United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
AWBERC LIBRARY
U.S. EPA
25 W. MARTIH LUTHER KING DR.
CINCINNATI, OWQ 15268
EPA 600/N-93/007
March 1993
&EPA
The Quality Manager
For EPA's QA Community
SramLREPORT
NATIONAL QA MANAGEMENT MEETING
Published by the Qualty Assurance Management Staff, Office of Research and Development
1992 QA MANAGER OF THE YEAR: LORA JOHNSON
Each year at the National Q A Man-
agement Meeting, a reception and ban-
quet is held to honor the recipient of the
QA Manager of the Year Award. The
award was established to honor the indi-
vidual who makes the greatest contribu-
ceives $2,000 in cash, a plaque inscribed
with his/her name and accomplishment,
and his/her name engraved on the Qual-
ity Assurance Honors Board at EPA
Headquarters.
Nancy Wentworth and Lora Johnson
tion to EPA's quality assurance pro-
gram during the course of the fiscal year.
The winner is determined by an impar-
tial panel of Senior EPA Managers, who
review documentation provided in the
official nomination. The awardee re-
• Lora Johnson, QA Manager for the
Environmental Monitoring Systems
Laboratory, Cincinnati, Ohio, received
the QA Manager of the Year Award for
1992. Her major accomplishments in-
clude leadership and advocacy in the
development of meaningful QA pro-
gram plans; significant contributions in
improving QA/QC communication be-
tween EMSL-Cincinnati and the clients
for its contract laboratory services; and
her success as an advocate for cross
organizational cooperation and dialogue
on QA issues.
Lora thanked her husband for his
encouragement and support, and ex-
pressed her sincere appreciation for the
support from the Laboratory Director
and Deputy Laboratory Director. "I think
this country has an incredible heritage of
natural resources, and that this Agency
is vital to passing that heritage on to our
children and grandchildren. I also think
that the QA community within EPA is
essential to making it effective, afford-
able, and efficient..."
As a conclusion to this article, THE
QUALITY MANAGER would like to
mention all the nominees for 1992's
Quality Manager of the Year Award:
William Brodtman, Office of Wastewa-
ter Enforcement and Compliance; Rich-
ard Edmonds, EPA Region 8; Wade
Knight, EPA Region 4; William Laxton,
Office of Air Planning and Standards;
Henry Longest, Office of Emergency and
Remedial Response; William Mitchell,
Atmospheric Research and Environmen-
tal Assessment Laboratory; Llewellyn
Williams, Environmental Monitoring
Systems Laboratory in Las Vegas; and
the Pretreatmcnt Unit (Lee Bohme, Steve
Bainter, and Karen Black) of the Toxics
Control Section of the Waste Management
Division in Region 6.
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Page 2
The Quality Manager
REVITALIZING QUALITY ASSURANCE AT FPA
With the change in administration in
Washington and leadership at EPA, changes
that will impact the Agency's QA program
are inevitable, and it is essential that the QA
community come together and renew its
strength in order to provide the needed lead-
er sh ipto meet the challenge of these changes.
It was hoped that the 13th Annual National
Meeting on Managing Environmental Data
Quality would accomplish these goals and
serve as a spring board for a renewal of
quality across the Agency.
The 13th Annual National Meeting
on Managing Environmental Data
Quality was held in San Francisco, Cali-
fornia the week of February 1, 1993.
More than one hundred participants from
the EPA program offices, laboratories,
and regions; other government agen-
cies; state and local agencies; private
contractors; and Q A consultants attended
the week-long meeting.
The theme of the conference, "Re-
vitalizing Quality Assurance at EPA,"
focused on identifying major successes
and weaknesses in the EPA QA pro-
gram, defining the current status of the
quality program, discussing issues that
will impact future progress, and estab-
lishing a vision and sense of direction
for the future. Each participant at the
conference received a notebook con-
taining the agenda, a floor plan of the
conference center, abstracts of major
presentations, a prospectus for available
on-site training opportunities, brief
speaker biographies, a list of names and
addresses of all participants, and an
evaluation form. This notebook will
replace the published proceedings of
previous years and hopefully give you a
record of the 13th Annual Meeting that
will be beneficial to your quality pro-
gram efforts.
