Forest Environmental Management Systems

Forest Service EMS Effort at a Crossroads

For any who stumble into this blog, I wanted to let you know that the US Forest Service has been working since November 2005 to find better ways to make Environmental Management Systems work for the agency, both in the "facilities" and the "planning" realms.

Most of this work is being done by committees, and done in conventional ways via in-person meetings, conference calls, Lotus Notes Teamrooms, and email flurries. So unless you are in-the-loop, there is little you can do or know about progress on the EMS betterment. So we will wait and see what emerges.

To muddy the waters a bit more, last Friday a Federal Court Judge ruled that the US Department of Agriculture erred in setting in play the 2005 Forest Planning Rule that brought EMS into the planning realm. Here is a recent Forest Policy – Forest Practice post on the ruling. For now, the 2005 Planning Rule has been set-aside, calling into question at least the legal mandate for EMS as identified in the Rule.

[Update March 2010] THIS BLOG NOW CLOSED!

Sometime in 2008 or 2009 the Forest Service retreated, finally, to a position where EMS is used only for "facilities" and other matters where many of us thought EMS ought to have been from the get-go. The whole mistaken notion that EMS might have a much more substantial role in legal, planning, and other framing for the Forest Service has been abandoned. For me, EMS was a huge distraction, on top of the "mission","planning", and "science" challenges that I continue to discuss here, here, and most recently here.

A New EMS Path?

Not long ago a few of us from the Forest Service Southwest Region and the Intermountain Region spent a day with Ed Quevedo from WSP Environmental

What a refreshing break from the usual hum-drum tedium of EMS in the US Forest Service — the stuff I've been blogging here for some months. Instead of focusing on a burdensome employee centered process, Quevedo stressed the importance of top management in the process. He stressed the need to carefully design, review, and improve decision-making and policy-making processes. He stressed the importance of culturing auditors intent on furthering education and organizational learning rather than accepting (and/or fearing) auditors who focus to tightly on "compliance" and "conformance" particulars.

The approach was fine-tuned to public engagement and organizational learning as driven by leadership, not followership. All of it was structured to empower employees without mposing undue burdens on any--in particular on, say, EMS coordinators.

Quevedo talked about those few EMS centered organizations who look beyond and transcend the ISO 140001 Standard, rather than focusing all the organizational time and energy on the guts of the "standard" and on nit-picky conformance/compliance requirements.

What Quevedo did not do, was to denigrate the ISO Standard or the EMS process. The focus was on developing and managing an EMS that works with and for the organization, rather than focusing on how to develop and maintain a 14001 standard-driven process that tends to work on the organization.

Quevedo talked about things like "ecological footprint," three types of "capital" (natural, human, and financial) and how each contributed uniquely to organizational processes. He talked a good line about quality improvement. His words were music to our ears. But we have not yet seen his words in action. For that we need to watch closely what the White River NF in Region 2 is up to, working in conjunction with WSP Environmental. And we need to roll up our sleeves here in Regions 3 and 4 to see what our pilot forests will develop as we do the same.

And we need to keep our ears to the ground to see what develops from the discussions going on right now in the "EMS lessons learned workshop" in Tucson, AZ. I'll try to work up a post on that and what I've gleaned from inquiries into the White River project soon.

EMS to the NEPA Rescue!

On Monday James Connaughton, Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, issued a Federal Register notice [PDF] of a "proposed guide" — Aligning the Complementary processes of Environmental Management Systems and the National Environmental Policy Act [PDF].

The proposed guide promotes EMS as a remedy to the governments' long-standing inability to "address the full range of ongoing activities (and products and services) … with the intent to continually improve environmental performance." And all this time I thought that was the intent of NEPA compliance. The CEQ has long stressed the importance of programmatic to site-specific linkages, connected actions, cumulative effects, and more.

One way to view the notice and guide is that CEQ is taking the next step along the road to better compliance with NEPA. Another, darker way to view the notice and guide is that the federal government is taking yet another step along the path of process gridlock. As we opined earlier, there are three EMS paths forward:

• EMS buries the Forest Sevice—in process and "paper,"
• The Forest Service buries EMS, or
• EMS transforms Forest Service culture to adopt adaptive management.

