Greenversations

Barbara Bennett, EPA Chief Financial Officer

Last November I was confirmed as EPA’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO). For many people, I imagine my title conjures images of number crunching and spreadsheets (which are all certainly part of what I do). However, my experience in finance has taught me that numbers always tell a story.

In my role as EPA’s CFO, the numbers I look at every day help paint a picture of how EPA accomplishes its mission and goals throughout the year. One way we are able to tell a story here at EPA is through the Agency’s five-year Strategic Plan. This Plan is our way of communicating the framework for our environmental programs, the plans for our budget resources, and the progress we have made on our priorities to the U.S. public.

I am delighted to announce that the Draft FY 2011-2015 Strategic Plan is now available for your review and comment, and I invite you to engage and share your thoughts and ideas with us from now through July 30:

• Read, review, comment, and review other comments on the Plan at www.regulations.gov (copy and paste docket number EPA-HQ-OA-2010-0486 into the search box).
• Share your ideas on EPA’s new Cross-Cutting Fundamental Strategies on our Discussion Forum. We will be hosting a dialogue around a different Cross-Cutting Fundamental Strategy each week!

The Draft Plan presents measurable environmental and human health goals that EPA will work to achieve over the next five years. The Draft Plan also includes five Cross-Cutting Fundamental Strategies, which are integral in guiding how EPA will work to accomplish our goals, and which also foster a renewed commitment to accountability, openness, and inclusion.

I look forward to reading your ideas on the Draft Strategic Plan and how we can fundamentally change the way EPA works to protect our environment and human health in our communities, our nation, and beyond.

About the author: Barbara Bennett is EPA’s Chief Financial Officer. Prior to joining EPA, she served as Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Discovery Communications, Inc. She lives in Virginia with her husband and two children.

We’re constantly looking for ways to make it easier for you to do what you want on our Web site, and we’re just starting a major overhaul. But epa.gov is large (500,000 pages) and complex (hundreds of smaller sites), so it’ll take time.

We’re taking small steps, though, and the first is a new home page. The main issue with the current home page is that it lacks visual and content prioritization, which makes it challenging to use.

Our design goals are straightforward: help you do what you want while sharing what we’re up to. To figure out your top tasks, we used a lot of data:

• popular search terms both here and in external search engines
• a question about top tasks in our online customer satisfaction survey
• scans that showed where people are clicking on the current home page
• surveys and focus groups that went into our information strategy

The top tasks, both across all audiences and within specific audiences, are remarkably consistent:

• learn about environmental issues
• find out what EPA is doing about an issue (this aligns well with our need to report what we’re up to)
• learn about your local community

Within the business community, an additional concern is to learn about requirements they have to follow. For parents, finding out what they can do to help and finding information for kids are also top tasks. Nothing overly surprising in these results, but it’s good to have data to confirm what we thought.

Our design approach was to greatly simplify the home page, focusing on these tasks and not trying to do everything.

New features include:

• A section linking directly to the subjects you search for most. We’ll update this section as things change.
• A new section on what you can do to protect the environment. We’ll change the contents of this section to match current efforts.
• New banner layouts that give us more flexibility to tell you what we’re doing.
• New sections showing our latest announcements and our highest-priority efforts.

We retained several elements that match your top tasks, like MyEnvironment, which lets you search for information about your community. And the tabs at the top will still be there (stay tuned for major enhancements to the content behind all of them). You’ll still be able to quickly link to our social media efforts, information about working here, and other information in the footer.

Again, this is just the first step, and we’ll adjust as we go. We’ve posted the new home page as a sneak peek, and we’d appreciate hearing your thoughts. Have we missed something big? Does it work? Are we achieving our goals? Keep in mind the complexity of our mission and our multiple audiences as you consider the new design. And remember, this is just the home page; we’re also working to improve the entire site.

I’m excited to finally be able to share the hard work of many folks here, and I look forward to hearing your suggestions for how we can do even better!

Check out the sneak peek.

About the author: Jeffrey Levy is EPA’s Director of Web Communications

Have you heard about President Obama’s Open Government Directive (PDF) (81K, about PDF)? Under this plan, we’re looking for your help making EPA more transparent and finding ways for us to work with you better. The ultimate goal? Getting the best ideas for how we can meet our mission of protecting health and the environment.

I’m personally excited about this new effort because it ties in so well with many other projects that use new tools to connect with you and get you involved.  One of the first was this blog, launched in April 2008.  Since then, we’ve started Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts, put together online discussion forums, done some live video webcasts, and launched Pick 5 for the Environment.

To get started, check out our new open government Web site, which links to many innovative projects and our social media sites.

