Paperwork Reduction Act
Subcommittee Questions Concerning the Act's Information Collection Provisions Gao ID: GAO-05-909R July 19, 2005This letter responds to Congress' request of June 22, 2005, that we provide answers to questions relating to our June 14 testimony on the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA). At the June hearing, we discussed the estimates of government paperwork burden provided in the annual PRA report (known as the Information Collection Budget) that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently released, as well as results from our report on agencies' PRA processes and compliance.
In answering Congress' questions on our testimony, GAO found that the PRA in its current form contains mechanisms intended to reduce the public burden. Among these is the requirement that OMB review all information collections, as well as the requirement put in place by the 1995 amendments to the PRA, that agencies establish a process to review program offices' proposed collections before the OMB review. Also, there may be opportunities to achieve such burden reduction without modifications to the law. Under the current law, agency CIOs are required to certify that for each information collection, the agency has reduced the associated burden to the extent practicable. However, the certification process is currently more administrative than analytical. GAO suggested that the Congress consider amending the act to mandate pilot projects similar to the targeted efforts being implemented by IRS and EPA and to measure and evaluate the success of these projects. and that the Congress consider eliminating the additional public comment period (the 60-day notice) added by the 1995 amendments. Also, GAO found that the Congress could continue to hold regular oversight hearings where it could monitor follow-up on our recommendations and their governmentwide effect. Next, GAO suggested that the Congress may wish to mandate the development of pilot projects to test and review the value of approaches such as those used by IRS and EPA. As part of this pilot, agencies could identify specific burden reduction goals for the targeted collections and report on reductions achieved. The Congress could also continue to hold regular oversight hearings where it could monitor OMB's actions. GAO also found that although PRA provides mechanisms to encourage communication between federal agencies and the public, the implementation of these mechanisms could be more effective. Our suggestion that the Congress consider eliminating the publication of the initial 60-day notice in the Federal Register is based on our observation that this notice had limited effectiveness in generating public involvement. In our view, eliminating this notice would not, therefore, appreciably decrease public involvement in the development of information collections. Finally, if the Congress wants to alter the existing public consultation requirements in the PRA, it has various alternatives for creating exemptions. For example, it could create an exemption for certain types of collections, such as extensions of currently approved collections or voluntary collections. Alternatively, the Congress could create an exemption for proposed collections that impose a minimal amount of burden on the public or affect only a small number of respondents.
GAO-05-909R, Paperwork Reduction Act: Subcommittee Questions Concerning the Act's Information Collection Provisions
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United States Government Accountability Office:
July 19, 2005:
The Honorable Candice S. Miller:
Chair:
The Honorable Stephen F. Lynch:
Ranking Minority Member:
Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs:
Committee on Government Reform:
House of Representatives:
Subject: Paperwork Reduction Act: Subcommittee Questions Concerning the
Act's Information Collection Provisions:
This letter responds to your request of June 22, 2005, that we provide
answers to questions relating to our June 14 testimony[Footnote 1] on
the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA). At the June hearing, we discussed
the estimates of government paperwork burden provided in the annual PRA
report (known as the Information Collection Budget) that the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) recently released, as well as results from
our report on agencies' PRA processes and compliance.[Footnote 2] Your
questions, along with our responses, follow.
1. With the passage of the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) of 1995, the
intent of the Congress was to reduce the burden imposed on the public
by federal agencies. Is the PRA in its current form an effective tool
for reducing public burden?
As discussed in our report, the PRA in its current form contains
mechanisms intended to reduce the public burden. Among these is the
requirement that OMB review all information collections, as well as the
requirement put in place by the 1995 amendments to the PRA, that
agencies establish a process to review program offices' proposed
collections before the OMB review. This agency review process is to be
carried out by the official responsible for the act's implementation--
now the agency's Chief Information Officer (CIO[Footnote 3])--who is to
be sufficiently independent of program responsibility to evaluate
fairly whether information collections should be approved. As part of
this process, the CIO is to certify that information collections meet
10 standards set forth in the act, including that they reduce the
burden on the public to the extent practicable and appropriate.
However, as discussed in our report, the current implementation of this
CIO review offers opportunities for improvement. As the case studies in
our report demonstrate, the review has been reduced to a routine
administrative process, rather than the rigorous analytical process
envisioned by the Congress, and does not appear to be effective in
reducing the burden. Accordingly, we recommended that agency CIOs
strengthen support for certifications, a process that has the potential
to improve the effectiveness of the review mechanism as a means to
reduce the burden. More effective implementation would make the PRA in
its current form a more effective tool for reducing the burden.
