RE: Getting Information Out

[Rich Puchalsky <rpuchalsky@att.net>]

I have spent the last decade working on the distribution of EPA information, so I think that I can write about it with some degree of expertise.  In my opinion, the quality of EPA's information distribution efforts has if anything degenerated in recent years.

I think it would be good for the people reading this to understand the history of information at EPA.  Maybe this will let people understand what's going on when we read bland assurances that something will be done and wonder years later what happened.

With the exception of one set of data -- the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) -- none of EPA's information was collected specifically for distribution to the public.  It was collected to keep track of permits, monitor pollutants for internal EPA use, keep track of enforcement, and in many cases -- such as some data about chemical health effects -- it was collected because a law mandated that it be collected, not because anyone at EPA particularly cared to use it.

Each of these different data sets -- about each type of permit, program, and so on -- was run by a different office within EPA, each with its own database program.  Public access was generally very difficult, and none of the information in one database could be easily connected to information in another database.  

Then TRI came out.  It was no idea of EPA's, it was mandated by law, and it was quite a task getting EPA to follow the law. It was a big success.  All of a sudden people in EPA discovered that the public wanted and could use information.  A new culture started to develop within EPA.  People in each office wanted some of the same kind of success that TRI got, so each office started to try to encourage some degree of public access to its data.  People within EPA started to ask obvious questions, like "Why don't we connect our databases together?" or "Why don't we just put all the information in some documented form on the Internet?"

This was clearly a threat to industry.  So a policy of co-optation was adopted.  First all of the developing public access methods were centralized in a series of initiatives that culminated in the formation of the Office of Environmantal Information within EPA.  All of the people who had been enthusiastic about distributing the information from their office -- the information that they really knew a lot about -- were now told that it was OEI's job.  The culture of information sharing that had started to be built up in certain offices was destroyed, because some of their people were transferred to OEI and the others reassigned, now that information distribution was OEI's job.  And OEI itself was put in charge of people who saw their job as guarding information, not distributing it.

OEI is run according to principles sponsored by an industry group called the Coalition for Effective Environmental Information, headed by an ex-EPA-revolving-door person named Mark Greenwood.  Release of information is to be discouraged until EPA has analyzed the purpose of the information, who the likely users will be, whether they might become confused, and whether the data is of tip-top quality -- in effect, since these analyses will take forever, this means that information release is to be discouraged.

OEI can't very well close down the initiatives that were going before its formation.  Therefore they are (mostly) still there.  But has OEI done anything since then?  Let's hear from the OEI employees reading this.

Worse, there is a gradual creep back to earlier standards of information distribution.  We had finally started to get to the point where if a member of the public asked for information, EPA's response would be "OK, here it is."  Now we are more and more hearing "Why do you want that?" or just silence.

Nothing in this dialogue will, in itself, change this state of affairs.  But the public should be aware of what's going on so that political pressure can be applied.