Which path will be taken is still a significant question.

Let's pursue the latter path a bit. Adaptive Management is a remarkable idea, and stands a reasonable chance of transforming (for the better) both landscapes and institutions. The Resilience Alliance, for example, is dedicated to that particular proposition.

But there are serious omissions in the description of adaptive management in the "proposed guide," relative to the way adaptive management is commonly framed. In particular in the proposed guide, adaptive management is framed in the narrow confines of what is referred to as a "'predict-mitigate-implement-monitor-adapt' model." that "adjusts actions to foster desired outcomes and reduce undesired ones." Nowhere to be found is the 'surprise, uncertainty, novelty and ignorance' side of the adaptive management endeavor. This is a serious, perhaps fatal omission in the guide.

To gain a better perspective on the two-part harmony of managing both the expected and the unexpected, take a look at, e.g. Karl E. Weick and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe, Managing the Unexpected.., Lance H. Gunderson and C.S. Holling (eds.), Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems, and T.F.H. Allen, Joseph A. Tainter, and Thomas W. Hoekstra, Supply-side Sustainability.

Will EMS prove to be the saving-grace for NEPA compliance? Or will EMS prove up on an anonymous USFS employee's (who came with EMS experience from the private sector) remark that: "EMS is an expensive excuse to pay consultants to tell us what we already know." The jury is out.

Web–Based Management Systems: Continuing Our Search

A few of us have been exploring various policy, program, decision, implementation, document, records management systems. So far we think we need to investigate further:

• EMS WebWare
• Enviance System
• ESP's OPSEnvironmental
• GreenWare Environmental Systems
• Intelex Web Based Management Systems

We haven't yet framed our needs/wants very well but we are looking into anything that can help us better manage our lives and work by integrating work planning, accomplishment reporting, monitoring and evaluation, learning, (all the adaptive management stuff) and doing so with web-based relational databases, document management software and more that also interface directly with individual and group calendars and email prompts.

If the US Forest Service and/or US Dept. of Agriculture buy into an off-the-shelf front end "dashboard" platform, e.g. ESP's "OPSEnvironmental" we will gain the advantage of having a network of users from various organizations feeding into the learning/betterment loop. If they go it alone, they will have only intra-government learning plus what they can glean from independent sources and what they see by looking at what others are doing. It will prove interesting to see how costs and performance of various systems are compared (and by whom) as the US government ventures further into e-government.

We few "intrapreneurs" here will try to watch what the USFS and the US Department of Agriculture are up to with inhouse efforts and what they are looking into from private contractors as they deal with shared problems amenable to web-based information/management system aids.

So maybe when I get back from a week-long EMS Auditor's Training next week, we can once again pick this inquiry project up and see where it takes us.

Paper Promises: easy to create, hard to live up to

How many court cases is the Forest Service losing on the basis of "paper promises" that have proven "Oh So Easy" to create? To find these promises, open up any part of the multi-volume Forest Service Manual and Handbook and look for paper promises. Open up any of a number of "rules," like, say, the January 2005 "National Forest System Land Management Planning Final rule [PDF]." Open up any of various Memorandums of Understanding between the Forest Service and whomever. What do we find? I think we find a case study of how easy it is to make sincere, yet "impossible to comply with" promises that can and do come back to haunt government agencies.

The other day, following an EMS legal-complaince trail, I wandered into the State of Utah Nonpoint Source Management Plan for Silvicultural Activities [PDF], 1998. It is addendum to the Utah Nonpoint Source Pollution Management Plan [PDF], 2000, itself an outgrowth of the Clean Water Act.

What struck me was that in a seemingly innocuous memorandum of understanding that led up to the development of the silviculture plan, the Forest Service agreed to 15 items, the State of Utah agreed to 10. Then my mutual affirmation, both entities agreed to 15 more—and that's just for "silviculture" under this one agreement (signed in early 1993). Most of these agreed-to items recur, and must be revisited periodically. Have they been looked at recently? Who knows?

