Sec. 2. Findings
390 words·~2 min read·
/bill/119/s/3800/is/section-2A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.
The Congress finds that— coordination between Federal, State, and local agencies and project sponsors is critical to ensuring the timely and effective completion of environmental reviews and authorizations, including through the sharing of relevant information, alignment of environmental review timelines, and integration of authorizations, while maintaining compliance with applicable statutory and regulatory requirements; digital strategies for environmental reviews have proven to make the community engagement process more accessible, available, and transparent to all stakeholders, especially the communities in which new projects are built; establishing robust data architectures will ensure data integrity, improve transparency, reduce costs, and enhance the ability of the Federal Government to serve the public;
Federal agency use of modern software that can track the full lifecycle of environmental reviews and authorizations is critical for— effective project management and process improvement; enabling workflow automation, transparency, and tracking; and simplifying reporting requirements; modern business process management systems that track Federal agency workflows and produce vendor neutral, interoperable event, task, and other milestone data that can be shared with other Federal agency systems can reduce costs and improve performance for Federal agencies responsible for environmental reviews and authorizations; case and project management systems— are essential tools for managing the tasks and activities associated with environmental reviews and authorizations; and provide Federal agencies more data and insight into such environmental reviews and authorizations; well-defined business rules can enable process automation that allows Federal agencies responsible for environmental reviews or authorizations to expedite routine tasks and workflows, and improve transparency and accuracy of project timeline estimates, which in turn can help project sponsors better plan for application preparation and project delivery milestones; taking a standardized, digital-first perspective to environmental reviews and authorizations at Federal agencies responsible for environmental reviews or authorizations will improve document quality, lead to more concise reports, enable the reuse and accessibility of the data underpinning Federal agency analyses and decisions, and enable objective, technology-assisted evaluation of environmental impacts, analysis, and documentation, and accelerate future environmental reviews and authorizations;
Federal agencies responsible for environmental reviews or authorizations, project sponsors, and the public should have access to up-to-date information on accurate timelines and the status of environmental reviews and authorizations; and allowing for seamless information exchange among Federal agencies and between Federal agencies and project sponsors will increase predictability and efficiency of environmental review and authorization schedules for project sponsors.