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The United States Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) published a July 13th document titled:

Approach for Development of National Water Program Core Measures (“Document”)

EPA notes that it has initiated implementation of the Lean Management System (“LMS”) which is stated to focus on continuous improvement.

The federal agency states in part:

ELMS sets ambitious performance targets for Strategic and Mission Measures and tracks progress against them to find and solve small problems before they become big problems. The Office of Water is seeking input to develop a core set of measures. Our goal is to select a small and meaningful set of metrics to track progress at the national level.

The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality has also instituted LMS.

EPA states that its National Water Program includes over 100 performance measures in the FY 2018-2019 National Water Program Guidance.

The Document notes, by way of background:

• Concerns expressed by the states/tribes about the number of measures required to track program performance
• EPA regions desire to retain some form of NPM guidance to states and tribes
• States/Tribes enjoy flexibility to capture program performance in grant work plans
• States/Tribes express concern over possible expansion of measures through the development of cascading performance measures initiated by other OW divisions and branches

The Document outlines:

• Three criteria for core measures
• Approach
  • Communication and Outreach
  • Development of Core measures
  • Development of 2020-2021 NPM Guidance
  • State Engagement
  • Next Steps
  • Proposed Timeline

The Document can be downloaded here.