Common Measures Project Final Report

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108pp. Contains the Final Report for the Common Measures Project, and the supporting appendices and a summary of findings.

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Final Report:

The Common Measures Project found that:

The Common Measures approach has tremendous potential to generate meaningful data about the environmental performance of any group. This information can be invaluable in making informed and strategic agency decisions about the best way to promote better performance and achieve compliance.
Comprehensive measurement can sometimes lead to surprising results. The Common Measures Project clearly showed that for the SQG sector, quantity and frequency of inspections and enforcement actions (the traditional compliance approach) did not account for differences in performance – the key factor accounting for higher performance was assistance and outreach activities.
Deploying this measurement approach more widely will take senior management commitment and dedicated resources and time for capacity building. States need continued assistance from U.S. EPA to build internal capacity, including the ERP Performance Analyzer tool.
In addition, in order to invest the resources to implement a Common Measures approach, states need relief from the traditional inspection requirements.

The Project also created a replicable template that can be used by other agencies to build the capacity to measure group performance and to use the information to identify the most efficient and effective strategies for promoting better environmental performance. The States Common Measures Project Final Report [PDF] presents the results, methodology, conclusions, and recommendations from this initiative.