In addition, we described more targeted approaches to burden reduction
that have been pursued at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Both IRS and EPA have reported
success with these efforts, and we suggested in our report that the
Congress may want to consider mandating the development of pilot
projects to test and review the value of such approaches. However, we
also noted that targeted reviews of the kind that IRS and EPA perform
would require more resources than are now devoted to the CIO review
process, and may not be warranted at agencies that do not have the
extensive paperwork issues that these two agencies have.
2. True reductions in the burden should take place due to program
changes--either statutory or agency-initiated. Additionally, certain
adjustments, such as those caused by the decreased burden associated
with subsequent collections following the initial request, can reflect
a real change in the burden experienced by the public. Federal agencies
may use adjustments to lessen the true burden increases caused by
discretionary agency actions. How can current law be modified to ensure
that agencies engage in activities that truly reduce the burden through
discretionary program changes and not through simple adjustments?
First, there may be opportunities to achieve such burden reduction
without modifications to the law. Under the current law, agency CIOs
are required to certify that for each information collection, the
agency has reduced the associated burden to the extent practicable.
However, as we describe in our response to question 1, the
certification process is currently more administrative than analytical.
Improving the execution of this process could increase agencies'
activities to reduce the burden through program changes.
A second way to potentially achieve such burden reductions--which does
involve changes to the PRA--was discussed in our report. The Congress
could consider mandating the establishment of pilot projects to test
and review the targeted approaches to burden reduction used by IRS and
EPA. Such pilot projects would encourage agencies to explore different
possible activities having the potential to truly reduce the burden.
However, as mentioned earlier, targeted reviews of the kind that IRS
and EPA do would require more resources than are now devoted to the CIO
review process, and may not be warranted at agencies with less
extensive paperwork issues than there is at these two
agencies.[Footnote 4]
3. As the Congress considers reauthorization of the PRA, what changes
to the information collection requirements of the act should the
Congress consider?
In our report, we identified two changes that we believe the Congress
should consider. First, we suggested that the Congress consider
amending the act to mandate pilot projects similar to the targeted
efforts being implemented by IRS and EPA and to measure and evaluate
the success of these projects. Second, we suggest that the Congress
consider eliminating the additional public comment period (the 60-day
notice) added by the 1995 amendments (see the answer to question 8). In
addition, in light of the lack of understanding of the current PRA
requirement that public consultation occur on all collections, the
Congress might consider clarifying what level of public consultation it
expects for new and existing collections (see the answer to question
9).
4. The GAO recommends the Director of the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB) take five actions to improve agency compliance with the
PRA. Furthermore, the GAO recommends five actions to be undertaken by
the agencies subject to its investigation. What actions could the
Congress take to ensure these recommendations are realized by agencies
governmentwide?
Some of the actions we recommended to OMB would, if implemented, have
governmentwide impact, such as clarifying its guidance in various ways
and directing agencies to review forms on agency Web sites for PRA
compliance. As part of our standard processes, we systematically follow
up on recommendations and make information on their status available to
the Congress. Accordingly, we will be reviewing the actions of OMB and
the other agencies to respond to our recommendations. In addition, the
Congress could continue to hold regular oversight hearings where it
could monitor follow-up on our recommendations and their governmentwide
effect.
5. What are some problems associated with specific burden reduction
goals, such as those mandated by the 1995 PRA? How can the Congress
mandate specific burden reductions caused by agency-initiated program
changes?
A major problem associated with these goals is that, so far, they have
not produced the intended results. We commented in our testimony on the
government's lack of success in meeting the specific burden reductions
mandated by the 1995 PRA. Our recommendation that the CIO review
process be strengthened is one possible approach to improving agencies'
success in reducing the burden.
A second problem is the intrinsic difficulty of accurately estimating
the burden. As we said in our testimony, "Because of limitations in the
ability to develop accurate burden estimates, the degree to which
agency burden-hour estimates reflect the real burden is unclear." It is
challenging to estimate the amount of time it will take for a
respondent to collect and provide the information or how many
individuals an information collection will affect.[Footnote 5] OMB's
latest report[Footnote 6] on the paperwork burden also alludes to this
difficulty, observing with regard to IRS that "— in an effort to more
accurately measure the paperwork burden, IRS is currently evaluating
its current methodology which, although vastly more sophisticated than
that used by most federal agencies, has recognized shortcomings. The
current methodology is based on survey data almost 20 years old and
measures only certain types of taxpayer compliance burdens. It has
limited ability to predict changes in the compliance burden resulting
from changes in tax policy or tax system administration."