It also shows our progress on several milestones.  The next one is to write our open government plan.  It’s due April 7, so until March 19 we’re using a special idea collection system to get your thoughts about:

• what should be in the plan
• how we should prioritize what we publish
• how to improve the quality of our information
• new ways of doing business and new tools we should be using

You can also vote and comment on other people’s ideas.

I look forward to hearing from you!

About the author: Jeffrey Levy is EPA’s Director of Web Communications.

Today, Administrator Lisa P. Jackson announced seven priorities for
EPA’s future:

• Taking Action on Climate Change
• Improving Air Quality
• Assuring the Safety of Chemicals
• Cleaning Up Our Communities
• Protecting America’s Waters
• Expanding the Conversation on Environmentalism and Working for Environmental Justice
• Building Strong State and Tribal Partnerships

Read her memo for the details.

Well it’s over. Yup, after weeks of planning, EPA’s Environmental Science Center’s 10th Anniversary celebration came to a successful conclusion.  After a 1996 groundbreaking, the Science Center opened for business in February 1999 and was dedicated by a host of politicians in April, 1999.  From then on it’s been my pleasure to be the facility manager.

I may not use Avogadro’s number very often, but I get to interact with both in-house customers and work with our hosts – the US Army.  Back in the mid-1980’s due to an earlier Base Realignment and Closure effort (BRAC for short), the Army was looking to transform Fort Meade into a federal office complex.  And EPA sought a modern home that consolidated facilities in Annapolis and Beltsville, Maryland and Cincinnati, Ohio.  While we normally enjoy poking fun at politicians, I have to say that Maryland’s two senators at the time enabled EPA to have a green, state-of-the-art facility to allow applied environmental analytical chemistry and microbiology to flourish.  The Army agreed to provide land for the new Environmental Science Center and Congress provided EPA the funds to design and build the facility.  Because EPA owns the Science Center, it’s facilities management’s job to make sure it serves the technical and scientific needs of the staff and scientists without getting in their way.

A lot has changed in the past 10 years.  When we arrived at Fort Meade, it was an “open post.”  Employees and most visitors were free to come and go with little or no interaction with the military.  Of course all that changed on that 2001 September day.  Managing a non-Defense facility on the other side of the fence line hasn’t been easy for us non-DoDer’s.  Fortunately, our hosts have gone out of their way to make us feel part of the community and we’ve learned to become more security aware.  Like all Americans we’ve adjusted to the times.  While we fight to protect the nation’s natural environmental resources, we work side by side with the men and women who defend our liberty day to day.

Our 10-year celebration gave us a perfect reason to step back and reflect on the sound science and other important achievements the staff has performed over the years.  All too often we’re so enmeshed in our day to day duties and focusing on the next crisis that we don’t take time to reflect.  Fortunately, there is something about the calendar and decennial time periods that force us to think about our recent past. When we did that to prepare for the anniversary, we were amazed at how many people who were with us in 1999 still work at the Science Center.  Seventy four of our 143 original employees still work here.  That’s a good sign that the Agency in general and the Environmental Science Center in particular is a satisfying, challenging place to work.

I’ll be back in touch with Greenversations for our 20th reunion.

About the author: Rick is a thirty plus year career federal employee with the Environmental Protection Agency. While with EPA, he has served in multiple capacities, and has been the Facility Manager at the Environmental Science  Center since the Center’s opening in 1999.  He is interested in travel, fly fishing, crabbing, genealogy and foreign languages.

I recently returned from the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Convention in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where EPA had a strong presence. Our participation ranged from a “green chat”, a tree dedication, recruiters at the LULAC job fair, a forum on climate change, and, above all, Administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s keynote address.

As administrator Jackson highlighted, EPA is urging all communities “to broaden the idea of environmentalism.” She emphasized the need to ensure that “EPA and the environmental movement in general represent the full spectrum of voices and concerns from across the country.”

In addition to the events surrounding the LULAC convention, Administrator Jackson met with the Governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Fortuño, to discuss many of the environmental challenges facing the islands of Puerto Rico. During their meeting at La Fortaleza, Administrator Jackson announced that the Agency was awarding nearly $72 million to Puerto Rico through the Recovery Act for improvements in wastewater and drinking water systems.

EPA’s community engagement in the islands of Puerto Rico goes well beyond its participation at the LULAC convention. EPA’s presence has greatly improved the conditions of the San Juan Estuary. Stakeholders representing the local government, academia, business, community and environmental groups have collaborated closely over the years to restore and manage that body of water and surrounding land. The collaboration has benefitted the environmental health of San Juan residents. Furthermore, the Agency continues to work closely with local universities to address environmental concerns, such as asthma, air and water quality, to name a few.

