On Thursday, May 2 from 1-3 p.m. Eastern, E-Enterprise for the Environment will host a webinar to spotlight work by states and U.S. EPA related to the development and deployment of various permitting applications and workflows under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES).

The workshop will feature three main segments:

• An overview of the E-Permitting and NetDMR systems developed by the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection.
• An overview of the revised EPA Office of Water NPDES Individual Permit Application forms stemming from the February 2019 NPDES Updates Rule.
• A review of the EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance’s NeT reporting tool for NPDES general permits and program reports such as the Construction General Permit (CGP) and Multi-Sector General Permit (MSGP). Speakers will include staff from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management who will discuss their efforts working with EPA to develop the first state-specific general permit application in NeT.

The webinar will be recorded for future viewing. If you have questions, please contact Beth Graves of ECOS or Sarah Abramowitz of Ross Strategic

The State Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) User Community Data Management Advisory Committee is sponsoring its first community-wide best practices webinar to showcase successes and experiences in transitioning to the Compliance Monitoring Data Portal. The webinar will feature a discussion led by Alaska and Montana, and is open to the entire SDWIS community as well as anyone who may be interested in the topic. We encourage you to register and share the webinar information below with your colleagues:

Tuesday, April 23, 2019 from 3 – 4:30 PM ET.

E-Enterprise Federated Identity Management co-chairs Mary Montoya of the New Mexico Environment Department and Chuck Freeman of U.S. EPA are currently soliciting partners to join a new E-Enterprise governance group focused on identity management. The Federated Identity Management Governance Group is open to state, tribal and U.S. EPA officials (more information on qualifications below).

 The group will focus on the development and maintenance of a set of standards, terms of use, levels of assurance, service levels, and security polices to reinforce trust among partners using the E-Enterprise Federated Identity Management system. Topics for governance consideration will be identified and prioritized to facilitate adoption of this technology by E-Enterprise Partners. Topics will be sized appropriately to ensure resolution in no longer than a two-month period. Resolution will rely on input and recommendations from working groups with expert knowledge on the topic under consideration such as the Shared CROMERR Services working group, or the Portal team. The governance group will present the results of the work on a quarterly basis to the Interoperability and Operations Team (IOT).

 Potential members will possess the following qualifications:

• Available to contribute to biweekly meetings initially.
• Have a firm understanding of federated identity management concepts: “A network of enterprises (partners) allow users to choose from a set of Identity Providers for authentication that provides access to a set of trusted web resources (Relying Parties). Relying Parties are responsible for authorizing user roles to perform functions within the web resource.”
• Have a firm understanding of existing federated identity management models currently used such as: OpenID Connect, OpenID, OAuth, OASIS SAML, Windows Identity Framework.  Active Directory experience alone is not adequate.
• Business Analysts, IT Managers, IT Application Architects or IT Security Policy Administrators with direct experience in identity management use cases at the browser tier, as well as at the cross-domain application to application tier.

 If you are interested in joining the group or have questions, please contact Kristen Durance (kdurance@rossstrategic.com ) and she will be sure to connect you to the appropriate team lead.

The FY 2019 National Environmental Information Exchange Network Grant Program Solicitation Notice is now available at https://www.epa.gov/exchangenetwork/fiscal-year-2019-national-environmental-information-exchange-network-grant. Applications are due to EPA by 11:59 PM Eastern Time, April 1, 2019. Information on stakeholder webinars will be provided shortly.

The primary outcome expected from Exchange Network (EN) assistance agreements is improved access to, and exchange of, high-quality environmental data from public and private sector sources. With this outcome in mind, applications should demonstrate support for and results toward EN program priorities.

In FY 2019, EPA expects to award over $7 million for 20-30 assistance agreements for EN projects. Most awards will be in the $50,000 to $300,000 range. Awards for an individual assistance agreement cannot exceed $200,000. EPA may make a limited number of awards to collaborative, partnership assistance agreements. Budgets for these projects cannot exceed $400,000. The exact number of assistance agreements will depend on the final amount of EPA’s appropriation for the EN grant program, the number of applications submitted to EPA by the application deadline, the amounts of proposed budgets, and the outcome of application reviews.

EPA only accepts project proposals for EN assistance agreements submitted electronically through Grants.gov, unless applicants have a waiver. EPA anticipates that it will announce selection decisions in or around August 2019, and tentatively plans to issue awards by September 30, 2019.

For more information, please contact:

Edward Mixon

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

P: 202-566-2142

E: mixon.edward [at] epa.gov