Justification for change

JUSTIFICATION FOR CHANGE

OMB Control No. 0648-0568

NOAA Office of Education has redesigned its Student Tracker database and the associated input form covered under OMB Control No. 0648-0568. This form is intended to capture information on all student participants supported by the Educational Partnership Program with Minority Serving Institutions (EPP/MSI) Undergraduate Scholarship Program (USP) and Cooperative Science Centers (CSCs) and Ernest F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship Program. The redesign is intended to facilitate administration of the four NOAA Cooperative Science Centers, awarded in 2016, which will require more robust data collection on program accomplishments and student activities such as research and training experiences at NOAA, conference presentations and publications. The new database design will also facilitate tracking of education and workforce outcomes by NOAA-supported students in order to evaluate long term program impacts.

Despite a net increase in the number of required data fields, the database and form have been redesigned with efficiency and ease of use in mind, resulting in a significantly lower net burden to complete the form. Tests by users prior to deployment have indicated that the net burden to complete the form is 22 hours on an annual basis per program coordinator, or six hours less than currently. With the current form that we are replacing, each grant program coordinator was expected to take a maximum of 28 hours to enter data for an average of 200 students and performance measures, annually. With four coordinators, the total annual hours have been reduced from 112 to 88.