In this special issue of THE QUAL-
ITY MANAGER, we will summarize
the events of the conference and present
the major highlights in greater detail.
WELCOME TO SAN FRANCISCO!
"It should be made clear that we' re
not building from the platform of having
no program. We are building from a
platform of strength in our existing QA
program."
John Wise
After welcoming the participants to
San Francisco, John Wise, Acting Re-
gional Administrator for EPA Region 9,
discussed several key points that fo-
cused on the theme of the conference,
"Revitalizing QA at EPA."
1. QA is thebasisofEPA's founda-
tion. "We're not building from the plat-
form of having no program; we're build-
ing from a platform of strength in our
existing QA program."
2. The quality of data is a presiden-
tial level weakness in the 1992 Federal
Managers' Financial Integrity Act
(FMFIA) declarations. 'To understand
the meaning of a FMFIA declaration, it
is a declaration of a weakness in an
Agency core program which means that
it will get attention, review, resources,
etc. Speaking for my colleagues, we
don't view QA as a weakness, but as a
sound program important to having
quality data, and vital to the future of the
Agency."
3. TheSuperfundprogram'smethod
for accelerating the Superfund process
(known as SACM) must be used care-
fully to avoid compromising the integ-
rity of the data. "Although we all want
to get on with the business of tests and
audits of analytical methods to make
certain that we are not comparing apples
and oranges, i.e., standard methods ver-
sus non-standard methods.
John concluded his presentation by
saying that we must continue to work on
and improve old standards such as the
Data Quality Objectives process, the
authenticity of laboratory data, and the
interfacing of EPA's QA program with
other data collection programs. "The
decision itself is informed by a variety of
factors but absolutely turns on the qual-
ity of the data."
SPECIAL INTEREST
GROUPS
Special Interest Groups met on
Thursday to discuss specific issues
relevant to their particular special in-
terest 1 he groups consisted of EPA
Headquarters, EPA Regional Offices,
and the Office of Research and De-
velopment.
The conference notebook con-
tains the topics discussed in each group
session, and the names of the discus-
sion leaders.
The next issue of THE QUAL-
ITY MANAGER will summarize the
conclusions of each group, and give a
brief report on the actions taken on
the addressed issues.
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Spring Edition 1993
Pages
KEYNOTE ADDRESS:
CONTINUING THE JOURNEY TOWARDS QUALITY
Senior managers have the responsibil-
ity for the data quality process and for mak-
ing the decisions. We are the people who
ensure that managers have on the table what
they need to make sound decisions at a
reasonable cost."
Nancy Wentworth, Director of the
Quality Assurance Management Staff
at EPA, recounted the formation of the
EPA via the "Federal Reorganization
Plan" of 1970 and cited some of the
more critical milestones in the evolve-
mentofEPA:
* 1972. A Quality Assurance Di-
vision was formed within the Office of
Research and Monitoring to represent
QA activities at the EPA Headquarters.
• 1973. An Agency-wide quality
control strategy was approved, funded,
and made mandatory across the Agency
with emphasis on analytical methods
and the laboratory.
• 1979. A mandatory quality as-
surance program was approved and ex-
tended to all environmental data
collection activities; the Quality Assur-
ance Management Staff was formed;
and the importance of management pro-
cesses and the integration of planning
and assessment processes was recog-
nized.
• 1984. The 1979 program was
codified into EPA Order 5360.1, which
defined the QA role and responsibilities
of Senior Agency Managers and others
involved in environmental data opera-
tions.
"The current program focus, in the
latest TQM jargon, is the right data, at
the right time, for the right decision.
