Justification for non-substantive change request

Justification for Non-Substantive Changes to Enhanced Geo-Targeted Wireless Emergency Alerts

OMB Control No. 3060-1269

The Commission is requesting approval for non-substantive changes to the methodology and surveys associated with the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) testing in collection 3060-1269.  The proposed update is designed to improve the accuracy of its findings by increasing the size of its control group from 2,000 respondents to 12,000 respondents. While the Commission initially believed 2,000 volunteers was largest size of the control group that its partners would make available, the Commission’s more recent experiences have demonstrated an overwhelming interest in making a large number of volunteers available to complete the survey. Based on this experience, the Commission now estimates a maximum of 12,000 respondents that will join the control group and take the WEA test survey. This estimate does not exceed the original burden estimate of 12,000 total live test survey respondents for this information collection, which it sought comment on and was ultimately approved by OMB in 2020. The proposed update also makes minor phrasing changes to the survey questions to make them more easily understandable by respondents and modifies the possible response choices offered to respondents to make them more clear and precise.

The Commission expects that these proposed modifications will enable it to better use the nationwide WEA test to further its public safety mission by informing the public of the state of WEA delivery and identifying any current shortfalls in WEA performance that warrant additional efforts. Based on the results of the collection, the FCC may be interested in coordinating on future tests that specifically examine geotargeting accuracy outside of a targeted area. The Commission acknowledges that conducting any future collections of this nature will require a new or revised information collection.

There is a decrease in the total annual burden hours by -500 hours and there are no costs associated with this information collection.