BLS Supplemental SS 1225-0088

Request for Approval under the “DOL Departmental Generic Clearance for the Collection of Routine Customer Feedback”

(OMB Control Number: 1225-0088)

TITLE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION: BLS Website Customer Satisfaction Survey

NOTE:

This is an amendment to OMB Control Number: 1225-0088. This amendment revises the total number of survey respondents and burden hours from 9,600 respondents and 480 burden hours to 48,000 respondents and 2,400 burden hours. This revision is based on more accurate information regarding the survey’s sample population on the BLS.gov website.

BLS.gov is a high-traffic website with around 48 million users and 163 million pageviews in FY 2024. After survey deployment on April 4, 2024, BLS received more survey responses than anticipated. BLS determined that the website pageviews, not users, served as a better representation of the survey’s sample population. BLS closely monitored survey responses and decreased the sampling rate from 10% to 1% on April 23, 2024 to reduce total survey burden. Since then, BLS has closely monitored the volume of survey responses for a more accurate assessment of our yearly survey volume represented in this amendment.

BLS is also updating the package with the actual screenshots which were not available at the time of original submission.

PURPOSE:

The purpose of this information collection is to obtain feedback from customers (aka visitors) to the public BLS.gov website. The feedback will be used to better understand the customer experience and whether the website is meeting their needs (i.e., they find what they are looking for, or the product provides informational value). The information collected will be used to identify opportunities to improve the website. In addition, an overall trust score for the agency and overall satisfaction score of the website will be collected. This will allow the agency to track trust and satisfaction over time and compare to other government agencies, including statistical agencies.

DESCRIPTION OF RESPONDENTS:

Respondents are individuals who are visiting the public BLS.gov website. The survey will be presented in two separate manners. One is a pop-up that is presented to a sample of respondents and the other method is a banner on the side of the website that the visitors can manually select. The survey will be conducted continuously and the customer selection process for receiving the survey will be periodically reviewed (and modified if necessary).

TYPE OF COLLECTION: (Check one)

[ ] Customer Comment Card/Complaint Form [X] Customer Satisfaction Survey

[ ] Usability Testing (e.g., Website or Software [ ] Small Discussion Group

[ ] Focus Group [ ] Other: ______________________

CERTIFICATION:

I certify the following to be true:

1. The collection is voluntary.

2. The collection is low-burden for respondents and low-cost for the Federal Government.

3. The collection is non-controversial and does not raise issues of concern to other federal agencies.

4. The results are not intended to be disseminated to the public.

5. Information gathered will not be used for the purpose of substantially informing influential policy decisions.

6. The collection is targeted to the solicitation of opinions from respondents who have experience with the program or may have experience with the program in the future.

Name: Douglas Williams

To assist review, please provide answers to the following question:

Personally Identifiable Information:

1. Is personally identifiable information (PII) collected? [ ] Yes [ X ] No

2. If Yes, is the information that will be collected included in records that are subject to the Privacy Act of 1974? [ ] Yes [ ] No

3. If Applicable, has a System or Records Notice been published? [ ] Yes [ X ] No

Gifts or Payments:

Is an incentive (e.g., money or reimbursement of expenses, token of appreciation) provided to participants? [ ] Yes [X] No

BURDEN HOURS

ORIGINAL

Category of Respondent	No. of Respondents	Participation Time	Burden
Sample visitor to BLS.gov (pop-up survey) – (Individuals or Households)	8,400	3 minutes	420 hours
Self-selected visitor to BLS.gov (banner survey)- (Individuals or Households)	1,200	3 minutes	60 hours
Totals	9,600		480 hours

REVISED

Category of Respondent	No. of Respondents	Participation Time	Burden
Sample visitor to BLS.gov (pop-up survey) – (Individuals or Households)	40,500	3 minutes	2,025 hours
Self-selected visitor to BLS.gov (banner survey)- (Individuals or Households)	7,500	3 minutes	375 hours
Totals	48,000		2,400 hours

The number of annual respondents is estimated based on a sampling rate of 1% of website pageviews and an approximately 2.5% response rate to the pop-up survey. Additional response is expected from webpage visits from visitor clicks on the banner link to complete the survey.

FEDERAL COST: The estimated annual cost to the Federal government is $8,000 (estimated based on an average GS-14/5 salary rate of $75.70 for development, programming, and system maintenance, and monitoring, receiving, analyzing, and reporting on the responses.)

If you are conducting a focus group, survey, or plan to employ statistical methods, please provide answers to the following questions:

The selection of your targeted respondents

1. Do you have a customer list or something similar that defines the universe of potential respondents and do you have a sampling plan for selecting from this universe? [ ] Yes [X ] No

If the answer is yes, please provide a description of both below (or attach the sampling plan). If the answer is no, please provide a description of how you plan to identify your potential group of respondents and how you will select them?

The survey(s) will solicit responses from customers using various methods:

• A pop-survey for sampled visitors to the website.

• A link in a banner on the BLS.gov website

The universe of potential respondents encompasses all visitors of the BLS.gov website. Visitors are defined as unique browser cookies interacting with the website. From October 2023-September 2024, there was a total of 47.9 million users. In order to prevent an individual visitor from being selected more than once within a 90 day period, cookies will be put in place. If previously selected within the past 90 days, the visitor will not be eligible for selection.

Visitors are sampled based on pageviews. Each month, 135,000 of the average 13.5 million pageviews per month will be randomly selected based on the pageview sampling rate of 1% such that this will achieve roughly 3,375 responses per month based on an estimated 2.5% response rate. The sampling rate will be monitored in order to ensure the number of desired completed responses.

Administration of the Instrument

1. How will you collect the information? (Check all that apply)

[X] Web-based or other forms of Social Media

[ ] Telephone

[ ] In-person

[ ] Mail

[ ] Other, Explain

2. Will interviewers or facilitators be used? [ ] Yes [X] No

Please make sure that all instruments, instructions, and scripts are submitted with the request.