[Judy Pino] 
Hello, and welcome to Green 
Scene, EPA's environmental 
information podcast series 
that you can take with you. 
I'm Judy Pino with the 
Office of Multimedia.
If you're viewing this podcast, 
then you are one of hundreds 
that visits EPA's Web site 
every day and also a part 
of the surge in public interest 
in on-demand access to 
information and 
the environment. 
To satisfy that need, EPA is 
launching a national dialogue 
on access to environmental 
information, and the person 
in charge of the initiative 
is the AA of EPA's Office of 
Environmental Information and 
Chief Information Officer, 
Molly O'Neill.
She's with us today. 
Welcome, Molly.
[Molly O'Neill] 
Thank you.
[Judy Pino] 
Molly, I know that environmental 
information is very much 
a priority 
for you. 
Explain to us more about 
the Office of Information, 
the office you run, 
and why you started 
such an ambitious initiative. 
[Molly O'Neill] 
Well, the portfolio within 
the Office of Environmental 
Information is probably larger 
than most people imagine. 
We, in that office, do 
everything from the data 
collection, the data coming 
into the agency, to doing some 
analysis, and then the access 
part, accessing the information,  
and, really, the third major 
component is the infrastructure 
that allows that to happen, and, 
for the technologists out there, 
those would be the wires 
and the boxes. 
[Judy Pino] 
So, tell us how you came 
up with this national 
dialogue initiative. 
[Molly O'Neill] 
One of the things I really 
want to concentrate on is 
improving or enhancing access 
to environmental information.
There's a couple of reasons 
why I wanted to do that. 
The first reason is really that 
a lot of the environmental 
problems today are really 
global in nature, 
and they require a lot of 
collaboration between federal 
agencies, between EPA and 
the states and the locals, 
even with other countries 
as well. 
So it's important that we're 
able to access our information 
and also access other 
environmental information 
that we at EPA don't own, 
and we can actually start 
bringing that together so that 
we can actually work on some 
of these more global problems. 
[Judy Pino] 
Now, you will be touring 
the country this summer, 
taking on some of these 
national dialogues. 
What do you wish 
to accomplish?
[Molly O'Neill] 
Well, there's a couple of 
things we're trying to 
accomplish with it. 
This is a really complex 
issue that we're trying 
to get around.   
There's a lot of environmental 
information out there, 
tons and tons, and even with 
the Internet, trying to find 
information these days can 
be a little overwhelming 
for people. 
And we want to really make sure 
that we look at, how do we make 
sure our information is 
discoverable so that we 
have the authoritative source, 
or the best sources of data, 
that gets out in 
front of people. 
So what we want to do with 
this dialogue is engage with 
different stakeholders, both 
internal to EPA, external to 
other parts of the government, 
with citizens, with scientists, 
to figure out what kind of data 
is a priority for you and how 
do you want us to deliver that 
because, in today's world, 
there's different technologies 
that allow us to push it out.
[Judy Pino] 
How will the information you 
use, accumulated in these 
dialogues, address the issue 
of improving information 
access at EPA? 
[Molly O'Neill] 
What we want to do is use 
the dialogue to do a lot 
of listening, 
first of all. 
And then we want to use it 
to inform our strategy in 
terms of building a strategy 
towards improving the access 
to this information.    
So that's one of the key 
outcomes that we're doing. 
The other thing we're trying 
to do is actually implement 
as we go.
So if we're hearing areas 
where people have some kind 
of frustration with accessing 
the information and there's 
ways that we can deliver 
that quickly, we're going 
to go ahead 
and do that. 
[Judy Pino] 
Now, speaking of access, 
would you say there is 
a digital divide today amongst 
the different generations   
now interested 
in accessing 
environmental information? 
[Molly O'Neill] 
Absolutely, right now we have 
what's commonly known in 
the trade press around here, 
from the information 
technology world, something 
called "digital immigrants" 
and "digital natives." 
The digital immigrants are 
those people who have been 
working for a while in 
government and are used 
to doing most things on paper, 
or they're just now 
understanding how to 
use computers for 
word processing
and e-mail.  
The digital natives are 
the people who are actually 
the people coming out of school 
who are used to thinking and 
typing at the same time. 
And so we have these different 
types of people of different 
kind of working skills with 
the technology out there.
So, at the Office of 
Environmental Information 
where I am, what we need to do 
is make sure that we have 
the tools out there to enable 
collaboration and work for 
both our digital natives 
and our digital immigrants. 
And who knows what the next 
generation will be?
[Judy Pino] 
Oh, absolutely. 
Well, you began this dialogue 
by meeting on January 29th  
with the Puget Sound Leadership 
Council, and you dabbled with 
some of these new technologies 
that you were talking about, 
and these might be used 
to inform a long-term 
information access strategy.  
So, how did the launch go? 
And explain to us a little bit 
about the technology without 
getting too technical.
[Molly O'Neill] 
Absolutely. 
One of the things we did in 
November's OEI National 
Symposium is, instead of just 
showing applications of new 
technology, we actually wanted to 
demonstrate how they're used. 
And we did this in concert with 
starting the national dialogue, 
where we actually brought some 
people together to talk about 
access and where access was good 
for EPA information, but also 
where they had 
some challenges. 
And that was one way to inform 
it, but we also did this 
Puget Sound Information 
Access Challenge as well, 
that would actually provide some 
feedback to us in real time in 
terms of people actually doing 
work and finding out whether, 
in fact, they could access 
our information or not. 
So this Information Access 
Challenge was actually done 
in cooperation with the Puget 
Sound Leadership Council who 
had asked OEI to do this 
challenge because they 
had an issue. 
And their issue was they needed 
to bring a lot of information 
about the Puget Sound area 
together rather quickly 
because they had to write a plan 
in terms of an action plan for 
improving the ecosystem 
in the Puget Sound. 
[Judy Pino] 
So this was the perfect 
opportunity. 
[Molly O'Neill] 
Absolutely, so that we could 
actually use Web 2.0 technology 
and a lot of that at the high 
level, not at the technical 
level, is really about using 
collaboration tools over 
the Internet. 
And so what we did at 
the symposium was we 
set up an Internet site, 
a wiki site, which would 
allow people from all over the 
U.S. to actually contribute 
to this Puget Sound 
Information Challenge.  
And we set it up for 36 hours 
to see what kind of results 
we would get.   
And we were absolutely amazed 
at the contribution that was 
out there.
[Judy Pino] 
Well, that's wonderful, Molly. 
Thanks again for 
being with us. 
I'm sure that you'll continue 
to be amazed as you go through 
the summer, and we'll try 
to follow the progress of 
the dialogue.
[Molly O'Neill] 
I'll look forward to 
reporting back on it.
[Judy Pino] 
Yeah, we invite 
you back. 
Thank you very much. 
And for more information on 
EPA's national dialogue on 
environmental information, 
you can visit 
www.epa.gov/nationaldialogue. 
And if you wish to find out more 
on the Puget Sound Leadership 
Council, please visit the 
Web address on screen. 
See you next time 
on Green Scene.