30-day notice

Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 169 / Friday, September 3, 2021 / Notices
MEDIAN DEPRECIATION RATES OF
RURAL UTILITIES SERVICE BORROWERS BY EQUIPMENT CATEGORY
FOR PERIOD ENDING DECEMBER 31,
2020
Telecommunications plant
category

Depreciation
rate

1. Land and Support Assets:
a. Motor vehicles ...............
b. Aircraft ...........................
c. Special purpose vehicles ................................
d. Garage and other work
equipment ......................
e. Buildings .......................
f. Furniture and office
equipment ......................
g. General purpose computers .............................
2. Central Office Switching:
a. Digital ............................
b. Analog & Electro-mechanical .........................
c. Operator Systems .........
3. Central Office Transmission:
a. Radio Systems ..............
b. Circuit equipment ..........
4. Information origination/termination:
a. Station apparatus ..........
b. Customer premises wiring ..................................
c. Large private branch exchanges .........................
d. Public telephone terminal equipment ............
e. Other terminal equipment ...............................
5. Cable and wire facilities:
a. Aerial cable—poles .......
b. Aerial cable—metal .......
c. Aerial cable—fiber .........
d. Underground cable—
metal ..............................
e. Underground cable—
fiber ................................
f. Buried cable—metal ......
g. Buried cable—fiber .......
h. Conduit systems ...........
i. Other ..............................

18.00
11.13
12.00
10.00
3.25
10.00
20.00
10.00
10.00
10.00
10.00
10.00
12.25
10.00
11.90
12.00
10.15
6.00
6.00
5.10
5.00
5.00
5.15
5.00
4.00
5.00

Christopher McLean,
Acting Administrator, Rural Utilities Service.
[FR Doc. 2021–19018 Filed 9–2–21; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3410–15–P

COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS

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Notice of Public Meeting of the
Tennessee Advisory Committee
Commission on Civil Rights.
Announcement of meeting.

AGENCY:
ACTION:

Notice is hereby given,
pursuant to the provisions of the rules
and regulations of the U.S. Commission
on Civil Rights (Commission), and the
Federal Advisory Committee Act

SUMMARY:

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(FACA), that a meeting of the Tennessee
Advisory Committee to the Commission
will convene by conference call on
Thursday, September 16, 2021, at 12:00
p.m. (CT). The purpose is to consider
topics for their next project.
DATES: The meeting will be held on:
Thursday, September 16, 2021, 12:00
p.m. CT.
Join via Webex: https://
civilrights.webex.com/civilrights/
j.php?MTID=m266086828fecf71c42
baa6329432e1c3.
Join via phone: 800–360–9505 USA
Toll Free; Access Code: 199 769 7332#.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Victoria Moreno at [email protected]
or by phone at 434–515–0204.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: This
meeting is available to the public
through the WebEx link above. If joining
only via phone, callers can expect to
incur charges for calls they initiate over
wireless lines, and the Commission will
not refund any incurred charges.
Individuals who are deaf, deafblind and
hard of hearing may also follow the
proceedings by first calling the Federal
Relay Service at 1–800–877–8339 and
providing the Service with the call-in
number found through registering at the
web link provided above for the
meeting.
Members of the public are entitled to
make comments during the open period
at the end of the meeting. Members of
the public may also submit written
comments; the comments must be
received in the Regional Programs Unit
within 30 days following the respective
meeting. Written comments may be
emailed to Victoria Moreno at
[email protected]. All written
comments received will be available to
the public.
Persons who desire additional
information may contact the Regional
Programs Unit at (202) 809–9618.
Records and documents discussed
during the meeting will be available for
public viewing as they become available
at the www.facadatabase.gov. Persons
interested in the work of this advisory
committee are advised to go to the
Commission’s website, www.usccr.gov,
or to contact the Regional Programs Unit
at the above phone number or email
address.
Agenda: Thursday, September 16,
2021; 12:00 p.m. (CT).
1. Welcome & Roll Call
2. Chair’s Comments
3. Committee Discussion
4. Next Steps
5. Public Comment
6. Other Business
7. Adjourn