What struck me second, was that the Utah Nonpoint Source Management Plan for Silvicultural Activities is itself 91 pages long and filled with promises. The Utah Nonpoint Source Pollution Management Plan proper runs 110 pages, and includes Best Management Practices (BMPs) for things like, "Grazing Management on Rangelands," "Soil Stabiliztaion of Rangelands," "Riparian Area Management," "Riparian Area Stabilization," "Silviculture-Forest Water Quality Guidelines" from earlier-mentioned addendum, and "Hydrologic Modification." The US Forest Service, agreed to abide by these BMPs, along with other entities including the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, the US Army Corps of Engineers (pg. 96). Who knows how many promises are embedded in the BMPs and perhaps other aspects of this Plan?

Why do I say such promises are impossible to comply with? The promises themselves are not onerous. But if the Forest Service has no systemic reporting/updating system(s) for these promises then they do easily fall into the "impossible to comply with" category. The jury is out. But EMS processes may help us better sort out what promises have been made, by whom and for what, and how well the Forest Service is doing in keeping its numerous promises.

A Simpler Way for "Legal and Other Requirements"

Why not take a very simple approach to Legal and Other Requirements? In particular, why not have forests simply point to a reference of Legal and Other Requirements, stratifying them perhaps by environmental aspects. Region 8 is working on this as I write, building on works from other Regions. Each Region could easily add Best Management Practices as determined state by state via Fed/State agreements for Clean Air and Clean Water Act compliance. A few other things, as deemed appropriate by the Forest Service, OGC, and perhaps others would round out the lists.

Then for the Forest Service as a whole, find a simple means to evaluate how the organization is doing with compliance. For example, the FS might ask OGC for an annual appraisal of performance relative to the law. OGC and the USFS might agree on some schedule to periodically evaluate all the various laws, say, when something changes in case law or via some other priority scheme.

Beyond that all that we would need to do is set up some means, organizationally, to better train FS folks on the connection between Legal and Other Requirements and FS Manuals, Handbooks, various state Best Management Practices developed specifically to aid in legal compliance, etc. Such training could be done by means other than through EMS, but be linked to EMS to help show a path to betterment.

Could it be as simple as this? ISO 14001 at "Annex A" says:

A.3.2 Legal and other requirements

… The determination of how legal and other requirements apply to an organization's environmental aspects is usually accomplished in the process of identifying these requirements. It may not be necessary, therefore, to have a separate or additional procedure in order to make this determination. ... {emphasis added)

ISO 14001 says,

... 4.3.2 Legal and other requirements

The organization shall establish, implement and maintain a procedure(s)

a) to identify and have access to the applicable legal requirements and other requirements to which the organization subscribes related to its environmental aspects, and

b) to determine how these requirements apply to its environmental aspects.

The organization shall ensure that these applicable legal requirements and other requirements to which the organization subscribes are taken into account in establishing, implementing and maintaining its environmental management system. ...

... 4.5.2 Evaluation of compliance

4.5.2.1 Consistent with its commitment to compliance, the organization shall establish, implement and maintain a procedure(s) for periodically evaluation compliance with applicable legal requirements.

The organization shall keep records of the results of the periodic evaluations. ...

So why not look for A Simpler Way for Legal and Other Requirements compliance? Arguably, there is nothing in the ISO standards that require organizations to over-complexify their compliance. Arguably, there is nothing in the ISO standards that require organizations to commit to things that are impossible or near-impossible to comply with. The whole point of EMS is quality improvement over a reasonable time frame. Legal requirements frequently prove tricky. Legal compliance is seldom a simple concrete "go/no-go" endeavor. But there are many means to help navigate through the legal maze.

We ought to be very careful not to seek simplicity this side of complexity, either in our ecosystem framing or our social (including legal) framing. Simplicity on the other side of complexity remains a very worthy goal.

Legal and Other Requirements Puzzle: Moving beyond "Spreadsheets from Hell"

We continue to struggle with the "Legal and Other Requirements Puzzle." Recently we saw a Region 6 "Spreadsheet from Hell"(citation needed!) that will likely require a small army of book-keepers to keep up-to-date and coordinated with other parts of the EMS world. After reeling from that, we were led to Region 1's "Evaluation of Compliance [with applicable laws and other requirements] Procedure [FS Intranet link]" which appears, superficially, to simplify "legal and other" compliance almost down to "Do NEPA!" "Almost," however, soon evaporates when we see the associated Region 1 Spreadsheet from Hell [FS Intranet link]. We propose an alternative path.

