NonSub Change Memo - TANF Office Culture - Inc Respondents_Feb 2019

Memorandum

DATE: February 4, 2019

TO: Josh Brammer

Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)

Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

FROM: Amelia Popham

Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE)

Administration for Children and Families (ACF)

SUBJECT: Non-Substantive Change Request: TANF Office Culture Information Collection (OMB # 0970-0520)

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Office Culture study research team finalized the six sites for the TANF Office Culture study after receiving OMB approval on October 26, 2018. In doing so, it became apparent that spending an additional one to two days beyond the originally proposed day and a half long site visits to interview more staff would provide a clearer picture of the organizational culture in a subset of those six sites.

All of the instruments will remain the same and the underlying goals of the data collection remain unchanged, only the number of respondents will change as a result of this non-substantive change request. Specifically, we request approval to adjust the number of respondents to the interviews as follows:

1. Leadership and Supervisor Interview Guide (Appendix A):

   1. In addition to interviews with the TANF Director, County Director, or Regional Director, we propose the inclusion of other relevant leadership, which varies depending on the structure of the State TANF program¹.

   2. We now propose to interview two, instead of three, supervisors at each site.

2. Front-line Staff Interview Guide (Appendix B): We now propose to interview four, instead of two, front-line staff at each site.

There are no proposed changes to the number of focus group participants (Appendix C).

The majority of sites selected are examples of programs whose organizational culture change was initiated at the county, city, or state level (as opposed to within individual local offices) that rely on staff in local offices to implement and embrace the change. In these instances, having an in-depth understanding of leadership’s intention for the organizational culture change and comparing it to multiple frontline worker perspectives on how the proposed change was implemented requires interviewing more leadership and frontline workers than originally proposed.

In addition, it is possible that staffs’ experiences implementing these higher level organizational culture changes differ depending on in which local office they work. Visiting multiple local offices to compare how these initiatives are implemented in different sites within the same program will provide a more complete picture of the TANF program’s organizational culture than visiting one local office.

Expanding the number of staff interviewed in each local office and including more local offices in each site visit requires an adjustment to the number of respondents originally estimated, which was estimated assuming the research team would visit one local office per site. Understanding how leadership and frontline workers across multiple offices work to implement an organizational culture change initiative maximizes the study’s usefulness for other TANF programs looking to implement a cohesive, organizational culture change across multiple sites.

We revised the Supporting Statements to reflect the changes to the number of respondents and therefore, the overall burden.

1 Examples of other relevant leadership may include a Human Services Director, Workforce or Social Services Commissioner, or other titles depending on the structure of the agency. The number of leadership staff interviewed will vary by site, from two to six.