Final PRA Clearance Generic ICR Supporting Statement_Part A

SUPPORTING STATEMENT – Part A

REQUEST FOR APPROVAL UNDER THE PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT AND 5 CFR 1320

OMB 0412-XXXX

Collection Title: USAID Generic Workforce and Organizational Surveys

PART A. JUSTIFICATION

1. Explain the circumstances that make the collection of information necessary. Identify any legal or administrative requirements that necessitate the collection. Attach a copy of the appropriate section of each statute and regulation mandating or authorizing the collection of information.

USAID’s workforce has a footprint of roughly 13000. Fellows, interns, and Institutional Support Contractors (ISCs) consist of roughly 3270 of USAID’s total workforce. Given that there is such a vast diversity of support staff who are bound to have different experiences and movement in, around, and out of the Agency, the M Bureau wishes to understand the circumstances surrounding the USAID workforce's experience while being employed and working with USAID in various capacities. The M Bureau wishes to use low-burden surveys and interviews to collect qualitative feedback on the overall support staff experience within the Agency and identify opportunities to improve retention and engagement. This information would be collected in person or via an online survey form. As such, the M Bureau wishes to add surveys and interviews for USAID personnel to monitor and assess their experiences while working with and for USAID. This information collection will give the Agency the ability to discern the felt experience of its workforce, regardless of hiring mechanism. This will help the Agency make better decisions to improve support staff retention and satisfaction. Support staff retention and consistency is a valuable resource to ensure the Agency will remain efficient and effective since if there is constant support staff turnover, the efficiency and effectiveness slows down due to the need of replacing and training new support staff.

2. Indicate how, by whom, and for what purpose the information is to be used. Except for a new collection, indicate the actual use the agency has made of the information received from the current collection.

The Operational Resource Management Division in M/MPBP is responsible for M Bureau resource management: human and financial. Given their responsibilities in addressing general workforce needs across the Bureau, M/MPBP/ORM will send out surveys and schedule interviews and focus groups with the members of the USAID workforce who qualify for the information collection in order to obtain the felt experiences of the support staff and agency partners. The vast majority of the information collection will be short online “pulse” surveys to help retain support staff and improve USAID’s overall workforce satisfaction. There are several management assessments annually for the purpose of improving internal operations that will involve focus group discussions and key informant interviews. Utilizing this information collection will greatly help the Agency discern work environment issues and those related to internal operations that impact organizational health. With this information collection, the Agency will be able to make corrections and programmatic changes to improve support staff retention and satisfaction which thus helps improve the Agency’s effectiveness and efficiency.

USAID will only submit a collection for approval under this generic clearance if it meets the following conditions:

• Information gathered will be used only internally for general workforce satisfaction improvement and program management purposes and is not intended for release outside of the agency (if released, procedures outlined in Question 16 will be followed);

• Information gathered will not be used for the purpose of substantially informing influential policy decisions ¹;

• Information gathered will yield qualitative information; the collections will not be designed or expected to yield statistically reliable results or used as though the results are generalizable to the population of study;

• The collections are voluntary;

• The collections are low-burden for respondents (based on considerations of total burden hours, total number of respondents, or burden-hours per respondent) and are low-cost for both the respondents and the Federal Government;

• The collections are non-controversial and do not raise issues of concern to other Federal agencies;

• Any 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 near future; and

• With the exception of information needed to provide remuneration for participants of focus groups and cognitive laboratory studies, personally identifiable information (PII) is collected only to the extent necessary and is not retained.

If these conditions are not met, USAID will submit an information collection request to OMB for approval through the normal PRA process.

To obtain approval for a collection that meets the conditions of this generic clearance, a standardized form will be submitted to OMB along with supporting documentation and collection instruments. The submission will have automatic approval, unless OMB identifies issues, within 5 business days.

The types of collections that this generic clearance covers include, but are not limited to, ISCs, fellows, and interns providing feedback regarding general employee satisfaction via the following collection methods:

• Comment cards/complaint forms

• Small discussion groups

• Focus Groups of delivery partners, or other stakeholders

• Cognitive laboratory studies, such as those used to refine questions or assess usability of a website

• Qualitative stakeholder satisfaction surveys (e.g., stakeholder pulse surveys; exit surveys)

The Agency has established a manager/managing entity to serve for this generic clearance and will conduct an independent review of each information collection to ensure compliance with the terms of this clearance prior to submitting each collection to OMB.