And this is what we are striving for. We
have a number of program components
we're trying to merge in order to realize
this vision. The first is management
planning and involvement If managers
are not involved in the planning process
to make sure that things happen, in all
probability they will not happen. The
second is the Data Quality Objectives
process. This is the planning process to
make sure that you get the right data, at
the right time, for the right decision, at
the right price. The other element is
Data Quality Assessment, which is tak-
ing the data you have and making sure
Nancy Wentworth
you can say that what you have is what
you thought you were going to get."
The future of the EPA under the
new Administration was then discussed.
Nancy envisioned several changes:
1. The elevation of the Agency to
Cabinet Status.
2. A realignment of environmental
research functions across the govern-
ment, with consideration of the forma-
tion of the National Institute of Envi-
ronmental and Health Sciences, and
3. Reorganization within EPA (with
a review of the location of QAMS).
Nancy then summarized recom-
mendations from the expert panel char-
tered last year by Administrator Reilly.
The panel on "Safeguarding the Future
- Credible Science, Credible Decisions"
was asked to look at science within the
Agency: how it is planned, how it is
reviewed, and how it is used. The rec-
ommendations included:
• The Agency needs to redefine its
science agenda to meet the long-term,
complex, and global environmental
problems.
• The Agency needs to broaden its
views instead of looking at a single
medium or individual problem.
• The Agency needs to make high
quality science a priority.
• The Agency needs a science ad-
visor to the Administrator to help him
implement peer review and quality as-
surance programs. (** This has been
implemented, and the new advisor is Dr.
William Raub.)
• Science should be used early and
often in the development of regulations.
• QA and peer review should be
applied to the planning and results of all
scientific and technical efforts to obtain
and use data.
• There should be a World Class
Scientists Program, with a group of sci-
entists whose sole purpose would be to
think great thoughts, and make sure that
our use of science was meaningful and
of the highest order.
Nancy concluded her speech by dis-
cussing internal and external forces that
would impact the future status and di-
rection of the Agency's QA program,
such as the Federal Managers' Financial
Integrity Act (FMFIA) declaring data
quality a weakness across the Agency,
anda series of General AccountingOffice
(GAO) reports from on-going audits.
[Over the past three or four years, GAO
has conducted audits of the Ambient Air
Monitoring Program, the Drinking Water
Compliance Program, the Pesticides and
Toxic Substances GLP Program, the
NPDES Program, and the RCRA Haz-
ardous Waste Subtitle C Permits Pro-
gram. This series of reports will be pub-
lished soon.]
GAOfindingsindicatethat: 1.where
environmental measurements are required
to be taken, statistics have not been used
well, if at all, in the development of those
monitoring programs; 2. mere is a wide-
spread inability to document the quality
of the data; and 3. there is a wide-spread
inability to document measurement sys-
tem performance, not just precision and
accuracy, but performance evaluation data
of sufficient frequency to tell if the mea-
surement systems are under control or
not
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Page 4
The Quality Manager
PLENARY SESSIONS
The Use of Metrics in EPA
Charles Plost, QA Manager for the
Office of Modeling, Monitoring Sys-
tems, and Quality Assurance, andEPA's
Metric Executive, discussed legislation
that focused on using metrics at EPA.
Charles described the 1985 EPA Order
1000.21 A, "The Use of Metrics in the
EPA," which directs Agency manage-
ment to ensure that all EPA comply with
the Metric Conversion Act of 1975; he
briefly discussedExecutive Order 12770,
"Metric Usage in Federal Government
Programs;" and then provided a copy of
a proposed December 21, 1992 draft
revision of Federal Standard 376B,
"Recommended U.S. Government Met-
ric Units," Federal Register, Vol 57, No.
245,preparedbyGSA,DOD,andNIST.
If you have comments or questions,
Charles can be reached at 202-260-4345.