In regard to mandating specific burden reductions, we made a related
suggestion in our report. Specifically, we suggested that the Congress
may wish to mandate the development of pilot projects to test and
review the value of approaches such as those used by IRS and EPA. As
part of this pilot, agencies could identify specific burden reduction
goals for the targeted collections and report on reductions achieved.
6. The Administrator of OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs (OIRA) stated that OMB is considering changing instructions for
agencies to align them more closely to the 10 standards in the PRA. How
can the Congress ensure that any proposed revisions to OMB guidance are
aligned with relevant statutes, either existing or new?
As part of our standard recommendation follow-up, we will be reviewing
OMB's actions to revise its guidance in the ways we recommended, and we
will make the results of this follow-up available to the Congress. The
Congress could also continue to hold regular oversight hearings where
it could monitor OMB's actions.
7. Has the PRA been effective in facilitating communication between
federal agencies and the public as information collections are
developed and reviewed? Are there any provisions of the PRA that
agencies have cited as being a disincentive to reach out to the public?
Although the act provides mechanisms to encourage communication between
federal agencies and the public, the implementation of these mechanisms
could be more effective. That is, the act explicitly states in section
3506 (c)(2)(A) that, in addition to providing a 60-day notice in the
Federal Register, each agency shall otherwise consult with members of
the public and affected agencies concerning each proposed collection of
information. However, agencies have not complied with this requirement.
We reported that a key reason for this noncompliance is OMB's guidance
that such consultation is optional. According to this guidance,
agencies should "otherwise consult," or affirmatively reach out to the
public, only on those collections that OMB says "deserve such effort."
As we stated in our report, if agencies do not actively consult with
the public, they limit their ability to determine whether proposed
collections adequately satisfy the act's standards. As a result, their
collections may be unnecessarily burdensome because of lack of clarity,
unnecessarily onerous recordkeeping requirements, or other reasons.
We also concluded that the 60-day Federal Register comment period has
had limited effectiveness in obtaining the views of the public. As we
reported, most agencies provided the required 60-day Federal Register
notice, but only an estimated 7 percent of those notices generated one
or more comments. We believe the Federal Register notice is not
effective in facilitating communication between federal agencies and
the public because it generates so few comments. Moreover, in the act's
second required Federal Register notice, the public has another
opportunity to provide its views. For these reasons, other types of
consultation are important and should be encouraged. For example, some
agencies post proposed collections on their Web sites and ask the
public to comment. Similarly, OMB could establish links on its Web site
to each agency's proposed collections (as is done with agencies'
proposed regulations on ([Hyperlink, http://www.regulations.gov] and
ask for public comments.
Agencies have cited another disincentive to undertaking active
consultation: The act defines a collection of information requiring
approval as the obtaining of facts or opinions by an agency that calls
for answers to identical questions posed to 10 or more persons.
According to agencies, this 10-person provision restricts their ability
to consult with the public on their proposed information collection
requests. We reported in 2000, for example, that EPA officials "noted
that the extent and nature of the agency's public consultations is
limited by the PRA's requirements. . . . A survey or a series of
meetings with 10 or more potential respondents to a proposed
information collection would itself constitute a collection of
information, thereby triggering the [OMB] approval process and adding
the burden associated with the collection to the agency's
total."[Footnote 7] OMB's instructions to agencies acknowledge this
constraint and state that "agencies should not conduct special surveys
to obtain information on which to base hour burden estimates.
Consultation with a sample (fewer than 10) of potential respondents is
desirable."
However, OMB has the option of developing alternatives to allow
agencies to consult on these matters. For example, it could devise and
approve a standard public consultation survey asking for responses to
proposals for (or renewals of) information collections that agencies
could use without further OMB approval.
In its report, the GAO suggests that the Congress may want to consider
eliminating the requirement that agencies publish an initial 60-day
notice in the Federal Register for proposed collections. Can you
elaborate on this suggestion? Would eliminating the required 60-day
notice decrease public involvement in the development of an agency's
information collection? Is there a legislative alternative to
eliminating the 60-day notice requirement? For example, how could the
Congress change existing law to create an exemption for routine
information collections and/or for collections that impose a minimal
amount of burden on the public?
