LEAP Supplemental Supporting Statement FOA

Funding Opportunity Announcement

Linking to Employment Pre-release Specialized American Job Centers (AJCs) Grant Program

Supplemental Justification

Supplemental Supporting Statement A: Justification

This request seeks OMB approval under the Paperwork Reduction Act for the unique information collection requirements in the Linking to Employment Activities Pre-release Specialized American Job Centers (AJCs) Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). The Employment and Training Administration (ETA), U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), announces the availability of approximately $5,000,000 in grant funds authorized by Section171, Pilot and Demonstration Projects, of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) and Section 212 of the Second Chance Act of 2007 to provide the opportunity for Local Workforce Investment Boards (LWIBs) to develop and operate specialized AJCs inside of county, municipal, or regional jails and correctional facilities to provide a range of AJC services that will assist soon to be released local inmates to prepare for employment to increase their opportunities for successful reentry into their home communities.

We expect to fund up to $500,000 each to 10 grantees, totaling $5,000,000, with a period of performance of 24 months. These grant funds will support the development and implementation of specialized AJCs, which must be linked directly to their existing full service community-based AJCs, enabling local inmates to prepare for employment prior to release and to continue with services in the community once released. These jail-based specialized AJCs will provide core and intensive services authorized under WIA inside correctional facilities to address the employment barriers of incarcerated offenders prior to and as they transition into the community and the workforce. Effective July 1, 2015, the community-based AJCs, under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), will transition into providing “career services” rather than separately designated core and intensive services.

Applications will include the following information collections: 1) Form SF-424 “Application for Federal Assistance,” separately cleared under OMB control number 4040-0004, 2) Project Budget, 3) Project Narrative, and 4) Attachments to the Project Narrative.

Electronic availability:

This grant solicitation is available on the grants.gov Web site. Based on past DOL experience, the Department anticipates 75 percent of responses will be submitted electronically.

Small Entities:

This information collection will not have a significant impact on a substantial number of small entities.

Assurances of confidentiality:

These grant solicitations do not offer applicants assurances of confidentiality.

Special circumstances:

This FOA implicates no special circumstances.

Burden:

Based on past experience, the DOL expects to receive approximately 20 applications from an equal number of respondents.  The ETA estimates public reporting burden for the information collection to average 20 hours per response for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining needed data, and completing and reviewing the collection of information.

20 applications x 20 hours = 400 hours.

The DOL has increased the October 2014, average hourly earnings in the professional and business services industry of $29.29 per hour by 40 percent (total $41.01 per hour) to monetize this burden.  See The Employment Situation—October 2014, DOL, Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_11072014.pdf at page 32.

400 hours x $41.01 = $16,404.

The DOL associates no other burden costs with this information collection. In addition to the application, each grantee will be required to submit quarterly financial, performance, and narrative reports to the ETA. Those information collection requirements will be cleared under a separate control number.

Total burden: 20 respondents, 20 responses, 400 hours, $0 other cost burden.

Supplemental Supporting Statement B: Statistical Methods

This information collection does not employ statistical methods.

3