Instead of trying to devise a process for "legal and other requirements" compliance from scratch, perhaps we ought to look to see what the Forest Service is already doing, and what the FS ought to soon begin as to EMS process improvement for: planning and NFMA, NEPA, ESA, … compliance.

A Forest Service "organizational approach" to EMS would have operational controls and process improvement requirements (including all EMS elements) for all functions that support work on the ground, including, planning and NFMA compliance, NEPA compliance, and so on. Developing such would relieve forests of the impossibilities of trying to account for legal compliance outside the structure of extant process requirements.

For example, we have a set of directives for Planning (FSM 1920 and FSH 1909.12). We also have specific policy directives outside the Manual/Handbook system for some legal and other requirements. All such could be controlled via EMS at a tier above forest operations. If it were we could then leave more-specific tweaking of law and policy to the local level while taking care of the bulk of legal authorities/responsibilities at levels above the forest.

Doing the EMS at levels above the forest may move us out of "Spreadsheet Hell." And it might help us explain why words from the 2005 NFMA Rule read: "…The scope of the EMS will include, at a minimum, the land management planning process…." [emphasis added] Whadayathink? Is there a better way? Are we on a right track with this proposal?

Another Support System: EMS Webware

Earlier this week I began my exploration of and about GreenWare Environmental Systems. I first dug up a few names at EPA. My intial (and so far only) contact in EPA asked me whether I found anyone actually using GreenWare. The idea I got was that while the file management package at GreenWare was very good, the system they had tried a couple of years ago was quite restrictive and not very forgiving as to documents/records developed elsewhere.

Then they told me about another group called EMS Webware (affiliated with Univ. of Massachusetts, Lowell) who had worked up a system that was perchance more flexible and adaptable. So I called them and they reiterated the same story, and suggested that they had only begun to develop EMS Webware when they found off-the-shelf systems too confining.

In their Feb. 2005 commencial software announcement the EMS Webware folks say:

…The program helps organizations build and implement an environmental management system (EMS) to enhance environmental performance.

University developers from the offices of Environment Health and Safety and Commercial Ventures and Intellectual Property office worked together to create EMS WebWare.

“It provides the tools required from beginning an EMS, to building teams, tracking documents, creating documents, providing links, to providing the security and IT support,” explained Rich Lemoine, director of the Environment Health and Safety office.

EMS programs were introduced by the EPA to promote environmental policy at universities and other public agencies. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) recommends a model for environmental performance called ISO 14001, which is used by large corporations and from which EMS Webware is modeled.

Conservative business projections have the software bringing in some $750,000 to the university over five years, according to Susu Wong, UMass Lowell's licensing associate and chief marketer of software. Customers would likely include other universities, as well as municipalities and EMS training providers.
UMass Lowell says Beta testers included the city of Lowell, the University of Rhode Island and the Toxics Use Reduction Institute.

“It had to be user-friendly. It had to adapt to any organization,” said Lemoine. “Basically what the system does is say, ‘Here are 17 templates and you can bring in any documents.'”
UMass started working on Webware in 2001 after finding difficulties implementing its own EMS on campus.

“The other systems out there, they weren't flexible, and they weren't going to meet the needs of our institution,” Lemoine said.

UMass Lowell provides all technical support for the software package and its server will host and retain all information organizations might need for future audits or agendas, he said.

So although we will still work to better understand GreenWare, we are in the process of looking further into EMS Webware too. It may be that GreenWare was never as inflexible as the UMass folks say, or it may be the it was but no longer is. In any case we want to investigate at least these two systems and hope to find more. Clearly we need 'something.'

EMS Support Systems: What do we use? What should we use?

