Justification for Non-Substantive Change 0960-0629

Justification for Non-Substantive Change to

Work Incentives Planning and Assistance (WIPA) Program

OMB No. 0960-0629

Background

Under the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act of 1999, the Social Security Administration (SSA) established a community-based work incentives planning and assistance program that disseminates information on work incentives programs to assist persons with disabilities in their employment efforts. This effort, called the Work Incentives Planning and Assistance (WIPA) Program is part of SSA’s strategy for increasing the number of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients to return to work and achieve self-sufficiency.

SSA collects information from: a.) WIPA project sites – these are cooperative agreements to provide employment-related information, benefits and work incentives counseling to SSDI and SSI recipients; and program administration and management- related information; b.) community work incentives coordinators (CWICS) who serve as the contact specialists conducting on-site and telephone interviews, benefits, work incentives, and employment counseling; and c.) WIPA participants – SSDI and SSI recipients considering employment or investigating returning to work. In addition, SSA collects data from the recipients on demographics, personal background, employment, benefits, and use of work incentives to improve WIPA program services and meet the needs of SSDI and SSI recipients in achieving their employment, financial, self-sufficiency, and health-care goals.

Change in Burden Data

Modality of Collection	Number of Respondents	Frequency of Response	Average Burden Per Response (minutes)	Estimated Total Annual Burden (hours)
WIPA Project Sites & CWICS	96	1	15	24
CWICs	400	1	20	134
SSDI & SSI Recipients	40,000	1	30	20,000
Total	40,496			20,159*

*ROCIS averaging total rounding up from 20,158.

Justification

We are increasing the burden estimates under the average burden per response for WIPA project sites, CWICs and WIPA participants. Based on three full years of data collection and data analysis we must allow more time to properly accommodate the needs of WIPA participants (e.g., describe work incentives, discuss participant needs, and generally gather the germane participant information CWICs need to provide accurate and timely guidance to them). Our experience with the WIPA program has shown that providing benefits counseling and work incentive information is a complicated process and requires precise discussion and explanation.

What follows explains the increases in our estimates; first, we estimate we will have fewer WIPA project sites nationwide as some sites will now cover larger catchment areas. Second, we estimate approximately 400 CWICs employed across 96 WIPAs based on data and the latest numbers of CWICs employed by WIPAs. Further, based on our very detailed and specific data collected since 2009, we know the WIPA program serves approximately 40,000 SSDI beneficiaries and SSI recipients on an annual basis. SSA’s data analysis found it takes CWICS approximately 30 minutes to extrapolate critical information from the WIPA participants, and about 20 minutes entering that data into the collection system. Finally, each project site takes approximately 15 minutes responding to inquiries and setting up site-specific accounts.