SSA - OAW Resettlement SRC Monthly Report

Operation Allies Welcome (OAW) Resettlement State Refugee Coordinator (SRC) Monthly Report

Formative Data Collections for Program Support

0970 – 0531

Supporting Statement

Part A - Justification

April 2022

Submitted By:

Office of Refugee Resettlement

Administration for Children and Families

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

4^th Floor, Mary E. Switzer Building

330 C Street, SW

Washington, D.C. 20201

Project Officers:

Carl Rubenstein

Director, Division of Refugee Assistance (DRA)

A1. Necessity for the Data Collection

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) seeks approval for the Operation Allies Welcome (OAW) Resettlement State Refugee Coordinator (SRC) Monthly Report.

This proposed information collection meets the following goals of ACF’s generic clearance for formative data collections for program support (0970-0531):

• Delivery of targeted assistance and workflows related to program implementation or the development or refinement of program and grantee processes.

• Planning for provision of programmatic or evaluation-related training or technical assistance (T/TA).

Background

As part of OAW, a significant number of Afghan arrivals are being resettled, including humanitarian parolees. The nature and scale of rapid influx of Afghan evacuees is unprecedented and is made more challenging by the reduction in resettlement capacity over the past several years. As a result, states may need additional resources and T/TA to adequately meet the needs of these arrivals. SRCs and State Refugee Health Coordinators (SRHC) understand the specific needs within their states and can provide ORR with valuable information to inform timely and appropriate targeted support from ORR. This includes support for program implementation, development of T/TA, and information to inform program decisions on program refinement, development and processes.

Legal or Administrative Requirements that Necessitate the Collection

There are no legal or administrative requirements that necessitate the collection. ACF is undertaking the collection at the discretion of the agency.

A2. Purpose of Survey and Data Collection Procedures

Overview of Purpose and Approach

ORR proposes to collect programmatic implementation, budget deployment, and process-related information from the SRCs and SRHCs from the states with the highest numbers of Afghan arrivals, and states participating in the State Afghan Placement Assistance (SAPA) program.

The purpose of this information collection is to inform ORR’s internal planning and the timely decisions on delivering targeted assistance to programs and states who face challenges in areas such as housing, legal, health, and school enrollment (such as deploying different types of housing staff and providing resources to increase medical screening sites). The data collected will help ORR identify targeted T/TA needs related to program implementation, medical screening process modifications, and funding deployment. Information collected will also inform ORR to make timely refinement of program and grantee processes related to the newly added program component such as Support to School (S2S) and legal assistance. Limited and aggregated tabulations and descriptive summaries might be shared with states, resettlement agencies, service providers, technical assistance providers, and partnering federal resettlement agencies upon request and approval by ORR leadership to facilitate bilateral discussions and inform ORR decisions on specific targeted assistance related to program implementation, refinement of current grantee process, and provision of programmatic or evaluation-related T/TA to these stakeholders.

Guiding Questions

1. How do different types of housing staff support Afghans’ transition from short-term to long-term housing?

2. What T/TA can ORR provide to facilitate states and program deploying budgeted funding to provide timely services in housing, legal assistance, health, and schooling?

3. How are ORR’s services associated with Afghan employment outcomes?

4. What challenges do grantee and service providers face to increase medical screening sites or modify current medical screening process to meet the needs of Afghans? What T/TA and resources can ORR provide to address these challenges?

5. How can ORR refine the new legal assistance and S2S program components to better serve the Afghans and Afghan school-age children?

Design

As of March 2022, OAW Afghan evacuees have resettled into fifty states and Washington D.C. To minimize total respondent burden and increase cost-effectiveness of data collection efforts while providing valuable and usable information to ORR, we will select around 25 states meeting at least one of the two criteria: (1) states with the highest numbers of OAW Afghan arrivals, or (2) states participating in the State Afghan Placement Assistance (SAPA) program. States participating in the SAPA program receive additional funding from ORR to resettle OAW cases, augmenting the current resettlement capacity in the state. These selected states accounts for about 85-90% of the total OAW arrivals. Respondents will be SRCs and SRHCs from these most impacted states.

Information Collection Efforts

ORR will use the OAW Resettlement SRC Monthly Report form to collect information on a monthly basis from SRCs and SRHCs in these most impacted states.

A3. Improved Information Technology to Reduce Burden

For each state, aggregated data will be collected by email using an Excel spreadsheet. This spreadsheet is designed and formulated to ensure data entry consistency and accuracy.

A4. Efforts to Identify Duplication

ORR is sensitive to the time and resource constraints of state service providers during the surge and influx of Afghan arrivals. ORR has developed the OAW Resettlement SRC Monthly Report in coordination with other ORR data collection activities and has confirmed that there are no duplicative data collection efforts.

A5. Involvement of Small Organizations

No small organizations will be involved in the proposed data collection activities.

