Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed Collection; Comment Request

AGENCY:

Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.

ACTION:

Notice and request for comments.

SUMMARY:

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), as part of its continuing effort to reduce paperwork and respondent burden, invites the general public to take this opportunity to comment on the “Generic Clearance for the Collection of Qualitative Feedback on Agency Service Delivery” for approval under the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA). This collection was developed as part of a Federal Government-wide effort to streamline the process for seeking feedback from the public on service delivery. This notice announces our intent to submit this collection to OMB for approval and solicits comments on specific aspects for the proposed information collection.

DATES:

Written comments are due by April 15, 2019.

ADDRESSES:

Send comments to: Jeannette Walters-Marquez, Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, 250 E Street SW, Washington, DC 20427, telephone and fax (202) 606-5488, or send via email to jwmarquez@fmcs.gov. Comments may also be sent by electronic mail message over the internet via the Federal eRulemaking Portal. See Federal eRulemaking Portal website ( http://www.regulations.gov ) for instructions on providing comments via the Federal Rulemaking Portal.

All comments will be available for inspection at 250 E Street SW, Washington, DC 20427, Room 7113 (Reading Room) from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, excluding legal holidays.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

For specific questions related to collection activities, please contact Jeannette Walters-Marquez, 202-606-5488, jwmarquez@fmcs.gov.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Comments submitted in response to this notice may be made available to the public through posting on a government website. For this reason, please do not include in your comments information of a confidential nature, such as sensitive personal information or proprietary information. If you send an email comment, your email address will be automatically captured and included as part of the comment that is placed in the public docket and made available on the internet. Please note that responses to this public comment request containing any routine notice about the confidentiality of the communication will be treated as public comments that may be made available to the public notwithstanding the inclusion of the routine notice.

The proposed information collection activity provides a means to garner qualitative customer and stakeholder feedback in an efficient, timely manner, in accordance with the Administration's commitment to improving service delivery. By qualitative feedback we mean information that provides useful insights on perceptions and opinions, but are not statistical surveys that yield quantitative results that can be generalized to the population of study. This feedback will provide insights into customer or stakeholder perceptions, experiences and expectations, provide an early warning of issues with service, or focus attention on areas where communication, training or changes in operations might improve delivery of products or services. These collections will allow for ongoing, collaborative and actionable communications between the Agency and its customers and stakeholders. It will also allow feedback to contribute directly to the improvement of program management.

The solicitation of feedback will target areas such as: Timeliness, appropriateness, accuracy of information, courtesy, efficiency of service delivery, and resolution of issues with service delivery. Responses will be assessed to plan and inform efforts to improve or maintain the quality of service offered to the public. If this information is not collected, vital feedback from customers and stakeholders on the Agency's services will be unavailable.

The Agency will only submit a collection for approval under this generic clearance if it meets the following conditions:

• The collections are voluntary;
• The collections are low-burden for respondents (based on considerations of total burden hours, total number of respondents, or burden-hours per respondent) and are low-cost for both the respondents and the Federal Government;
• The collections are non-controversial and do not raise issues of concern to other Federal agencies;
• Any 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 near future;
• Personally identifiable information (PII) is collected only to the extent necessary and is not retained;
• Information gathered is used only internally for general service improvement and program management purposes and is not intended for release outside of the agency;
• Information gathered is not used for the purpose of substantially informing influential policy decisions; and
• Information gathered yields qualitative information; the collections are not designed or expected to yield statistically reliable results or used as though the results are generalizable to the population of study.

Feedback collected under this generic clearance provides useful information, but it does not yield data that can be generalized to the overall population. This type of generic clearance for qualitative information will not be used for quantitative information collections that are designed to yield reliably actionable results, such as monitoring trends over time or documenting program performance. Such data uses require more rigorous designs that address: The target population to which generalizations will be made, the sampling frame, the sample design (including stratification and clustering), the precision requirements or power calculations that justify the proposed sample size, the expected response rate, methods for assessing potential non-response bias, the protocols for data collection, and any testing procedures that were or will be undertaken prior to fielding the study. Depending on the degree of influence the results are likely to have, such collections may still be eligible for submission for other generic mechanisms that are designed to yield quantitative results.

As a general matter, information collections will not result in any new system of records containing privacy information and will not ask questions of a sensitive nature, such as sexual behavior and attitudes, religious beliefs, and other matters that are commonly considered private.

Current Action: New collection of information.

Type of Review: New collection.

Affected Public: Individuals and Households, Businesses and Organizations, State, Local or Tribal Government.

Below we provide projected average annual estimates:

Estimated Number of Annual Respondents: 7,000.

Expected Annual Number of Activities: 1.

Number of Respondents per Activity: 1.

Annual Responses: 7,000.

Frequency of Response: Once per request.

Average Minutes per Response: 10.

Average Expected Annual Burden hours: 1,667.