SUPPORTING STATEMENT FOR
PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT SUBMISSION
INTERNational
Connections
OMB Number 1405- XXXX
One of the key elements of its FY-08–FY-12 Strategic Recruitment Plan is that “[t]he U.S. Department of State will establish a coordinated and institutionalized recruitment program with a focus on long-term candidate relationship management”. The Department’s student intern programs provide a key source of potential candidates who are interested, motivated, and qualified to become future Department employees. The Department seeks to strengthen and maintain its connections to this group, fostering and mentoring a pool of candidates from which to obtain successful recruits. Currently, the Department’s intern program employs over 1,000 participants during the summer in addition to fall and spring internships. It is anticipated that over the course of a year, approximately 1,000 former interns will register on the site and engage with employees who will work to recruit them into the Department. However, no information system exists to enable the Department to track its interns over time or to determine the rate at which they are ultimately hired as Civil Service or Foreign Service employees. This proposed information collection will provide the Department the means to maintain contact with former interns, complementing other outreach activities to sustain their interest in Department careers and to follow up and encourage continued engagement and a sense of community. With this information collection, the Department will also be able to measure its success in converting qualified interns into career employees.
The Department’s Bureau of Human Resources will use the collected information to track and maintain contact with current and former interns, sending them targeted electronic messages related to their interest in careers with the Department. The purpose of these contacts is to encourage these interns to pursue those interests, in support of the Department’s recruitment goals and objectives. Individual Department officers in other bureaus will also use the information for the purpose of mentoring and enhancing the interns’ sense of engagement with the Department. The information can also be used by the interns themselves for the purpose of maintaining contact with each other, networking, developing contacts, and creating a shared sense of community.
This proposed collection of information exclusively utilizes electronic information technology.
The information to be collected is not available elsewhere.
The proposed collection of information does not impact small businesses or other small entities.
Without the proposed collection of information, the Department of State will not have a means of maintaining contact with its former interns and will therefore lack a valuable recruitment tool for targeting a particularly well qualified and motivated pool of career candidates. Moreover, by lacking the means to track its former interns, the Department would also be unable to measure the success of its efforts to recruit among this population.
There are no special circumstances associated with this information collection.
The Department published a 60-day notice in the Federal Register to solicit public comments. On June 27, 2009, one comment was received that indicates it is not necessary to stay in touch with former interns because there are hundreds of applicants for each position. The Department believes the benefits of this initiative would far outweigh the costs. The Department has made a substantial financial investment in its student intern programs. For a relatively minimal financial outlay, this initiative will provide the Department with a dramatically improved means of maintaining contact with, and pressing recruitment efforts among, a group of talented potential candidates who already have familiarity with the Department and have demonstrated a genuine interest in the work of the Department.
There will be no payments or gifts to respondents.
Respondents are given no assurances of confidentiality of the information provided to the Department other than those afforded under the provisions of the Privacy Act and Freedom of Information Act. Respondents themselves control the degree and extent to which their information is shared with other respondents.
This information collection does not seek responses to any questions of a sensitive nature.
Participation in this information collection is completely voluntary, and respondents are free to devote as much or as little time to it as they choose, depending upon the extent to which they find it useful in furthering their own goals. It is estimated that approximately 1,000 former interns will each spend about 30 minutes on this information collection. Based on these figures it is estimated that the total annual burden on respondents will be just 500 hours.
It is estimated that the cost to respondents will be minimal. There are no costs or fees and no equipment or recordkeeping requirements associated with this information collection, which is completely voluntary on the part of respondents. It is expected that respondents currently have full capacity to provide the requested information, which is readily available to them as a normal part of daily life.
It is estimated that the annualized cost to the Federal Government is confined to the salary and benefits associated with the time spent by Department officials responsible for the administrative oversight and management of this information collection, as well as the annual web hosting fee. The total upfront cost (including development, testing, website design, programming, website hosting and maintenance, etc.) is approximately $230,000. The total annual cost for ongoing maintenance, web hosting and personnel salary and benefits is approximately $60,000.
The program changes reported in Items 13 and 14 of OMB Form 83-I simply reflect the fact that this is a new collection.
Results of this collection of information will not be published.
The expiration date for OMB approval of the information collection will be displayed.
No exceptions are being requested to the certification statement in OMB Form 83-I.
This collection does not employ statistical methods.
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| File Title | SUPPORTING STATEMENT FOR |
| Author | USDOS |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-02-03 |