Top 10 Agency Initiatives: Environmental Protection Agency

As part of the special Federal News Radio series, “The Obama Impact: Evaluating the Last Four Years,” we asked more than two dozen federal agencies — including all of the Cabinet-level agencies — for a list of the three most effective, nonpolitical management initiatives or policies they’ve embarked on over the past four years.

One EPA

While EPA’s authorities are set forth in distinct statutes — the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, etc. — the agency most effectively and efficiently pursues its mission of protecting public health and the environment when it works across these programmatic and geographic lines as a single, coordinated organization — as One EPA. Among the most effective and successful steps Administrator Lisa P. Jackson has taken to advance the thinking and practice of moving the agency to a more cohesive institution is the One EPA campaign that includes:

• Creating Cross-cutting Fundamental Strategies on issues affecting the whole agency, such as environmental justice, childrens’ health, science and technology innovation, and workforce support, as integral components of EPA’s Strategic Plan for FY 2011-2015. These strategies require EPA to work collaboratively across its traditional lines to define them, carry out action plans to achieve them, and hold the agency accountable through measurable key performance indicators. See http://www.epa.gov/planandbudget/strategicplan.html .
• Establishing a single Executive Management Council (EMC), composed of all the most senior career leaders from every EPA Office, to provide strategic direction, policy recommendations and implementation leadership on cross-agency management, policy, and administration issues. The EMC replaced multiple, overlapping senior-level councils, and provides a central forum to ensure a responsive, thoroughly considered, and fully coordinated approach to issues affecting the entire Agency.
• Identifying and implementing advanced, enterprise collaboration tools by the end of 2012 to enable EPA to overcome the high transaction costs of working as One EPA across programmatic and geographic lines, making most efficient use of employees’ distinctive expertise, provide a more supportive work environment, and promoting career development.

Sustainable Facilities

EPA was one of only two federal agencies (out of 23 rated) who met all of the goals of Executive Order 13514 by scoring “Green” (meeting or exceeding requirements) on the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) January 2012 scorecard for all seven metrics of sustainability and energy performance.These metrics include Greenhouse Gas Scope 1&2 inventory submission, Greenhouse Gas Scope 3 inventory submission, reduction in energy intensity, renewable energy usage, reduction in water intensity, reduction in fleet petroleum usage, and the percentage of Agency facilities that are sustainable green buildings.

• EPA has reduced energy use by 18.1% since FY 2003, avoiding $5.1 million annually in utility costs as of FY 2011. The agency achieves these savings through a combination of major infrastructure replacement projects like the Cincinnati AWBERC project, and re-commissioning projects like the laboratory fumehood airflow reduction project in RTP main.
• EPA has reduced water consumption by 15.3% between FY 2007 and FY 2011 at our laboratories, saving the agency $155,000 in water costs in FY 2011 alone. The agency achieves this level of savings through a number of projects including the condensate recovery systems that collect cold water that condenses on our cooling coils and delivers it to our cooling towers at the Science and Technology Center in Kansas City, water fixture upgrades at our owned laboratories, eliminating landscape irrigation at our Ada lab as well as at the FTC, and improving EPA employee awareness to use water wisely across the country.
• EPA has reduced GHG Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 56.9% in FY 2011 from a FY 2008 baseline. The agency achieves GHG reductions through a combination of purchased Green Power and Green Power Renewable Energy Credits equal to 100% of its conventional electricity use, and numerous smaller scale renewable energy projects such as the solar roof and wind turbines at the Narragansett lab.

Model Civil Rights Program

EPA has begun implementing fundamental changes to build a model civil rights program that reflects the agency’s One EPA paradigm.

In 2009, EPA hired an external consultant to evaluate complaint backlogs and other questions about the agency’s program. Taking up the challenge of the consultant’s report, Administrator Jackson appointed an Executive Committee on Civil Rights, chaired by the Deputy Administrator, to develop recommendations to revitalize EPA’s program and engage senior managers, employees, and stakeholders.

The model program has several important components. Most significantly from the perspective of immediate concerns, the agency is accelerating its investigation of discrimination complaints under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act against recipients of EPA grants by assigning investigations to experts from across the agency, while ramping up the authority of the Office of Civil Rights to assure investigations are timely and thorough. Already the agency has significantly reduced a backlog of complaints stretching back more than ten years.

From a longer term perspective, the model program broadens responsibility for civil rights, and in doing so assures that the agency’s senior executives — and their offices across EPA — all have a role and are accountable for supporting the program. The agency will take a key step here soon when it establishes Designated Civil Rights Officials in all major offices and regional locations who will be charged with developing civil rights action plans and assuring implementation of across-the-board reforms in EPA’s equal employment programs and Title VI program.

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