CWS 0038 Revised Burden Increase Supporting Statement

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 because of planned efforts to obtain feedback concerning customer
satisfaction with the service received from the Electronic Business Center help desk.
Due to this increased activity, the USPTO is increasing the estimate for the electronic
questionnaires and customer surveys by 6,000 responses, from 750 to 6,750.
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
these 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 68 and
1,088 hours, from 60 to 128 and 60 to 1,148 burden hours per year, respectively.
The USPTO estimates that there will be an increase in the annual burden for this
submission of 1,156 burden hours as an administrative adjustment, bringing the total
annual hours to 1,376.