Supporting Statement for VA Forms 21-8960 & 21-8960-1
Certification of School Attendance or Termination
OMB 2900-0458
A. Justification
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), through its Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), administers an integrated program of benefits and services established by law for veterans, service personnel, and their dependents and/or beneficiaries. 38 U.S.C. 101 (4) and 38 CFR 3.667 provide the authority to pay benefits to or for a child who attends an approved course of instruction or training between the ages of 18 and 23.
VA Form 21-8960 and VA Form 21-8960-1 are being revised to include new standardization data points; to include identification information.
VA Forms 21-8960 & 21-8960-1 are used to gather the necessary information to determine continued benefit entitlement to or for a child between the ages of 18 and 23 who is attending school.
VA Form 21-8960 is not available on the One-VA website for several reasons. VA Form 21-8960 is a computer-generated form which is dispatched only by VA’s central computer system. VA Form 21-8960-1 is used by VA regional offices if VA Form 21-8960 is not correctly dispatched. Respondents may provide the information requested by VA Form 21-8960-1 via telephone, e-mail, or fax. Before VA Forms 21-8960 are mailed to beneficiaries, they are partially completed by VA with information that is specific to the beneficiary and the schoolchild for whom verification of school attendance is being requested. Additionally, beneficiaries are required to provide the information requested by these forms within 60 days from the date the form is generated, or benefits may be reduced or terminated. The date VA mails the form to the beneficiary is necessary in order to correctly determine due process and appeal periods. No data regarding the percentage of responses received via e-mail is available. Currently, there has been no consideration of using other information technology. The Department will reconsider using other information technology when the resources become available.
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.
Program reviews were conducted to identify potential areas of duplication; however, none were found to exist. There is no known Department or Agency which maintains the necessary information, nor is it available from other sources within our Department.
The collection of information does not involve small businesses or entities.
VA compensation and pension programs require current information to determine eligibility for benefits. VA Forms 21-8960 and 21-8960-1 solicit information that is needed to determine continued benefit eligibility for schoolchildren between the ages of 18 and 23. If the collection were not conducted or were conducted less frequently, VA would be unable to verify continued entitlement in a timely manner, and increased overpayments would result.
There is no special circumstance requiring collection in a manner inconsistent with 5 CFR 1320.6 guidelines.
The Department notice was published in the Federal Register on January 31, 2017, Volume 82 No. 19, Page 8891. No comments were received in response to this notice.
No payments or gifts to respondents have been made under this collection of information.
The records are maintained in the appropriate Privacy Act System of Records identified as “Compensation, Pension, Education, and Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment Records-VA (58VA21/22/28),” published at 74 FR 29275 on June 19, 2009, and last amended at 77 FR 42593 (July 19, 2012).
There are no questions of a sensitive nature.
Estimate of Information Collection Burden.
a. Number of Respondents is estimated at 70,000 per year.
b. Frequency of Response is once a year for most beneficiaries.
c. Annual burden is 11,667 hours.
d. Estimated completion time is 10 minutes.
e. The respondent population for VA Forms 21-8960 and 21-8960-1 is composed of individuals seeking continued benefit entitlement to or for a child between the ages of 18 and 23 who is attending school. VBA cannot make further assumptions about the population of respondents because of the variability of factors such as the educational background and wage potential of respondents. Therefore, VBA used general wage data to estimate the respondents’ costs associated with completing the information collection.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) gathers information on full-time wage and salary workers. According to the latest available BLS data, the median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers are $954.40. Assuming a forty (40) hour work week, the mean hourly wage is $23.86 based on the BLS wage code – “00-0000 All Occupations.” This information was taken from the following website: (http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000, May 2016).
Legally, respondents may not pay a person or business for assistance in completing the information collection and a person or business may not accept payment for assisting a respondent in completing the information collection. Therefore, there are no expected overhead costs for completing the information collection. VBA estimates the total cost to all respondents to be $278,374.62 (11,667 burden hours x $23.86 per hour).
This submission does not involve any recordkeeping costs.
Estimated Costs to the Federal Government:
Grade |
Step |
Burden Time |
Hourly Rate |
Cost Per Response |
Total Responses |
Total |
7 |
3 |
45 |
$18.07 |
$ 13.55 |
70,000 |
$ 948,675.00 |
Overhead at 100% Salary |
$ 948,675.00 |
|||||
9 |
3 |
30 |
$22.11 |
$ 11.06 |
70,000 |
$ 773,850.00 |
Overhead at 100% Salary |
$ 773,850.00 |
|||||
11 |
3 |
20 |
$26.75 |
$ 8.92 |
70,000 |
$ 624,166.67 |
Overhead at 100% Salary |
$ 624,166.67 |
|||||
|
|
|||||
Processing / Analyzing Costs |
$4,693,383.33 |
|||||
Printing and Production Cost |
$ 52,148.70 |
|||||
Total Cost to Government |
$4,745,532.04 |
Overhead costs are 100% of salary and are same as the wage listed above and the amounts are included in the total.
Note: The hourly wage information above is based on the hourly 2017 General Schedule (Base) Pay (https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/pdf/2017/GS_h.pdf ). This rate does not include any locality adjustment as applicable.
The processing time estimates above are based on the actual amount of time employees of each grade level spend to process to completion a claim received on this form. The within-grade step (3) of each employee represents the average experience of employees within each grade.
There is no change in the reporting burden. VA Form 21-8960 and VA Form 21-8960-1 are being revised to include new standardization data points; to include identification information.
The information collection is not for publication or tabulation use.
We are not seeking approval to omit the expiration date for OMB approval.
This submission does not contain any exceptions to the certification statement.
B. Collection of Information Employing Statistical Methods
This collection of information does not employ statistical methods.
File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
File Title | SF 83 SS VAF 21-8926 |
Author | Veterans Benefits Administrat |
File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
File Created | 2021-01-22 |