Office of Environmental Information NATIONAL PROGRAM MANAGER GUIDANCE FISCAL YEAR 2018-2019 August 2017 [260B17001] ------- Office of Environmental Information FY 2018-2019 NPM Guidance Table of Contents I. INTRODUCTION 2 II. KEY PROGRAMMATIC ACTIVITIES 3 Making a Visible Difference in Communities 3 Data and Content Management 3 Information Security 3 EPA Geospatial Platform 4 Exchange Network 4 Exchange Network Grants 5 Moving EPA to a High Performing Organization 6 EPA Quality Program 6 FITARA and IT/IM Governance 7 APPENDIX A: FY 2018 NPM GUIDANCE MEASURES APPENDIX TEMPLATE 8 APPENDIX C: POINTS OF CONTACT FOR MORE INFORMATION 9 1 ------- Office of Environmental Information FY 2018-2019 NPM Guidance I. INTRODUCTION The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Overview to the FY 2018-2019 National Program Manager (NPM) Guidance communicates Agency-wide information as well as other applicable requirements critical to effective implementation of EPA's environmental programs for FY 2018 and 2019 and should be reviewed in conjunction with this Guidance. The Overview is available at: https://www.epa.gov/planandbudget/national-program-manager-guidances. The EPA has progressively integrated new and transformative approaches to the way information technology (IT) and information management (IM) is managed across the agency as consistent with the FY 2018 President's Budget request. The goal of the EPA's IT/IM services is to enhance the power of information by delivering on demand data to the right people at the right time. The Office of Environmental Information (OEI) will strive to meet EPA's IT/IM service need while continuously improving customer experiences to allow EPA, its partners and the public to acquire, generate, manage, use and share information as a critical resource to protect human health and the environment. To accomplish this, OEI will focus available capacity in the following areas: • Improve the way EPA supports and manages the lifecycle of information; • Modernize EPA's IT/IM infrastructure, applications and services; • Empower a mobile workforce using innovative and agile solutions; • Empower state and Tribal partnerships using innovative and agile solutions; and • Align IT/IM resources with EPA's core program priorities. OEI continues work to strengthen IT partnerships with states and federally-recognized Indian tribes (tribes) that are central to the success of the national environmental protection enterprise through consultation, collaboration, and shared accountability. In keeping with the government to government relationship between federally-recognized tribes and the federal government, OEI will commit to including tribes in meaningful outreach and information sharing activities by upholding EPA's 1984 Indian Policy and the EPA Policy on Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribes. 2 ------- Office of Environmental Information FY 2018-2019 NPM Guidance II. KEY PROGRAMMATIC ACTIVITIES Making a Visible Difference in Communities OEI will continue to improve access to environmental data while also engaging and empowering communities and partners. Increasing the availability of publicly accessible Agency data increases transparency, expands public participation and encourages collaboration among stakeholders to find solutions for environmental problems. EPA will: • Continue to streamline business processes and systems to reduce burden on states, tribes and regulated facilities, while also improving the effectiveness and efficiency of regulatory programs, with the implementation of the E-Enterprise business strategy - jointly governed by states, tribes, and the EPA; and • As provided in the E-Enterprise Shared Services Strategy, foster a culture encouraging the use of shared services while striving to implement a shared services framework including change management, regular communication of services to all users, and accommodating inbound and outbound data flows to non-USEPA users. Data and Content Management The EPA continues to manage the Agency's information as a strategic asset to ensure Agency information is easy to discover, understand, access, analyze and use within a broad array of applications that support the Agency's mission and stakeholders' needs. Improved information management will also facilitate access to information requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and improve the EPA's ability to apply its Discovery Services tools in a more exacting and comprehensive manner, reducing demands on staff resources. EPA will: • Provide analyses of environmental information to the public and the EPA's staff through My Environment, EnviroFacts, OneEPA Web, EPA National Library Network and the EPA intranet; • Maintain the EPA's national libraries and the ONE EPA Web, which supports hosting for all agency websites and Web pages; and • Continue to ensure compliance of the EPA's public systems Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended (29 U.S.C. § 794 (d)) In 1998. Information Security Information is a valuable national resource and a strategic asset to the EPA. It enables the agency to fulfill its mission to protect human health and the environment. The agency's Information Security program is designed to protect the confidentiality, availability and integrity of the EPA's information assets. EPA will: • Maintain continuous monitoring of security controls and address increasing security threats and risks; 3 ------- Office of Environmental Information FY 2018-2019 NPM Guidance • Manage information