CS-14-445 TEGE Outreach Survey

OMB #1545-1432

SUPPORTING STATEMENT

Paperwork Reduction Act Information Approval Request

to Conduct Customer Satisfaction Research

IRS TE/GE Customer Outreach Feedback Survey

A. JUSTIFICATION

1. Circumstances Making the Collection of Information Necessary

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Tax Exempt and Government Entities (TE/GE) division is conducting a survey to measure satisfaction with outreach events held by the customer education and outreach (CE&O) offices of Employee Plans (EP), Exempt Organizations (EO), and Government Entities (GE). The missions of these three CE&O divisions are to help external customers understand their tax responsibilities by developing and delivering educational outreach programs and products.

Feedback from customers is important to assess the effectiveness of these programs and take improvement actions if necessary. Improvements to outreach events should lead to greater compliance with tax responsibilities.

2. Purpose and Use of the Information Collection

The primary goal of this survey is to collect feedback on TE/GE outreach events for the EO, EP, and GE divisions. These divisions can then use this information to consider ways to improve their outreach to key stakeholders.

3. Consideration Given to Information Technology

The questionnaire will be offered to all individuals who attend a TE/GE outreach event. The outreach events will include in-person seminars, webinars, and phone forums. A web link will be provided to all participants, giving the entire population of outreach attendees a chance of participating in the study.

4. Duplication of Information

This is the only study conducted by the IRS TE/GE to collect feedback on virtual and in-person outreach events. Any current methods of collecting feedback will be replaced with this survey.

5. Reducing the Burden on Small Entities

The TE/GE Customer Satisfaction Survey has been designed to minimize burden. The time that a respondent takes to complete the survey has been carefully considered and only the most important areas are being surveyed. Additionally, since most of the outreach events will be conducted online, hosting the survey on a website should reduce burden. The maximum time for completion of the survey is expected to be 5 minutes. We have made every attempt in designing this survey to maximize the response rate.

6. Consequences of Not Conducting Collection

TE/GE will not be able to fully measure satisfaction with outreach events, particularly as it relates to virtual events such as webinars without implementing this survey. Feedback from customers is important in order to develop service improvement actions.

7. Special Circumstances

There are no special circumstances. The information collected will be voluntary and will not be used for statistical purposes.

8. Consultations with Persons Outside the Agency

N/A

9. Payment of Gift

N/A

10. Confidentiality

The security of the data used in this project and the privacy of taxpayers will be carefully safeguarded at all times. Security requirements are based on the Computer Security Act of 1987 and Office of Management and Budget Circular A-130, Appendices A & B. Physical security measures include a locked, secure office. Notes are stored in locked cabinets or shredded. Data security at the C-2 level is accomplished via the Windows NT operating system. Systems are password protected, users profiled for authorized use, and individual audit trails generated and reviewed periodically.

The IRS will apply and meet fair information and record-keeping practices to ensure privacy protection of all taxpayers. This includes criteria for disclosure—laid out in the Privacy Act of 1974, the Freedom of Information Act, and Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code—all of which provide for the protection of taxpayer information as well as its release to authorized recipients.

Responses will be anonymous to the fullest amount permitted by law. The survey will not contain tax return or taxpayer information. Survey participants will not be identified in any of the documents or files used for this project. We will limit and control the amount of information we collect to those items that are necessary to accomplish the research questions. We will carefully safeguard the security of data utilized as well as the privacy of the survey respondents. We will apply the fair information and record-keeping practices to ensure protection of all survey respondents. The criterion for disclosure laid out in the Privacy Act, the Freedom of Information Act, and section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code provides for the protection of information as well as its releases to authorized recipients.

11. Sensitive Nature

No questions will be asked that are of personal or sensitive nature.

