State and Local Environmental Public Health Employees Usage of Public Health Assessments and Consultations Documents

Attachment F: Clearance Process Evaluation Executive Summary

ATSDR Documentum Clearance Time Summary

January 1, 2011 – June 18, 2012

The Division of Community Health Investigation (DCHI) Evaluation Team analyzed Documentum clearance times for all documents cleared between January 1, 2011 and June 18, 2012 for DHAC, DRO, and DCHI. During this time frame a total of 258* documents were cleared in Documentum. The average amount of time it took for a document to clear in Documentum was 56.5 days. Figure A contains the number of each type of document cleared during this time frame and the average number of days each type took to clear in Documentum.

Figure A

Type of document	Average Days to Clear	Number of Documents Cleared
NCEH/ATSDR Custom Clearance	127	1
Public Health Assessments	109.09	47
Training Materials	94	2
Print Materials	92.76	17
Health Consultations	63.03	76
Web site	48.59	17
Correspondence	36	5
Other NCEH/ATSDR Document	24.27	11
Presentations / Abstracts	20.86	58
Publication	13.18	17
NCEH/ATSDR Public Meeting Materials	11	5
Technical Assistance Reports	8	2

The average amount of time a document spent with a reviewer is 8.38 calendar days. Figure B contains average amount of time in calendar days each type of reviewer took to clear a document and the number of documents that were cleared by each reviewer type in the clearance chain.

Figure B

Reviewer Type	Average Document Calendar Days	Number of documents cleared
Editorial Services	22.5	13
Team Lead	17.08	142
Ad-Hoc Reviewer	16.98	157
Division ADS	14.11	231
CDC ADS	14	1
Office of Science	11.67	179
Mean	8.38	258
ADC	7.33	50
OPPE	6.67	3
Division Director	4.88	236
Branch Chief	3.79	188
NCEH ATSDR OD	2.5	14
Clearance Administrator	2.5	5
NCEH Final	1	1
OD information	0.67	122
E-Office of Science	0	1

Figure B indicates that the bottlenecks in clearance occur at the team lead, ad-hoc reviewer, division ADS, and NCEH/ATSDR office of science. Although Editorial Services took the longest time to clear a document, their relative workload was much smaller.

The percentage of HCs and PHAs that were returned to the author by one or more reviewers:

• 87% of health consultations (66 of 76) had to be returned to author at least once during clearance

• HCs were returned to authors an average of 1.6 times during the clearance process

• Some HC’s were returned to author as many as six times indicating multiple reviewers returned documents to authors

• 81% of PHAs (38 of 47) had to be returned to author at least once during clearance

• PHAs were returned to authors an average of 1.9 times during the clearance process

• Some PHAs were returned to author as many as four times indicating that multiple reviewers returned documents to authors

Below is the clearance time as a percentage of total development time for PHAs and HCs:

• Mean time to complete a PHA / HC = 374.4 days

• Mean time to complete a PHA = 454.1 days

• Mean time to complete a HC = 328.4 days

• Clearance time as a % of total document development time

  • PHAs = 12.4%

  • HCs = 17.2 %

In sum, documentum clearance takes up a relatively small part of the total document development time for PHAs/HCs.

*Did not count the EPI-X/HAN posting