Attachment A - Supporting Statement

Health Resources and Services Administration

SUPPORTING STATEMENT

Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program Technical Assistance Feedback and Satisfaction Surveys

A. Justification

1. Circumstances of Information Collection

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) currently has approval under the generic clearance, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Control No. 0915-0212, to conduct customer satisfaction surveys and focus groups. This collection of information helps fulfill the requirements of:

1. Executive Order 12862, “Setting Customer Service Standards,” which directs Agencies to continually reform their management practices and operations to provide service to the public that matches or exceeds the best service available in the private sector.

This is a request for OMB approval of qualitative voluntary customer satisfaction surveys under HRSA’s generic clearance.

The Maternal and Child Health Bureau’s Division of Home Visiting and Early Childhood Systems (DHVECS) conducts numerous training and technical assistance (TA) activities to support Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (Federal Home Visiting Program) grantees in the implementation of their grants. TA activities are conducted both by federal staff and contracted TA providers. In order to assess Federal Home Visiting Program grantee’s customer satisfaction with these ongoing TA activities, HRSA is proposing to implement qualitative TA feedback and satisfaction surveys. Information from these surveys will be used for program improvement purposes only. The Federal Home Visiting Program was originally authorized under the Affordable Care Act, and was most recently reauthorized through fiscal year 2017 under the Medicaid Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015.

Executive Order 12862 directs agencies that "provide significant services directly to the public" to "survey customers to determine the kind and quality of services they want and their level of satisfaction with existing services". The objectives of this data collection request is to assess Federal Home Visiting Program grantee’s customer satisfaction with the training and technical assistance services provided to them by federal staff and contracted TA providers. This information will be used to improve the quality and effectiveness of TA offerings and will be used for program improvement purposes only.

2. Purpose and Use of the Information

The purpose of this information collection request is to assess TA participant satisfaction with various training and technical assistance activities. TA activities are conducted by federal staff and contracted TA providers in order to support grantees in the implementation of their grants. Understanding TA participant customer satisfaction with these activities can assist HRSA in properly tailoring TA to grantee preferences and improve grantee participation in voluntary TA activities.

HRSA provides TA to grantees through multiple means, including: site visits; federally-facilitated grantee town halls, and; in-person grantee meetings.

Grantee satisfaction surveys have been developed to best solicit feedback for different TA strategies, and are included in this clearance package. While in some cases different TA strategies are best evaluated using different methods, HRSA has attempted to standardize these customer feedback and satisfaction surveys to promote the ability for findings to be compared across TA modalities.

This information collection request contains three types of customer feedback and satisfaction surveys: the site visit assessment form; grantee town hall satisfaction survey, and; all-grantee meeting assessment forms. Each of these forms is tailored to specific TA activities and includes information pertinent to those types of activities.

Surveys will be implemented following the conclusion of TA activities and will be provided to all TA participants who participated in the activity. Completion of the survey is voluntary.

Feedback contained in the surveys will be summarized and used by federal staff and TA providers to identify the strengths and weaknesses of particular TA events, as well as be used more broadly to identify TA strategies, modalities, and content that TA participants find most useful. In addition, grantee feedback on TA activities conducted by contracted TA providers is an essential component of the assessment of contractor performance. By collecting this information, HRSA is better able to assess the performance of contractor personnel and promote accountability to high-quality TA delivered by contractors. Feedback and satisfaction data will also be used to inform a continuous quality improvement framework to test and refine TA strategies.

3. Use of Improved Information Technology

In general, HRSA plans to use web-based survey delivery software, such as SurveyMonkey to provide the survey instruments to TA participants. The use of a web-based application will reduce reporting burden and ease data collection and analysis. HRSA estimates that 90% of survey responses will be collected electronically. The exceptions may occur during in-person meetings, such as all-grantee meetings where immediate feedback is provided on paper forms. However, HRSA is also utilizing conference support and logistics applications to encourage participants to complete these surveys electronically, whenever possible.

4. Efforts to Avoid Duplication

This information is not available through any other source and is not currently being collected. The proposed information collection is specific to participants in ongoing Federal Home Visiting Program TA activities.

5. Involvement of Small Entities

Proposed data collection includes participants in Federal Home Visiting Program TA activities. Generally, participation in these activities does not involve small entities, as most participants represent grantee organizations, which are typically state governments. No small businesses will be involved in this proposed information collection. Additionally, completion of the data collection forms is purely voluntary.

6. Consequences if Information Collected Less Frequently

Information will be collected following the conclusion of each TA activity. Less frequent collection of this information will impede HRSA’s ability to utilize feedback and satisfaction data in order to tailor TA activities to grantee preferences. Contracted TA providers are contractually obligated to conduct, submit, and utilize grantee feedback and satisfaction surveys in order to assess their work and engage in improvement activities.

