Justification - LSA App Instructions v 7_2_08[2]

SUPPORTING STATEMENT FOR PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT SUBMISSIONS

 

A. Justification

A1.  Need for Information Collection

The Corporation for National and Community Service (the Corporation) awards grants to states, institutions of higher education, non-profit organizations, Indian tribes, and U.S. Territories to operate Learn and Serve America programs. This information collection comprises the questions applicants will answer to compete for funding related to the Corporation’s strategic initiatives or other priorities.

A2.  Indicate how, by whom, and for what purpose the information is to be used.

The Corporation is soliciting comments concerning application instructions designed to be used for grant competitions which the Learn and Serve America sponsors from time to time. The initial comment period closed June 2, 2008. No comments were received.

These grant competitions are designed and conducted, when appropriations are available, to address the Corporation’s strategic initiatives or other priorities. Applicants will respond to the questions included in these instructions in order to apply for funding in these competitions.

For Continuation requests (second and third year applications), the Corporation’s eGrants system automatically copies all information provided in the first year’s application into the second and third year applications to ease the burden on grantees. The updated applications are used by staff to make recommendations for continued funding, which is available to grantees subject to funding availability and adequate progress towards meeting performance measures.

 

 A3.  Minimize Burden: Use of Improved Technology to Reduce Burden

The Corporation has developed an electronic system to comply with the requirements of Public Law 106-107. Grantees are required to attempt to submit applications electronically via eGrants, the Corporation’s web–based grants management system. Grantees unable to use eGrants will be allowed to submit reports on paper, however, the Corporation is anticipating near 100 percent electronic submission rate for this document. Electronic submission of this document is part of the Corporation’s integrated grants management system, which facilitates on-line application submission, awarding, monitoring and closeout of Corporation grants. Additionally, all general grant information and performance measures that grantees will be reporting against will automatically populate from the application to the grantees’ Progress Reports, saving grantees the time of reentering unchanged or baseline information.

A4.  Non-Duplication

There are no other sources of information by which the Corporation can meet the purposes described in A2 (above).

 

A5.  Minimizing for economic burden for small businesses or other small entities.

This collection of information does not impact small businesses because they are not eligible to apply for grants. There is no economic burden to any other small entities beyond the cost of staff time to develop the grant application. This is minimized to the degree possible by only asking for the information absolutely necessary to measure progress towards the Corporation’s strategic initiative benchmarks.

A6.  Consideration of Collection

 The Corporation will be unable to conduct Learn and Serve America competitions related to its strategic initiatives or other priorities without approval of this collection. The Corporation uses the information collected to help make grant decisions, evaluate requests for continued funding and track progress towards meeting agreed upon performance measures.

A7.  Special circumstances that would cause information collection to be collected in the specified ways.

There are no special circumstances that would require the collection of information in any other ways specified.

A8.  Provide copy and identify the date and page number of publication in the Federal Register of the Agency’s notice.

The 60 day Notice soliciting comments was published on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 on page 17958. No comments were received as a result of this notification.

 

 A9.  Payment to Respondents

There are no payments or gifts to respondents

  

A10.  Confidentiality

Information provided by this collection may be shared with federal, state, and local agencies for law enforcement purposes. Information provided by respondents is subject to the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act.

A11.  Sensitive Questions

 The information collection does not include questions of a sensitive nature.

 

A12. Hour burden of the collection

We expect approximately 900 respondents to use these instructions to apply for Learn and Serve America competitions related to the strategic initiatives or other priorities. The frequency of response will not be greater than annually, and should not exceed 8 hours of effort per respondent, for a total burden of 7,200 hours. About half of these estimates are for the Higher Education application and half are for the Community Based application. There is no estimated annual hour burden outside of the customary and usual business practices.

 

A13. Cost burden to the respondent

The total cost burden based on an average cost of $19.51 per hour (value of a volunteer hour according to Independent Sector) is $140,472. About half of these estimates are for the Higher Education application and half are for the Community Based application.

 

A14. Cost to Government

Depending upon the type of review, contractor costs for identifying, hiring and the managing peer reviewers for new applicants may be incurred. For 2009, contracted services and reviewer honorariums are estimated to total $354,742. In years when Learn and Serve America accepts only Continuation applications, there are no additional costs the government. Learn and Serve America’s review of that data will be accomplished by internal teams of staff as part of their regular job functions and will not result in the incurring of additional costs. About half of these estimates are for the Higher Education application and half are for the Community Based application.

A15. Reasons for program changes

The hour burden per applicant has decreased based on a review of annual records for the time it takes an applicant to prepare and submit an application. Additionally, the number of applicants has increased based on the historical number of applications received. And the cost value for a volunteer hour has gone up, increasing the estimated cost per respondent.

 

 A16.  Publication of results

Not applicable because the responses to this information collection will not be published. 

 

A17.  Explain the reason for seeking approval to not display the expiration date for OMB approval of the information collection.

Not applicable.

 

 A18.  Exceptions to the certification statement

There are no exceptions to the certification statement in the submitted ROCIS form.

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