Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
In 2001, the U.S. Congress - strongly pushed by industry (Noe
et al., 2003 : 10226; Herrick, 2004 : 420; the Water Resources Research
Institute, 2004 )-passed the Data Quality Act, 18 requiring agencies
to establish procedures to ensure and maximise the quality, objec-
tivity, utility and integrity of the information they disseminate. The
Office of Management and Budget (OMB; and especially the Office
of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the OMB) was provided
with the task to interpret and operationalise this one-sentence leg-
islative requirement. No legislative history indicated what it was that
Congress actually meant. The OMB interpreted the background of
this Act 19 to be located in the Information Age, where information has
become a vast resource of power and where governments rely increas-
ingly on information dissemination to accomplish its goals. “Regula-
tion by information is becoming the norm” (Noe et al., 2003 : 10224).
Reliability and quality of information is then essential for the pub-
lic. OMB has developed government-wide and agency-specific guide-
lines for governmental agencies to fulfil the requirements of this Act.
Although the Act covers all federal agencies, the focal point in much
of the discussion has been on environmental and health issues and
thus on the U.S. EPA, also because EPA regulations and policies are
often based on emerging science and can have a major impact on
vested interests. 20 For the U.S. EPA, a fifty-four-page guideline has
been developed, defining standards of objectivity, quality, integrity and
18
Section 515(a) of the U.S. Treasury and General Government Appropriations
Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (Public Law 106-554). The origin of the Act was in a
political dispute over air pollution, when the U.S. EPA proposed to tighten
national ambient air quality standards for fine particulates and opponents felt
unable to assess and review some of the supporting scientific data. The
industry-sponsored Center for Regulatory Effectiveness was the main lobby
for this Act.
19
OMB prefers to refer to this Act as the Information Quality Act. It covers more
than just data but also regulatory, statistical, research, financial, risk assessment
and other governmental information. It also includes third-party information
'initiated' or 'sponsored' by governmental agencies. Distinctions are made
between ordinary information and influential information, with different
quality regimes. A major discussion is whether the Act applies to rule making
as well (cf. Noe et al., 2003 ).
20
In the Fiscal Year 2003, EPA received thirteen requests for corrections based on
the DQA, only to be surpassed by the Department of Transportation with
thirty-eight petitions (Herrick, 2004 ). For corrections of information filed with
the EPA, see http://www.epa.gov/oei/qualityguidelines/af req correction
%20sub.htm.
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