Justification

UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20460

OFFICE OF

WATER

MEMORANDUM

DATE: July 7th, 2010

SUBJECT: Request for OMB Approval of Customer Satisfaction Survey for the ‘Clean Watersheds Needs Survey 2008 Report to Congress data access website,’ ICR 1711.12, OMB 2090-0019

FROM: Michael Plastino

Sustainable Management Branch

Municipal Support Division

Office of Wastewater Management, Office of Water

THROUGH: Michelle Mandolia (1807T)

Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation

TO: Spencer Clark (2822T)

Information Collections Division

Office of Environmental Information

Background:

The Sustainable Management Branch (SMB) manages the Clean Watersheds Needs Survey (CWNS), a joint effort between EPA, the states and a few U.S. territories which culminates, every four years, in a report to Congress on the nation’s wastewater infrastructure capital needs. SMB will be sharing the CWNS 2008 Report to Congress, along with much of the supporting data through EPA’s website.

New for the 2008 report, CWNS results are being presented over the internet using Oracle Apex software. Publishing the results on the internet supports the President’s efforts to make the federal government more transparent.

In order to provide improvement to the internet reports over time, SMB would like to—through the attached survey—gather data on users’ impressions of the accessibility, navigability, and general usefulness of the data access site.

This survey consists of nine questions. The first six questions, which are multiple-choice, will gauge the respondent’s impressions of the utility of the data access site. The seventh question is open-ended and will give respondents an opportunity to include any additional comments about the data or the data access site. The last two questions will gather information about the respondent. Question #8 lists the known main groups of users, allowing for survey responders to enter ‘other’ group identifiers. SMB anticipates that levels of satisfaction with aspects of the website may differ depending on affiliation or region (because of how the data and report needs vary by affiliation and region). Asking respondents for these two pieces of information will allow SMB to test this hypothesis and conduct targeted follow up if necessary to delve more deeply into website user issues within a particular response group.

Estimated total respondent burden: 1.3 hours (80 minutes)

• Assumes:

1. 7 multiple choice questions, each taking 5 seconds to complete

2. 2 open -ended questions, each taking 30 seconds to complete

3. Total = less than 2 minutes per respondent to complete the survey

   • Estimated 40 respondents (assumes 200 data users and a 20% response rate)

Estimated total Agency burden: 3 hours

Internally, staff and managers will spend approximately 3 hours to review and discuss the results and communicate recommendations to the CWNS 2012 workgroup.