Overcoming barriers to a national Environmental Assessment Portal

The purpose of this research is to provide recommendations for the Advisory Board to the EA Portal. The recommendations are designed to increase the sharing of information useful to the practice of environmental assessment (EA) through EA practitioners' use of the EA Portal. This work makes recommendations by identifying bafflers and providing best practices applicable to addressing those barriers. To make these recommendations, the following methods were used: a review of EA literature which addresses the information needs of EA practitioners and a literature review of innovation adoption and diffusion research; informant interviews with EA practitioners, information systems specialists, and legal practitioners; and case studies of web portals having the purpose of sharing environmental information. The results of this research indicate that there are four key areas of concern (signified by barriers to the Portal) for the Advisory Board: engaging users and partners, obtaining human and financial resources, ensuring the overall quality of the initiative, and potential legal issues. It is recommended to implement all twenty best practices provided by this research to address the four key areas. However, at minimum, the following eight most important best practices should be used: market the Portal to users and partners, reduce the complexity of sharing, employ a content manager, engage multi-sector leadership, obtain financial support, provide quality control, address Portal usability, and address potential legal issues.;Keywords. Environmental Assessment Portal, EA Portal, web portal, environmental information portal, information management, innovation adoption and diffusion research, EA practitioner, information system, information technology.