The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established a single portal on the Internet for all environmental data entering the agency.
The Central Data Exchange (CDX) offers companies, states and other entities that provide data to EPA a faster, easier and a more secure reporting option. The portal also includes built-in data quality checks, Web forms, standard file formats and a common, user-friendly approach to reporting data across vastly different environmental programs such as the Toxic Release Inventory, the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule and the Air Emissions Inventory.
A cornerstone of the agency's e-government initiative, EPA says CDX aids the its overall systems modernization effort and saves money by reducing redundant infrastructure.
CDX currently accepts data for certain air, water, waste and toxic programs and will gradually expand to support all agency environmental reporting by 2004. Though the current focus is electronic, CDX will eventually incorporate a facility for the agency's paper data collections as well. More information is available at www.epa.gov/cdx.
edited by Sandy Smith ([email protected])