EMMC Status Report
Bettina Fletcher from the Office of
Regional Operations and State/Local Re-
lations, and also a member of Environ-
mental Monitoring Management Council
Steering Committee, gave a brief report
on the status of the EMMC.
Current activities include:
1. The recommendation for devel-
oping a design for a national laboratory
accreditation program, with an EPA-
State group assisting in the preparation
of a draft program framework.
2. The Methods Integration Panel
has developed integrated methods for
several common analyses, which are
undergoing internal review.
3. The EMMC Policy Council has
endorsed recommended changes to the
Agency's regulation development pro-
cess and the development of guidance
for regulatory work groups designed to
highlight the monitoring aspects of new
regulations.
4. The Environmental Monitoring
Methods Index (EMMI) has been dis-
tributed Agency-wide, with public dis-
tribution being negotiated through NTIS.
A system update is anticipated some-
time this year.
Future activities include:
1. Reaching a consensus on an
initial set of integrated methods;
2. Addressing a process for ensur-
ing the adoption of integrated methods
by all Agency programs; and
3. Addressing new issues such as
the use of performance-based methods
and coordinated activities with the
Technology Innovation Council on ap-
proval processes for new monitoring
methods.
Extramural Support for
Quality Assurance
George Alapas, Chief of the Evalu-
ation and Review Staff in the Office of
Research and Development, and Nancy
Wentworth, Director of the Quality As-
surance Management Staff, jointly dis-
cussed management safeguards and
contracting procedural requirements.
George reported that internal ORD
reviews and Office of Inspector General
audits conducted across ORD over the
past several months have consistently
found three violations:
1. Contractors have been perform-
ing functions that are inherently Gov-
ernmental and must be performed by a
government employee;
2. Contractors have been requested
to perform duties that create a personal
services relationship (some warning
signs are: performance on site, principle
equipment furnished by the government,
services are integral to the Agency's
assigned mission, comparable services
meeting comparable needs are performed
elsewhere by Government employees,
the services have been required for more
than one year, and the nature of the work
requires direct supervision); and
3. Contractors have performed work
for EPA when they had a conflict of
interest. (A conflict of interest exists
when, because of other contractual and
personal circumstance, the contractor
cannot render an impartial judgement or
advice to the Government).
Nancy picked up where George left
of f by discussing the list of tasks in EPA
Order 1900.2, "Contracting at EPA,"
that are "inherently Governmental
functions" and, as such, are prohibited
to contractors. She also mentioned an-
other list of functions that are "sensi-
tive," and may be performed by contract
"only under appropriate management
controls."
One such sensitive function is the
oversight of one contractor by another.
To help solve this problem, a Quality
Action Team (Q AT) was formed in ORD
to review the QA program functions and
delineate those that were inherently
Governmental functions and those that
could be performed by extramural re-
sources.
The QAT developed a list of QA
functions under three headings: Tasks
that can only be done by Federal em-
ployees; Tasks that can by done by
contract; and Tasks that are sensitive
and can be done by contract only under
appropriate management controls. The
QAT report containing these lists have
been reviewed internally and by OGC
and OARM, and are thought to be an
appropriate application of current con-
tracting policies.
According to Nancy, steps will be
taken in the next few weeks to have the
QAT report issued as official ORD
policy. And following this, steps will be
taken to initiate the "Green Border Re-
view" across the Agency to determine if
it would become Agency policy.
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Spring Edition 1993
Pages
PANEL DISCUSSIONS
Management Approaches for
Quality
Moderator:
Jim Stemmle
Members:
John Sandy, Office of the Comptroller
Dick Bauer, Office of Administration
and Resource Management
George Alapas, Office of Research
Program Management
Nancy Wentworth, Quality Assurance
Management Staff
John Sandy
John Sandy discussed FMFIA and
what it means to have a Presidential
weakness. "The basic idea was to have
aU managers, not just accountants and
auditors, self assess their programs to
determine if controls over those pro-
grams were sufficient to prevent prob-
lems from occurring. And if the prob-
lems are big enough, and serious enough,
then Congress wants to know about
them."
