Generic Submission Request for Farmers.gov

Request for Approval under the “Generic Clearance for the Collection of Routine Customer Feedback” (OMB Control Number: 0560-0286)

TITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION: Farmers.gov digital properties usability

Evaluation (qualitative)

PURPOSE: The information collected will be used to inform the design and development of the USDA-Farm Production and Conservation (FPAC) “farmers.gov” unauthenticated, public-facing websites. Farmers.gov design requires ongoing customer feedback to ensure its development meets the needs of the customer accessing USDA-FPAC agencies’ programs and services. FPAC-BC will ask the users to test both live, Farmers.gov website as well as protypes.

DESCRIPTION OF RESPONDENTS: The respondents will be a representative group of US farmers, ranchers, and foresters from priority geographic areas who do business with USDA. They will all be over the age of 18.

TYPE OF COLLECTION: (Check one)

[ ] Customer Comment Card/Complaint Form [ ] Customer Satisfaction Survey

[ X ] Usability Testing (e.g., Website or Software) [ ] Small Discussion Group

[ ] Focus Group [ ] Other: ______________

CERTIFICATION:

I certify the following to be true:

1. The collection is voluntary.

2. The collection is low-burden for respondents and low-cost for the Federal Government.

3. The collection is non-controversial and does not raise issues of concern to other federal agencies.

4. The results are not intended to be disseminated to the public.

5. Information gathered will not be used for the purpose of substantially informing influential policy decisions.

6. The collection is targeted to the solicitation of opinions from respondents who have experience with the program or may have experience with the program in the future.

Name: Kaveh Sadeghzadeh

Brittany Halsey

To assist review, please provide answers to the following question:

Personally Identifiable Information:

1. Is personally identifiable information (PII) collected? [ X ] Yes [ ] No

2. If Yes, will any information that is collected be included in records that are subject to the Privacy Act of 1974? [ ] Yes [ ] No N/A

3. If Yes, has an up-to-date System of Records Notice (SORN) been published? [ ] Yes [ ] No N/A

Gifts or Payments:

Is an incentive (e.g., money or reimbursement of expenses, token of appreciation) provided to participants? [ ] Yes [ X ] No

BURDEN HOURS

Category of Respondent	No. of Respondents	Participation Time	Burden
U.S. farmers, ranchers, and foresters	500	1 hour	500 hours
Totals	500	1 hour	500 hours

FEDERAL COST: All costs are already covered in our existing MetroStar contract for this project.

If you are conducting a focus group, survey, or plan to employ statistical methods, please provide answers to the following questions:

The selection of your targeted respondents

1. Do you have a customer list or something similar that defines the universe of potential respondents and do you have a sampling plan for selecting from this universe? [ ] Yes [ X ] No

If the answer is yes, please provide a description of both below (or attach the sampling plan)? If the answer is no, please provide a description of how you plan to identify your potential group of respondents and how you will select them?

Administration of the Instrument

1. How will you collect the information? (Check all that apply)

[ X ] Web-based or other forms of Social Media

[ X ] Telephone

[ X ] In-person

[ ] Mail

[ ] Other, Explain

2. Will interviewers or facilitators be used? [ X ] Yes [ ] No

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