security risk and build upon efforts to protect, defend and sustain its information assets through continued improvements to training and incident response; • Sustain multi-year improvements by establishing foundational capabilities and closing gaps in the security architecture; • Include capabilities for detecting and protecting against attacks and, capturing and integrating threat intelligence sources; • Continue to detect and remediate the effects of Advanced Persistent Threats to the agency's information and information systems; • Focus on training and user-awareness to foster desired behavior, asset definition and management, compliance, incident management, knowledge and information management, risk management and technology management; • Continue Phase II of the implementation of the Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12) requirements for logical and physical access as identified in the Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS)201, Personal Identity Verification (PIV) of Federal Employees and Contractors; and • Improve its capabilities at the internal Computer Security Incident Response Capability (CSIRC) to support identification, response, alerting and reporting of suspicious activity. EPA Geospatiai Platform The EPA Geospatiai Platform is a shared infrastructure that supports coordinated Agency-wide use of geospatiai technology to advance the Agency's mission. Geospatiai technology has become ubiquitous, and the growth in use of these technologies has been extremely rapid. In addition to meeting ongoing program needs, Geospatiai information and analysis play a critical role in the agency's ability to respond rapidly and effectively in times of emergency. EPA will: • Support the essential capabilities of GeoPlatform; • Implement geospatiai data, applications and services by which the agency can integrate and interpret multiple data sets and information sources to support environmental decisions; • Focus on GeoPlatform data services, dashboards and story maps based on provided geographic information to support programmatic analysis and decision-making; and • Use the GeoPlatform to publish internal and public mapping tools and make available a number of shareable maps, geodata services and applications. Exchange Network The Environmental Information Exchange Network (Exchange Network or EN) is a standards- based, secure approach for the EPA and its state, tribal and territorial partners to exchange and share environmental data over the Internet. Capitalizing on advanced technology, data standards, open-source software, shared and portal services for the E-Enterprise business strategy, and reusable tools and applications, the EN offers its partners tremendous capabilities for managing and analyzing environmental data more effectively and efficiently, leading to 4 ------- Office of Environmental Information FY 2018-2019 NPM Guidance improved decision making. OEI will continue to work with the Exchange Network Tribal Governance Group and via its cooperative agreement with the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals to establish joint goals and priorities related to tribal participation in Exchange Network activities in the coming years. The Central Data Exchange (CDX) is the largest component of the EN program and serves as the point of entry on the EN for environmental data transactions with the agency. Working in concert with CDX are the EPA's System of Registries, which are centralized shared data services to improve data quality in EPA, state and tribal program data, while promoting burden reduction for the reporting community. EPA will: • Provide baseline functions for the Exchange Network IT systems; • Approve CROMERR applications from authorized programs that propose to use the EPA's shared CROMERR services and assist co-regulators with integrating these services into their systems; • Continue operations and research to maintain currency of data registries by: o Prioritizing updates to the EPA's Environmental Dataset Gateway to improve data accessibility and adhere to Open Data Policy requirements (OMB M-13-13); and o Maintaining the list of previously entered IT resources through its catalog of IT services (i.e., widgets, Web services, reusable code); and • Maintain the E-Enterprise Portal that transforms the EN to a more open platform of services and makes environmental data reporting, sharing and analysis faster, simpler and less expensive to industry partners. Exchange Network Grants Based on the proposed President's budget, EPA anticipates awarding 15 Exchange Network grants in FY 18 that will assist states, tribes and territories in implementing the following activities: • Data Access and Availability - create services and tools that make state or tribal data available on demand to other partners; develop Web services, application programming interfaces (APIs) and tools that support access, analysis and integration of environmental data. • New EPA Reporting Data Flows - support developing and implementing new Exchange Network data flows that enable automated reporting to EPA systems. • Partner Data Sharing - support the partners' ability to share cross-state, cross-tribal, or state-tribal data. • Virtual Exchange Services (VES) Support- support transition of EN Partners from using individually-operated nodes to leveraging the EPA-hosted VES. • Sharing CROMERR Services - support state and tribal adoption and implementation of a suite of CDX services that the EPA has centrally developed for CROMERR functions. 