Supporting Statement For Paper Work (2)

SUPPORTING STATEMENT FOR PAPER WORK REDUCTION ACT SUBMISSIONS

1. Justification

A1. Need for Information Collection

Under the authority of the National and Community Service Act of 1990, the Corporation for National and Community Service ("the Corporation") is authorized to "conduct directly or by grant or contract, appropriate training programs regarding national service in order to improve..." the quality of national service programs and to "make technical assistance available" in order to develop national service programs or to assist other organizations in applying for assistance. In order to provide training and technical assistance (T/TA) to existing and prospective national service programs, including AmeriCorps, Learn and Serve and Senior Corps, the Corporation awards cooperative agreements through a competitive process to a number of organizations with expertise in specific content areas.

To select T/TA providers, the Corporation must solicit proposals from competing organizations. Once a selection is made, in order to monitor and oversee the use of the funds and accomplishments of the training providers, the Corporation must receive regular reports.

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

The information collected in the applications will be used by the Corporation to award cooperative agreements lo selected training and technical (TATA) providers. In compliance with the provisions of these cooperative agreements, the selected providers will supply T/TA services designed to develop grantee competencies and capacities specified by the Corporation.

The selected T/TA providers must comply with reporting requirements, including submitting semi-annual financial and progress reports. The information collected in these reports will be used by the Corporation to monitor and oversee the performance of the selected T/TA providers and assess their T/TA impact.

A3. Minimize burden: Use of improved technology to reduce burden

The Corporation has developed a new electronic system, eGrants, to comply with the requirements of Public Law 106-107. Applicants will apply on-line to the Corporation. The selected T/TA providers will then submit semi-annual reports via the eGrants system, with some accompanying hardcopy or electronic documents.

A4. Non-duplication

There are no other sources of information to use or modify for the purposes stated in A2 above.

A5. Minimizing economic burden for small businesses

The collection of information does not impact small businesses or other small entities because the Corporation has developed an electronic reporting process with dedicated support and detailed operating instructions.

A6. Consequences if the collection is not conducted

Without the information collected in the applications, the Corporation would be unable to select T/TA providers for cooperative agreements and award the funds necessary to provide the training and technical assistance to Corporation grantees. Without the planning and accomplishment information collected in the reports, theCorporation would be unable to monitor and oversee the use of the Corporation funds and assess the technical assistance being provided to its grantees and subgrantees.

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

There are no special circumstances that would increase as specified the frequency or amount of information to be collected by respondents.

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

A 60-Day Notice soliciting comments was published in the Federal Register/VoI. 73, No. 83/Tuesday, April 29, 2008/Notices pp. 23209-23210. A copy of this publication is provided.

A9. Payment to respondents

There is no payment or gift to respondents.

410. Confidentiality

We do not include a specific assurance; however, information provided by respondents is subject to the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act.

A11. Sensitive questions

The information collected does not contain questions of a sensitive nature.

A12. Hour burden of the collection of information

We expect approximately 56 respondents to apply for TTA cooperative agreement awards. The frequency of response will not be greater than once every five (5) years and the time burden should be approximately 11.75 hours of effort per respondent. The averaged total burden hours are 658 hours.

With regard to the planning and reporting information, we expect to select approximately 15 T/TA providers for cooperative agreements. These 15 providers will prepare budget and activity projections at the beginning of the budget period (usually one year) and report semi-annually on actual activities and funds expended. It is anticipated that they will spend approximately 12 hours on the budget/activity projection and 24 hours each per semi-annual report, or 60 hours each per year per respondent. Total number of burden hours is 900 hours.

The level of burden for both the application and the periodic budget planning and reporting is attributable to the extensive, national scope of the services that will need to be described in the application and the subsequent planning and reporting documents. The organizations selected for cooperative agreements are expected to provide materials and services that will serve Corporation grantees and subgrantees regardless of size (large non-profit institution, small community organization), type of program (Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, state or national parent organization, urban, rural, tribal), geographic location (east coast, west coast, US territory, multi-site, multi-state), or experience (veteran program or new start-up). Estimates for the above time burdens were determined by consulting a sample of current and potential respondents.

In this collection the Corporation receives submissions from new applicants and re-competing applicants. The burden for new applicants for an initial submission of a proposal is higher due to the effort of the research time expended reviewing materials on the Corporation’s Resource Center (the CNCS on-line collection of tools, tips, best practices eCourses and other aides to assist Corporation grantees and subgrantees in meeting the statutory and regulatory requirements of the Federal grants awarded by CNCS) to have a better sense of the deliverables developed under this collection. In addition time and effort is expended in researching the main CNCS web site to learn about the Corporation programs that training and technical assistance resources and strategies are being proposed. Recompeting applicants responding to this collection will already have the background and experience in designing learning strategies and resources for CNCS grantees and subgrantees and they will have already become familiar with the CNCS Resource Center through their past work therefore allowing them to skip the research step and move directly to writing the proposal. Because of this previous experience and knowledge their burden is lessened

A13. Cost burden to respondents

Using the average cost per volunteer hour ($19.55/hour) multiplied by the total number of burden hours (80 hours) we estimate the cost at $1564.00 per collection per respondent.

A14. Costs to the federal government

The Corporation is a grant-making agency and a certain portion of its administrative budget is tied to collecting information for funding TTA providers. The Corporation's administrative budget includes cost estimates related to reviewing applications and awarding grants and cooperative agreements. For this collection approximately $6 million is awarded to support the training and technical assistance of Corporation grantees and subgrantees.

Changes made subsequent to the 3045-0105 OMB Notice of Action re: Application Instructions: Training and Technical Assistance Cooperative Agreements

The Office of Leadership Development and Training is moving the Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) Cooperative Agreements from three year agreements to five year agreements. To align with that change, specific dates and years have been eliminated from the instructions. Specific dates will be published in the NOFO/A that are used in conjunction with these instructions. By moving to longer agreement periods, there is less time and effort dedicated to proposal writing and review required by applicants to this collection thereby reducing the burden on applicants. In addition, with the longer agreement periods there will be a cost savings to the Federal Government related to the resources dedicated to the entire grant review process.

We have further reduced the public burden related to this collection by removing portions of the instructions that are no longer applicable to this collection for TTA Cooperative Agreements. Because of the nature of the cooperative agreements and the intimate involvement of OLDT in setting the work plans and managing the budget and deliverables based on the programs’ needs, we no longer require applicants to discuss those items under Proposed Activities. Streamlining and reduced burden is further seen our omission of the requirement of submitting additional documents.

Lastly, because the organizational capacity of an organization in developing training strategies and products is a critical to this collection, the percentages of the Selection Criteria have changed. The change reduces the percentage in Program Design from 50% to 35%. The percentage for Organizational Capacity and Personnel has been increased from 35% to 50%. This change in the selection criteria has allowed us to no longer require the portions of the application previously identified.

A15. Reasons for program changes

We have made changes to reflect changes being made to the Corporation’s core competencies for programs. Through historical records, we now have a better sense of how many applications we might receive, and the amount of time it will take to complete the application and reporting.

A16. Publication of results

Information collected will be part of (he Agency's PAR report.

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

Not applicable.

418. Exception to the certification statement

There are no exceptions to the certification statement in OMB Form 83-1.