At a recent meeting of the Allegheny County Bar Association Environmental Law Section, the DEP's Eric Conrad described its Foundation for Information eXchange ("FIX"), its data integration and system conversion project. This has resulted in the development of a "General Information Form" to be used in permit applications across programs. The FIX Project was designed to foster cross program communication, support new initiatives, better manage DEP resources and better support decision making. In the cross program communication, the aim is to address compliance issues at facilities regulated by multiple programs. To better manage DEP resources, there will be team assignments for multi-media inspections. And to better support decision-making, staffing will be allocated to address those areas most in need. Some new initiatives that will be supported by the program in addition to the joint inspections, are the pollution prevention compliance assistance and ISO 14000 certification.
The interim compliance system was implemented beginning on July1, 1997, and there is now a department-wide compliance system, with program specific inventories. Mr.Conrad claims that the system has been well received by the public. The system is designed to do the following:
- Give a multi-media view of all permitted facilities at a location.
- Give a multi-media view of all clients associated with a site.
- Tell what permit applications are pending, who is reviewing them and how much time is left before the review must be completed.
- Tell what facilities have compliance problems and the nature of the problem.
- Identify the most frequently occurring violations by region, program, facility type and industry type.
- Generate compliance rates by program, region, facility type and industry type.
- Generate GIS layers so facilities can be viewed spatially.