Working in a Deeper Shade of Green

Not everyone was thrilled with the idea. Businesses were leery of what would be made available online and whether information would be misinterpreted. Department employees were skeptical too. Not only would eFACTS initially mean more worklearning a new system, tracking new databut two previous efforts to integrate the agency's 17 data silos had failed.

Nevertheless, with the governor's full support, Hess and then CIO Nelson made it clear that failure was not an option. "We really threw home the point that this is the only tool we're going to allow them to have to track compliance," Hess says.

Nelson kept the planning process open by hosting dozens of roundtable meetings with employees, businesses and citizens. She also split the project into manageable chunks, including converting legacy data (completed in 1997), launching the public website (in 1998) and rolling the system out to the department's many programs.

One World

The system already has changed the way DEP employees work. For instance, they can make educated decisions about whether to approve each of the 20,000 permits DEP issues each year. "If you're getting ready to issue a permit to a facility in Meadville, it would be very useful to know if the owner had any problems at their other locations," Nelson says. "You're not going to call six different people each time you issue a permit. This way, you can just bring up the record and look."