NIST AMTech Consortia - Supporting Statment

OMB Control No. # 0693-0033 – NIST Generic Clearance for Program Evaluation Data Collections

Lessons Learned from the Inaugural AMTech Competition Data Collection

FOUR STANDARD SURVEY QUESTIONS

1. Explain who will be surveyed and why the group is appropriate to survey.

This information collection is for the recipients of the inaugural 19 planning grants awarded by the AMTech program from the 2013 award competition. These awards are either completed or near the end of their work. Awardees from the 2014 award competition expressed an interest in lessons learned and best practices while conducting their own work. NIST is seeking to use the findings from this information collection to serve its customers from the 2014 competition, potential new applicants to future competitions, and to the broader NIST customer base interested in understanding consortia development. These 19 awards reflect a diversity of characteristics including geographic breadth, industry diversity, new and established consortia, industry versus non-profit led consortia, elements of successful roadmapping, and the use of professional independent assistance to extract information from key stakeholders. This diversity spans the characteristics of future NIST customers working in consortia development.

2. Explain how the survey was developed including consultation with interested parties, pre-testing, and responses to suggestions for improvement.

NIST worked with a private contractor in developing the interview questions. The awarded contractor has experience in effectively and efficiently collecting the type of information being sought with this clearance. The contractor had discussions with AMTech program managers, AMTech key personnel, and evaluation experts at NIST. At the time of award, AMTech organizations were made aware that an independent third-party evaluation would be conducted to assess lessons learned and the efficacy of the program. Conference calls were conducted with the awardees seeking input for data and information collection protocols that would serve both future evaluation as well as effective consortia management.

3. Explain how the survey will be conducted, how customers will be sampled if fewer than all customers will be surveyed, expected response rate, and actions your agency plans to take to improve the response rate.

All funded participating organizations from the 2013 award competition are in the sample frame. The expected response rate is 100 percent, as awardees were made aware at the time of award of this effort. AMTech program managers will assist the contractor in securing cooperation. All 19 awardees will be interviewed by phone. Prior to the phone interview, respondents will contacted by email from NIST AMTech project management introducing the contractor and asking for support in answering the questions. The contractor, in consultation with NIST, will select four awardees for follow-up interviews. There will be no new questions during the follow-up but more detail will be sought from the previous answers. All 19 awardees will be asked the complete set of interview questions in the instrument. The respondents will not receive a copy of the collection instrument, but will be informed of the major topic areas: Status check of the consortium, Leadership structure and practices, Lessons for building and growing a consortium, Developing technology roadmaps, Outcomes to date, and Future sustainability planning.

4. Describe how the results of the survey will be analyzed and used to generalize the results to the entire customer population.

This effort will result in a publication of a best practices document from the 2013 award competition. The findings will be published and made available to organizations from the 2014 competition and the public at large. The results will also be presented at a future AMTech showcase to be held at NIST. This information collection is designed to understand various elements of consortia building and examine what worked, and didn’t, from the 2013 award competition. General themes will emerge that will be of interest to the broadest NIST customer base. Because the NIST customer is broad, the design of this collection was not to recommend a single best practice for effective consortia but to identify successful strategies across consortia with varied characteristics.