Paperwork Reduction Act

Americans spend billions of hours each year providing information to federal agencies by filling out information collections (forms, surveys, or questionnaires). A major aim of the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) is to balance the burden of these collections with their public benefit. Under the act, agencies' Chief Information Officers (CIO) are responsible for reviewing information collections before they are submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for approval. As part of this review, CIOs must certify that the collections meet 10 standards set forth in the act. GAO was asked to assess, among other things, this review and certification process, including agencies' efforts to consult with the public. To do this, GAO reviewed a governmentwide sample of collections, reviewed processes and collections at four agencies that account for a large proportion of burden, and performed case studies of 12 approved collections.

Governmentwide, agency CIOs generally reviewed information collections and certified that they met the standards in the act. However, GAO's analysis of 12 case studies at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, and Labor showed that CIOs certified collections even though support was often missing or partial. For example, in nine of the case studies, agencies did not provide support, as the law requires, for the standard that the collection was developed by an office with a plan and resources to use the information effectively. Because OMB instructions do not ask explicitly for this support, agencies generally did not address it. Further, although the law requires agencies both to publish notices in the Federal Register and to otherwise consult with the public, agencies governmentwide generally limited consultation to the publication of notices, which generated little public comment. Without appropriate support and public consultation, agencies have reduced assurance that collections satisfy the standards in the act. Processes outside the PRA review process, which are more rigorous and involve greater public outreach, have been set up by IRS and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), whose missions involve numerous information collections and whose management is focused on minimizing burden. For example, each year, IRS subjects a few forms to highly detailed, in-depth analyses, including extensive outreach to the public affected and the information users. IRS reports that this process--performed on forms that have undergone CIO review and received OMB approval--has reduced burden by over 200 million hours since 2002. In contrast, for the 12 case studies, the CIO review process did not reduce burden. Without rigorous evaluative processes, agencies are unlikely to achieve the PRA goal of minimizing burden while maximizing utility.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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