Attachment A - GovernorsLetter

Attachment A

The Honorable <<GOVNAME>>

Chief of Staff

A Message from the

U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics

We are writing to request that your office appoint a coordinator for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 Survey of State Government Research and Development. The U.S. Census Bureau, in collaboration with the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) within the National Science Foundation (NSF), collects data on research and development (R&D) expenditure information from the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Your survey response will be compiled by the Census Bureau and forwarded to the NCSES, the federal agency charged with collecting and reporting national R&D statistics. These statistics are used to measure states’ contributions to our Nation’s science and technology base, a building block of a strong U.S. economy. Results are publicly available from the NSF website at https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/srvystaterd/.

The coordinator you appoint will be asked to confirm the names and contact information for your state departments, agencies, commission, and public authorities that are most likely to fund or conduct R&D activities. These departments and agencies will receive a questionnaire asking about their R&D activities. The coordinator also will serve as the authorizing official for your state’s response after all departments and agencies complete their survey questionnaires. The coordinator may be called upon to assist the Census Bureau and the NCSES in obtaining responses from any non-responding agencies.

To ensure the NCSES issues the most accurate statistics for your state’s R&D investments, it is important that all agencies selected for the survey respond, even if they do not have qualifying R&D expenditures for fiscal year ending in 2023. Since each state is a unique legal and economic entity, there are no standard methods for imputing R&D for any non-responding agencies. Therefore, any non-response may contribute to an undercount in official U.S. government statistics of your state’s public investments in R&D.

Please contact Vicki Kuppala, Survey Manager, US Census Bureau for this survey, with the name and contact information for your state coordinator by e-mailing erd.sgrd@census.gov or calling 1-888-340-7525. Please respond by August 14, 2023. For previous survey cycle(s), <<CONTACT NAME>> served as your state’s survey coordinator.

Thank you in advance for your help to ensure an accurate measurement of our Nation’s R&D expenditures by state governments. You can find previous survey results and additional information on the NSF web page: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/srvystaterd/.

OMB Number

This collection has been approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The eight- digit OMB approval number is 0607-0933. Without this approval, we could not conduct this survey.

Authority and Confidentiality

Title 13, United States Code, Section 8(b) and Title 42, United States Code, Sections 1861-76 (National Science Foundation Act of 1950, as amended), authorizes the U.S. Census Bureau to conduct this collection on behalf of the National Science Foundation and to request your assistance. These data are subject to provisions of Title 13, United States Code, Section 9(b), which exempts data that are customarily provided in public records from rules of confidentiality.

Burden Estimate Statement

We estimate this collection of information to average 5 minutes per response. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this voluntary collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden to: ERD Survey Comments 0607-0933, U.S. Census Bureau, 4600 Silver Hill Road, Room ERD-6H128, Washington, DC 20233. You may e- mail comments to erd.survey@census.gov; use ERD Survey Comments 0607-0933 as the subject.