John then mentioned five FMFIA
requirements of EPA:
1. Describe the program
2. Document the program
3. On a scale of 1 to 10, describe the
seriousness of the problem
4. Prepare a corrective action plan
to tell Congress and the American pub-
lic how you will solve the problem
5. Implement the program
The final portion of the presenta-
tion was devoted to what was being done
at EPA to change the process and make
the management technique more mean-
ingful for managers. The activities in-
cluded:
1. Establishing an Agency-wide
Quality Action Team and to look at:
a.improving the understanding of the
act, b. improving their reporting to make
it more useful for managers, and c. get-
ting buy-in at the top.
2. Establishing an Accountable Of-
ficials Network requiring managers with
material weaknesses to report monthly
on progress made toward correcting their
deficiencies
3. Continuing the Senior Council
on Management Controls as requested
byGAO
Dick Bauer
Dick focused on what TQM is
and how it works in the Agency. "TQM
is a comprehensive set of management
principles and problem-solving tools
designed to help an individual or an
organization improve its productivity
and the quality of its products or ser-
vices. TQM emphasizes fact rather than
opinion and you must be able to measure
and to quantify or you can't improve.
So, TQM depends on getting informa-
tion that is reproducible and reliable."
The presentation ended with a
comparison of TQM to other manage-
ment systems in the past. The conclu-
sion was that TQM optimized the best
planning, measuring, and implementing
strategies from the many different man-
agement systems, including ZBB and
MBO.
George Alapas
George talked about the consis-
tencies and inconsistenciesbetween three
management improvement models:
FMFIA, TQM, and QA. "The FMFIA
model emphasizes hierarchy, control,
documentation, power, and the role of
trained professionals in defining the
quality of the outputs, while TQM em-
phasizes flatter organizations, the con-
cept of empowerment, human resources,
building consensus, outcomes, and the
voice of the customer. And similar to
FMFIA and TQM, QA defines a model
of a successful organization within which
all decisions are made rationally, based
on data determined to be adequate for
the purpose."
The intent of the three models
was then discussed. George stated that
each model seeks to improve Agency
organizations by focusing on effective-
ness and improved quality of outputs.
"There is a strong undercurrent of
efficiency—and each model implies a
way of making the organizations a better
place to work."
Nancy Wentworth
Nancy stated that QAMS has been
applying TQM in the past and will con-
tinue to apply it in the future by: pro-
viding its customers with QA leader-
ship, guidance, tools, and training; en-
suring that as changes occur, QAMS
will interact with top management to
make a positive difference; responding
to FMFIA requirements, such as report-
ing on quality progress; and creating a
positive force for quality improvement
across the Agency.
QAMS QA Documents and
Tools
Moderator:
Gary Johnson, QAMS
Members:
FredHaeberer, QAMS
John Warren, QAMS
Gary Johnson
Gary Johnson reported that QAMS
had started a program to develop and
distribute various requirements and
guidance documents. He reviewed the
purpose, expected availability dates, and
current status of 17 QA-related docu-
ments.
** A list of the guidances is avail-
able in the conference notebook.
Fred Haeberer
Fred discussed the progress and
changes in the Data Quality Objectives
(DQO) process and guidance. Recent
activities mentioned were that QAMS
was revising the DQO guidance for gen-
eral or generic environmental data col-
lection operations, and working with the
Office of Emergency and Remedial Re-
sponse to develop customized guidance
for specific application to the Superf und
(continued on page 6)
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Pages
The Quality Manager
PANEL DISCUSSIONS
(continued from page 5)
Accelerated Cleanup Model (SACM).
This Superfund guidance would replace
an earlier two-volume DQO package
issued by OERR in 1987, but would be
broader in scope and would incorporate
SACM. Fred stated that a workgroup
which included representatives from
regions and program offices, was as-
sisting in the revision process, and that
the guidance would be reviewed across
the Agency when completed.
