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As a part of the interagency Cooperative Conservation initiative led by the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), the federal government has made progress in addressing these challenges. Yet, additional opportunities exist to develop and disseminate tools, examples, and guidance that further address the challenges, as well as to better structure and direct the initiative to achieve the vision of Cooperative Conservation, which involves a number of actions by multiple agencies over the long term.

Failure to pursue such opportunities and to create a long-term plan to achieve the vision may limit the effectiveness of the federal government’s initiative and collaborative efforts.  [Here ends Highlights (http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d08262high.pdf) of GAO-08-262 (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08262.pdf), a report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, U.S. Senate.  The remainder of this article summarizes areas of the report that the Editor saw as particularly transferable to EPA’s collaboration work.]

The GAO report noted that key challenges [Table 2] that the agencies face fall within the following major areas:

•Improving employees’ collaborative skills. Often, federal employees are technical experts and may not have the skills and experience to collaborate. Collaborative skills include the ability to conduct meetings, involve relevant stakeholders, resolve disputes, and share technical information to make it accessible to groups.

•Determining whether to participate in a particular collaborative effort. Opportunities to collaborate continually emerge as community members initiate efforts. However, without understanding the external factors that may affect success, federal land and resource management agencies may become involved and invest resources in a collaborative effort that has little chance of succeeding.

Table 2 - Key Challenges

Challenge	Description
Improving Federal Employees’ Collaborative Skills	Skill and experience interacting and communicating with the public and conflict resolution skills.
Determining Whether to Participate in a Collaborative Effort	Evaluating particular factors that will affect whether a collaborative effort is likely to succeed in particular circumstances. Such factors include the capacity for the community to engage in such efforts, which may depend on the community having leaders, social networks, and local infrastructure and institutions that facilitate civic involvement; and external conditional factors  such as an issue that has a history of litigation and viewpoints rooted in the community that participants bring with them into a collaborative effort such as stereotypes or a history of distrust among community members.
Sustaining Participation	Achieving and sustaining the consistent participation of all relevant stakeholders and people with collaborative, leadership, and technical skills and being able to build trust and equal footing among the participants. Also includes a lack of sufficient time, money, or people to fully support a collaborative effort.
Measuring and Monitoring for Accountability	Achieving and demonstrating accountability through measuring participation and monitoring natural resources given the long time horizons of natural resource results.
Working within Federal Laws and Agency Policies _________________________	Agency support of collaboration through culture, funding, laws, and policies, and relationships with other agencies and organizations. _____________________________________________________________

                                                 Source: GAO analysis

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•Sustaining federal employees’ participation over time. Agency employees can contribute scientific and technical expertise, such as habitat identification and mapping skills, to help plan and focus the group’s work. Limited participation by federal agencies may constrain the amount of work that can be planned and therefore accomplished by both the agency and the group.

•Measuring participation and monitoring results to ensure accountability. Participation in and natural resource results of collaborative efforts are difficult to measure and collaborative efforts often lack a systematic approach for monitoring the results.  A lack of measuring or monitoring data may make it difficult for agencies and their partners to demonstrate and be accountable for their results and justify their continued participation.

•Sharing agency and group experiences with collaboration. Collaborative groups are scattered throughout the United States and do not have many opportunities to meet and share experiences. Although Web sites and guidebooks exist to share information, without venues to bring collaborative groups together, it is more difficult for group members to learn and benefit directly from each other’s experience.

•Working within the framework of federal statutes and agency policies to support collaboration. Some federal laws and agency policies appear to be inconsistent with collaboration.  Without evaluating the laws and policies involved, the federal agencies cannot determine the changes needed to better balance collaboration with good government practices.  [See EPA's Legal Framework Supports Collaboration]

While group structure and process may differ, GAO found that many experts identified collaborative practices that groups share and that can contribute to effective collaboration. The experts primarily identified the following practices through studying various existing collaborative resource management efforts:

•Seek inclusive representation. All stakeholders—individuals and organizations whose interests are affected by the process or its outcome—should be included in the process by participating or being represented.

•Develop a collaborative process. Though processes vary, good ones fit the needs and circumstances of their situation. And obtain commitment from the participants that an agreement will be implemented.

•Pursue flexibility, openness, and respect. Flexibility, transparency, and respect should be built into the collaborative process.

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•Find leadership. Collaborative groups need to find credible leaders capable of articulating a strong vision, and build skills so that these leaders can effectively represent the interests of their organizations.

•Identify or develop a common goal. By establishing a goal based on what the group shares in common—a sense of place or community, mutual goals, or mutual fears—rather than on where there is disagreement among missions or philosophies, a collaborative group can shape its own vision and define its own purpose.

•Develop a process for obtaining information. It is important to develop a common factual base, which can be accomplished by all participants jointly gathering and developing a common understanding of relevant data. This process allows the stakeholders to [review and weigh before they agree to] accept the facts themselves, rather than having the facts disseminated to them through experts.

•Leverage available resources. Since collaboration can take time and resources to accomplish such activities as building trust among the participants, setting up the ground rules for the process, attending meetings, conducting project work, and monitoring and evaluating the results of work performed, it is important for groups to ensure that they identify and leverage sufficient funding to get the group started and to accomplish the objectives.

•Provide incentives. Economic incentives can help collaborative efforts achieve their goals.

•Monitor results for accountability. To be effective, the participants in groups need to be accountable to their constituencies and to their process, and funding organizations expect accountability for the time, effort, money, or patience they invest. Therefore, designing protocols to monitor and evaluate progress toward a collaborative group’s goals, from both an environmental and a social perspective, is important. 

Recommendations for Executive Action
To enhance the federal government’s support of and participation in collaborative resource management efforts, we recommend that the Chairman of CEQ, working with the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior, direct the interagency task force to take the following actions:

1. Disseminate, more widely, tools for the agencies to use in assessing and determining if, when, and how to participate in a particular collaborative effort and how to sustain their participation over time.

2. Identify examples of groups that have conducted natural resource monitoring, including at the landscape level, and develop and disseminate guidance or protocols for others to use in setting up such monitoring efforts.

3. Hold periodic national or regional meetings and conferences to bring groups together to share collaborative experiences, identify further challenges, and learn from the lessons of other collaborative groups.

4. Identify and evaluate, with input from OMB, legal and policy changes concerning federal financial assistance that would enhance collaborative efforts.

5. Identify goals, actions, responsible work groups and agencies, and time frames for carrying out the actions needed to implement the Cooperative Conservation initiative, including collaborative resource management, and document these through a written plan, memorandum of understanding, or other appropriate means.

Furthermore, to ensure that federal agencies can work well with collaborative groups, GAO recommends that the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture take action to develop a joint policy to ensure consistent implementation of ethics rules governing federal employee participation on nonprofit boards that represent collaborative groups.

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