Managing for Results

For more than a decade, various studies have urged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to "manage for environmental results" as a way to both improve and better account for its performance. To implement this type of management, EPA must set goals, develop strategies to achieve its objectives, and report on its results. The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) recommended in 1995 that EPA take a series of steps to manage for results, including measures to improve and integrate its processes for planning, budgeting, and ensuring accountability. EPA responded to NAPA's suggestions by announcing plans to establish a new office that would develop and implement an integrated planning, budgeting, and accountability system for the agency. This report reviews the status of EPA's efforts to (1) establish the new office and develop and implement an integrated system and (2) ensure that the agency has comprehensive scientific and environmental data and appropriate environmental measures of progress for use in strategic planning, budgeting, and accountability. GAO also discusses EPA's earlier efforts to implement this kind of system and identifies elements of an effective system that could be used as benchmarks to gauge progress in this current effort.

GAO noted that: (1) in January 1997, the EPA Administrator approved the organizational structure and staffing for a new office, called the Office of Planning, Analysis, and Accountability, which is responsible for developing and implementing an integrated planning, budgeting and accountability system; (2) earlier, in March 1996, EPA had established a work group, composed of employees on temporary assignment, to begin developing the new system; (3) although the work group was never fully staffed and made limited progress in developing the system, it developed a conceptual framework that the new office is beginning to implement; (4) members of the work group were temporarily assigned to the new office, which will not be fully staffed before July 1997; (5) EPA faces long-term challenges to obtain the scientific and environmental information needed to fully support its new system; (6) although much scientific and environmental information has already been collected, many gaps exist, and the data are often difficult to compile because different data collection methods have been used; (7) likewise, much effort is still needed to identify, develop, and reach agreement on a comprehensive set of environmental measures to link the agency's activities to changes in human health and environmental conditions; (8) currently, EPA has to rely mainly on administrative measures, such as the number of permits issued or inspections made, to measure its performance or success; (9) EPA has been trying since the early 1970s to revise its management systems to better manage for results; (10) in the early 1990s, for example, EPA announced a strategic planning, budgeting, and accountability effort that was very similar to the system being proposed today; (11) however, such efforts proved to be difficult and fell short of EPA's expectations; (12) EPA's current plans are no less complex and challenging; (13) given this complexity, GAO identified various elements of an effective planning, budgeting, and accountability system that EPA can use as benchmarks to monitor its progress as it works to implement its plans for an integrated system; (14) these elements describe organizational, informational, and procedural capabilities needed to improve and integrate EPA's management processes; and (15) EPA also needs performance partnership agreements with the states to set out expectations for their contributions to meeting national environmental and agencywide goals and to specify measures for assessing their performance.

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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