The Administration has introduced new Agency Priority Goals and Cross-Agency Priority Goals in the 2015 Budget, along with the release of new agency strategic plans. Agencies establish a variety of performance goals and objectives to drive progress toward key outcomes. Agencies outline long-term goals and objectives in their strategic plans, and annual performance goals in annual performance plans. Agency Priority Goals target areas where agency leaders want to achieve near-term performance acceleration through focused senior leadership attention.

FY2014 – FY2018 EPA Strategic Plan

Goal 2: Protecting America’s Waters. Protect and restore waters to ensure that drinking water is safe and sustainably managed, and that aquatic ecosystems sustain fish, plants, wildlife, and other biota, as well as economic, recreational, and subsistence activities.

Objective 2.1: Protect Human Health. Achieve and maintain standards and guidelines protective of human health in drinking water supplies, fish, shellfish, and recreational waters, and protect and sustainably manage drinking water resources.

Strategic Measures

Water Safe to Drink

• By 2018, 92 percent of community water sys­tems will provide drinking water that meets all applicable health-based drinking water standards through approaches including effective treatment and source water protection. (2005 baseline: 89 percent. FY 2013 universe: 51,535 community water systems. Status as of FY 2013: 91.4 percent.)
• By 2018, 88 percent of the population in Indian country served by community water systems will receive drinking water that meets all applicable health-based drinking water standards. (2005 baseline: 86 percent. FY 2013 universe: 1,013,222 people in Indian county served by community water systems. Status as of FY 2013: 77 percent.)
• By 2018 in coordination with other federal agencies, provide access to safe drinking water for 148,100 American Indian and Alaska Native homes. (Status as of FY 2013: 108,881 homes. Universe: 360,000 homes.)

The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) tool summarizes the drinking water program's performance measures and results. It also provides detailed information about public water system inventory and violations data.  You can filter the data to see different summaries.  You can also drill down to the details in the underlying data.

For example, you can:

• Find the number of systems reporting a certain type of violation, in a certain year, for a certain state
• Compare the results to those of other states
• Compare results among states within an EPA region