Budget and Performance

EIA receives funding for its activities with an annual appropriation from Congress. EIA's budget request falls under the purview of the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Energy and Water Development.

The fiscal year (FY) 2013 budget provides $99.5 million for EIA, a decrease of $5.5 million, or -5.2 percent, from the FY 2012 level. The FY 2013 funding level maintains EIA's core energy statistics, analyses, and forecasting programs, and allows the agency to deliver this information to its customers in the most efficient and effective means. EIA will focus on the following areas:

Conduct the Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS)

• Complete the collection of data for CBECS 2012, which is the only statistically reliable source of energy consumption, expenditures, and end-uses in U.S. commercial buildings. Initial data from CBECS 2012 will be released in 2014.

Maintain EIA's energy modeling and analysis capabilities

• Maintain the National Energy Modeling System so that Federal, State, and local policymakers and other customers have access to reliable forecasts and analyses.
• Continue the Energy and Financial Markets Initiative to improve public understanding of complex energy markets.

Continue to provide critical information on crude oil and product prices

• Provide information on the availability and price of petroleum and petroleum products produced in countries other than Iran to Congress as required by the National Defense Authorization Act (P.L. 112-81).

Promote greater energy literacy through product content and delivery innovations

• Improve the web-based delivery of energy information by launching a comprehensive, dynamic, and interactive view of state energy data and information.
• Maintain EIA's energy education line, including Today in Energy, Energy Kids, Energy-in-Brief, and Energy Explained.

Due to budget considerations, EIA has delayed or suspended several planned activities, including:

• Postponed exploring the National Academy of Sciences' methodological recommendations for EIA's end-use energy consumption data program.
• Delayed the Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) to FY 2014.
• Postponed upgrades to EIA's critical weekly petroleum and natural gas statistical reports.
• Slowed modernizing data collection and processing systems and methods.
• Suspended publication of the Annual Energy Review and its companion publication, Energy Perspectives. The Monthly Energy Review will incorporate annual historical data for about 70 key tables.

EIA's FY 2013 and FY 2014 Budget Requests to Congress can be viewed at http://energy.gov/cfo/reports/budget-justification-supporting-documents.

Performance Measures

As a statistical survey organization, EIA has used a variety of measures to assess its performance for many years, including measures to monitor operations of specific surveys and processes. In addition, EIA currently has two principal measures that it reports on annually to assess overall agency performance.

• Information Quality: A consistently high customer satisfaction rating reflects EIA's ability to provide stakeholders with information that supports a productive national dialogue on a wide range of energy issues. To this end, EIA has conducted at least one comprehensive web customer satisfaction survey each year since the mid-1990s to collect a range of information from users, including customer type, frequency of website use, purpose of visit to the site, user perceptions of EIA, and an overall assessment of customer satisfaction with the quality of EIA's information. EIA's most recent survey, which was fielded on its website in September 2012, collected more than 12,500 responses in six days and provided a wealth of customer information. 91% of the customers who responded to the survey said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the quality of EIA information. This rating exceeds EIA's annual customer satisfaction target of 90%. Additionally, 80% of survey respondents, representing a broad range of customer types and information needs, indicated that they were able to find the specific information they were looking for, up from 73% in 2011. This is especially noteworthy given EIA's recent investments in website re-design and information accessibility. EIA plans to conduct another comprehensive web customer survey in the summer of 2013 and also will consider the use of occasional small, more targeted surveys to help the agency tailor its product line to better meet evolving customer needs.

• Meeting scheduled release dates: Timely delivery of EIA's statistics and analyses ensures that EIA's customers have reliable access to information used in a wide range of energy-related decisions. EIA therefore tracks scheduled and actual release dates for an extensive list of web-based products that span the energy sector and represent a range of periodicity, including weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual, and multi-year release cycles. EIA has a consistent record of meeting or exceeding its 95% target for on-schedule release of these products, including a 97% rating for 2012.

For questions on the EIA Budget please contact Gale Kabat, (202) 586-2469; for questions on the Performance Measures please contact Preston Cooper, (202) 586-9839.

Last updated: May 2013