1405-0190 Supporting Statement 01-31-13

SUPPORTING STATEMENT FOR
PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT SUBMISSION

INTERNational Connections DS-5103

OMB Number 1405-0190

A. JUSTIFICATION

1. One of the key elements of its FY-10–FY-14 Strategic Recruitment Plan is that the U.S. Department of State will establish a coordinated and institutionalized recruitment program with a focus on long-term candidate relationship management. The Department’s student intern programs provide a key source of potential candidates who are interested, motivated, and qualified to become future Department employees. The Department seeks to strengthen and maintain its connections to this group, fostering and mentoring a pool of candidates from which to obtain successful recruits. Currently, the Department’s intern program includes over 1,000 participants during the summer, in addition to fall and spring internships. This information collection provides the Department the means to maintain contact with former interns, complementing other outreach activities to sustain their interest in Department careers and to follow up and encourage continued engagement and a sense of community. With this information collection, the Department is able measure its success in encouraging qualified interns to become career employees. The legal authorities pertaining to this collection include: 22 U.S.C. § 2651a (Organization of the Department of State), 22 U.S.C. § 3901 (Congressional Findings and Objectives), 5 U.S.C. § 3111 (Acceptance of Volunteer Services), and 5 C.F.R. Part 362, Subpart B (Presidential Management Fellows, Agency Programs).

2. The Department’s Bureau of Human Resources uses the collected information to track and maintain contact with current and former interns, sending them targeted electronic messages related to their interest in careers with the Department. The purpose of these contacts is to encourage these interns to pursue those interests, in support of the Department’s recruitment goals and objectives. Individual Department officers in other bureaus use the information for the purpose of mentoring and enhancing the interns’ sense of engagement with the Department. The information is also used by the interns themselves for the purpose of maintaining contact with each other, networking, developing contacts, and creating a shared sense of community.

3. This collection of information exclusively utilizes electronic information technology, adopting the WordPress platform as the foundation. This platform allows users to create an account, engage in communications about their intern experiences, facilitates two-way exchanges between interns (current and former) and employees/recruiters, and provides the Department with a long-term web-based connection to the participants. The information has been consolidated and simplified to make it less of a burden to voluntary participants through fewer field entries. For instance, instead of separate fields for first name, middle initial, last name, we are requesting full name only in one field. We have consolidated multiple fields into one open-ended text field, e.g. Professional Experience reduced from 13 individual fields to one open ended text field.

4. The information collected is not available elsewhere.

5. The collection of information does not impact small businesses or other small entities.

6. Without the collection of information, the Department of State will not have a means of maintaining contact with its former interns and will therefore lack a valuable recruitment tool for targeting a particularly well qualified and motivated pool of career candidates. Moreover, by lacking the means to track its former interns, the Department would also be unable to measure the success of its efforts to recruit among this population.

7. There are no special circumstances associated with this information collection.

8. The Department published a 60-day notice in the Federal Register was published on October 29, 2012 (77, pg 65602) to solicit public comments. There were no public comments to the 60-day notice. One public comment was sent directly to the Department in reference to the 30-day public notice. The comment was not germane to the purpose of this collection but instead commented about government program spending in general.

9. There will be no payments or gifts to respondents.

10. Respondents are given no assurances of confidentiality of the information provided to the Department other than those afforded under the provisions of the Privacy Act and Freedom of Information Act. Respondents themselves control the degree and extent to which their information is shared with other respondents.

11. This information collection does not seek responses to any questions of a sensitive nature.

12. Participation in this information collection is completely voluntary, and respondents are free to devote as much or as little time to it as they choose, depending upon the extent to which they find it useful in furthering their own goals. It is estimated that approximately 1,000 current and former interns will each spend about 30 minutes on this information collection. Based on these figures it is estimated that the total annual burden on respondents will be 500 hours.

13. There is no cost to respondents. Respondents should be able to readily provide the requested information.

14. The annualized cost to the Federal Government is confined to the salary and benefits associated with the time spent by Department officials responsible for the administrative oversight and management of this information collection, as well as the annual web hosting fee. The total annual cost for ongoing maintenance, web hosting and personnel salary and benefits is approximately $108,000 that includes three contractors associated with this site: a full-time Webmaster, a part-time Community Specialist dedicated to working on INTERNational Connections, and a full-time Marketing Specialist who provides a minimal amount of oversight of the site.

15. There are no program changes to this collection. The electronic application has been redesigned in its format to make it easier for respondents to use.

16. Results of this collection of information will not be published.

17. The expiration date for OMB approval of the information collection will be displayed.

18. No exceptions are being requested to the certification statement.
    
    
    

B. COLLECTION OF INFORMATION EMPLOYING STATISTICAL METHODS

This collection does not employ statistical methods.