EPA Data Governance Council Meeting Summary - December 14, 2020 Facility Data Update • The EPA Regulated Facility Data Business Needs project will provide a fresh look at EPA's facility data. • The project is broken into three phases. o Phase 1 ended in October 2020 and focused on identifying business needs. A survey, and interviews with 10 regional offices, 9 program offices, and 4 states, and a report were completed. o Phase 2 will be conducted between November 2020 and September 2021. It will further define the business needs through use cases and include a gap and alternatives analysis. o Phase 3 will begin in October 2021 and include implementation activities. Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Update • EPA's Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Policy was signed by EPA's Chief Information Officer (CIO) on December 2nd, 2020. • A UAS Community of Practice (COP) will be engaged to help implement the Policy and develop standard operating procedures (SOPs) and guidance for data management. • The Policy allows for UAS activities under contracts, grants, and interagency agreements. However, programs may not lease or own their own equipment. They can contract with vendors that follow Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules. • Offices will be required to report on UAS activities. The Agency is working on centralizing that process. • National Program Managers (NPM) have the authority to approve UAS projects. The authority can be re- delegated. A template will be developed to guide the delegations process. Metadata COTS Analysis Update • The Environmental Dataset Gateway (EDG) satisfies the basic mandate of the Foundations for Evidence Based Policy Making Act of 2018 but is aging and based on custom code. Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS) solutions have advanced, making it a good time to evaluate alternatives. • The vision is to have a unified data platform with data publishing, metadata authorship, public engagement and management oversight that will enable EPA to transform how it manages, uses and makes data and metadata available internally, for other government entities, and for the public. • Current progress: o The Workgroup developed an Analysis Scope and Approach document which was approved on December 1, 2020. • Next steps: o Evaluation Criteria will be drafted by December 18, 2020. DGC members will review the criteria between January 4 and January 15, 2021. o The Workgroup will also begin identifying the list of tools to evaluate this week. EPA Data Governance Council Meeting Summary 1 December 14, 2020 ------- Webpage Workgroup Update • EPA's Data Web page is being updated to streamline communication to the public and the Agency, highlight data usage and make the site easier to maintain. • The Workgroup is finalizing wireframes and provided the DGC with an overview of the design. Data Skills Assessment Update • The Data Skills Subcommittee is progressing with the Data Skills Assessment. • EPA's Labor and Employee Relations (LER) completed their review. • Microsoft Forms will be used for the Pilot, but a different survey tool may be need for Agency-wide distribution. • The Region 1 Pilot will begin in January 2021. • The Subcommittee has been working on their approach to analyzing the data. • They will also continue to work with other related subcommittees, such as the Evidence Act Capacity Assessment Team. Action Items • EPA's CDO will send an email to DGC members to solicit input and suggestions for the DGC meeting format/content. EPA Data Governance Council Meeting Summary 2 December 14, 2020 ------- |