3. Describe whether, and to what extent, the collection of information involves the use of automated, electronic, mechanical, or other technological collection techniques or other forms of information technology, e.g., permitting electronic submission of responses, and the basis for the decision for adopting this means of collection. Also describe any consideration of using information technology to reduce burden.

For the surveys, the collection of information would include electronic surveys emailed to those who are eligible, specifically Google Forms. This would enable the fastest response and the ability to accurately organize and keep a record of the surveys for future use. Interviews and focus groups would also be options for those who do not wish to take a survey. The most technological aspect of the surveys would be to just email eligible USAID workforce, have them fill out the Google Form, and then they would submit it so that we can record their answers and keep a record. For an interview or focus group, all that would be needed is to schedule a meeting, either in person or through the Google calendar. The survey and interview results directly do not need to be made available to the public on the internet, but analysis can be done on the results and can be presented in a way to help improve the Agency.

4. Describe efforts to identify duplication. Show specifically why any similar information already available cannot be used or modified for use for the purposes described in Item 2 above.

No similar data are gathered or maintained or are available from other sources known to USAID.

5. If the collection of information impacts small businesses or other small entities, describe any methods used to minimize burden.

The USAID workforce will be the respondents of these surveys and interviews, and ISCs make up a large portion of the USAID workforce. Given that ISCs often come from small businesses, the surveys and interviews will specifically focus on the individual’s experiences supporting USAID operations. They will not attempt to gain any information about their experiences or issues with the ISC contracting company itself.

6. Describe the consequence to Federal program or policy activities if the collection is not conducted or is conducted less frequently, as well as any technical or legal obstacles to reducing burden.

If the collection is not conducted, Agency operations would be impacted because it would hinder the Agency’s ability to recruit, hire, and retain staff. If the Agency’s ability to recruit, hire, and retain staff was hindered, valuable human resources would be lost because of the lack of a consistent workforce that can implement the work needed to be done. This would impede Agency mission readiness, weaken institutional memory, and hamper overall Agency efficiency and effectiveness. The feedback given by the USAID workforce would allow the Agency to see what they are doing wrong or what they can do better to help retain staff and limit partner entity turnover and thus help improve the Agency overall. The collection will greatly help increase efficiency within the Agency as a whole and will help satisfaction in general by allowing the Agency to identify and analyze the felt experiences of the USAID workforce. As for technical obstacles, the only requirement for this is to have a good electronic survey (Google Form) and have it be submittable so that the Agency can keep accurate records and conduct analysis on the results.

If collection is done less frequently, the same can be true as if it is not conducted. Implementing these surveys and interviews frequently will greatly help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the Agency by providing the Agency with the USAID workforce’s overall experiences. Discovering and analyzing the experiences felt by the entire workforce will help the Agency recruit, hire, and retain staff.

7. Explain any special circumstances for the information collection.

There are no special circumstances for information collection under this clearance.

8. If applicable, provide a copy and identify the date and page number of publication in the Federal Register of the agency's notice, required by 5 CFR 1320.8(d), soliciting comments on the information collection prior to submission to OMB. Summarize public comments received in response to that notice and describe actions taken by the agency in response to these comments. Specifically address comments received on cost and hour burden.

A 60-Day Federal Register Notice was published at 88 FR 74401 on October 31st, 2023.

Comments were received from an individual stating that USAID should be defunded and USAID’s work in foreign countries is not needed and is a misuse of tax dollars. As this was not a comment regarding the specific notice of information collection, no adjustments were made; however, the comment was acknowledged via a formal response.

A 30-day Federal Register Notice was then published at 89 FR 1060 on January 9th, 2024. No comments were received in response to the 30-day Federal Register Notice.

9. Explain any decision to provide any payment or gift to respondents, other than remuneration of contractors or grantees.

There are no payments or gifts to respondents for USAID surveys under this clearance.

10. Describe any assurance of confidentiality provided to respondents and the basis for the assurance in statute, regulation, or agency policy. If the collection requires a Systems of Records Notice (SORN) or Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA), those should be cited and described here.

A confidentiality statement is included as an introduction to the exit survey. Respondents have the option of providing their name and email address if they wish to offer additional context for their responses. In the event that they opt to provide their responses via interview versus survey, they will not be anonymous; however, the introductory script includes a statement that the collection of this information is confidential and output will only be summarized in key themes. The collection of PII will be restricted to the bare minimum necessary.

