FROM EPA REGARDING SUMMER DIALOGUE

[Guest guest]

FORWARD:

EPA Dialogue participants,

Thanks again for taking the time to participate in the EPA Dialogue last

summer. I am including below an announcement about the availability of

the final evaluation report from our evaluator, Tom Beierle. Also, Pat

Bonner and Kahn have created summary tables from the dialogue

content and will soon be releasing EPA's plans for implementing the

Public Involvement Policy. That is also described below.

Best wishes for the New Year.

Bob Carlitz

Information Renaissance

===

The evaluation report on the National Dialogue is now available. As the

era of e-government dawns, this report outlines how on-line dialogues

can harness the Internet to enhance public participation in agency

decision making. In addition to providing an in-depth analysis of the

National Dialogue, the report provides a set of ideas and principles for

agencies and other organizations planning to conduct and evaluate

their own dialogues in the future. It also offers recommendations for

the administration and Congress to build capacity for electronic

democracy across the executive branch.

Please use the following link to download the full report:

<A HREF= " http://www.rff.org/reports/PDF_files/democracyonline.pdf " >

http://www.rff.org/reports/PDF_files/democracyonline.pdf</A>

If you would like to download only the executive summary, please use the

following link:

<A HREF= " http://www.rff.org/reports/summaries/DemOnlineExecSum.pdf " >

http://www.rff.org/reports/summaries/DemOnlineExecSum.pdf</A>

If you would like a hard copy of the report, please email a request to

beierle@..., send a fax to (202) 939-3460, or call (202) 328-5015.

Tom Beierle

Resources for the Future

===

As promised during the Dialogue, EPA staff organized postings into

various tables, based on content. You can search these tables for

specific topics and key words. One set of tables contains Dialogue

excerpts that discuss ideas for improving public involvement at EPA. The

other set contains Dialogue participants' descriptions of public

involvement experiences that were not ideal - the problem areas. In

addition, a separate table contains all postings that discuss tribal

public involvement issues. EPA plans to use many of these ideas in

public involvement training materials for EPA staff.

You may find the tables on the Dialogue Web site:

<A HREF= " http://www.network-democracy.org/cgi-bin/epa-pip/show_tables.pl " >

http://www.network-democracy.org/cgi-bin/epa-pip/show_tables.pl</A>

EPA also recently created draft Recommendations for Implementing EPA's

Public Involvement Policy. This document describes a set of internal

actions that will help ensure that the Policy is implemented by EPA's

staff and management. The draft Recommendations will be published soon

in the Federal Register, and EPA will seek public comments on it for 60

days. Once it is published, Information Renaissance will send you an

e-mail notification.

Pat Bonner

Kahn

U.S. EPA