Justification for change to add DOI burden for SF-299

Justification for no material, non-substantive change to

OMB 0596-0082 “Special Use Forms”

January 2012

After a discussion in December between OMB desk officers Nathan Frey and Danielle Jones, and then Danielle with USDA clearance officer Charlene Parker and Department of Interior (DOI) clearance officer Don Bieniewicz, it was determined that both the Forest Service and DOI’s Bureau of Land Management have an OMB control number, 0596-0082 and 1004-0189 respectively, for Standard Form 299 “Application for Transportation and Utility Systems and Facilities on Federal Lands.”

The first OMB approval of this Standard Form was in 1986 for the Forest Service. The first approval of the DOI-BLM version of the SF-299 was thirteen years later, in 1999. It is unclear why the BLM requested its own approval since it is a Standard Form usable by any Federal agency. BLM should have used the SF-299 as approved under 0596-0082 and reported such use to the Forest Service.

The Department of Interior’s OMB control number 1004-0189 approval expires April 30, 2012. The Forest Service OMB control number 0596-0082 approval expires October 31, 2012.

Forest Service is currently in the process of preparing the 60-day Federal Register notice to renew its collection 0596-0082. In addition to its burden estimates for this package the FS will within the notice include and indicate separately the burden associated with SF-299 for DOI bureaus and the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers (USACE).

In the meantime, we are requesting approval for this no-material non-substantive change request to merge the following burden figures supplied by DOI for SF-299 into 0596-0082.

The chart below indicates the number of SF-299 applications that each DOI bureau processes each year, and the DOI total along with figures for USACE:

DOI Number of Applications per Year

BLM FWS NPS BuRec Total

Business 3,577 31 2 850 4,460

Individual 200 9 11 50 270

State, Local, Tribal 400 22 2 100 524

Total 4,177 62 15 1,000 5,254

U.S. Army Corp of Engineers

Business 32

GRAND TOTAL 5,286

The total annual burden for DOI use of the SF-299 would be 131,051 hours and the total annual burden for USACE is 800 hours for a total of 131,851 hours being merged into 0596-0082.

Upon approval of this request USDA will notify Don Bieniewicz, DOI, of the approval in order to allow DOI to submit to OMB a discontinuation request for 1004-0189, in order to avoid duplication.