John Warren
John described the currentprogress
and status of the development of guid-
ance for implementing a Data Quality
Assessment (DQA) process.
He discussed several key character-
istics for useful DQA guidance:
1. Readability
2. Usefulness
3. Not a "how to" book
4. Strong statistical bias
What Do You Need To Move
QA Forward?
Moderator:
Fred Haeberer, QAMS
Members:
Barbara Metzger, Environmental
Services Division, Region 2
RonPatterson, Atmospheric Research
andExposure AssessmentLaboratory,
Research Triangle Park
Duane Geuder, Office of Emergency
and Remedial Response
Barbara Metzger
"Before we focus on what we can
do to improve Q A, we need to look at the
areas that need the most help. Number
1 is buy-in by the folks who should be
using QA as an integral part of their
work. Without a buy-in by everyone in
the Agency, and those who interact with
the Agency Grantees, contractors, and
regulated community, we will not come
close to having a true quality QA pro-
gram in the region. And second is the
necessary resources to implement a
quality QA program with the associated
QC. If Q A is not considered an integral
part, it becomes an additional holdup, a
resource drain..."
Barbara then stated that the most
important step in making things better is
to have an Agency QA Champion "with
a lot of helpers, rather than a lot of "I'm
the Champion." This should make deal-
ing with cross-cutting issues, such as
performance standards and laboratory
accreditation more efficient and more
successful."
Barbara summarized by emphasiz-
ing three important points:
1. There needs to be an unfettered
Champion of Q A who could work across
all programs.
2. Program Offices should assume
more QA/QC responsibilities to free
regional expertise for problem-solving.
3. QA should be a line item in the
budgeting processof programs to prevent
the trickle down from the program of-
fices and laboratories to the regions.
Ron Patterson
Ron focused on the "Grass Roots"
problems and issues that impacted the
quality of laboratory data. Several is-
sues mentioned included:
1. Expanding Agency-imposed
programs with no increase in resources;
2. Aging capital equipment, with
nothing planned in the budget for re-
placements;
3. Retiring technical staff and pro-
fessional experts with no plans to re-
place them; and
4. Changing environmental regula-
tions.
Ron added that given these circum-
stances, the laboratories would have to
streamline their programs and concen-
trate on the more critical things such as:
1. Management involvement in
planning goals and targets.
2. Changes in duties and responsi-
bilities. Managers must"... take an ac-
tive role in planning...and they must
identify their quality needs and expecta-
tions based on documented specifica-
tions, criteria, targets, and goals."
3. Training development. "Our
project officers need training in devel-
oping S tatements of Work that are suffi-
cient and accurate enough to implement
the job, and aid in the development of a
good QA Project Plan."
4. Change in policy, "...to make
quality the responsibility of the person
accepting the products or services from
a Level of Effort (LOE) contract, thus
relieving some of the Project Officer's
QA responsibilities."
Duane Geuder
Duane addressed two issues on
Superfund: what the program contains
and what it lacks.
It contains:
1. EPA Order 5360.1, which gives
a quality system and spells out indi-
vidual responsibilities, and
2. The National Contingency Plan
(NCP), which contains strong QA re-
quirements.
It lacks:
1. Adequate audits, oversight, and
corrective actions,
2. A comprehensive QA plan for
OSWER that covers Superfund and
RCRA,
3. Full DQO documentation,
4. A focal point for input to the
Superfund RPM: QA input from the
BSD, geologic input, statistical input,
etc., and
5. Training. ("Not TQM, but good
old-fashioned QA.")
QA and Information Resources
Management Requirements:
Project Life Cycle Consider-
ations
Moderator:
Fred Haeberer, QAMS
Members:
Linda Kirkland, Environmental
Monitoring and Assessment Program
(EMAP.ORD)
Rick Johnson, Office of Information
and Resource Management
(continued on page 8)
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Spring Edition 1993
Page?
