Chips SOI Supporting Statement A Final

SUPPORTING STATEMENT

U.S. Department of Commerce

National Institute of Standards and Technology

CHIPS Statement of Interest Information Collection

OMB Control No. 0693-0091

SUPPORTING STATEMENT PART A

Justification

1. Explain the circumstances that make the collection of information necessary. Identify any legal or administrative requirements that necessitate the collection. Attach a copy of the appropriate section of each statute and regulation mandating or authorizing the collection of information.

The CHIPS Incentives Program is authorized by Title XCIX—Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America of the William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (Pub. L. 116-283, referred to as the CHIPS Act or Act), as amended by the CHIPS Act of 2022 (Division A of Pub. L. 117-167). The CHIPS Incentives Program is administered by the CHIPS Program Office (CPO) within the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the United States Department of Commerce (Department). As part of the application process, applicants must submit a statement of interest available at https://applications.chips.gov/ at least 21 days before submission of a pre-application or application.

2. Indicate how, by whom, and for what purpose the information is to be used. Except for a new collection, indicate the actual use the agency has made of the information received from the current collection.

A potential applicant must submit a statement of interest with a brief description of the proposed project. The purpose of the statement of interest (SOI) is to gauge interest in the program and enable CPO to plan for application review. CPO requires the submission of statements of interest a minimum of 21 days before proceeding to the next step in the application process.

Data elements include:

• Name of potential applicant organization and contact information

• Estimated date of submission of a pre-application or full application

• Basic project information, which will be elicited through multiple-choice questions and specific fields in the statement of interest form, including nature of project and potential scope

The form is available and will be submitted electronically at https://applications.chips.gov/.

This information will be collected once per respondent per site location. If an entity is planning to apply for separate instances of assistance for separate locations, then one SOI per location would be required.

There is no plan to share this information with any other agency other organizations inside or outside the Department of Commerce or the government at this time.

3. Describe whether, and to what extent, the collection of information involves the use of automated, electronic, mechanical, or other technological collection techniques or other forms of information technology, e.g., permitting electronic submission of responses, and the basis for the decision for adopting this means of collection. Also describe any consideration of using information technology to reduce burden.

Applications must be submitted electronically at https://applications.chips.gov/.

The SOI will consist of a series of questions presented to registered users via a web form. Question types will include basic contact information, picklists, cost estimates, and brief project narratives. This method was chosen to reduce applicant burden by eliminating redundant entries to the greatest extent possible and consolidating entries into one online form.

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.

Not applicable as this is a new program.

5. If the collection of information impacts small businesses or other small entities, describe any methods used to minimize burden.

The CHIPS portal is designed to facilitate CHIPS program interactions and application submissions and provide a customer-friendly interface to reduce the burden on CHIPS stakeholders. The process of the Statement of Interest is one portion within a larger system. The CHIPS system has multiple modes of reducing burden to the applicant:

1) Conditional questions – when applicable, customers will only see questions necessary, based on their responses to previous questions. 

2) Reusable information – all the applications are programmed on the same platform, allowing the use of information supplied in one application to be available to the others. Once an applicant provides their company or contact information in one portion of the larger system, the Incentives application will pre-populate the details anywhere that information is needed so that users do not have to type the same information multiple times. 

3) Just in time automation - certain sections of the applications will unlock for the users only after applicants have passed certain gates, so that they are not providing more information than necessary at any step in the application process. 

6. Describe the consequence to Federal program or policy activities if the collection is not conducted or is conducted less frequently, as well as any technical or legal obstacles to reducing burden.

Collection of statements of interest will allow the CPO to gauge interest in the program and the types of projects and applicants applying, and appropriately prepare staffing to review applications. The complexity of future applications and the resultant need for early interaction with potential applicants is essential to the success of the program. Without a way to identify potential applicants, the process of preparing the infrastructure needed to support those submissions would be uneducated and potentially result in significant delays, risking program success. Additionally, interactions via this application portal will help reduce the burden on customers. Having a forum that allows applicants to identify themselves to the program office allows for early interaction and more opportunity for valuable interaction that has great potential to reduce issues when submitting applications to the program. The CHIPS Program remains committed to providing excellent service to stakeholders through the lifespan of the Act, and this information collection is critical to providing that standard of service in order to ensure overall success of the program.