A6. Consequences of Less Frequent Data Collection

ORR will request information monthly. A timely and frequent data collection effort is necessary to provide ORR with targeted and up-to-date information related to programs serving large number of Afghan evacuees. Specifically, monthly information will provide information to ORR about different types of housing staff needed by geolocation to provide various housing services. Transitioning Afghan evacuees from high-cost short-term housing to stable long-term housing under current stringent housing market is critical to Afghans’ self-sufficiency and has critical funding implication. Monthly information also allows ORR to understand budget needs as they change and to refine brand-new services and program components (such as S2S and legal services). If the data collection is not conducted or not conducted in a timely manner, it will result in little to no data on how programs are implemented under high levels of influx, how current program capacity is effectively adjusted, what process needs to be refined, and what assistance and T/TA is needed for states during the critical initial resettlement phase. It will also jeopardize ORR’s timely program development and refinement, and risk ORR’s ability to appropriately provide T/TA to states and service providers.

A7. Special Circumstances

There are no special circumstances for the proposed data collection efforts.

A8. Federal Register Notice and Consultation

Federal Register Notice and Comments

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (Pub. L. 104-13) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regulations at 5 CFR Part 1320 (60 FR 44978, August 29, 1995), ACF published a notice in the Federal Register announcing the agency’s intention to request an OMB review of the overarching generic clearance for formative information collection. This notice was published on October 13, 2020, Volume 85, Number 198, page 64480, and provided a sixty-day period for public comment. During the notice and comment periods, no substantive comments were received.

Consultation with Experts Outside of the Study

SRCs and experts from ORR’s Division of Refugee Health have been consulted for their feedback on the questions and wording.

A9. Incentives for Respondents

No incentives for respondents are proposed for this information collection.

A10. Privacy of Respondents

Information collected will be kept private to the extent permitted by law. Respondents will be informed of all planned uses of data, that their participation is voluntary, and that their information will be kept private to the extent permitted by law.

ORR has contracted with GDIT to collect this information. As specified in the contract, the Contractor shall protect respondent privacy to the extent permitted by law and will comply with all Federal and Departmental regulations for private information. The Contractor has developed a Data Safety and Monitoring Plan that assesses all protections of respondents’ personally identifiable information. The Contractor shall ensure that all its employees, subcontractors (at all tiers), and employees of each subcontractor, who perform work under this contract/subcontract, are trained on data privacy issues and comply with the above requirements.

As specified in the evaluator’s contract, the Contractor shall use Federal Information Processing Standard compliant encryption (Security Requirements for Cryptographic Module, as amended) to protect all instances of sensitive information during storage and transmission. The Contractor shall securely generate and manage encryption keys to prevent unauthorized decryption of information, in accordance with the Federal Processing Standard.  The Contractor shall: ensure that this standard is incorporated into the Contractor’s property management/control system; establish a procedure to account for all laptop computers, desktop computers, and other mobile devices and portable media that store or process sensitive information. Any data stored electronically will be secured in accordance with the most current National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) requirements and other applicable Federal and Departmental regulations. No personally identifiable information is collected through this data collection. All information collected is aggregated information.

A11. Sensitive Questions

There are no sensitive questions in this data collection.

A12. Estimation of Information Collection Burden

Estimated Burden and Costs

ORR proposes to collect the monthly data until the end of FY2023 when Afghanistan Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2022 (ASA) funds end; for about 18 month. The estimated annual cost to respondents is calculated using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) job code for Social and Human Services Assistants [21-1093] and wage data from May 2020¹, which is $18.38 per hour. To account for fringe benefits and overhead, the rate was multiplied by two, totaling $36.76 per hour.

Instrument	Total Number of Respondents	Number of Responses Per Respondent	Average Burden Hours Per Response	Total Burden Hours	Annual Burden Hours2	Average Hourly Wage	Total Annual Cost
OAW Resettlement SRC Monthly Report	25	18	2	900	600	$36.76	22,056

A13. Cost Burden to Respondents or Record Keepers

There are no additional costs to respondents.

A14. Estimate of Cost to the Federal Government

The total cost for the data collection under this current request to the federal government is $140,946.

A15. Change in Burden

This is for an individual information collection under the umbrella formative generic clearance for program support (0970-0531).

A16. Plan and Time Schedule for Information Collection, Tabulation and Publication

Data collection will start monthly in April 2022, pending OMB approval, and will continue for about 18 months. Data collected will be tabulated and analyzed immediately after the data collection is completed. Aggregated data and tabulation will be used internally for program support and T/TA provision. These summary data will be shared with the ORR federal, state, and local partners, resettlement agencies, and refugee technical assistance providers.

A17. Reasons Not to Display OMB Expiration Date

All instruments will display the expiration date for OMB approval.

A18. Exceptions to Certification for Paperwork Reduction Act Submissions

No exceptions are necessary for this information collection.

1 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2020, 21-1093 Social and Human Service Assistants, https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes211093.htm (last visited February.16, 2022).

2 Reflects 12 months of submissions.

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