Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

13. Environmental Protection Agency · Minor

Adopt EPA's Lean Management System across all OLEM programs

Not started

431 13. Environmental Protection Agency

“Adopt EPA’s Lean Management System (ELMS) across all OLEM programs.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    The Lean Management System reaches one corner of OLEM and has not been extended, and EPA has stopped calling it that. The Superfund Program Implementation Manual, OLEM Directive 9200.3-158 and the office's own implementation directive, names the EPA Lean Management System exactly once in 17,042 lines, and only for the Federal Facilities Restoration and Reuse Office's internal review of draft five-year review reports — one function of one office, in a manual signed in December 2024 and so before the window. EPA offers that FY 2025 manual as the current version on a page last updated 3 June 2026; no successor extends Lean across OLEM's programs. Meanwhile the program itself has been reframed: `epa.gov/lean` now redirects to "Continuous Improvement", described as a system that "uses Lean principles and tools" — a rename, which under §3b changes nothing about the ask either way. The FY 2026 Congressional Justification mentions "Lean principles" three times, all in financial-management and OCFO contexts, and never for OLEM; the Federal Register full-text search for "Lean Management" restricted to EPA returns nothing.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • One negative search covered the whole cluster of OLEM and Superfund asks on pp. 431-433.
  • Federal Register API: a search for “Lean Management” in EPA documents published from 2025-01-20 returned none.
  • EPA’s FY 2026 Congressional Justification mentions “lean” three times, all about applying Lean principles to financial reporting and data availability; none is about OLEM.
  • Reviewed 2026-09-06. Status unchanged. We found and read the OLEM directive that was the open lead: the Superfund Program Implementation Manual FY 2025, semspub.epa.gov/src/document/HQ/100003577, linked from epa.gov/superfund/superfund-program-implementation-manual. The word “Lean” appears once in its 17,042 lines, quoted in the Status note. The manual is dated 18 December 2024, so it predates the evidence window and cannot be Evidence; the page still offering it as current on 2026-06-03 is what carries the negative.
  • That reading changes how to read this item’s negative in two ways. First, Lean is no longer “not named in any OLEM context” — it is named in one, and that naming predates the window, so it is neither adoption nor evidence of any act by this administration. Second, epa.gov/lean still opens, redirecting to epa.gov/continuous-improvement (updated 2026-08-28), rather than having been taken down.
  • The same reading of the manual served #1118, #1123, #1124 and #1127.
Action
other
Object
EPA Lean Management System (ELMS)
ID
1119