Supporting Statement: Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (WANTO) Technical

Funding Opportunity Announcement

Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (WANTO) Technical Assistance (TA) Grant

Supplemental Justification

Supplemental Supporting Statement A: Justification

This request seeks OMB approval under the Paperwork Reduction Act for the unique information collection requirements in the Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations Technical Assistance (TA) Grant, or “WANTO,” Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). The Employment and Training Administration (ETA), U.S. Department of Labor (DOL, or the Department, or we), announces the availability of approximately $1,988,000.00 in grant funds authorized by the Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (WANTO) Act of 1992, Pub. L. 102-530, 29 U.S.C. 2501 et seq.WANTO awards are discretionary grants awarded by the Secretary of Labor (Secretary) under WANTO, which authorizes the Secretary to initiate grant awards to provide technical assistance to organizations regarding women in non-traditional employment occupations.

The purpose of these grants is to provide funding to CBOs to deliver TA to Registered Apprenticeship Programs (RAPs) to assist them in placing women into apprenticeable and nontraditional occupations (A/NTO). These grants will be awarded competitively to CBOs to set up and administer a Regional/Multi-State TA Resource Center that will focus on conducting innovative projects to improve the recruitment, selection, training, employment, and retention of women, women of color and women with disabilities in A/NTO. Through this competition, DOL is interested in establishing a national network of TA Resource Centers, to assist in the recruitment and retention of women in A/NTO.

CBOs should design activities to enhance recruitment efforts that include: 1) providing guidance and TA to organizations targeting outreach to women for opportunities in A/NTO, and 2) TA to increase retention rates of women in apprenticeship in nontraditional occupations in their workplaces. This TA should result in an increase in the number of women employed in jobs that pay a self-sufficient wage for women, and their families. ETA’s goal is that at least 52 RAPs are provided TA with the total funding provided under this announcement.

The Department anticipates awarding approximately 4 grants of no more than $650,000 each to RAP Sponsors (RAPS), which may be any person, association, committee, business, or organization operating a Registered Apprenticeship Program and in whose name the program is (or is to be) registered or approved; and the American Apprenticeship Grant Initiative Grantees. The period of performance is 24 months with an anticipated start date of July 1, 2016. This performance period includes all necessary implementation and start-up activities.

Applications will include the following information collections: 1) Form SF-424 “Application for Federal Assistance,” separately cleared under OMB control number 4040-0004, 2) Project Budget, 3) Project Narrative, and 4) Attachments to the Project Narrative.

Electronic availability:

This grant solicitation is available on the grants.gov web site. Based on past DOL experience, the Department anticipates 75 percent of responses will be submitted electronically.

Small Entities:

This information collection will not have a significant impact on a substantial number of small entities.

Assurances of confidentiality:

These grant solicitations do not offer applicants assurances of confidentiality.

Special circumstances:

This FOA implicates no special circumstances.

Burden:

Based on past experience, the DOL expects to receive approximately 15 applications from an equal number of respondents.  The ETA estimates public reporting burden for the information collection to average 20 hours per response for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining needed data, and completing and reviewing the collection of information.

15 applications x 20 hours = 300 hours.

The DOL has increased the October 2014, average hourly earnings in the professional and business services industry of $29.29 per hour by 40 percent (total $41.01 per hour) to monetize this burden.  See The Employment Situation—October 2014, DOL, Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_11072014.pdf at page 32.

300 hours x $41.01 = $12,303.00

The DOL associates no other burden costs with this information collection. In addition to the application, each grantee will be required to submit quarterly financial, performance, and narrative reports to the ETA. Those information collection requirements will be cleared under a separate control number.

Total burden: 15 respondents, 15 responses, 300 hours, $0 other cost burden.

Supplemental Supporting Statement B: Statistical Methods

This information collection does not employ statistical methods.

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