EPA Paperwork: Burden Estimate Increasing Despite Reduction Claims
GGD-00-59
Published: Mar 16, 2000. Publicly Released: Mar 23, 2000.
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Highlights
Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) paperwork burden, focusing on: (1) the general dimensions of EPA's paperwork requirements and the agency's progress toward reducing the burden that those requirements impose; (2) the process that EPA used to develop paperwork burden-hour estimates for its largest information collections as of September 30, 1998, and gauge the credibility of those estimates; (3) EPA's largest paperwork burden-hour reductions between September 30, 1995, and September 30, 1998, and gauge the credibility of those reductions; and (4) EPA's Reinventing Environmental Information initiative and the agency's new Office of Environmental Information.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected Sort descending | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Environmental Protection Agency | The Administrator, EPA, should correct the agency's burden-hour estimate for the national pretreatment program in the Regulatory Information Service Center database and future editions of the Information Collection Budget by including in its estimate the nearly 600,000 burden hours that were converted to dollars. |
Closed – Implemented
EPA officials provided documentary evidence that they have corrected the agency's burden-hour estimate for the national pretreatment program. They also indicated that future editions of the burden estimate for the National Pretreatment Program were revised back to hours. Those changes were made final at the end of September, 2000.
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Data collectionEnvironmental policiesGovernment informationInteragency relationsProjectionsReporting requirementsStatistical methodsInformation collectionPolychlorinated biphenylsEnvironmental information