Considerable interest exists among water supply professionals
in how well public health protections are generated by the
federal drinking water regulatory program as administered under
the US Environmental Protection Agency's (USEPA's) Safe Drinking
Water Act. This interest is heightened because of Office of
Management and Budget pressure on federal agencies to develop
common performance measures to track the progress of every
regulatory program.
It is challenging to devise clear, meaningful measures of
progress for public sector entities such as the USEPA's federal
drinking water regulatory program. Limitations are inherent in
the relevant public health data, and it is difficult to attribute any
observable trend in public health statistics to drinking water or
other possible causal agents. In addition, performance measures
that are easily countable may steer results in the wrong direction,
whereas indicators that are more oriented toward the
ultimate desired outcomes (e.g., better health) may be uncountable
or not easily interpreted.
This article offers a useful perspective on performance indicators
and recommends ideas for how such indicators might be
applied to the drinking water regulatory program for defining the
monitoring and related data collection requirements. Includes 8 references, figure.
| Edition : | Vol. 98 - No. 4 |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 210 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 9 |
| Published : | 04/01/2006 |
