CWS 0038 Burden Increase Comment Sheet

Attachment for Change Worksheet for 0651-0038
Other Change
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approved the renewal of this collection
on April 24, 2007 with 1,900 responses and 220 burden hours. Of this total, the United
States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) estimated that 750 paper questionnaires
and customer surveys would be completed and submitted to the USPTO per year and
that an additional 750 questionnaires and customer surveys per year would be
completed and submitted electronically. The USPTO estimated that it would take 5
minutes to complete both the paper and electronic versions of this survey and that the
associated burden hours for each survey would be 60 hours per year.
The USPTO has steadily increased its efforts to obtain feedback and comments from its
customers concerning the agency’s products and services. The USPTO now believes
that more electronic questionnaires and customer surveys will be conducted than
originally thought due to the agency’s outreach program to encourage more patent filers
to file their applications through EFS-Web and heightened efforts in obtaining feedback
and comments from patent filers on how electronic filing and other eCommerce
initiatives can be improved. Due to this increased activity, the USPTO is increasing the
estimate for the electronic questionnaires and customer surveys by 13,350 responses,
from 750 to 14,100, since many of the surveys concerning the eCommerce initiatives
are solely electronic. Many of the questionnaires and customer surveys completed on
paper can also be completed electronically if the respondent chooses to do so.
The USPTO also believes that more paper questionnaires and customer surveys will be
conducted than originally estimated due to the increased survey activity. To account for
these estimated increases, the USPTO is increasing its estimate for the paper
submissions by 1,000 responses, from 750 to 1,750 surveys per year.
Based on recent survey packages, the USPTO has determined that the average
completion time for the questionnaires and customer surveys is higher than the time
indicated in the collection. On average, the questionnaires and customer surveys, both
paper and electronic, are estimated to take 10 minutes to complete and submit.
Currently in the collection, it is estimated to take an average of 5 minutes to complete
the surveys. The USPTO is taking this opportunity to increase the estimated completion
time for the paper and electronic questionnaires and customer surveys to 10 minutes.
This will increase the burden hours associated with these surveys by 2,337 and 238
hours, from 60 to 2,397 and 60 to 298 burden hours per year, respectively.
The USPTO estimates that there will be an increase in the annual burden for this
submission of 2,575 burden hours as an administrative adjustment, bringing the total
annual hours to 2,795.