Revised Supporting Statement A 0906-0006 v3 FINAL

Supporting Statement A

Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Grantee Satisfaction Survey

OMB Control No. 0906-0006 - Revision

Terms of Clearance: None

A. Justification

1. Circumstances Making the Collection of Information Necessary

This is a request to reinstate with revisions to the Grantee Satisfaction Survey, previously approved under 0906-0006 and 1090-0007. HRSA is requesting that the survey be reinstated under 0906-0006. HRSA elected to do this as a full package because this is considered a medium burden package, and HRSA wanted to give the public an opportunity to comment. HRSA plans to survey HRSA grant recipients to better understand their opinions about HRSA’s grants processes and to improve the way HRSA conducts business with them. This survey will focus on grantee customer satisfaction areas related to the grants life cycle, grantee relationships with HRSA staff (e.g., Project Officers, Grants Management Officers), technical assistance received from HRSA Bureaus and Offices, availability of grant resources, and grantee access to guidance and instructional documents, etc. The seven (7) grants management areas, which are directly related to the grants life cycle, are: Customer Service/Cooperation; Policies and Procedures; Pre-Award Phase; Award Phase; Reporting/Post-Award Administration; Technical Assistance; and Priorities for Improvement. The ability to receive this information from external customers will provide HRSA with a repository of information, which will be incorporated into the Office’s strategic efforts to coordinate with program staff to improve grants management services and customer service overall.

In 2023, HRSA revised the survey with the goal to enhance utility of survey results, promote equity, and reduce burden on survey respondents and HRSA staff. The revised version of the survey has fewer questions and satisfaction drivers. In addition, the revised survey was restructured to allow for more granular and targeted feedback related to specific grants and has been changed from a 10-point Likert scale to a 5-point Likert scale. HRSA has also worked to integrate bureau-specific satisfaction questions in efforts to reduce the amount of surveys HRSA grantees are asked to respond to.

This activity is consistent with the goals of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-11, Preparation, Submission, and Execution of the Budget, Part 6, The Federal Performance Framework for Improving Program and Service Delivery, Section 280, Managing Customer Experience and Improving Service Delivery.

This activity also supports HRSA’s contributions to OMB Memorandum M-23-15, Measuring, Monitoring, and Improving Organizational Health and Organizational Performance in the Context of Evolving Agency Work Environments. The memo states, “As agencies consider their work environments within their major operating units, assessments of organizational health and organizational performance can help identify beneficial or adverse impacts of telework and other operational policies on the agency’s performance of its mission. These may include impacts to customer experience….”

2. Purpose and Use of Information Collection

The HRSA Grantee Satisfaction Survey will provide meaningful and relevant results to agency decision-makers about various customer satisfaction domains (e.g., efficiency, timeliness, usefulness, responsiveness, quality, and overall satisfaction with HRSA project officers, products, and services). The information collected will assist HRSA in its efforts to gauge, understand and effectively respond to the needs and concerns of its customers, especially as they relate to the aforementioned areas. The survey results will provide HRSA with concrete indicators regarding the best areas in which to dedicate time, energy, and resources to improve customer service. This information will be used to support agency-wide continuous quality improvement efforts. Results will be used by HRSA to improve the efficiency, quality, and timeliness of its grants business processes, as well as to strengthen its partnership with its external customers.

3. Use of Improved Information Technology and Burden Reduction

The survey will be administered online only. HRSA’s contractor, CFI group, uses a Qualtrics XM Platform that received its FedRAMP Authority To Operate (ATO) on June 29, 2018 at a Moderate Impact level.

4. Efforts to Identify Duplication and Use of Similar Information

As the information collected pertains to HRSA grantees only, there are no other sources or data collection efforts for this information. For example, a literature review or consultations with other HHS agencies would not yield this information.

5. Impact on Small Businesses or Other Small Entities

No small businesses will be involved in this study.

6. Consequences of Collecting the Information Less Frequently

Respondents will respond to data collection every two years. A biennial data collection approach allows for implementation of any actionable efforts identified by the survey results related to improving grantee customer satisfaction. If data are collected less frequently, HRSA will not have timely access to grantee feedback on efforts to improve their satisfaction with HRSA customer service efforts. There are no technical or legal obstacles to reduce the burden.

7. Special Circumstances Relating to the Guidelines of 5 CFR 1320.5

The request fully complies with the regulation.

8. Comments in Response to the Federal Register Notice/Outside Consultation

Section 8A:

A 60-day notice published in the Federal Register on March 10, 2023, vol. 88, No. 47; p. 15053. There were no public comments. 

Section 8B:

In April 2023, HRSA conducted a focus group with eight grantees through a third-party federal contract with NORC at the University of Chicago. Grantees represented various HHS regions, duration of award recipients, and urban/rural status as well as roles in their organization such as Grant Administrator, Business Officer, Project Director, or Principal Investigator. HRSA received feedback and recommendations on ways to modify the survey instrument from the focus group session. Focus group participants did not submit any major problems with the Grantee Satisfaction Survey that could not be resolved during consultation.

9. Explanation of any Payment/Gift to Respondents

No payments or gifts will be provided to respondents.

10. Assurance of Confidentiality Provided to Respondents

Survey responses will be collected on a secure server controlled by the survey contractor and inaccessible to HRSA personnel. Respondent-level data will not be made available to HRSA personnel. The information will be kept confidential to the extent permitted by law. The survey contractor will take the following measures to ensure respondent confidentiality following data collection:

• At the survey close, the survey sample frame will be deleted from the on-line data collection tool.

• Data downloaded to the contractor’s secure warehouse will be stripped of all personally-identifiable information; all personally-identifiable data fields will be deleted from files on the contractor’s secure servers upon finalization of project deliverables.

