MITRE’s data-driven responses to a White House inquiry supporting the development of the federal Environmental Justice Scorecard.
MITRE’s Response to the OSTP RFI on the Draft Environmental Justice Scorecard
What’s the issue?
Executive Order 14008 (Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad) states that agencies must make achieving environmental justice part of their missions by developing programs, policies, and activities to address the disproportionately high and adverse human health, environmental, climate-related, and other cumulative impacts on disadvantaged communities, as well as the accompanying economic challenges of such impacts. As part of this effort, the administration is developing an Environmental Justice Scorecard to enable a robust and comprehensive assessment of the Federal Government's efforts to secure environmental justice for all. OSTP provided a draft of this Scorecard and issued an RFI seeking review and comment on it.
What did we do?
The Center for Data-Driven Policy led a cross-MITRE analysis of the questions posed in the RFI, seeking to uncover data and evidence (from our work in the public interest) that would help OSTP finalize the Scorecard, ensuring it will be evidence-based, actionable, and will lead to their desired outcomes.
What did we find?
MITRE provided evidence- and experience-based comments to help enhance numerous sections of the Environmental Justice Scorecard, including the design of the scorecard itself and to recommend aligning the scorecard to a federal environmental strategy to help ensure maximum impact.