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Dated: August 31, 2021.
David Mussatt,
Supervisory Chief, Regional Programs Unit.
[FR Doc. 2021–19115 Filed 9–2–21; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE P

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
Census Bureau
Agency Information Collection
Activities; Submission to the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) for
Review and Approval; Comment
Request; Business Enterprise
Research and Development Survey
The Department of Commerce will
submit the following information
collection request to the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) for
review and clearance in accordance
with the Paperwork Reduction Act of
1995, on or after the date of publication
of this notice. We invite the general
public and other Federal agencies to
comment on proposed, and continuing
information collections, which helps us
assess the impact of our information
collection requirements and minimize
the public’s reporting burden. Public
comments were previously requested
via the Federal Register on June 28,
2021 during a 60-day comment period.
This notice allows for an additional 30
days for public comments.
Agency: U.S. Census Bureau,
Department of Commerce.
Title: Business Enterprise Research
and Development Survey.
OMB Control Number: 0607–0912.
Form Number(s): BRD–1.
Type of Request: Regular submission,
Request for a Revision of a Currently
Approved Collection.
Number of Respondents: 47,500.
Average Hours per Response: 2 hours
and 37 minutes.
Burden Hours: 124,450.
Needs and Uses: The Census Bureau
is requesting clearance to conduct the
Business Enterprise Research and
Development Survey (BERD) for the
2021–2023 survey years with the
revisions outlined in this document.
Companies are the major performers of
research and development (R&D) in the
United States, accounting for over 70
percent of total U.S. R&D expenditures
each year. A consistent business R&D
information base is essential to
government officials formulating public
policy, industry personnel involved in
corporate planning, and members of the
academic community conducting
research. To develop policies designed
to promote and enhance science and
technology, past trends and the present

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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 169 / Friday, September 3, 2021 / Notices

status of R&D must be known and
analyzed. Without comprehensive
business R&D statistics, it would be
impossible to evaluate the health of
science and technology in the United
States or to make comparisons between
the technological progress of our
country and that of other nations.
BERD is a joint statistical project
between the National Center for Science
and Engineering Statistics (NCSES)
within the National Science Foundation
(NSF) and the Census Bureau.
NCSES has published annual R&D
statistics collected from the Survey of
Industrial Research and Development
(1953–2007), the Business R&D and
Innovation Survey (2008–2016), the
Business Research and Development
Survey (2017 and 2018), and the
Business Enterprise Research and
Development Survey (2019 and 2020)
for 67 years. The results of the surveys
are used to assess trends in R&D
expenditures by industry sector,
investigate productivity determinants,
formulate science and tax policy, and
compare individual company
performance with industry averages.
This survey is the Nation’s primary
source for international comparative
statistics on business R&D spending.
BERD will continue to collect the
following types of information:
• R&D expense based on accepted
accounting standards.
• Worldwide R&D of domestic
companies.
• Business segment detail.
• R&D related capital expenditures.
• Detailed data about the R&D
workforce.
• R&D strategy and data on the
potential impact of R&D on the market.
Beginning in 2020, in an effort to
reduce burden, BERD began rotating
select content off the survey in
alternating years. In 2020, questions
related to detail of R&D performed by
others, activities with academia,
industries of business and specific
federal agency funding R&D, and areas
of application for R&D were removed
from BERD. In 2021, all of those
questions will be reintroduced to the
survey and the Intellectual Property and
Technology Transfer Section will be
removed from the survey. BERD plans to
continue rotating this content in
alternating years.
Beginning in 2021, the BERD will
revise its existing Capital Expenditures
section to collect additional information
on assets. Cognitive testing on these
questions conducted by the Census
Bureau in 2018 revealed that these
questions pose no substantive impact on
burden (the data requested are all
readily available in most companies’

