because companies around the world are increasingly hiring "competitive intelligence" professionals to collect and analyze legally obtained information to glean insight into their competitors' operations. This report (1) provides information on the usefulness of publicly available information to competitive intelligence professionals and (2) assesses EPA's efforts to address industry concerns about providing the public with access to sensitive business information.

GAO noted that: (1) competitive intelligence professionals, industry representatives, and environmental officials expressed a range of views on the usefulness of publicly available environmental information provided by businesses; (2) for example, industry representatives told GAO that environmental information reported by businesses--such as air and water permits or materials accounting information--often contains valuable details about their operations; (3) in contrast, most intelligence professionals said that, while such information is useful for some of their purposes, it is rarely sufficient for reliable analyses when used alone; (4) New Jersey and Massachusetts environmental officials also questioned the value of this information for competitive intelligence purposes and noted that businesses made very few claims of confidentiality in their states when submitting even the controversial materials accounting information; (5) despite the wide range of views on the value of environmental information for competitive intelligence purposes, competitive intelligence professionals generally agreed that multiple types and sources of information are needed to develop comprehensive and reliable analyses of competitors' business operations; (6) industry officials also acknowledged that they could do a better job in protecting their sensitive business information while still complying with reporting requirements; (7) EPA has made a number of efforts to address industries' concerns about the collection and the dissemination of sensitive business information; (8) for example, during EPA's recent consideration of materials accounting reporting, the agency made several attempts to better understand and address industries' concerns; (9) however, many of the industry officials that GAO contacted continue to have concerns about EPA's lack of consistent policies and practices for collecting and disseminating sensitive business information; (10) in addition, GAO, industry trade groups, and most recently EPA itself, have raised concerns about the absence of consistent high-level agency attention to information management activities; (11) in response to these concerns, EPA will soon consolidate many of these activities in a new Information Office; and (12) however, it remains unclear how the new office will address issues related to collecting and disseminating sensitive business information.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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