The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been plagued with inefficiency for years. The Partnership for Public Service ranked the EPA 22 out of 23 ineffective leadership for a mid-sized agency for the last two years in a row. The Resource for the Future, an environmental, energy, and natural resource research institution, found that the average EPA permit process takes 420 days to complete.
But now, under Administrator Scott Pruitt, the EPA is committed to fixing itself. Pruitt is taking the necessary steps to increase accountability and set clear guidelines for action. The EPA has already established over 400 metrics across all EPA programs and regional office that track monthly goals, created standardized methods of communicating monthly targets, integrated monthly business reviews for all senior leaders to review their office’s performance, and initiated new employee training.
Pruitt is also looking to hold the career employees at the agency accountable. The newly created Office of Continuous Improvement (OCI) will ensure the policies that work in some areas of the department are implemented across the agency, and hopefully, act as a model for other agencies.
In a May 14, 2018 press briefing, EPA Chief Operating Officer Henry Darwin explains, the purpose of the new office is to coordinate the agency-wide implementation of the new EPA Lean Management System (ELMS).
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers noted in March 2016 ELMS has its roots in the automotive industry, Toyota created the Lean Management system to eliminate waste from manufacturing operations. Today, engineers and manufacturing leaders use Lean Management to create clear standards of quality and expedite timelines.
The OCI will universalize these ELMS standards across the agency and oversee their success with the goal of instituting full ELMS in 80 percent of agency units by September 30, 2020 and will require programs within the EPA to submit timelines for action and engage in monthly reviews of both regional and national programs to ensure deadlines are being kept.
While this might seem like an ordinary accountability standard in the private sector, Pruitt explained in the press briefing that the EPA has failed to conduct these program reviews for years.
Pruitt further explained, until this year, the EPA did not track the time it took to complete permit requests, did not track legal deadlines set by Congress, did not measure correction and compliance rates following known violations of agency guidelines, and did not measure the number of drinking water systems out of compliance with EPA rules.
Essentially, EPA management has had little to no accountability for when projects must finish or how actions must be corrected when projects are completed inadequately. Pruitt notes, this caused vast inconsistencies between regional branches, created a disengaged workforce, and fueled mismanagement.
The Office of Continuous Improvement will give the EPA the opportunity to rebuild their reputation of waste and inefficiency, and if successful, can be used across the federal government to improve agency efficiency. Our civil service employees must be held accountable for their work the way employees in the private sector are, and what better way to do that than implement a system that has worked for private manufacturers?
About the author: Natalia Castro is a contributing editor at Americans for Limited Government.
Editor’s Note: EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is a target for leftists locally and nationally. Pruitt defends real science, realistic governance and patriotic conservation as many of his critics use environmental hysteria to promote communist redistribution scams based on junk science.
James Delingpole writing for Breitbart.com notes the false attacks writing in part:
Scott Pruitt is probably the most capable senior operator in the Trump administration.
In the teeth of vicious opposition, he has worked miracles—not the least of which was giving his president the moral support he needed when he was courageously and rightly trying to pull the U.S. out of the disastrous Paris climate accord. If it hadn’t been for Pruitt, the “stay in Paris” faction—which included Javanka and then-Secretary of State Tillerson—might well have prevailed. Pruitt is a winner. Winning presidents do not get rid of winners.
My second objection to this anti-Pruitt drive is this: Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the pretty-damned-good. Refresh your memories, why don’t you? Re-read this piece I wrote about Scott Pruitt’s predecessors, especially the ones during the Obama administration. These people were not just really stupid, talentless no-hopers who only got their jobs because they were bovine leftists and fully compliant with the Green Tyranny: they were also mendacious, corrupt, and quite immensely damaging to liberty and the U.S. economy. Suppose every one of the profligacy charges against Pruitt were true: even if he were to stay in office splurging on first class flights and fancy accommodation for the next thousand years, he wouldn’t cost the U.S. taxpayer a fraction of what Gina McCarthy and Lisa Jackson’s junk-science-driven environmental legislation and regulation cost the U.S. economy.
My third objection is that it’s not at all clear that the charges being leveled against Pruitt are accurate or fair. That complaint the Weekly Standard makes about the cost of his security detail, for example. This, it has now been shown, did not come from Pruitt but was requested by his landing team. With good reason: The Green Blob has many tentacles, contains more than its fair share of certified lunatics and Pruitt is doing a great job taking it on.