SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

(1) Need for the Proposed Information Collections

The proposed information collection activity provides a means to garner qualitative customer and stakeholder feedback in an efficient, timely manner. This qualitative feedback provides useful insights on perceptions and opinions of customers and stakeholders. The feedback helps the Commission gain understanding into customer or stakeholder experiences and expectations and provides an early warning of issues with service, or focuses attention on areas where communication, training or changes in operations might improve delivery of products or services. These collections allow for ongoing, collaborative and actionable communications between the Commission and its customers and stakeholders and contribute directly to the improvement of program management.

(2) Description of the Information To Be Collected

The solicitation of feedback will target areas such as: timeliness, appropriateness, accuracy of information, courtesy, efficiency of service delivery, and resolution of ( printed page 89728) 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 Commission's services will be unavailable.

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 nonresponse bias, the protocols for data collection, and any testing procedures that were or will be undertaken prior to fielding the study. 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.

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 noncontroversial 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 will be used only internally for general service improvement and program management purposes and is not intended for release outside of the agency;
• Information gathered will yield qualitative information; the collections will not be designed or expected to yield statistically reliable results or used as though the results are generalizable to the population of study.

(3) Estimated Burden of the Proposed Information Collection

The Commission estimates that information collections issued under the requested generic clearance will impose an average annual burden of 350 hours on 1,000 respondents.

No record-keeping burden is known to result from the proposed collection of information.

88 FR 89727