White Paper

Request for Fast-Track Approval for Collecting Feedback
on 2014 NVSBE Post-Engagement Survey: White Paper

Situation

The Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBU) requests approval for the Fast-Track process (or generic clearance) for collecting service delivery feedback under the Paper Reduction Act (PRA). OSDBU needs to measure return-on-investment (ROI) and satisfaction information from attendees of the 2014 National Veterans Small Business Engagement (NVSBE). The 2014 NVSBE is the VA Secretary Signature event and will take place December 9-11, 2014. Its main goal is to provide Small Business Owners access to Federal agencies, commercial corporations, and prime contractors in order to increase their procurement opportunities.

OSDBU presented metrics to the Chief of Staff that measure the success and the ROI VA receives from this event. The 2014 NVSBE Post-Engagement Survey will provide information required to determine success for small business as well as VA and will collect feedback on how to increase the ROI of next events. The targeted respondents are the attendees, to include federal employees, small business owners, and corporations’ representatives.        

PRA Information Supporting the Fast-Track Process

The Fast Track Process is designed for information collection that focuses on the awareness, understanding, attitudes, preferences, or experiences of customers or other stakeholders relating to existing or future services, products, or communication materials (FAQs for New Fast-Track Process, Point 2, page 1). The 2014 NVSBE Post-Engagement Survey focuses on overall attendee experience to measure procurement readiness, ROI, and customer satisfaction and determine OSDBU’s achievement of established metrics. In order to gather the most accurate data, the feedback will be electronically collected following the end of the engagement.

As this information collection intends to learn about the customer level of overall satisfaction in regard to the 2014 NVSBE, it should qualify for generic clearance (FAQs for New Fast-Track Process, Section III, page 3). The estimate of the hour burden of the collection (408 hours) and the fact that it does not raise substantive or policy issues, supports its suitability for the fast-track process. (FAQs for New Fast-Track Process, Section XI, page 4).

If results need to be shared with potential attendees, it will be indicated that these are not generalizable to the population of study, as established in the FAQs for New Fast-Track Process, Section IX, page 5.

Summary

OSDBU faces a very limited time frame to get this collection cleared by OMB and to be ready to start delivering the forms on Dec 11, 2014, the last day of the 2014 NVSBE. Given this situation and the fact that it meets the requirements, OSDBU requests that the 2014 NVSBE Post-Engagement Survey goes through the fast-track approval process in order to meet this important deadline. As previously mentioned, this is a customer satisfaction, low-burden collection which results are be fundamental for the after action report that is expected by VA Chief of Staff.