THE BANQUET: QUALITY IMPROVEMENT WORKS!
"What we have here is a rhino prob-
lem. We call senior managers rhinos be-
cause they stand around and do nothing
until something agitates them, and then they
charge in and screw everything up."
Larry Ledin
Larry Ledin is the President and
Chief Executive Officer for Basic
American Foods (BAF), a privately-
owned multi-million dollar company
that makes dehydrated products such as
potatoes, beans, onions, and garlic for
various fast food clients. Headquar-
tered in San Francisco, California,
Basic American Foods has seven plants
and employs over 3000 people.
Larry's presentation focused on the
quality improvement process used at
BAF and how it was beneficial to the
company and its employees. "We are
committed to continuous improvement
fueled by employee involvement—mea-
sured and recognized." Four elements
were cited as keys to success at BAF:
Continuous Improvement. "You
must have management commitment and
no rhinos. It's easy to be successful at
improvement when you're on the brink
of going under, but it's hard when you're
already successful. At BAF, we now
have an Executive Committee for Im-
provement, a VP for Improvement, and
Continuous Improvement teams."
Employee Involvement. 'The key
to success is employee involvement. An
enormous untapped resource in this
country is the ability of humans to con-
tribute, and it's management's job not
primarily to make decisions, but to make
certain that the best decisions are made."
Measure. "At BAF, we measure
everything and display the results in the
employees' work area. It's a very funda-
mental principle. If you measure it and
display the results, it will improve. No
one wantsameasurement chart that shows
performance going straight down."
Recognition. 'To keep the momen-
tum going, you musthave recognition. At
theMilikenCompany, aMalcolm Baldrige
Award winner, more than 80% of over
20,000 employees are rewarded in a tan-
gible way each year. Roger Miliken walks
around the company on Saturdays with a
recorder in his hand, and if he sees an
employee, he dictates a letter thanking
him for his dedication and asking him
what he can do so that the employee can
spend Saturdays with his family. The
reason that employees improve is that
someone recognizes their good behavior.
Confident managers share the power and
recognizepeople's efforts when they make
a contribution. We used to have rhinos
who went around looking for something
wrong so they could curse somebody out.
Now, we go around looking for good
things that deserve a reward."
TRAINING SESSIONS
Six training sessions were offered
on Wednesday of the conference.
EPA Auditing for Improved Perfor-
mance: Dennis Arter, Columbia
Quality, Inc.
This workshop focused on apply-
ing quality auditing principles to envi-
ronmental applications, and how to move
from an inspection approach to a more
analytical approach. Some of the topics
included: the four phases of auditing,
skills and qualifications of an auditor,
the audit plan, and effective auditreports.
Achieving High Quality Measure-
ment Processes: Stan Deming, De-
partment of Chemistry, University of
Houston
This workshop addressed issues
involved with achieving high quality
measurement processes. Topics of dis-
cussion focused on how to accomplish a
common language for working with a
variety of applications, fundamentals of
laboratory quality control, and ways to
evaluate measurement processes.
Positive Communication Skills for
Change and Chaos: Linne Bourget,
Positive Management Communica-
tions Systems
This workshop covered the follow-
ing topics: how "communication as
usual" makes change more difficult, what
communication approaches support and
facilitate change, how to use leading
edge mental technologies to communi-
cate more effectively for change, how
you can achieve success in change by
using certain communication ap-
proaches, how to increase your ability to
influence others' in change, and how to
keep yourself going during tough times.
Introduction to the Data Quality
Objective (DQO) Process: Fred
Haeberer, Quality Assurance Man-
agement Staff, EPA
Malcolm Bertoni, Center for En-
vironmental Measurements and
Quality Assurance, Research Triangle
Institute, EPA
This workshop was conducted to:
provide a general understanding of the
DQO concept and its value to environ-
(Continued on page 8)
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Pages
The Quality Manager
PANEL DISCUSSIONS
(continued from page 6)
Linda Kirkland
Linda focused on the current and
future activities of the Environmental
Monitoring and Assessment Program
(EMAP). Current QA-related activities
include:
1. Development of a proof of con-
cept information management system,
which incorporates planning for data
quality assessment, through a series of
workshops.