7. Explain any special circumstances that would cause an information collection to be conducted in a manner: requiring respondents to report information to the agency more often than quarterly; requiring respondents to prepare a written response to a collection of information in fewer than 30 days after receipt of it; requiring respondents to submit more than an original and two copies of any document; requiring respondents to retain records, other than health, medical, government contract; grant-in-aid, or tax records, for more than three years; in connection with a statistical survey, that is not designed to produce valid and reliable results that can be generalized to the universe of study; requiring the use of a statistical data classification that has not been reviewed and approved by OMB; that includes a pledge of confidentiality that is not supported by authority established in statute or regulation, that is not supported by disclosure and data security policies that are consistent with the pledge, or which unnecessarily impedes sharing of data with other agencies for compatible confidential use; or requiring respondents to submit proprietary trade secrets, or other confidential information unless the agency can demonstrate that it has instituted procedures to protect the information's confidentiality to the extent permitted by law.

Potential applicants are only required to submit one statement of interest per application. The aggregated results from these data collection activities are not intended for general publication, however the results will/may be disseminated to select CHIPS or DOC staff, and key federal policy and management officials.

8. If applicable, provide a copy and identify the date and page number of publication in the Federal Register of the agency's notice, required by 5 CFR 1320.8(d), soliciting comments on the information collection prior to submission to OMB. Summarize public comments received in response to that notice and describe actions taken by the agency in response to these comments. Consultation with representatives of those from whom information is to be obtained or those who must compile records should occur at least once every 3 years - even if the collection of information activity is the same as in prior periods. There may be circumstances that may preclude consultation in a specific situation. These circumstances should be explained.

A 60-day Federal Register Notice (FRN) soliciting public comments was published on Wednesday, April 12, 2023 (Vol. 88, Number 70, pages 22011-22012). No comments were received.

A 30-day Federal Register Notice (FRN) soliciting public comments was published on Monday, August 21, 2023 (Vol. 88, Number 160, page 56797).

In order to ensure that the CHIPS meeting request and Incentives application solutions meet stakeholder needs, the CHIPS program has engaged in an extensive benchmarking and stakeholder consultation effort. The CHIPS Incentives Application Portal is modeled after a very similar grant application portal that was recently established by NTIA for broadband grants. The CHIPS portal incorporates many of the same features of the NTIA portal. The Statement of Interest is unique to the CHIPS Incentives application, and is intended to help assess program interest and facilitate the application process for applicants.

In addition to benchmarking, the CHIPS Program Office has engaged in extensive stakeholder outreach with the U.S. semiconductor industry, in order to ensure that the CHIPS Incentives solution is designed to meet their needs.

9. Explain any decision to provide any payment or gift to respondents, other than remuneration of contractors or grantees.

There are no plans to provide payments or gifts to respondents.

10. Describe any assurance of confidentiality provided to respondents and the basis for the assurance in statute, regulation, or agency policy. If the collection requires a systems of records notice (SORN) or privacy impact assessment (PIA), those should be cited and described here.

Information in this system is not maintained in a Privacy Act system of records (i.e., information about an individual is not retrieved by the individual’s name or unique identifier) and a SORN and Privacy Act Statement are not required.

In accordance with the privacy provisions of the E-Government Act of 2002, a privacy impact assessment is required for this information system. The information will be maintained in NIST’s Business Operations Office System. The system’s PIA is being updated to reflect the collection and maintenance of CHIPS-related information and will be review and approved by the Department’s Senior Agency Official for Privacy before being published to the Department’s privacy program page available at: https://osec.doc.gov/opog/privacy/NIST-pias.html.

