NCCC Performance Measures Justification 5-25-11

SUPPORTING STATEMENT FOR PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT SUBMISSIONS

 

A. Justification

A1.  Need for Information Collection

The Corporation for National and Community Service (the Corporation) awards grants to states, institutions of higher education, non-profit organizations, Indian tribes, and U.S. Territories to operate AmeriCorps State, AmeriCorps National, AmeriCorps NCCC, AmeriCorps VISTA, and Senior Corps programs. This information collection comprises the questions NCCC project sponsors will answer in order to provide data on the activities of the program.

A2.  Indicate how, by whom, and for what purpose the information is to be used.

The data collected from NCCC sponsors will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the NCCC program. The data will be collected and analyzed by NCCC headquarters staff or contractors and used in the development of the congressional budget justification, and program development and evaluation. The results and analysis, once sufficiently aggregated to ensure anonymity of the respondents, will be distributed to NCCC regional staff.

 

 A3.  Minimize Burden: Use of Improved Technology to Reduce Burden

The Corporation will be eliciting and accepting sponsor response to these questions electronically via a web-based survey program.

A4.  Non-Duplication

There are no other sources of information by which the Corporation can meet the purposes described in A2 (above).

 

A5.  Minimizing for economic burden for small businesses or other small entities.

This collection of information does not impact small businesses because they are not eligible to be project sponsors. There is no economic burden to any other small entities beyond the cost of staff time to collect and report the data. The cost of staff time is minimized to the degree possible by only asking for the information absolutely necessary to measure progress towards the Corporation’s strategic initiative benchmarks.

A6.  Consideration of Collection

 The Corporation will be unable to effectively evaluate the impact of program services on sponsor organizations and communities without approval of this collection.

A7.  Special circumstances that would cause information collection to be collected in the specified ways.

There are no special circumstances that would require the collection of information in any other ways specified.

A8.  Provide copy and identify the date and page number of publication in the Federal Register of the Agency’s notice.

The 60 day Notice soliciting comments was published on November 23, 2010.

 

 A9.  Payment to Respondents

There are no payments or gifts to respondents.

  

A10.  Confidentiality

Responses to this collection will be collected and analyzed in such a manner as to provide confidentiality between the project sponsor and the regional NCCC campuses that engage the sponsor.

A11.  Sensitive Questions

 The information collection does not include questions of a sensitive nature.

 

A12. Hour burden of the collection

We expect approximately 660 respondents to participate in the sponsor survey. Average sponsors will respond annually, and should not exceed 1 hour of effort per respondent. There is no estimated annual hour burden outside of the customary and usual business practices.

There are five sections to the survey. A respondent may receive between one and four survey sections. All respondents will complete the Successful Service Intervention module. Based on current year distribution of project type, it is estimated that 47 percent of sponsors will complete the Volunteer Services module, 38 percent will complete the Disaster Services module, 25 percent will complete the Environment module and 15 percent will complete the housing module.

Because the NCCC has not historically recorded projects by the new issue area type, it is difficult to determine the exact mix of survey module distribution. There are 12 possible survey module combinations. It is impossible to arrive at a meaningful distribution estimate, because the universe of possible project types is not limited to the four issue areas selected for measurement in this effort. However, assuming a constant distribution of these four issue areas relative to this year’s distribution, it is estimated that 8 percent of respondents would complete only the Successful Service module, 35 percent would complete two modules, 41 percent would complete three modules and 16 percent would complete four modules. Because projects that are both housing and environment are so unlikely, we did not calculate an estimate for five modules. Given an estimated burden time of 8, 15, 22 and 30 minutes for each respective survey combination of one through four modules, the total estimated yearly burden for 660 surveys is 198 hours.

The estimated annual burden for the Successful Service module is 88 hours. The estimate annual burden for Volunteer Services is 41 hours, for Disaster Services is 33 hours, for Housing is 13 hours and for Environment is 22 hours.

 

A13. Cost burden to the respondent

There is no cost burden to the respondent.

 

A14. Cost to Government

There is no additional cost to the Government.

A15. Reasons for program changes

Not applicable.

 

 A16.  Publication of results

Publication of data from the surveys aggregated at a national or regional level may be published in the Congressional Budget Justification, annual plans and other plans, evaluations and reviews. No individual data will be published.

 

A17.  Explain the reason for seeking approval to not display the expiration date for OMB approval of the information collection.

Not applicable.

 

 A18.  Exceptions to the certification statement

There are no exceptions to the certification statement in the submitted ROCIS form.

3