There are no legal obstacles to reduce the burden.

7. Consistency With the Guidelines in 5 CFR 1320.5(d)(2)

These surveys will be implemented in a manner fully consistent with 5 CFR 1320.5(d)(2).

8. Consultation Outside the Agency

The notice required in 5 CFR 1320.8(d) was published in the Federal Register on December 17, 2014, (Vol. 79, No.242, pages 75164). No public comments were received.

9. Remuneration of Respondents

No remuneration is sought for this proposed data collection activity.

10. Assurance of Confidentiality

To date, the HRSA customer satisfaction surveys have not collected personally identifiable information from respondents. No personally identifiable information will be collected as part of this proposed data collection activity.

11. Questions of a Sensitive Nature

No questions of a sensitive nature will be asked as part of this proposed data collection activity.

12. Estimates of Annualized Hour Burden

Respondents:

Respondents include participants in ongoing Federal Home Visiting Program TA activities. HRSA estimates that approximately 55 TA activities will occur annually with an average participation of 25 participants and an average time to complete the TA feedback and satisfaction survey of 0.25 hours. The total annual burden estimate for respondents is 508.5 hours.

This burden estimate is based on the number of TA activities included in contractual arrangements between HRSA and contracted TA providers, as well as additional TA activities led by federal staff (grantee town halls, all-grantee meeting).

Annual burden estimates:

Type of Collection	Number of Respondents1	Responses per Respondent	Total Responses	Hours per Respondent	Total Burden Hours	Wage Rate2	Total Hour Cost
Site Visit Assessment Form	1,250	1	1,250	0.25	312.5	$35.82	$11,193.75
Town Hall Satisfaction Survey	100	4	400	0.25	100	$35.82	$3,582.00
MIECHV All-Grantee Meeting Assessment Forms (Overall and Individual Sessions)	300	4	1,200	0.08	96	$35.82	$3,438.72
Total	1,650		2,850		508.5		$18,214.47

This information collection request contains three types of customer feedback and satisfaction surveys: the site visit assessment form; grantee town hall satisfaction survey, and; all-grantee meeting assessment forms. The annual burden estimate table summarizes the number of respondents per year per form (note that respondents do not represent an unduplicated count as the same respondent may participate in multiple TA activities per year).

Planned frequency of information collection:

Information will be collected at the conclusion of each TA activity.

13. Estimates of Annualized Cost Burden to Respondents

HRSA anticipates the total annualized cost to respondents to be $18,214.47. No capital or start-up costs are associated with this information collection request. The total annualized cost estimate is related to the time for respondents to complete and submit satisfaction surveys.

14. Estimates of Annualized Cost to the Government

Costs to the federal government fall into the following categories:

• Cost for overseeing contracted TA providers

• Costs of contractual support for survey administration, analysis, and reporting

• Costs for administering and analyzing government-furnished TA satisfaction surveys

Type of Cost	Description of Services	Annual Cost
Oversight of Contractors (Government Program Analyst - 10%)	Federal staff time to oversee contractors who administer TA activities	$10,136
Cost of Contractual Support	Time and effort for contractors to administer, analyze, and report on satisfaction surveys	$63,481
Administration of Government Satisfaction Survey (Government Program Analyst – 5%)	Federal staff time to administer, analyze, and report on government-furnished TA satisfaction surveys	$2,672

HRSA anticipates the average annual cost for the federal government will include personnel costs for contractual oversight. This will include a federal program analyst at Grade 13 Step 4 ($48.73 hourly rate) for 208 hours and a federal program analyst for administering, analyzing, and reporting on government-furnished TA satisfaction surveys at Grade 9 Step 1 ($25.69 hourly rate) for 104 hours.

Additionally, the federal government supports several TA contractors who administer TA satisfaction surveys on behalf of the federal government. HRSA estimates that these activities constitute 5% of total contract costs.

The total cost to the federal government for these activities is $76,289 per year.

15. Change in Burden

Not Applicable. This is a new activity under HRSA’s generic clearance and will be included in the total burden currently approved by OMB under OMB Control No. 0915-0212.

16. Plans for Analysis and Timetable of Key Activities

Plans for analysis include aggregation and descriptive statistics of survey results in order to summarize grantee feedback on TA activities. TA satisfaction surveys will be administered throughout the year following the conclusion of each TA activity. Surveys administered by contracted TA providers will be summarized in monthly reports submitted to HRSA.

17. Exemption for Display of Expiration Date

No exemption is being requested. The expiration date will be displayed.

18. Certifications

This information collection activity will comply with the requirements in 5 CFR 1320.9.

1 The number of respondents is not an unduplicated count

2 Wages for MIECHV grantee staff is based on the 2014 Bureau of Labor Statistics data for the median hourly wage for Social and Community Service Managers

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