EPA’s collaboration with Hispanic organizations and community leaders continues to be a priority for the Agency. The Beyond Translation Initiative is a prime example of the Agency’s efforts to actively engage Hispanic community leaders in this new environmentalism. Stay tuned.

About the author: Lina Younes has been working for EPA since 2002 and chairs EPA’s Multilingual Task Force.  Prior to joining EPA, she was the Washington bureau chief for two Puerto Rican newspapers and she has worked for several government agencies.

Recientemente regresé de la Convención de la Liga Latinoamericana de Ciudadanos Unidos (LULAC, por sus siglas en inglés) en San Juan, Puerto Rico, donde la EPA tuvo una sólida presencia. Nuestra participación incluyó varias actividades entre las cuales figuraban una “charla verde”, una dedicación de un árbol, reclutadores a la feria de empleos de LULAC, un foro sobre cambio climático, y sobre todo, el discurso de la administradora Lisa P. Jackson ante la convención.

La administradora Jackson destacó que EPA está exhortando a todas las comunidades a “ampliar el concepto del ambientalismo”. Ella enfatizó la necesidad de asegurar que la “EPA y el movimiento ambiental en general debe representar una amplia gama de voces y preocupaciones provenientes de todo el país”.

Además de los eventos relacionados con la convención de LULAC, la administradora Jackson se reunió con el gobernador de Puerto Rico Luis Fortuño para discutir muchos de los retos medioambientales a los cuales se enfrentan las islas de Puerto Rico. Durante su reunión en La Fortaleza, la administradora Jackson anunció que la agencia otorgaba cerca de $72 millones a Puerto Rico de la Ley de Recuperación Económica para mejoras en los sistemas de aguas residuales y potable.

La participación comunitaria de EPA en las islas de Puerto Rico va más allá de su participación en la convención de LULAC. La presencia de EPA ha contribuido enormemente a mejorar las condiciones del Estuario de San Juan. Partes interesadas que representan funcionarios y líderes del gobierno local, las universidades, el sector privado, grupos comunitarios y ambientales han podido colaborar estrechamente a lo largo de los años para restaurar y manejar este importante cuerpo de agua y terrenos circundantes. Esta colaboración ha beneficiado la salud medioambiental de los residentes de San Juan. Además, la Agencia continúa trabajando de cerca con universidades e instituciones locales para abordar preocupaciones ambientales como el asma, la calidad del aire y del agua, entre otros.

La colaboración de EPA con organizaciones y líderes comunitarios hispanos continúa siendo una prioridad para la Agencia. La Iniciativa de Más allá de las traducciones es otro ejemplo primordial de los esfuerzos de la Agencia por entablar una comunicación activa con líderes comunitarios hispanos en este nuevo modelo de ambientalismo. Permanezcan sintonizados.

Sobre la autor: Lina M. F. Younes ha trabajado en la EPA desde el 2002 y está a cargo del Grupo de Trabajo sobre Comunicaciones Multilingües. Como periodista, dirigió la oficina en Washington de dos periódicos puertorriqueños y ha laborado en varias agencias gubernamentals.

Last fall, I wrote about this blog’s Twitter account, @greenversations. Since then, several folks across EPA have been trying out Twitter, with varying approaches.  Today, I got this question from Randa Williams, a researcher at the University of Washington who’s looking into best practices for businesses on Twitter:

I wonder when you will start having conversations rather than just broadcasting on twitter…Lots of EPA broadcast channels on Twitter, exceptionally few conversations. I know, engagement is more work, wondering if you had thought about expanding into this area.

It was such a good question, I thought I’d respond publicly as well as emailing her.

Randa is right: the gold standard is conversing on Twitter and other social media sites, not just broadcasting. But she’s also right that it takes resources.  Not just someone’s time, but also having the right person, who’s plugged into what’s going on around EPA and who knows how to speak to the world on EPA’s behalf.

There are also different ways to use Twitter, and we’re experimenting with most of them.  For example, we’ve done a little live tweeting, with plans to do more.  There are also different approaches to who to follow, how frequently we can commit to posting, etc.

We do have a couple of good examples of interaction for content on a smaller scale than “all of EPA:”

• @EPAregion9 – Wendy Chavez in our San Francisco office.  I think Wendy is our best tweeter at the moment.
• @EPAespanol – Lina Younes at headquarters.  Lina leads our multilingual communications task force (have you seen all the languages in the upper right corner of our home page?), and she tweets in Spanish.

