General Inquiries to State Agency Contacts
1220-0168
February 2018
General Inquiries to State Agency Contacts
Supporting Statement
Circumstances necessitating data collection
(This list of BLS/State cooperative statistical programs may change over time.)
The
Labor Market Information (LMI) Cooperative Agreement (CA)(1220-0079)
and Occupational Safety and Health Statistics (OSHS)(1220-0149) CA
packages are the vehicles through which State Grant Agencies (SGAs)
are awarded funds. The CA packages include application instructions
and materials, as well as financial reporting, closeout and other
administrative requirements, as spelled out in Title
2 Part 200 of the Code of Federal Regulations (hereinafter cited as 2
CFR 200), Uniform
Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements
for Federal Awards,
and as published by the Department of Labor in Title 2 Part 2900.
Federal Assistance
is encouraged by Public Law 91-596, the Occupational Safety and
Health Act.
To ensure the timely flow of information and to be able to evaluate and improve BLS/State cooperative programs’ management and operations, it is necessary to conduct ongoing communications between the BLS and its State partners. Whether information requests deal with program deliverables, program enhancements, operations, or administrative issues, questions and dialogue are crucial to the successful implementation of these programs.
In order to conduct these communications, the BLS is requesting OMB approval of general inquiries, allowing dialogue between the BLS and its State partners. Due to the day-to-day and sometimes urgent nature of these information requests, these inquiries are conducted on an ongoing basis. OMB agreed when this package was first submitted that the terms of clearance of this package would be: 1) if BLS is sending written requests to States under this clearance, the OMB control number and expiration date will be displayed somewhere on the request; and 2) if BLS makes an inquiry to more than nine States and estimates the response burden per State to be more than two hours, a copy of that inquiry will be forwarded to OMB. Inquiries that do not exceed nine States and two hours of burden per response will not have to be forwarded to OMB.
Purpose of data collection
Information
collected under this clearance is used to support the administrative
and programmatic needs of these joint BLS/State programs. Examples
of types of requests are included in Attachment 1 – Examples of
Inquiries to the States.
Use of improved information technology to reduce burden
The
BLS primarily uses email or telephone contacts to collect information
from the States. Written memoranda from the BLS to the States also
are used to request information when appropriate. Many of the
requests are made to address time-critical issues where the use of
formal information collection instruments is not practical.
Efforts to identify duplication
Information collected from the States by the BLS is unique to these Federal/State collections.
Minimizing small employer burden
Information is collected from governments of the 50 States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. None of this information is collected from businesses.
Consequences of less frequent data collection
The
BLS makes requests for information from the States to ensure that
deliverables are provided on schedule and to identify and resolve any
problems or issues encountered by the States and/or the BLS. Some of
these requests are made on a scheduled basis and others are made when
events or issues necessitate. Some are administrative in nature or
may deal with estimation, benchmarking, training, conferences,
updating information, program operations, etc.
Special circumstances relating to 5 CFR 1320.5
Some
requests for information are made more frequently than quarterly and
responses may be requested within fewer than 30 days. This is done
when a quick turnaround time is appropriate to facilitate program
operations.
No comments were received as a result of the Federal Register notice published in 82 FR 58447 on December 12, 2017.
Payments to respondents
The
States receive Federal domestic assistance provided under the
BLS/State cooperative agreements.
10. Confidentiality provisions
Information
collected under this clearance request generally is not confidential.
The information typically is operational or administrative in
nature. (Program-specific statistical data from respondents are
treated in accordance with confidentiality provisions applicable to
the respective programs. The confidentiality of those data is
addressed in the clearance requests for those programs.)
Sensitive questions
There are no
sensitive questions asked.
Estimated burden hours and costs
The burden hours for individual inquiries are variable. The frequency per State per program per year also is variable. There are 54 potential respondents, and the time required to complete an inquiry typically will vary from ten minutes to two hours. The total annual burden hours (15,927) and the total annual responses (23,890) requested in this clearance are based on BLS experience in administering the programs and are estimates of the maximums that would be required. For purposes of estimating burden, the agency average response time is 40 minutes. 23,890 responses x 40 minutes = 15,927 hours.
Respondents to this information collection are state employees whose average fully loaded earnings are estimated to be $48.06 per hour. (See Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC), a product of the National Compensation Survey at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf.) The agency estimates the total value of respondent time to be $765,451.62. 15,927 hours x $48.06/hour = $765,451.62.
Costs resulting from information collection
The
agency anticipates no additional costs to respondents or
recordkeepers resulting from the information collection.
Estimated annual costs to the Federal government
None.
This activity is an inherent aspect of the ongoing conduct of the
BLS/State cooperative programs, which themselves have been cleared by
OMB separately.
Changes in burden
There is no change in burden.
Plans for tabulation and publication
The
information collected will not be used for publication but, rather,
for program operation purposes, including carrying out BLS fiduciary
responsibilities for managing and administering the funds
appropriated for the BLS/State cooperative statistical programs.
Display of expiration date
BLS/State
cooperative
agreements under which these programs are conducted contain a
notification paragraph explaining that the BLS will make inquiries to
the States as needed to conduct the programs, and that those
inquiries are covered under OMB Number 1220-0168.
Exception to certification statement
There are no exceptions to the certification statement.
| File Type | application/msword |
| File Title | CENSUS OF FATAL OCCUPATIONAL INJURIES |
| Author | windau_J |
| Last Modified By | SYSTEM |
| File Modified | 2018-02-13 |
| File Created | 2018-02-13 |