Confidentiality Change

DATE: February 7, 2017

THROUGH: Suzanne Plimpton

NSF OMB Clearance Officer

FROM: John R. Gawalt

Division Director

National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics

National Science Foundation

SUBJECT: Emergency Clearance Request for Confidentiality Pledge Revision

The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) requests emergency clearance approval for a change in its confidentiality pledge. Emergency clearance is needed because:

1. the collection of information is needed prior to the expiration of normal clearance procedures and is essential to the NCSES’s mission and

2. NCSES cannot reasonably comply with the normal clearance procedures because the use of normal clearance procedures is reasonably likely to prevent or disrupt the collection of information or is reasonably likely to cause a statutory or court ordered deadline to be missed.  

This change to the NCSES confidentiality pledge would affect several surveys conducted under NCSES’s active Information Collections (ICs), listed in Table 1 below. Attached to this memo are the Federal Register Notice (FRN) and abbreviated supporting statement that describe and justify the needed changes to the confidentiality pledge. The revised confidentiality pledge was approved by NSF’s Office of General Counsel (OGC).

Table 1: Information Collections affected by revised confidentiality pledge wording, NCSES

OMB Control Number	Expiration Date	Information Collection Title
3145-0101	08/31/2018	Survey of Science and Engineering Research Facilities (Facilities)
3145-0019*	05/31/2018	Survey of Earned Doctorates
3145-0020	08/31/2018	Survey of Doctorate Recipients
3145-0100*	09/30/2019	Higher Education R&D Survey
3145-0141**	05/31/2018	National Survey of College Graduates
3145-0174*	07/31/2019	Generic Clearance of Survey Improvement Projects…
3145-0235	06/30/2017	Early Career Doctorates Survey

* Indicates information collections that are expected to be in the field during the period covered by the 6-month emergency clearance.

** This information collection was also named in a Federal Register Notice from the U.S. Census Bureau (81 FR 94321), since that agency collects data on NSF’s behalf.