Supp State

OMB SUPPORTING STATEMENT

A. Justification

1. Public Law 107-67, sec. 630 of the Treasury and Government Appropriations Act, 2001, gives Federal agencies the authority to use appropriated funds to assist their lower income employees with the costs of child care. It is necessary to collect the child care provider information in order to verify that the child care provider is licensed and/or regulated by a local or State authority. The regulation requires that eligibility for child care subsidy is dependent on the use of a child care provider that is licensed and/or regulated. In addition, OPM is required to report to Congress on the implementation and use of Section 630 by Federal agencies. Child care provider information will be a part of that report.

2. The administrators of the child care subsidy program will use the information to verify that the child care providers are licensed and/or regulated.

3. The forms can be electronically submitted to the administrators of the programs, if the agencies choose. This is an optional use form. Agencies may design and use their own form. If they do use an agency form, the agency must apply directly to OMB for clearance under the Paperwork Reduction Act.

4.) Since there is no national repository of licensed and/or regulated child care in the United States, there is no other means by which to collect the information.

5. The collection of information will impact small businesses. The form is kept brief for this purpose and requests the respondent to attach a copy of their latest license and/or regulatory document in an effort to reduce the burden of duplicating the information.

6. The consequences to the Federal subsidy program of not collecting the data is that there will be no way to assure the child care programs are licensed and/or regulated, as required by law.

7. This information collection is consistent with the guidelines in 5 CFR 792.

8. A 60-day notice of the proposed information collection was published in the Federal Register on March 24, 2008 as required by 5 CFR 1320, giving persons outside the agency an opportunity to comment on the form. A 30-day notice will be published in the Federal Register with this submission.

9. No payment or gift is made to the respondents.

10. This information collection is protected by the Privacy Act of 1974, OPM regulations (5 CFR 831.106) and SORN number OPM Internal 15, Child Care Assistance Records.

11. This information collection does not include questions of a sensitive nature, such as sexual behavior and attitudes, religious beliefs, and other matters that are commonly considered private.

12. OPM estimated that it would take 10 minutes to complete the form and that the approximately 3,500 child care providers would be involved. The estimated hour burden is 333.3 hours.

13. There is no cost to record keepers.

14. The estimate of annualized costs to the Federal government is $1,500.

15. When the clearance was approved for this originally, this was a new program. Our initial estimate of the number of responses using the form appears to have been too high. After three (3) years of experience with agency use of this information collection, we have made the appropriate revisions to the estimate.

16. The results will not be published.

17. Since we cannot always reprint the whole supply of forms to change the

OMB clearance expiration date, we seek approval not to display the date on the

form.

18. There are no exceptions to the certification statement.