About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

GAO-20-287PR 1 (2020-04-28)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaebbk0001 and id is 1 raw text is: c AO U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Comptroller General Washington, DC 20548 of the United States April 28, 2020 The Honorable Andrew Wheeler Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20460 Priority Open Recommendations: Environmental Protection Agency Dear Administrator Wheeler: The purpose of this letter is to provide an update on the overall status of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) implementation of GAO's recommendations and to call attention to areas where open recommendations should be given high priority.1 In November 2019, we reported that on a government-wide basis, 77 percent of our recommendations made 4 years ago were implemented.2 EPA's implementation rate for recommendations we made in 2015 is 71 percent. As of January 2020, EPA had 104 open recommendations. Fully implementing these open recommendations could significantly improve agency operations. Since our April 2019 letter on the status of priority recommendations, EPA has implemented three of our 17 open priority recommendations. In doing so, officials in EPA's Office of Research and Development and Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) Program took action to assess established time frames for each step in the IRIS process, publish current information about the chemicals being assessed, and post broad milestone dates for those chemicals on a routine basis. As a result, the agency enhanced understanding about the established time frames within the IRIS process and is routinely providing the public with some information on chemicals under assessment. We ask for your continued attention to EPA's 14 recommendations remaining from those we identified in the 2019 letter. We are also adding seven new recommendations that we made in 2019 and 2020 as priorities. These new priority recommendations relate to managing climate change risks and ensuring cybersecurity at EPA. This brings the total number of priority recommendations to 21. (See the enclosure for the list of priority recommendations.) The 21 priority recommendations fall into the following five areas: 1Priority recommendations are those that GAO believes warrant priority attention from heads of key departments or agencies. They are highlighted because, upon implementation, they may significantly improve government operations, for example, by realizing large dollar savings; eliminating mismanagement, fraud, and abuse; or making progress toward addressing a high-risk or fragmentation, overlap, or duplication issue. 2GAO, Performance and Accountability Report.- Fiscal Year 2019, GAO-20-1SP (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 19, 2019). GAO-20-287PR EPA Priority Recommendations Page 1

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most