Supporting Statement for Form SSA-1587-OCR-SM,
Beneficiary Recontact Report
20 CFR 404.703 and 404.705
A. Justification
1. Section 202(d)(1) of the Social Security Act states that a child of an individual entitled to retirement or disability benefits, or an individual who is fully or currently insured at death, shall be entitled as long as the child is not married and is under age 18 or disabled.
20 CFR 404.703 of the Code of Federal Regulations permits the Commissioner of Social Security to ask for the information needed to decide whether continuing entitlement to benefits exists. 20 CFR 404.705 allows the Social Security Administration (SSA) to stop benefits if the requested information needed to establish continuing entitlement is not received.
2. Studies conducted by SSA and a match (made by the Office of the Inspector General) of marriage records to our Master Beneficiary Record disclosed that a number of children who married failed to report the marriage. On the basis of these two efforts, SSA began to request information about marriage from children ages 15-17, the group most likely to marry. SSA collects this information using two similar forms. If a child has a representative payee, Form SSA-1587-OCR-SM is completed by the representative payee. Form SSA-1588-OCR-SM (OMB No. 0960-0502) is completed by those children in direct payment. Based on the information collected, SSA has terminated benefits according to the statute and has prevented additional overpayments from accruing. Respondents are recipients of Survivor mother/father Social Security benefits who have representative payees.
3. The SSA-1587-OCR-SM is a pre-filled form, meaning that certain fields are completed electronically by SSA before the form is sent to the beneficiary. These fields are also encoded within bar codes on the forms for ease of scanning the information into SSA’s system upon the respondents’ return of the form. Because this is an Agency-initiated form on which SSA is required to pre-fill encoded information before releasing these forms, we are not able to implement this collection electronically at this time. Also, we ask just 2 questions, providing a return envelope, and the burden is only 3 minutes. We believe the paper process is equal to or less than the burden for electronic submission, as the responder would need to provide additional information (e.g., name, address, etc.) in order to submit the information to SSA.
4. Form SSA-1587-OCR-SM collects information similar to that collected on Form
SSA-1588-OCR-SM. However, the forms differ in that Form SSA-1587-OCR-SM is designed for representative payee completion, whereas Form SSA-1588-OCR-SM is designed for completion by a child in direct payment.
5. The collection of information does not involve small businesses or other small entities.
6. If SSA did not collect the information, overpayments could accumulate because of continued payments to ineligible children. Also, because this information is only collected on an as-needed basis, SSA cannot collect this data less frequently. There are no technical or legal obstacles that prevent burden reduction.
7. There are no special circumstances that would cause this information collection to be conducted in a manner inconsistent with 5 CFR 1320.5.
8. The 60-day advance Federal Register Notice was published on August 6, 2007 at 72 FR 43674, and SSA has received no public comments. The second Notice was published on October 18, 2007 at 72 FR 59132. There have been no outside consultations with members of the public.
9. SSA provides no payment or gifts to the respondents.
10. The information provided on this form is protected and held confidential in accordance with 42 U.S.C. 1306, 20 CFR 401 and 402, 5 U.S.C. 552 (Freedom of Information Act), 5 U.S.C. 552a (Privacy Act of 1974), and OMB Circular No. A-130.
11. The information collection does not contain any questions of a sensitive nature.
12. Form SSA-1587-OCR-SM is completed by approximately 982,357 respondents annually. The estimated average response time is 3 minutes for a total of 49,118 burden hours. The total burden is reflected as burden hours, and no separate cost burden has been calculated.
There is no known cost burden to the respondents.
The annual cost to the Federal Government is approximately $490,386. This estimate is a projection of the costs for printing and distributing the collection instrument and for the collection of information.
15. There are no changes in the public reporting burden.
16. The results of the information collection will not be published.
17. OMB has granted SSA an exemption from the requirement that the expiration date for OMB approval be printed on its program forms. SSA produces millions of public-use forms, many of which have a life cycle longer than that of an OMB clearance. SSA does not periodically revise and reprint its public-use forms, (e.g., on an annual basis). This exemption was granted so that otherwise useable editions of forms would not be taken out of circulation because the expiration date had been reached. In addition, government waste has been avoided because stocks of forms will not have to be destroyed and reprinted.
18. SSA is not requesting an exception to the certification requirements at 5 CFR 1320.9 and related provisions at 5 CFR 1320.8(b)(3).
B. Collections of Information Employing Statistical Methods
Statistical methods are not used for this information collection.
| File Type | application/msword |
| File Title | SUPPORTING STATEMENT FOR FORM SSA-1587-OCR-SM, |
| Author | Jeanne O'Connor |
| Last Modified By | 177717 |
| File Modified | 2007-10-29 |
| File Created | 2007-10-04 |