11. Provide additional justification for any questions of a sensitive nature, such as sexual behavior and attitudes, religious beliefs, and other matters that are commonly considered private. This justification should include the reasons why the agency considers the questions necessary, the specific uses to be made of the information, the explanation to be given to persons from whom the information is requested, and any steps to be taken to obtain their consent.

No sensitive or private information of this sort is being collected.

12. Provide estimates of the hour burden of the collection of information.

The CHIPS Program Office anticipates a large volume of SOIs received upfront driven by high initial interest, volume rapidly declines over time.

Collection Activity	Number of Respondents	Number of responses annually / respondent	Total annual responses	Estimated hours per response	Total Annual Burden Hours
Statement of Interest	500	1	500	.5 (30 minutes)	250

13. Provide an estimate for the total annual cost burden to respondents or record keepers resulting from the collection of information. (Do not include the cost of any hour burden already reflected on the burden worksheet).

There are no subscription costs to respondents or record keepers resulting from the collection of this information. There is no subscription or service cost to submit a Statement of Interest. Use of the website for submitting the information is free. Once collected the respondent has no requirement to pay for any service to maintain eligibility.

Type of Respondent	Number of Respondents	Number of Responses per Respondent	Average Burden per Response	Hourly Wage Rate*	Total Burden Costs
Applicant	500	1	.5 hrs.	$47.32	$11,830
Total	--	--	--	--	$11,830

* Hourly wage based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for a 13-1082 Project Management Specialist, mean annual wage. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes131082.htm

14. Provide estimates of annualized costs to the Federal government. Also, provide a description of the method used to estimate cost, which should include quantification of hours, operational expenses (such as equipment, overhead, printing, and support staff), and any other expense that would not have been incurred without this collection of information. Agencies may also aggregate cost estimates from Items 12, 13, and 14 in a single table.

Initial start-up costs involved the implementation of a contract to provide development of a web-based application. The contract involves three of the four modules of the larger system – the Statement of Intent, Pre-application, and Full-application. The cost of developing the Statement of intent as a portion of that contract is approximately $1.075M. Continued maintenance and licensing costs will be approximately $211,732 per year.

Staff	Grade/Step	Salary	Fringe (if applicable	% of Effort	Total Annualized Cost to Gov’t
Federal Oversight
NIST Project Oversight Officer -	ZP-IV	170,000		25%	$42,500
System Maintenance (labor)
NIST OISM systems maintenance staff x 2		140,000	65.6% (leave and benefits)	5%	$23,184
NIST OISM IT Security		140,000		5%	$11,592
System Operation (labor)
CPO Engagement Staff x 6		170,000	65.6% (leave and benefits)	5%	$84,456
Other Objects (Non-labor)
Licenses					$50,000
Total Cost to the Government					$211,732

15. Explain the reasons for any program changes or adjustments reported on the burden

worksheet.

This is an extension to a new information collection.

16. For collections of information whose results will be published, outline plans for tabulation and publication. Address any complex analytical techniques that will be used. Provide the time schedule for the entire project, including beginning and ending dates of the collection of information, completion of report, publication dates, and other actions.

The agency plans to perform certain analyses and develop statistics, reports, or other items summarizing the results of the collection activity. For example, the agency will develop reports showing the number of statements of interest submitted, correlated by geographic area, cross referenced with the proposed type of project submitted in the statement of interest. Correlating this information with business size information available in FPDS will most likely be required to report the impact of this program on government and agency small business goals.

This analysis will occur on a regular and recurring basis over the life cycle of the revolving nature of the program.

17. If seeking approval to not display the expiration date for OMB approval of the information collection, explain the reasons that display would be inappropriate.

The expiration date will be clearly displayed with the OMB Control Number.

18. Explain each exception to the topics of the certification statement identified in “Certification or Paperwork Reduction Act Submissions.”

There will be no exceptions to the certification statement and NIST certifies compliance with 5 CFR 1320.9 and the related provisions of 5 CFR 1320.8(b)(3).