Supporting Statement

OMB Control No. #0693-0031 – NIST Generic Request for Customer Service-Related Data Collections

Standards Information Center Customer Satisfaction Evaluation

FOUR STANDARD SURVEY QUESTIONS

1. Explain who will be surveyed and why the group is appropriate to survey.

The attached instrument will be used as a “post-customer interaction evaluation” to determine customer satisfaction ratings with the technical information products and research services provided by the Standards Information Center at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Technical information and research specialties of the Standards Information Center include standards, regulations, and conformity assessment procedures in the United States and around the world.

Staff assigned to NIST’s Associate Director for Laboratory Programs, Standards Coordination Office (SCO), Standards Services Group, 601.01 will collect the survey information. Customers will self-select to be surveyed or not, and no script will be used in their selection. All surveyed responders will be users of Standards Coordination Office information products and research services. They may be U.S. national and international parties from governments, industries, academia, as well as private individuals.

This group is appropriate to survey because it represents the customer base whose views and opinions are important for SCO and NIST to understand in order to provide high levels of customer satisfaction with technical information. Guidance and feedback from customers are also critical to SCO and NIST in strategic planning for the future to develop new relevant, appropriate, and targeted standards and trade related information products and services.

2. Explain how the survey was developed, including consultation with interested parties, pre-testing, and responses to suggestions for improvement.

This survey was developed by an internal NIST work team with responsibilities for providing both the US government and public, including international customers, with standards-related, regulatory, and conformity assessment technical information products and services. The survey was pre-tested within NIST for effectiveness and ease of use. Based on the internal pre-test, it is estimated to take five minutes or less to complete the survey. In response to pre-test feedback:

• the “Not Applicable” response was changed to “Don’t Know”

• a survey statement was changed from “I am confident in the Standards Information Center” to “I will recommend Standards Information Center services to others”

• all technical terms were removed

• all acronyms were identified for maximum user comprehension.

3. Explain how the survey will be conducted, how customers will be sampled if fewer than all customers will be surveyed, expected response rate, and actions your agency plans to take to improve the response rate.

Primarily, and for the convenience of survey responders, the survey will be posted on the Internet at the website of SurveyMonkey.com. Invitations to complete the survey and a link to the survey will be circulated by SCO staff when responding to all technical information and general information written and email customer requests (approximately 400 annually). Staff will include an invitation to complete the survey in email responses to customer inquiries and the survey link in various promotional materials regularly distributed to the public.

4. Describe how the results of the survey will be analyzed and used to generalize the results to the entire customer population.

The results of the surveys will be used to comply with NIST agency-wide strategic planning requirements in order to project future needs of the agency in 10-year increments. The survey data will be used to improve NIST development and delivery of standards-related technical information products and services to more widely meet and exceed customer expectations, and to expand to include new technological applications that may be identified.