Supporting EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO)

In 2002, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency created the Enforcement and Compliance History Online platform to improve public access to information about environmental compliance and enforcement activities. Prior to ECHO, this information was scattered across multiple databases and was often difficult to access or understand. In 2012, EPA asked ERG to help the agency modernize ECHO and meet a fast-approaching deadline for decommissioning the legacy site.

ERG modernized ECHO by analyzing requirements, delivering software using agile methods, and improving site organization, content, data presentation, and security. We successfully deployed core queries and reports before the legacy system shut down in 2013. The modernized data warehouse integrates data from over 19 sources and includes enforcement and compliance information on more than 1 million regulated facilities nationwide. We improved data flows into ECHO to help keep information up to date and improved access to the data by developing public web services.

Since 2012, ERG has continued working with EPA to expand and continuously improve ECHO. We integrated ambient and pollution data to support health-based analyses and improved capabilities for conducting community-based analyses for environmental justice concerns. Our data presentations in ECHO are visual, dynamic, and interactive to promote better understanding of complex information. In addition, we create video tutorials and conduct six to nine live training sessions per year to support ECHO's user base.