Abstract |
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is actively working to implement the President's program for reinventing government and reforming regulatory policy. As a part of these efforts, EPA is working to implement, to the extent feasible, a Performance-Based Measurement System (PBMS) for environmental monitoring in all of its media program offices. As a result, EPA intends that PBMS provide flexibility in conducting required environmental monitoring, expedite the use of new technologies, and result in less costly approaches to conducting required monitoring. Congress and the regulated public have also expressed support for such changes. EPA's Environmental Monitoring Management Council (EMMC), developed a working definition of PBMS and identified guiding principles for EPA to follow. The EMMC then tasked Agency offices, including the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (OSWER), with developing a plan to implement PBMS on a program-specific basis. This document is a result of efforts by the OSWER PBMS Implementation Team in response to this task. Based on this plan, OSWER projects that PBMS will be fully implemented at OSWER by September 30, 1998. The OSWER Team began development of the implementation plan by using the EMMCs PBMS definition and guiding principles to identify PBMS implementation goals for OSWER. As part of the development process, the OSWER Team also determined to what extent OSWER was already implementing these PBMS principles. The various program offices were asked to identify and describe any projects or tasks that have been completed or are on-going which address the PBMS goals. The Team called the recently completed projects PBMS victories. |