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books) and would provide context on
capital stock of R&D active companies
not currently available in any other data
source. After collecting two consecutive
years of data (for 2021 and 2022), BERD
plans to collect the additional assets
questions in alternating years, similar to
the other rotating content. So, in 2023,
BERD would have the smaller
[previously collected] Capital
Expenditures section, and in 2024
would reinstate the more robust Assets
section and so on.
Information from BERD will continue
to support NCSES’ responsibility to
collect information on Research and
Development for overall support for
Federal policy discussions, as required
under the America COMPETES
Reauthorization Act of 2010.
Policy officials from many Federal
agencies rely on these statistics for
essential information. Businesses and
trade organizations rely on BERD data to
benchmark their industry’s performance
against others. For example, total U.S.
R&D expenditures statistics are used by
the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)
for incorporating R&D as fixed
investment in updates to the National
Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs).
Also, NCSES, BEA and the Census
Bureau periodically seek to use BERD
data to augment global R&D investment
information that is obtained from BEA’s
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and
U.S. Direct Investment Abroad (USDIA)
surveys. Further, the Census Bureau
links data collected by BERD with other
statistical files. At the Census Bureau,
historical company-level R&D data are
linked to a file that contains information
on the outputs and inputs of companies’
manufacturing plants. Researchers can
analyze the relationships between R&D
funding and other economic variables
by using micro-level data.
Individuals and organizations access
the survey statistics via the internet in
annual InfoBriefs published by NCSES
that announce the availability of
statistics from each cycle of BERD and
detailed statistical table reports that
contain all of the statistics NCSES
produces from BERD. Information about
the kinds of projects that rely on
statistics from BERD is available from
internal records of Census’ Center for
Economic Studies. In addition, survey
statistics are regularly cited in trade
publications and many researchers use
the survey statistics from these
secondary sources without directly
contacting NCSES or the Census Bureau.
Affected Public: Business or other forprofit organizations.
Frequency: Annually.
Respondent’s Obligation: Mandatory.

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Legal Authority: The survey is
conducted under the authority of Title
13, United States Code, Sections 8(b),
131, and 182; Title 42, United States
Code, Sections 1861–76 (National
Science Foundation Act of 1950, as
amended); and Section 505 within the
America COMPETES Reauthorization
Act of 2010.
This information collection request
may be viewed at www.reginfo.gov.
Follow the instructions to view the
Department of Commerce collections
currently under review by OMB.
Written comments and
recommendations for the proposed
information collection should be
submitted within 30 days of the
publication of this notice on the
following website www.reginfo.gov/
public/do/PRAMain. Find this
particular information collection by
selecting ‘‘Currently under 30-day
Review—Open for Public Comments’’ or
by using the search function and
entering either the title of the collection
or the OMB Control Number 0607–0912.
Sheleen Dumas,
Department PRA Clearance Officer, Office of
the Chief Information Officer, Commerce
Department.
[FR Doc. 2021–19134 Filed 9–2–21; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510–07–P

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
Census Bureau
Agency Information Collection
Activities; Submission to the Office of
Management and Budget (OMB) for
Review and Approval; Comment
Request; Current Population Survey,
Annual Social and Economic
Supplement
U.S. Census Bureau,
Commerce.
ACTION: Notice of information collection,
request for comment.
AGENCY:

The Department of
Commerce, in accordance with the
Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) of
1995, invites the general public and
other Federal agencies to comment on
proposed, and continuing information
collections, which helps us assess the
impact of our information collection
requirements and minimize the public’s
reporting burden. The purpose of this
notice is to allow for 60 days of public
comment on the proposed revision of
the Annual Social and Economic
Supplement (ASEC) to the Current
Population Survey, prior to the
submission of the information collection
request (ICR) to OMB for approval.

SUMMARY:

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