SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Title of Collection: Evidence and Evaluation Measurement Generic Clearance for the Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP)

OMB Control No.: 3145-NEW.

Expiration Date of Approval: Not applicable.

Type of Request: Request for approval of a new information collection.

Proposed Project: The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP), is establishing the TIP Evidence and Evaluation Measurement Framework as a generic clearance to support data collection for evidence building, evaluation, and organizational learning. The Framework will encompass information collections across three broad areas of TIP investment: technology translation, workforce development, and regional innovation ecosystems. The generic clearance will provide a common structure for data collection across these three areas while allowing individual data collections to be tailored to their specific purpose, context, and respondent population.

Established by the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, TIP was created to strengthen the Nation's innovation ecosystem. To fulfill this mission, TIP advances three broad strategic priorities: (1) accelerating critical and emerging technologies, (2) building a competition-ready workforce, and (3) expanding the geography of American innovation, all through partnerships that span academia, industry, government, nonprofit organizations, and other sectors. Accordingly, TIP's investments are designed around these strategic priorities to advance technology translation and commercialization, workforce development, regional innovation, and partnerships.

Across the three areas covered by the Framework, the scope of data collected will be generally similar and will include descriptive and contextual information; customer, participant, and stakeholder experiences and satisfaction; and information on the activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts of TIP investments. For example, within the technology translation area, data may include project and organizational characteristics, intellectual property development, technology validation and testing, commercialization activities, partnerships, follow-on investments, adoption barriers and risks, and other indicators of technology translation. Information collected within the workforce development and regional innovation ecosystem areas will similarly reflect the activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts relevant to those areas.

The Framework will also support the development, testing, and evaluation of data collection techniques and methods, as appropriate to individual projects conducted under the generic clearance. These activities may include, but are not limited to, survey pretesting, pilot testing, focus groups, and testing alternative data collection approaches. Insights obtained through these activities may be used to assess and improve data collection instruments and methods, test alternatives, evaluate current approaches, and inform subsequent data collection and evaluation activities.

The data collected under the Framework is intended to address evidence needs across TIP's investment portfolio. Existing administrative data can provide information about awards and selected outputs but may not capture the activities, experiences, conditions, and outcomes necessary to understand TIP investments and their results. Data collected under the Framework will supplement existing administrative information and contribute to TIP's evidence-building, evaluation, and organizational activities.

Following standard OMB requirements, TIP will submit an individual request to OMB for each information collection undertaken under this generic clearance, and will obtain OMB approval prior to implementation. TIP will provide OMB with the proposed scope of the collection, how it aligns with TIP's three evidence areas covered by the Framework, the associated respondent burden, and a copy of the data collection instrument and related materials. This approach will provide TIP flexibility to tailor data collection instruments and methods to program objectives and respondent characteristics, and to undertake development and testing activities described above. Together, these flexibilities will strengthen the quality and credibility of the evidence generated under the Framework.

Respondents: The respondents generally have the education and/or experience level commensurate to a university associate professor.

Estimated Number of Annual Respondents: 3,000.

Burden on the Public: Over the three years of the requested generic clearance, TIP estimates that approximately 3,000 principal investigators (PIs) will respond annually, with an average burden of one hour per respondent. This results in an estimated annual reporting burden of approximately 3,000 hours or 9,000 hours over the three-year clearance period. The estimated burden for individual information collections may vary depending on the methods used. For example, focus groups may require longer participation times, while surveys generally require less time. The total cumulative burden associated with all information collections conducted under the generic clearance will not exceed the approved burden estimate.

91 FR 66367