The P2Rx administrative group met for a conference call on January 14, 2004. Andy Bray (NEWMOA), John Calcagni, Curt McCracken, and Gary Hunt (WRRC), Deb Jacobson (GLRPPR), Thomas Vinson (region 6), Rick Yoder (P2RIC), Mike Vogel (Peaks to Prairies), Ed Gonzalez (WRPPN), Chris Wiley (PPRC), Beth Anderson (EPA) and Jean Waters (P2Rx) were on the call.

The news committee reported that they are working on policy recommendations for providing credit to news providers and policies to ensure quality. Scott Butner and Andy are working on software code, possibly will use RSS standard. They expect to have something by the NPPR summit this spring.

The on-line surveys were reviewed. It was pointed out that some questions don’t fit the audience for every center. Beth responded that minor deviations for each center should be acceptable.

The group doing the PPIN evaluations (IEC) needs some names of our users to interview. Jean will get the list of names that Weinreich Communications interviewed and distribute it so centers can provide other names to Beth for the PPIN evaluation.

Rick has concerns about IEC’s proposed logic model. Beth needs comments by January 21.

The web group had a successful workshop. There are still Topic Hub code updates to be done. There are style differences among centers that present challenges in sharing the Topic Hubs. Hard-coded format within the narrative pages will need to be changed. Scott provided a search engine report card, detailing what every center should do in order to have higher ranking from search engines. The left-hand navigation code improvements and bibliographic search code is complete. The acknowledgements section is nearly ready to be implemented. Time was spent at the workshop documenting the software code. The desire for a user’s manual was discussed. Prabin will write it and Thomas and Curt will review it. Webtrends reports should be posted by every center.

Center report-outs

PPRC – planning annual regional roundtable in March in Seattle. Will get agenda info to anyone interested. Close to rolling out tool that evaluates energy efficiency technology in remediation sites; may turn it into a topic hub if info is useful. Currently are developing more EPP tools. This includes a product prioritization tool for organizations and a market survey protocol to identify market for alternative products. PPRC will communicate with green purchasing topic hub author when the tool is developed. Submitted a pre-proposal to house the health care compliance assistance center, have been asked to submit a full proposal. Currently redesigning the web site; it has been criticized for it not being very intuitive. PRC is also putting together a “pesticide use in nursery operations” roundtable.

WRPPN – been coordinating with Baja Calif. Roundtable, their meeting will be in February. Ed has been coordinating with John Roanhorse at Northern Arizona University. WRPPN will help with his tribal clearinghouse and he’ll help with topic hubs. WRPPN will update and upgrade their topic hubs. Review teams have been assembled. Ed has been participating in California local government quarterly meetings. WRPPN’s annual advisory board meeting will be in Sacramento in March.

Peaks – regional initiative on P2 in state parks and smaller parks using the model of larger park initiatives. States will be getting together in Bismarck on Feb 12; Marie Zanowick will do training on the parks initiative. After this meeting, Peaks will put together a tool kit for smaller parks. Homes Across America is really blossoming and is being seen by lots of groups as a showcase product. Peaks received sponsorship from USDA to hire a person to get more home profiles into the database..

P2RIC – working on topic hub development, adding programs to the program directory, and answering questions. P2RIC will be hosting an industrial assessment center training at the end of the month. The Region 7 P2 Roundtable is in April in Kearney, Neb. We will be looking at measurement, following up the December measurement meeting. Focus of roundtable will be ethanol plants. P2RIC is adding videos to library, if you have videos, send them.

Region 6 – Thomas will be the new center director pending his background check. He is expecting to start the new job by Feb. 2. He has committed to finishing POTW topic hub updates by first quarter report. NM is doing a workshop, Thomas will speak, Arkansas is starting a state-wide performance driven EMS program. Louisiana may be moving their P2 program to their small business program. Thomas has committed to having web site functioning by end of January. The regional workgroup will meet again this week to come up with new domain name.

GLRPPR – working with Gary Miller on regional measurement task force. They have split into subcommittees to address quality, to organize state-specific feedback, address regionally and report nationally. Regional salvage yard topic hub is waiting for feedback from Andy. The Technology Diffusion hub is finalized. GLRPPR isn’t holding their winter meeting in Chicago this year. Ohio will have next conference in Columbus at the end of September or early October.

WRRC – There is a significant need in regions for coordination because EPA P2 coordinators in both regions have been on other assignments. John has been running regional conference calls. RCC offered to pay for P2 people to come to Florida to integrate P2 into their programs. The networking that occurred was very valuable. Could P2Rx develop topic hubs around RCC targeted chemicals? They are waiting to see what happens in region 3 as Jeff Burke is gone and backup is on another assignment.

NEWMOA commented on EPA’s once-in always in MACT policy and will follow up. NEWMOA also commented on the need to incorporate p2 technologies into the ract/bact/laer clearinghouse. Sent comment letter in coordination with sister agency, regional air group. They are working with regional air folks to look at residual risk evaluation. If so, what P2 opportunities are there to mitigate the emissions? Have four draft hubs underway, wood furniture, lead, dioxin, auto recycling. NEWMOA is trying to leverage the work of the national compliance assistance center by get the links from them into our database. When done, will document; it will be a nice case study for why we care about content sharing. Andrea McKay is new staff person. Andy has been working with Scott to simplify the way we use keywords throughout our sites. We are trying to get away from maintaining separate keyword lists.

Proposed Amendment to P2Rx Programs Data Collection Development Policy; Draft - September, 2002 Updated - 1/03, 6/03 Adopted - 10/03.

The proposed change is in the "individual contacts data fields, " add "or generic" to both the "LastName" and "FirstName" fields.

Note:
These fields would still be required to have words in them, so the "where to go for help" function will work on the topic hubs. If a center doesn't want to list an individual's name, they can use something generic, like "executive director" or "staff engineer."

John's main reason for wanting to modify the policy is that state programs do not want names of individuals listed because they find it intrusive or inappropriate (e.g. they have rotating assignments for public inquiries or have a unit assigned not an individual). We feel strongly that we need to honor the wishes of the programs in preparing their listings.

Secondly, it will be a major continuing resource burden to maintain an accurate list of names. Contacts change much more frequently than programs. Having an out of date contact is much worse than having no contact. It undermines the credibility of the program directory if the information is out of date.

Many Centers presently do not include a contact person for every listing. For those with large program directories (not WRRC but others) it will be an immediate additional unfunded resource burden to contact all those programs to get names. As a resource estimate, based on my vendor database plan on 40 staff hours to verify and update every 100 entries. Are all centers really willing to commit spending more unbudgeted time to do this?

Making the inclusion of primary contacts voluntary doesn't require those who want the names in their database to change what they are doing. It only helps us who don't want to include them.

Putting up email addresses will make them a target for additional spam since spammers harvest email addresses from internet websites.

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