12. Burden of Information Collection

The TE/GE Outreach Survey has been designed to minimize burden. The time that a respondent takes to complete the survey has been carefully considered and only the most important areas are being surveyed. The total number of customer contacts at outreach events in the next year is expected to be 76,200 (1,200 EO, 45,000 EP, and 30,000 GE). There will be no screening of participants. All attendees will be invited to participate in the survey. The estimated burden time for the invitation for each participant is 30 seconds. We estimate a 30% response rate resulting in 22,860 responses. Survey completion time for these responses is 3 minutes each. The burden times for all invited participants as well as the respondents for each unit (EO, EP, & GE) are presented below.

Estimated Response Rate: 30%

Category of Respondents	Number of Respondents	Participation Time (in minutes)	Burden (in hours)
All Invited Participants	76200	0.5	635
EO Respondents	360	3	18
EP Respondents	13500	3	675
GE Respondents	9000	3	450
Totals Burden Hours			1778

13. Costs to Respondents

N/A

14. Costs to Federal Government

The survey will be conducted electronically using www.cvent.com, a survey tool already procured by TE/GE Research & Analysis. There will be no additional cost.

15. Reason for Change

N/A

16. Tabulation of Results, Schedule, and Analysis Plans

The individual responses of participants will be aggregated for analysis. Responses will analyzed separately for the EP, EO, and GE CE&O offices. TE/GE Research and Analysis will conduct the data analysis and provide the results to the respective offices.

With regard to the low response rate, the IRS will assume that all data collected from this survey is qualitative in nature, and that no critical decisions will be made by this office solely from the analysis of data from this survey.  The results from this survey are simply one piece of a larger set of information needed to assess the needs related to services provided by the IRS.

IRS will hold the identities of respondents anonymous to the extent permitted by law.

17. Display of OMB Approval Date

N/A

18. Exceptions to Certification for Paperwork Reduction Act Submissions

These activities will comply with the requirement in 5 CFR 1320.9.

19. Dates collection will begin and end

July 1, 2014 – June 30, 2015

B. STATISTICAL METHODS

Data collection methods and procedures will vary; however, the primary purpose of these collections will be for internal management purposes; there are no plans to publish or otherwise release this information. The purpose of the survey is to evaluate outreach events conducted by TE/GE. The results may be used to make improvements to outreach programs. The survey questions utilize a 5-point rating scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. There will also be several open-ended questions to obtain more detailed responses.

1. Universe and Respondent Selection

All taxpayers that attend TE/GE outreach events, both in-person and online, will be asked to take the survey at the conclusion of the event.

2. Procedures for Collecting Information

TE/GE Research and Analysis will be responsible for collecting the data and conducting data analysis. At the conclusion of the outreach event participants will be provided an event number and web link and asked to participate in a survey. For some outreach events, where participants provide their email address upon registration, they will be emailed a link to the survey. They will then proceed to the survey tool and enter their event number and provide their responses to the questions electronically. In either situation, the script/message will be identical (this script is also included in the survey attachment):

The IRS is committed to delivering quality customer service. You can help in this important mission by completing this survey about the IRS outreach event you recently attended. This voluntary survey takes less than three minutes to complete and your responses will be anonymous.

You will be asked for an event number. Your event number is [insert number]

To complete this survey click here (Note: this link will take to actual survey once it is active).

3. Methods to Maximize Response

IRS will attempt to achieve an overall 30% response rate in the surveys. IRS TE/GE outreach events are moving more towards a web-based format. With participants in front of a computer for the outreach event, hosting the survey online should make the survey easier to complete. The greater ease of completing the survey should maximize the response rate.

4. Testing of Procedures

The survey will be tested by IRS TE/GE employees to ensure there are no errors or bugs in the survey design. The survey will not be pilot tested on the public.

5. Contacts for Statistical Aspects and Data Collection

For questions regarding the study, questionnaire design or statistical methodology, contact:

Scott Leary

Social Scientist

Internal Revenue Service, Tax Exempt & Government Entities

Research & Analysis

[email protected]

202-317-8767

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