11. Provide additional justification for any questions of a sensitive nature, such as sexual behavior and attitudes, religious beliefs, and other matters that are commonly considered private. This justification should include the reasons why the agency considers the questions necessary, the specific uses to be made of the information, the explanation to be given to persons from whom the information is requested, and any steps to be taken to obtain their consent.

There are no questions of a sensitive nature that will be asked. All questions are directly related to work experience; organizational health, and/or efficiency and effectiveness of Agency operations.

12. Provide estimates of the hour burden of the collection of information.

For purposes of this clearance, the USAID workforce includes Institutional Support Contractors (ISCs), fellows, and interns.

Type of Information Collection	# Of Respondents	# Of Responses Per Respondent	Participation Avg hours per response	Annual Burden Hours
Pulse Survey	650	2	10 minutes	217 hours
Customer Interviews	50	1	45 minutes	38 hours
Focus Groups	50	1	45 minutes	38 hours
Feedback Survey (e.g., exit surveys)	1400	1	10 minutes	233 hours
Totals	2,150	5	110 minutes	526 hours

The burden was estimated by thinking about how long it would take to actually fill out a survey and submit it. The respondents include Institutional Support Contractors (ISCs), fellows, and interns only. Some of the different types of surveys that will be submitted under this generic clearance include pulse surveys, exit surveys, and operating unit-specific surveys; these surveys are not expected to take much time and are usually administered annually or are dependent on specific actions taking place. Additionally, this generic clearance will also include the management assessments needed to improve internal operations, such as business process reviews and after action reviews. All things considered, it should not take respondents much time to fill out and submit. If an interview is conducted, the time it takes may take a little longer, but not by much.

13. Provide an estimate for the total annual cost burden to respondents or record keepers resulting from the collection of information. (Do not include the cost of any hour burden already reflected on the burden worksheet).

There is no annual cost burden to respondents. There is no additional cost for record keepers and data analysts as a result of collecting this information. This would be a collateral responsibility for a U.S. direct hire and costs for effort are already assumed under their existing salary and benefits.

14. Provide estimates of annualized costs to the Federal government. Also, provide a description of the method used to estimate cost, which should include quantification of hours, operational expenses (such as equipment, overhead, printing, and support staff), and any other expense that would not have been incurred without this collection of information. If there will be no costs beyond the normal labor costs for staff, state that here.

There is no additional cost to the Agency. Resources to collect, develop, and analyze the data are included as part of the salary and benefits of 2 FTE in USAID’s Bureau for Management for Agency pulse surveys, 2 FTE in the Office of Human Capital and Talent Management for exit surveys, and 10 FTE across 10 additional operating units for their operating unit-specific surveys. The 14 FTEs are expected to be mid-level salaried GS-13 employees. The average hourly wage in the Washington, DC metropolitan area (effective as of January 2024 per OPM 2024 General Schedule (GS) Locality Pay Tables) is $117,962 per year (Step 1). The cost of carrying out the information collection would be accounted for in the duties and responsibilities of the FTEs, so no additional cost or burden would be put onto the Agency by using this general clearance. The survey is by Google Form, which is included in the Agency’s Google suite platform used to support Agency operations. Data analysis is estimated to take place on a quarterly basis and represent a 40-hour level of effort. Additionally, senior leadership’s time and effort to review the collected data will not be a major burden. They will review the collected data as surveys are submitted.

15. Explain the reasons for any program changes or adjustments reported on the burden worksheet.

There are no program changes or adjustments reported on the burden worksheet.

16. For collections of information whose results will be published, outline plans for tabulation and publication. Address any complex analytical techniques that will be used. Provide the time schedule for the entire project, including beginning and ending dates of the collection of information, completion of report, publication dates, and other actions.

These results will only be shared with the Agency workforce. We will not post this data with the general public.

17. If seeking approval to not display the expiration date for OMB approval of the information collection, explain the reasons that display would be inappropriate.

This request is not seeking approval to not display the expiration date for OMB approval of the information collection.

18. Explain each exception to the topics of the certification statement identified in “Certification for Paperwork Reduction Act Submissions.” (See Pg. 2 of the OMB 83-I form)

There are no exceptions to be explained.

1 As defined in OMB and agency Information Quality Guidelines, “influential” means that “an agency can reasonably determine that dissemination of the information will have or does have a clear and substantial impact on important public policies or important private sector decisions.”

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