SUPPORTING STATEMENT FOR PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT SUBMISSIONS
The Corporation for National and Community Service holds competitions for AmeriCorps, Learn and Serve America, Senior Corps and Innovation and Demonstration grants. As part of its review process, the Corporation uses peer reviewers to help determine the quality of the grant applications received. The information collected will be used by the Corporation to select individuals to serve as peer reviewers and peer review panel facilitators for its grant review processes.
A2. Indicate how, by whom, and for what purpose the information is to be used.
The information collected constitutes an application to the Corporation for people wishing to serve as a peer reviewer or peer review panel facilitator. The Corporation evaluates the applications and selects qualified individuals to serve as peer reviewers or facilitators. The information is used to determine the level of expertise of the applicant and whether an individual is best qualified to become a peer reviewer for AmeriCorps, Learn and Serve America, Senior Corps or more than one program.
A3. Minimize Burden: Use of Improved Technology to Reduce Burden
The Corporation has developed an electronic system to comply with the requirements of Public Law 106-107. Applicants apply on-line to the Corporation.
A4. Non-Duplication
There are no other sources of information to use or modify for the purposes described in A2 above.
A5. Minimizing for economic burden for small businesses or other small entities.
The collection of information does not affect small businesses or other small entities because they are not eligible to apply as peer reviewers. Only individual persons may apply.
A6. Consideration of Collection
The Corporation would be unable to find and select the number of peer reviewers and facilitators it needs for each grant competition if this information were not collected. The Corporation uses the information collected to select peer reviewers and facilitators for new grant competitions. The information collection requires a detailed application to determine if the person appears to have the knowledge and background required for peer review. The peer reviewer may, upon occasion make additional changes in order to update his/her information.
A7. Special circumstances that would cause information collection to be collected in the specified ways.
There are no special circumstances that would require the collection of information in any other way specified.
A8. Provide copy and identify the date and page number of publication in the Federal Register of the Agency’s notice.
The Notice soliciting comments was published April 28, 2010.
There is no payment or gift to respondents.
A10. Confidentiality
Information provided by this collection will be held solely by CNCS staff. The conflict of interest procedure that occurs once reviewers are selected includes an assurance that information provided by applicants will not be publicly disclosed in institutionally identifiable terms.
The Peer Review Application includes a privacy policy based on the Privacy Act of 1974 (5 U.S.C § 552a). The policy holds that the information collected is made available to the Corporation, any intermediary grantor (if applicable), and federal, state, or local agencies pursuant to lawfully authorized requests. All non-personally identifiable information may be provided to the public; personally identifiable information will not be provided to any other organizations without prior written permission. This collection is included in the CNCS System of Records Notice.
The e-Grants system is password protected, limiting access to different levels of the system. The Corporation has completed and received acceptance of a System Security Plan and updates the system and System Security Plan as necessary to comply with FISMA requirements.
A11. Sensitive Questions
The information collected does not contain questions of a sensitive nature.
A12. Hour burden of the collection
We expect that 2,500 respondents to apply annually to be a peer reviewer or facilitator for the Corporation. The frequency of response will not be greater than once per year and should not exceed 40 minutes (or 2/3 of an hour) of effort per respondent.
There is no annual cost burden to respondents resulting from the collection of this information.
A14. Cost to Government
The Corporation is a grant-making agency and a certain portion of its administrative budget is tied to preparing information collection instruments for peer review and evaluating the information collected in order to select peer reviewers. The cost estimate below includes costs related to evaluating and selecting peer reviewer and facilitator applications.
Cost to government aside from normal cost of doing business is 0.
A15. Reasons for program changes
The majority of the changes are nonsubstantive (updating webpage addresses and correcting typos). The most significant change is in the Education/Job History section. In this section, we are proposing to change the way applicants identify their experiences. We are moving the list of experience categories to each of the job history screens. That way we will have each job history associated with four experience areas. In the past, the experience areas were shown as a list on a separate screen and an applicant was able to check off as many as they wanted. ot having the experiences directly associated with a job, made it more difficult for us and presumable for the applicants, to associate the experience with the particular job in which they were gained.
We are eliminating the screens in which we asked reviewers to list all of their experiences. Moreover, we are eliminating the need for an applicant to identify how many years of knowledge they had for each experience. This will actually cut the number of screens applicants will need to complete to submit an application.
A16. Publication of results
Not applicable because this information collection will not be published.
A17. Explain the reason for seeking approval to not display the expiration date for OMB approval of the information collection.
Not applicable.
A18. Exceptions to the certification statement
There are no exceptions to the certification statement in OMB Form 83-I.
| File Type | application/msword |
| File Title | SUPPORTING STATEMENT FOR PAPERWORK REDUCUTION ACT SUBMISSIONS |
| Author | Corporation for Nat'l Service |
| Last Modified By | Amy B. |
| File Modified | 2010-09-16 |
| File Created | 2010-07-12 |