2. Development of a quality man-
agement system that incorporates a Data
Quality Assessment process relating to
how data can be used.
3. Development of data base que-
ries that will produce example reports.
4. Development of data quality as-
sessments to target data quality objec-
tives and confidence intervals.
Future activities of the EMAP in-
clude:
1.Estimating the current status,
trends, and changes in selected indica-
tors of the condition of the Nation's
ecological resources on a regional basis
with known confidence.
2. Estimating the geographic cov-
erage and extent of the Nation's ecologi-
cal resources with known confidence.
3. Seeking association between se-
lected indicators of natural and anthro-
pogenic stresses and indicators of con-
ditions of our national ecological re-
sources.
Rick Johnson
Rick discussed emerging informa-
tion resources management issues, fo-
cusing on the conclusions and recom-
mendations of a study done a year ago
on the overall status of the Agency's
information resources. "We decided to
do a study to determine if the Agency's
information resources were as diffuse
and unconnected as we suspected. Some
of our suspicions were correct"
Findings indicated that EPA's in-
formation systems were optimized for
individual programs, there was a lack of
meta data, and most problems started in
the collection phase with a failure to
identify the potential customers. Rec-
ommendations to solve these problems
included looking at other organizations
that may have similar problems to see
what they were doing to solve them, and
creating a data element dictionary that
would look at existing data bases and
information systems "as a kind of re-
pository to allow people to know what
kinds of data are in those systems, and
the overall assets of the Agency."
WRAP UP
The Special Interest Groups pre-
sented their summaries on issues dis-
cussed the previous day. The spokes-
person for EPA's Regional Offices was
Don Johnson from Region 6; Jim
Stemmle represented EPA Headquar-
ters; and Ron Patterson presented the
conclusions of the Office of Research
and Development.
THE QUALITY MANAGER will
publish these summaries, along with the
latest updates on the action items, in the
next issue. In the interim, please direct
any specific questions to the individual
presenter. His/her address can be found
in the list of participants that was handed
out at the conference.
** The conference notebook con-
tains the topics discussed in each ses-
sion, along with the names of the discus-
sion leaders.
Nancy Wentworth closed out the
meeting with high hopes for the future.
She encouraged participants, and the
QA community as a whole, to accept the
challenges of the future; turn the nega-
tives and barriers of dealing with OIG/
GAO criticisms into positives and
bridges; make internal forces and con-
flicting management priorities; and im-
prove extramural support for QA under
the current guidelines.
TRAINING
SESSIONS
(continued from page 7)
mental decision-making, familiar-
ize participants with the key steps
and roles in the DQO process, and
provide practical experience in DQO
implementation. Emphasis was
placed on management issues asso-
ciated with DQOs, rather than "how-
to" technical information.
Data Quality Assessment Statis-
tics:
John Warren, Quality Assurance
Management Staff, EPA
Bob O'Brien, Office of Policy
Planning and Evaluation, EPA
This workshop focused on what
the Data Quality Assessment (DQ A)
processis, whatitspositiveattributes
are, how it can be used as a planning
tool, and when a statistician is
needed. Emphasis was placed on
the practical interpretation of data,
the relationship of DQA to DQO,
and what a statistician does when
investigating data.
Training Technology: Mary Ann
Pierce, JWK International Cor-
poration
This workshop demonstrated
computer-based training lessons that
were developed to provide QA
technical and management training
support in the RCRAandSuperfund
programs. These lessons provide
basic information on data collec-
tion and data analysis activities, and
are intended to create an interactive
learning environment through the
use and techniques such as graph-
ics, animation, and games.
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