Our suggestion that the Congress consider eliminating the publication
of the initial 60-day notice in the Federal Register is based on our
observation that this notice had limited effectiveness in generating
public involvement. (We did not analyze the responses generated by the
second 30-day Federal Register notice as part of our review.) In our
view, eliminating this notice would not, therefore, appreciably
decrease public involvement in the development of information
collections. If agencies instead performed other types of consultation,
as we recommended, we see the potential for a net increase in public
involvement.[Footnote 8]
If the Congress chooses not to eliminate this notice, it could create
exemptions for certain types of collections, such as extensions
(currently approved collections that are being extended with no change)
or "voluntary" collections (that is, where the public is under no
obligation to respond; for these, agencies have an incentive to
minimize burden so as to encourage the public to respond when there is
no legal obligation to do so). Alternatively, the Congress could create
an exemption for proposed collections that impose a minimal number of
burden hours or affect only a small number of respondents. Such
exemptions could free up agency resources that could be devoted to
improving compliance on more significant collections. We have not
studied the relative merits of these alternatives, however.
8. In the GAO report, OMB and three agencies disagreed with GAO's
assertion that public consultation occur on each collection in addition
to the required 60-day Federal Register notice. The Department of
Labor's CIO expressed concern that additional public consultation,
particularly for routine renewals of collections, would not be a good
use of agency resources. If the Congress were to consider altering this
particular provision to improve its effectiveness as a tool to improve
public consultation, can legislative corrections be made to
differentiate between significant collections and routine collections
and/or collections that impose a minimal amount of burden? If so, how
can the Congress modify the PRA to facilitate public outreach without
forcing agencies to spend valuable resources engaging in such
activities for routine information collections or when such actions are
considered unnecessary?
If the Congress wants to alter the existing public consultation
requirements in the PRA, it has various alternatives for creating
exemptions. For example, it could create an exemption for certain types
of collections, such as extensions of currently approved collections or
voluntary collections. Alternatively, the Congress could create an
exemption for proposed collections that impose a minimal amount of
burden on the public or affect only a small number of respondents. We
have not studied the relative merits of these alternatives, however.
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation:
We provided a draft of this letter to OMB officials for comment. The
Chief for the Health, Transportation and General Government Branch in
OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs stated that OMB had
no comments.
In responding to these questions, we relied on past work related to our
review of agencies' processes for reviewing paperwork collections under
the act. We conducted our work in accordance with generally accepted
government auditing standards during June and July 2005.
We are sending copies of this letter to the Director of OMB and to
other interested parties. Copies will also available at no charge at
our Web site at www.gao.gov.
Should you or your offices have any questions on matters discussed in
this letter, please contact me at (202) 512-6240 or by e-mail at
[Hyperlink, koontzl@gao.gov]. Contact points for our Offices of
Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last
page of this report. GAO staff who made major contributions to this
correspondence include Al Stapleton, Assistant Director; Barbara
Collier; Nancy Glover; David Plocher; and Warren Smith.
Signed by:
Linda D. Koontz:
Director, Information Management Issues:
(310742):
FOOTNOTES
[1] GAO, Paperwork Reduction Act: Burden Reduction May Require a New
Approach, GAO-05-778T (Washington, D.C.: June 14, 2005).
[2] GAO, Paperwork Reduction Act: New Approach May Be Needed to Reduce
Government Burden on Public, GAO-05-424 (Washington, D.C.: May 20,
2005).
[3] The 1995 amendments used the 1980 act's reference to the agency
"senior official" responsible for implementation of the act. A year
later, the Congress gave that official the title of agency Chief
Information Officer (the Information Technology Management Reform Act,
Pub. L. 104-106, Feb. 10, 1996, which was subsequently renamed the
Clinger-Cohen Act, Pub. L. 104-208, Sept. 30, 1996).
[4] IRS and six other agencies account for more than 90 percent of the
federal burden; thus, relatively small reductions in the burden imposed
by these agencies could have a major effect on reducing the paperwork
burden governmentwide.
[5] See GAO, EPA Paperwork: Burden Estimate Increasing Despite
Reduction Claims, GAO-GGD-00-59, (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 16, 2000) for
how one agency estimates the paper work burden.
[6] Office of Management and Budget, Office of Information and
Regulatory Affairs, Managing Information Collection: Information
Collection Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2005
(May 2005), http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/inforeg/2005_icb_final.pdf.
[7] GAO/GGD-00-59, 23.
[8] Other types of consultation might include holding meetings with
representative groups, posting information on Web sites, and so on. For
example, IRS convenes periodic meetings between its personnel and
representatives of the American Bar Association, the National Society
of Public Accountants, the American Institute of Certified Public
Accountants, and other professional groups to discuss tax law and tax
forms. During these meetings there are opportunities for those
attending to make comments on forms used for information collection.