A couple of days ago I saw a copy of a spreadsheet tracking legal and other requirements for EMS. What struck me, other than the immense size, was the interrelationship between that document and operational controls and other elements of the ISO standard. Then it hit me, again: Why aren't we using relational databases in our EMS work? Everything is tightly linked together, and trying to sort out all relevant linkages every time something is changed will likely prove futile, or at minimum very expensive and time-consuming. Why are we are cobbling together random spreadsheets, word documents, etc. with little thought given to their interconnectedness?

I remembered that Chris Miller, from the CAT (Content Analysis Team) had suggested that I look at a software package by GreenWare Enviornmental Systems that has been used by many:

Sample Client List:
• Environmental Protection Agency (40 Sites)
• Royal Dutch Petroleum Company (Shell)
• TRW
• ITT Automotive
• Environment Canada
• Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
• Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission
• Solvay Polymers, Inc.
• Toshiba International Corporation
• Dupont Canada Inc.
• Dell Computer
• US Department of National Defense
• Inco Ltd.
• Local/municipal governments

GreenWare Government Clients:
• Air Armament Center
• Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency
• U.S. Department of Energy - BWXT Pantex
• Canadian Forces Base Kingston
• Canadian Forces Support Unit
• Clean Water Services
• Defence Construction Canada
• Department of Homeland Security - Customs and Border Protection
• Department of National Defence HQ
• Environment Canada
• Fort Riley Directorate of Environment and Safety
• Greater Pretoria Metropolitan Council (GPMC)
• Ontario Ministry of Environment and Energy
• Public Works and Government Services Canada
• U.S. EPA (40 Facilities)

In my preliminary look at their approach to EMS, I found that not only does the GreenWare system appear to be entirely compatible with our approach to EMS, but it even includes a "guidebook" or "manual" as they call it to conveniently co-locate all elements of the standard to serve as a basis for working the EMS. It even has spreadsheets for proving up on significance of environmental aspects. Furthermore there is a fully integrated calendar to help schedule all. Finally it seems relatively inexpensive.

So why won't we use it, or another compatible off-the-shelf system (or use one that is primarily off-the-shelf with a contract for enhancement)? Maybe we will, someday. But there seems to be little overt attention being placed to the acquisition of such software right now. Or at least there is little attention that I know about. Why not?

Are so steeped in "event mentality" – doing things once, postponing thought until after "the event" about continued do-ability of whatever it is we are attempting – that we forget that some things need to be designed simply, and inter-connectedly so that we can continue to use them (and improve them) from the moment they are turned on.

Have we been trained by forest planning and other nearly endless "events" that we have forgotten that organizations run best when run simply, while recognizing the complexity of the surrounding environment?

In any case, Why aren't we talking a lot about the urgent need to acquire or devleop adequate system-support for EMS?

For more, see Chris Miller's post in our EMS Support Systems blog.

E-MESS: Three Paths Forward

Last week an EMS fellow-traveler and I were discussing process requirements, Forest Service agency culture, and our hopes, dreams, and nightmares regarding the next few years.

We concluded, that very likely EMS process requirements would bury the Forest Service or the FS would find means to bury EMS—deep-six it. But we also discussed a third path. On the third path we caught a glimpse of a positive future where EMS would transform the Forest Service into an agency that actually knows its process requirements and no longer takes pride in ducking its own directives.

As the process requirements of EMS become ever-more-clear and more widely shared, more and more FS folks are getting the "deer in the headlights look." Early FS EMS arm-waving suggested that the similarities between our extant and emergent planning and adaptive management processes and the EMS world would make the transition easy and relatively quick. But the realities are beginning to dawn differently and we are becoming aware , rhetoric aside, that we are not an adaptive management organization, and will face much difficulty in the transformation.

It will prove interesting to see which path the Forest Service takes. If the first, the agency may not survive much past its Centennial celebrations. On the second path, agency immune system responses will trigger to reject the EMS processes and its emphasis on disclosure, process compliance, process improvement, and so on. On the third path the Forest Service might use EMS as a catalyst to become an adaptive management organization. The jury is out! The challenge is ours. Which path will we follow?

• EMS buries the Forest Service
  
• Forest Service buries EMS
  
• EMS transforms FS culture into Adaptive Management