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IMPROVING ACCESS TO INFORMATION ABOUT ORD PROJECTS
Citation:
Shepanek, R. IMPROVING ACCESS TO INFORMATION ABOUT ORD PROJECTS. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, National Center for Environmental Assessment, Washington Office, Washington, DC, 1999.
Description:
ORD project information is maintained in, and retrieved from, multiple systems and home pages. Not all sources of project information are Intranet accessible. Descriptive information may be abbreviated and not useful in conveying a comprehensive understanding of a project. The maintenance of project information in multiple repositories is an unnecessary administrative burden. The net result of these factors is that ORD is hampered in its ability to do effective planning. One of the major benefits of improving access to project information with a shared approach is that planning will no longer occur with less than full knowledge of what projects are already on-going and planned within the organization. Easy access to project information by scientists and science managers will make ORD a more effective and efficient science enterprise. The report describes one possible scenario for ORD to improve access to ORD project information with a minimal investment in development of policy and systems integration. Two existing applications widely used within the organization already capture information that describes ORD projects. ORD Management Information System (OMIS) is the repository of budget and planning information. A second, Environmental Information Management System (EIMS), also provides access to ORD products such as data sets, documents and models. To make these systems function in an integrated fashion, ORD must develop the technical capability to share a project description, and it must develop and promulgate ORD business rules to ensure that high quality project descriptions written by ORD principal investigators (PI) are captured in an integrated system. Implementing this vision will result in consistent and useful project descriptions in all participating ORD systems. Other ORD systems that contain information on intramural and extramural projects, their relationship to GPRA, and other planning information must also be included to develop a comprehensive and accessible view of ORD projects. The report presents a simplified set of steps that ORD can take to achieve an integrated project description approach. The business process envisioned would leverage existing ORD science and administrative systems for planning and product management. A project description is created by an ORD principal investigator. This single description is used to relate future deliverables from the project in EIMS to financial information in OMIS. As the project progresses, resulting data, tools and documents are described in EIMS. Access to the descriptive information and the products themselves is strictly controlled by the PI and/or project manager. Since all deliverables created by a project are related to its description in EIMS, the content of the entire project can be electronically archived with a single command. The business process described is forward-looking. Knowledge of ORD work that is planned or already being performed is an essential component of successful strategic and tactical planning. The staff and technical infrastructure already exist to support this approach. The policies and incentives to define the business rules could be developed quickly for review by ORD management. Once approved, new policies can be promulgated ORD-wide. Making this information readily available will reduce redundant effort and enable all levels of the organization to be constructive participants in the business of ORD. The ability to share data, tools and documents is fundamental to making ORD a high performing organization, a leader in the environmental research community and achieving its strategic goals.