Justification for Change

Justification for changes from Form 52.13 (eFORS) to NORS form regarding annual responses and burden hours – 0920-0004 National Disease Surveillance Program – II Disease Summaries

The submission of this change request has been awaiting the approval of a previously submitted request to 0920-0004, which was approved by OMB on December 18, 2008.

CDC hopes to deploy this revised form on January 1, 2009, otherwise there will be a delay in the deployment for an entire additional year as it is critical that to have a complete year of data using the revised form (historic data is based on the calendar year). A delay beyond January 1, 2009 would have serious consequences for CDC as the electronic system to capture data using this revised form is also being deployed January 1, 2009.

This request involves a minor increase of 229 burden hours to the 22,127 approved burden hours, and therefore is submitted as no material/non-substantive change. CDC expects the number of annual responses to increase with the new form, NORS. The current Form 52.13 (eFORS) permits the reporting of foodborne-associated illnesses; however, NORS will allow the continual reporting of foodborne-associated illnesses, in addition to the following modes of transmission: person-to-person, animal contact, and environmental contamination other than food/water. The increase in annual responses, from 25 to 31.5, is expected due to reporting additional modes of transmission. The increase in responses will result in an increase in the time per response, 15 minutes (eFORS) to 20 minutes (NORS), which in turns increases the number of annual burden hours from 338 (eFORS) to 567 (NORS).