10/15/2010 Memo for FFRDCs

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

4201 WILSON BOULEVARD

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA 22230

October 15, 2010

TO: Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs

Office of Management and Budget

Docket Library

FROM: Suzanne Plimpton

Reports Clearance Officer

National Science Foundation

SUBJECT: Amendment to OMB clearance 3145-0100, “Survey of R&D Expenditures at Universities and Colleges”

Attached for your records is the electronic submission of the amendment to the OMB clearance until 10/31/13 of the following collection:

• 3145-0100, “Survey of R&D Expenditures at Universities and Colleges”

This amendment concerns the FY 2010 FFRDC R&D Survey questionnaire. The change requested is to add an additional 2 items and modify one item. The first new item (question 2) will request the total R&D expenditures in FY 2010 funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The purpose of this question is to be able to account for the ARRA proportion of any increase in overall spending. The second item (question 5) will request the FFRDC’s total operating budget in FY 2010. The purpose of this question is to gauge how much of an FFRDC’s total budget can be attributed to R&D projects.

In addition, the category of internal funds has been deleted from Question 1. It was found to be not applicable during discussions about the survey changes with several FFRDCs.

Based on discussions with several FFRDCs, we do not expect a substantive change to the burden estimate of the survey due to these changes. The new items are both already tracked within the FFRDCs and easy to extract. Therefore we are keeping the burden estimate at six hours.

If you have any questions, please call me at 703-292-7556.

Form 83-C

Attachment 1: FY 2010 FFRDC R&D Survey instrument