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Evaluating Innovative Pilot Projects

Evaluating Project XL

Project XL is one vehicle for piloting innovative tools and approaches that challenged EPA to think about new ways to protect human health and the environment in a smarter, cleaner and cheaper way. From inception, Project XL was designed as a forum to find and test innovative approaches to environmental protection that could yield to broader concepts for supplementing our environmental protection system. Project XL said to its partners: "If you have an idea that offers better environmental protection results than what would be achieved under current regulations, we will work with you and other interested stakeholders to put that idea to the test." Thus we opened a door for a promising set of regulatory experiments to begin.

XL experiments explore new approaches to environmental protection. They are designed to create more options for environmental management and take a more comprehensive approach to environmental management. But the goal of XL was never to serve a select few. Its intent continues to be broad - to find solutions that can be integrated more broadly into our environmental protection system.

Evaluation Support tracks the evolution of innovations to measure the actual environmental performance against anticipated outcomes. Innovation results are documented with the intent that lessons learned from innovative tools and approaches can be integrated into Agency policy, guidance and regulations. But with so many innovations in experimentation, there is a recognized need to continue to more systematically capture, identify and evaluate innovations as well as have decision making structures and processes established that are nimble, responsive, and supportive of that same innovation.

To date, the foundation for this tracking for Project XL innovations has been the

These XL comprehensive reports have played a key role in identifying, capturing and disseminating new knowledge of innovations being tested in XL pilot projects. The 1999 Project XL Comprehensive Report was EPA's initial undertaking to systematically describe the status of projects and to analyze innovations that may lead to system change. The Project XL Comprehensive Reports of 2000 and 2001 build upon the 1999 report, updating project status and results of the 51 XL projects.

The reports demonstrate that Project XL has already yielded important insights and discoveries as a vehicle for testing new ideas in environmental protection. Several of the approaches that are being experimented with under Project XL have been or are in the process of being adopted into our national system of environmental protection.

In creating a national laboratory for innovation, Project XL is showing that it is possible to experiment with new approaches so long as performance goals and reliable safeguards are in place. Learning how to effectively employ these tools to address present and future challenges is a key component. Evaluation will continue to play a critical role in distilling the lessons learned from innovative approaches and translating that knowledge for widespread use.

For specific XL progress reports and additional XL evaluation information, please see the section Project XL Evaluation Documents.

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