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GCN Home > 10/11/04 issue

Interstate exchange: Management was key to putting EPA network together

By Richard W. Walker, GCN Staff

From the beginning, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Information Exchange Network initiative looked like a tall order.

“I don’t think we really appreciated what was before us in terms of the complexity of the project—and that’s a good thing because we might have been scared off,” said Mark Luttner, director of EPA’s Office of Information Collection.

But rigorous and meticulous management of the exchange network’s evolution has allowed the system to flower since it was conceived about six years ago and formally launched last fall.

Using Web services and Extensible Markup Language schema, EPA and state agencies are starting to share vital environmental data electronically, improving data quality and saving time and resources.

Luttner said 13 state environmental departments currently have Exchange Network nodes or Web servers, and are exchanging data on a regular basis.

He said EPA officials hope to have about 35 state agencies on the network by the end of this calendar year and all 50 states online before the end of next year. He also expects some Indian tribes on board in the next year.

The idea for the system had its genesis in 1998, when officials began to recognize a growing need to standardize information-sharing processes be-tween EPA and states.

At the time, states were developing their own automated systems for reporting environmental data. They also were required to report that data to EPA via its systems.

A hodge-podge of incompatible platforms, databases, languages and formats was impeding the ability to share critical environmental information.

Quality concerns

“States were frustrated at having to provide EPA with environmental data that goes into the agency’s legacy systems,” Luttner said. “There also were all sorts of data-quality issues that needed to be addressed. Another common problem was timeliness. Some data presented [to EPA] was two years old.”

EPA and the Environmental Council of the States decided to commission a forum, the Information Management Workgroup, to seek a fix for the problem.

In 2000, the workgroup created a joint EPA and state team to develop a blueprint for a national data network. The team came up with a network concept that would use the latest technologies to let EPA and state agencies share information more efficiently and effectively.

Two years later, the workgroup chartered a permanent governing body, the Network Steering Board, to oversee and guide the implementation of the exchange network.

Made up of eight members, four from EPA and four from state agencies, the board oversees and manages the framework, policies and procedural issues.

The board, co-chaired by Kim Nelson, EPA assistant administrator for environmental information, and Bob Zimmerman of the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, also manages an assortment of action teams that design and develop technical approaches, and manage data-related issues for the network.

More news on related topics: Content / Record Management, E-Government, IT Infrastructure, Management, IT Management, Web Strategies



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