Findings and Recommendations - Science For Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead - page 188

centives. It can play a role not only in promoting innovation in the agency but
stimulating innovation by others. The agency also has the opportunity to lever-
age resources to support innovation. The committee does not recommend that
EPA attempt to develop all such solutions itself. Rather, it would be more cost
effective to partner and engage with others to support innovation. That can be
supported through EPA's Small Business Innovation Research program or an
award, such as the Presidential Green Chemistry Awards, which would nudge
the entrepreneurial community to address problems of direct interest to the
agency. EPA has taken a global leadership role by supporting efforts that focus
on innovative solutions-oriented science, including the pollution prevention pro-
gram, Design for the Environment, and the green chemistry and engineering
program. They demonstrate the potential for innovative approaches to advance
and use scientific knowledge to protect health and the environment through the
redesign of chemicals, materials, and products. They also demonstrate the role
that EPA can play in driving decisions by providing high-quality scientific in-
formation.
Finding: EPA has recognized that innovation in environmental science, tech-
nology, and regulatory strategies will be essential if it is to continue to perform
its mission in a robust and cost-effective manner. However, to date, the
agency's approach has been modest in scale and insufficiently systematic.
Recommendation 6: The committee recommends that EPA develop a more
systematic strategy to support innovation in science, technology, and prac-
tice.
In doing this, the agency would be well-advised to work on identifying
much more clearly the “signals” that it is or is not sending and to refine them as
needed. Clearly identifying signals could be accomplished by seeking to identify
the key desired outcomes of EPA's regulatory programs and communicate the
desired outcomes clearly to the private and public sectors. The committee has
identified several ways in which EPA could address this recommendation.
 Establish and periodically update an agency-wide innovation strategy
that outlines key desired outcomes, processes for supporting innovation, and
opportunities for collaboration. Such a strategy would identify incentives, disin-
centives, and opportunities in program offices to advance innovation. It would
highlight collaborative needs, education, and training for staff to support innova-
tion.
 Identify and implement cross-agency efforts to integrate innovative ac-
tivities in different parts of the agency to achieve more substantial long-term
innovation. One immediate example of such integration that is only beginning to
occur is bringing the work on green chemistry from the Design for the Environ-
ment program together with the innovative work on high-throughput screening