The Exchange Network Leadership Council (ENLC) is nearing completion of its draft “Implementation Plan for Phase 2 of the Exchange Network.” The Plan sets goals and priorities to guide the Network’s growth and expansion in the coming years. The ENLC will share the Plan with the entire Network community in the coming days and we welcome your feedback and questions.

On February 20, 2013, from 2:00-3:30pm ET, the ENLC will sponsor an Open Conference Call to review the Plan and discuss your thoughts and questions about our proposed activities. To register and participate, please visit: 

Andrew Battin
EPA ENLC Co-Chair
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
P: 202.566.2140
E: battin.andrew [at] epa.gov

Andrew Putnam
State ENLC Co-Chair
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
P: 303.692.3579
E: andrew.putnam [at] state.co.us

I am excited to announce that the newest version of EPA’s NetDMR, the internet-based Discharge Monitoring Report electronic reporting tool (NetDMR v1.5), went into production on January 25, 2013.

Version 1.5 includes a significant number of enhancements and problem fixes. These changes include solutions to the highest priority issues identified by the States, EPA Regions, and EPA Headquarters.

If you have any questions regarding this release, please contact the NetDMR Customer Support Staff by email at netdmr[at]epa.gov or by phone at 202.564.7756.

John Dombrowski
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
P: 202.566.0742
E: dombrowski.john[at]epa.gov

To promote greater awareness of Exchange Network Governance activities, important discussions and action items from EN Governance meetings, conference calls, and events are consolidated into monthly activity summaries and posted to the Exchange Network website.

The December 2012 EN Governance Activity Summary is available here.

The schedule of upcoming Governance calls and meetings is available here.

The storage-related issues at EPA’s National Computer Center have been corrected. All NCC-hosted Agency systems should now be available. If you are experiencing any ongoing issues,please contact the Node Help Desk at 888.890.1995 or nodehelpdesk [at] epacdx.net.

Tina Chen
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
P: 202.566.0248
E: chen.tina [at] epa.gov

The EPA’s National Computer Center (NCC) is experiencing a major outage of its storage systems. Numerous NCC-hosted Agency systems are currently unavailable. The NCC is working to restore service as quickly as possible. Additional information will be distributed as soon as it is available.

If your system and/or application is affected, please contact the Node Help Desk at 888.890.1995 or nodehelpdesk [at] epacdx.net.

Tina Chen
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
P: 202.566.0248
E: chen.tina [at] epa.gov

The EPA’s Tribal Identification data standard specifies the Tribal names and codes needed for identification of Federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native entities. Implementing the Tribal Identification standard helps to ensure consistency in the names and codes for Tribal entities and facilitates exchange and integration of Tribal information. To support implementation of this standard, EPA’s Office of Environmental Information has developed the TRIBES Web Services to allow systems to consume the current list of political (i.e., non-geographic) Tribal names and codes, as well as EPA Internal Identifiers to ensure unambiguous identification of Tribal entities.

The TRIBES Data Exchange is available here.

Michael Pendleton
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
P: 202.566.1658
E: pendleton.michael [at] epa.gov

EPA’s Office of Environmental Information has released an updated Exchange Network Glossary. The Glossary, which builds upon previous work conducted by a range of Partners, provides a single point of reference for understanding terms that are relevant to the Exchange Network. There are more than one hundred definitions available, ranging from “Node Client” to “Flow Configuration Document” to “Integrated Project Team.”

This glossary is one of many that are cataloged in EPA’s Terminology Services (www.epa.gov/ts), a repository of environmental and other terms and definitions in use by EPA and other organizations. States, Territories, Tribes, and other Network Partners can create direct links from their web pages to the EN Glossary.

The Exchange Network Glossary is available in the Knowledge Base.

Angelina Hurst
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
P: 202.566.0701
E: hurst.angelina [at] epa.gov

The Exchange Network Leadership Council is excited to announce that EN2014, the 2014 Exchange Network National Meeting, will be held February 25-27, 2014, at the Sheraton Society Hill Hotel in Philadelphia. A Welcome Reception will be held the evening of February 24.

Keep up to date on EN2014 at https://www.exchangenetwork.net/en2014/

The Great Lakes National Program Office (GLNPO) collects environmental data on a wide variety of constituents in water, biota, sediment, and air. After these studies are completed, the data remain. Central to the data management effort is a computerized relational database system to house Lake Michigan Mass Balance and other project results. The Great Lakes Environmental Database (GLENDA) was developed to provide data entry, storage, access and analysis capabilities to meet the needs of mass balance modelers and other potential users of Great Lakes data. The GLENDA Data Exchange provides data services that can be used by Partners to retrieve substance information from the GLNPO system based upon a variety of identifiers and substance characteristics.

The GLENDA Data Exchange is now available here.

Kenneth Klewin
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
312.886.4794
klewin.kenneth [at] epa.gov