Re-engineering the Federal planning process: A total Federal planning strategy, integrating NEPA with modern management tools

摘要

A new strategy, referred to as Total Federal Planning, is proposed for unifying large-scale federal planning efforts under a single, systematic, structured, and holistic process. Under this approach, the NEPA planning process provides a unifying framework for integrating all early environmental and nonenvironmental decision-making factors into a single comprehensive planning process. To promote effectiveness and efficiency, modem tools and principles from the disciplines of Value Engineering, Systems Engineering, and Total Quality Management are incorporated. Properly integrated and implemented, these planning tools provide the rigorous, structured, and disciplined framework essential in achieving effective planning. Ultimately, the goal of a Total Federal Planning strategy is to construct a unified and interdisciplinary framework that substantially improves decision-making, while reducing the time, cost, redundancy, and effort necessary to comply with environmental and other planning requirements. Potentially this approach has widespread implications in the way federal planning is approached.