• No personally-identifiable information will be included in deliverables to HRSA in any format (e.g., reports, presentations, online reporting/analysis portals).

• Online access to survey results reporting shall be strictly limited to authorized users designated by HRSA and will require personal user authentication (e.g., username/email and password unique to authorized personnel).

• No segmentation of responses below a sample size of 10 shall be included in any report or permitted in any deliverable.

• The survey contractor will review all responses to open-ended survey items and redact any references which may identify respondents such as names, telephone numbers, email addresses, and so.

The purpose of these measures is to ensure the anonymity of survey respondents to HRSA staff. These measures are not a legal requirement.

11. Justification for Sensitive Questions

There are no questions of a sensitive nature.

12. Estimates of Annualized Hour and Cost Burden

Respondents will include HRSA Grantees, specifically individuals who hold positions as a grantee’s main point of contact, such as a Project Director or Principal Investigator.

12A. Estimated Annualized Burden Hours

HRSA will send the survey to 7,813 potential respondents. This number is based on an active grants list sent from OFAM indicating there are 7,813 active project directors managing HRSA awards.

Based on HRSA Grantee Satisfaction Surveys administered in previous years, HRSA estimates a 32 percent response rate, for a total of 2,500 responses (see Table 1). The online survey requires approximately 20 minutes to complete. This estimate was based on pretesting the form with 6 potential respondents.

Table 1: Estimated Annualized Burden Hours

Type of Respondent	Form Name	No. of Respondents	No. Responses per Respondent	Total Responses	Average Burden per Response (in hours)	Total Burden Hours
Project Director, Principal Investigator	HRSA Grantee Satisfaction Survey	7,813	0.32	2,500	0.34	850
Total		7,813		2,500		850

12B.

For the purposes of this estimate, HRSA used the Bureau of Labor Statistics median hourly wage estimate for 11-1021, General and Operations Managers. Responsibilities include: “Plan, direct, or coordinate the operations of public or private sector organizations, overseeing multiple departments or locations. Duties and responsibilities include formulating policies, managing daily operations, and planning the use of materials and human resources, but are too diverse and general in nature to be classified in any one functional area of management or administration, such as personnel, purchasing, or administrative services.” HRSA used General and Operations Managers as the profession that will fill out this survey as the respondents for this survey would most likely fall under the General and Operations Manager position in their respective organization.

Table 2 shows the estimated annualized burden costs. The median wage for General and Operations Managers is $47.16 per hour, which is multiplied by two to account for overhead costs for a total of $94.32 per hour.

Table 2. Estimated Annualized Burden Costs

Type of Respondent	Total Burden Hours	Hourly Wage Rate*	Total Respondent Costs
Project Director or Principal Investigator`	850	$94.32	$ 80,172
Total	850	$ 94.32	$ 80,172

*Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, General and Operations Managers (May 2022), https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes111021.htm.

13. Estimates of other Total Annual Cost Burden to Respondents or Recordkeepers/Capital Costs

Other than their time, there is no cost to respondents.

14. Annualized Cost to Federal Government

The total cost to the Federal Government for this information collection is $257,433.25, to support two contracts and the time investment of federal staff.

Contracts: $237,082

• The first contract ($74,957) conducted focus groups with grantees and HRSA staff to develop recommendations for updates to the survey to reduce burden and improve response rates.

• The second contract ($162,125) supported the development, testing, finalization, and administration of the updated survey.

Federal staff: $20,351.25

• One GS-15/8 for 10 hours at $91.95 per hour; plus overhead costs: $1,379.25

• One GS-14/10 for 100 hours at $86.83 per hour, plus overhead costs ($13,024.50).

• One GS-11/1 for 100 hours at $39.65 per hour, plus overhead costs ($5,947.50)

• Wages have been multiplied by 1.5 to account for overhead costs (e.g., benefits).

1. Explanation for Program Changes or Adjustments

Changes between the current and requested burden are due to adjustments to the number of awardees projected to complete the survey as well as adjustments to the estimated time to complete the survey. The previous approved collection had 1,206 total burden hours, and the current request is for 850 burden hours. This is a decline of 356 hours, or a 30% decline in burden hours.

16. Plans for Tabulation, Publication, and Project Time Schedule

HRSA estimates that approval of the survey will permit HRSA to field the survey in May of 2024.

HRSA intends to survey 7,813 awardee project directors with one or more HRSA grants. HRSA has 14,453 active awards (grants and cooperative agreements) to 3,996 separate organizations as of October 1, 2023. Frequently, a single individual is a project director for multiple grants an organization receives. Therefore, HRSA will email each project director to ensure that the survey is representative of organizations that receive HRSA awards.

HRSA will keep the results of the HRSA Grantee Satisfaction Survey internal, to support action planning for internal business process improvements. HRSA does not plan to publicly publish results at this time, because we believe that publication may disincentivize people from responding. Although the responses will be confidential, there was some concern during focus group testing that their answers would be tracked. Furthermore, there are budgetary and technical constraints with increased posting of HRSA data online, beyond what is already regularly posted.  HHS and HRSA are working on mechanisms that would facilitate increased data sharing. This approach is consistent with the Department's Open Government Plan, Section 3.13., Access to Scientific Data and Publications and with the Fifth U.S. Open Government Action Plan. While customer satisfaction is publicly reported for High Impact Service Providers, HRSA is not among that list of providers. 

17. Reason(s) Display of OMB Expiration Date is Inappropriate

The OMB number and Expiration date will be displayed on every page of every form/instrument.

18. Exceptions to Certification for Paperwork Reduction Act Submissions

There are no exceptions to the certification.

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