While we figure out the gold standard (interaction), we’re doing what we can on what I call the tin standard (broadcasting). Given the number of followers, it seems a decent number of people appreciate even that.  Here are some of our other accounts:

• @EPAgov – our main account.  Primarily our automated news release headlines and blog posts, plus a few web updates and manual tweets.  This account combines content that’s also split into individual accounts, and is also available on normal Web pages:
  • @EPAnews – news releases (same info as shown in our newsroom)
  • @greenversations – blog (same as the blog itself)
  • @EPAweb – updates to epa.gov (same info as shown on our recent additions page)
• @EPAlive – we’re occasionally experimenting with using this for live tweeting
• @EPAowow – Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds
• @EPAairmarkets – market-based regulatory programs to improve U.S. air quality
• @EPAregion2 – regional office in New York
• @EPAregion3 – regional office in Philadelphia

We’re also working up some conventions, like starting our account names with “usepa” and using the same seal as the avatar.

Not quite in the same category, some of us are also tweeting professionally. We’re not “representing” EPA per se, but we’re using it as a professional network and information source.  For example:

• @levyj413 – this is my Twitter account, and I use it to discuss social media in government (especially EPA)
• @suzack777 – this is Suzanne Ackerman on our web team.  Suzanne uses Twitter to research projects like blogger outreach, and uses Twitter to make contacts and discuss related issues.

So thanks, Randa, for reminding me that we need to communicate more about what we’re up to.  Stay tuned for updates about our other social media efforts, too (in the meantime, join us on Facebook!).

Jeffrey Levy is EPA’s Director of Web Communications.

About the author: Jeffrey Levy joined EPA in 1993 to help protect the ozone layer. He is now the Director of Web Communications.

A couple of weeks ago, EPA Administrator Jackson issued a memo calling for maximum transparency in everything we do. The memo put into EPA terms the ideas first espoused in the memo President Obama issued on his first full day in office, saying that government must be transparent, participatory, and collaborative.  The overarching theme is that you, the public, are entitled to know what we’re up to.

Those of us in EPA’s Web community really took notice, because our site and various social media tools (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) offer so many ways to serve those goals.  We have several projects underway.

One of the first is that the Administrator publishes her daily working calendar showing meetings with the public.  Next, she directed her senior management team to do the same.

We’re now setting up the process, and you’ll soon be able to see who’s meeting with top EPA leaders.

It occurs to us, though, that we could do better than simply giving you a calendar in table form. What if you could download multiple calendars across EPA and other agencies, and then create mashups as you saw fit?

So we want to publish machine-readable formats, too. And that’s where you can help us. Please let us know what works best: comma delimited, something else?

Also, please help us understand how you’d use the info; that’ll help us figure out how to make it easier.

We’ll be coming back to you to ask for your help on other questions, too, so here’s to a long, collaborative discussion!

Marcus Peacock is EPA’s Deputy Administrator. This speech was written a year ago to be delivered next week. It didn’t need to be changed one whit.

A teacher once asked her third grade class if any of the students had heard of Julius Caesar. “Yes,” said one girl in the back of the classroom. “What do you know about him?” the teacher asked. “Well, I know he lived a long time ago and he was really important.” “Anything else?” the teacher prodded. “Yeah, he gave really long speeches . . . and they killed him.”

(pause)

I don’t intend to talk for long.

For over three years I’ve been in charge of making EPA run better. I think it’s the best job I’ll ever have. It’s tough to say ‘good-bye.’

It’s been an exciting 42 months. First we set up a system for governing at the ‘corporate’ level by creating quarterly management reports and meetings. Building off this I believe we have become the best-managed Agency in the Cabinet. Look at what we did in 2008 alone. We were:

• the second Agency to achieve, and keep, the highest possible score on the President’s Management Agenda
• the only Agency to create a new organization, the Program Analysis Division, whose full-time job is to look for ways to improve operations and outcomes.
• one of a few agencies to systematically capture, disseminate, and validate best practices;
• the first Agency to internally broadcast, live, regular senior management progress meetings;
• the only Agency I know of to have our senior career managers regularly meet to make decisions regarding improving our operations and management systems;
• and the first federal Agency to win the President’s Quality Award for overall management back-to-back.

Part of this success is due to the fact we used measures to manage rather than just using them to report. Since 2005 we’ve reduced the number of measures by 20 percent making those that remain more vital. In 2008:

• EPA, for the first time, corralled all our performance measures into one central repository;
• all EPA offices were able to access all our measures electronically and some offices were able to create tailored electronic dashboards; and
• managers were not slaves to measures but constantly asked the key question, “What are the outcomes we are really trying to achieve?”

We accomplished these things because hundreds of people at this Agency understand that when EPA works better, public health and the environment improve faster. Management initiatives are gobbledygook unless they lead to cleaner air, water, and/or land. It’s that simple.

I’ll miss working on EPA’s operations and on EPA’s mission. But most of all, I’ll miss working with people who get up every morning, look themselves in the mirror and ask, “How can I improve what we do today?”

Thanks and farewell.