5 ------- Office of Environmental Information FY 2018-2019 NPM Guidance Measures: • See Measures Appendix A for list of Exchange Network supporting measures on page 8. Moving EPA to a High Performing Organization EPA remains committed to developing employees, creating a supportive work environment, and streamlining and modernizing business processes to build a high-performing organization. EPA will continue to maintain essential information technology and infrastructure with the following activities: • Adjust the schedule for replacement or upgrades to keep up with technology advancement and to align with capacity; • Maintain and provision: desktop computing equipment, network connectivity, e-mail and collaboration tools, application hosting, remote access, telephone services, Web and network services, and other IT-related equipment; • Continue efforts to consolidate the EPA's data centers and computer rooms and to optimize operations within the EPA's remaining data centers; and • Provide basic support to migrate to a cloud hosting environment. EPA Quality Program The Quality Program ensures that all environmentally-related data activities performed by or for the agency will result in the production of data that is of adequate quality to support specific decisions or actions. In order for this data to be used with a high degree of certainty by its intended users, the quality of the data must be known and documented. The Quality Program provides Quality Assurance (OA) policies, procedures and guidance to assist the EPA's programs in the implementation of their quality management systems which are required by the EPA Quality Policy CIO 2105.0, Policy and Program Requirements for the mandatory Agency- Wide Quality System (2008), for all environmental data operations. The Quality Program also oversees the implementation of the EPA Information Quality Guidelines. EPA will: • Provide technical support to all of the EPA's programs and laboratories for the implementation of the EPA Quality Policies, Procedures and Standards; • Develop and provide QA training courses for EPA employees; • Review and/or approve all organization Quality Management Plans that have sunset dates in FY 18-19; • Conduct scheduled 3-year Quality System Assessments of the EPA organizations having an implemented Quality Management Plan; and • Revise EPA Quality Policy CIO 2105.0, Policy and Program Requirements for the Mandatory Agency-Wide Quality System. Solicit feedback from states, tribes and external partners about any potential changes to the policy that may impact their internal operations. 6 ------- Office of Environmental Information FY 2018-2019 NPM Guidance FITARA and IT/IM Governance Under the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), EPA continues to revise its IT budgeting, acquisition, portfolio review, and governance process to adopt practices that improve delivery of capability to users, drive down lifecycle costs, and ensure proper leveraging of sheared services. EPA will: • Continue to implement its IT acquisition review process as part of the implementation of federal Common Baseline Controls for FITARA; • Continue to execute the FITARA Implementation Plan to: o Increase the engagement of the CIO in the budget process to ensure that IT needs are properly planned and resourced; o Maintain and strengthen effective communications between the CIO and the agency's programs and Regional Offices to ensure their IT strategies are well designed, directly drive agency strategic objectives, and follow best practices; o Ensure the CIO engages closely with key IT decision-makers across the EPA and fosters plans to refresh IT skills within the agency; o Support a Digital Services team that will provide the system design expertise needed for transforming the agency's digital services to make them easier for the public to use and more cost-effective for the agency to build and maintain; and o Leverage the Digital Services team to work with a limited number of agency projects to support externally facing technology solutions and improve the EPA's existing technology infrastructure. • Maintain and strengthen an IT/IM governance framework that will support decision- making and policy in alignment with EPA's mission and business needs; and • Continue to align IT/IM investments and decisions with the Agency IT/IM Strategic Plan to ensure that resources are targeted to strategic enterprise areas. 7 ------- Office of Environmental Information FY 2018-2019 NPM Guidance APPENDIX A: FY 2018 NPM GUIDANCE MEASURES APPENDIX TEMPLATE ACS Code Measure Text Indicator (Y/N) FY 2018 National Planning Target Comments/Clarification PM 052 Number of major EPA environmental systems that use the CDX electronic requirements enabling faster receipt, processing, and quality checking of data. N 85 Systems PM 053 States, Tribes, and territories will be able to exchange data with CDX through nodes in real time, using standards and automated data-quality checking. N 110 Nodes PM 999 Total number of active unique users from states, Tribes, laboratories, regulated facilities and other entities that electronically report environmental data to EPA through CDX. N 100,000 Users 8 ------- Office of Environmental Information FY 2018-2019 NPM Guidance APPENDIX C: POINTS OF CONTACT FOR MORE INFORMATION Contact Name Subject Area Phone Email Elizabeth Jones Division Director; OEI 202-564-2163 Jones.Beth@epa.gov Planning, Policy and Evaluation Division Jill Smink Planning and Governance 202-540-9196 Smink.Jill@epa.gov 9 ------- |