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REDUCING THE PAPERWORK BURDEN ON THE

PUBLIC: ARE AGENCIES DOING ALL THEY CAN?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON REGULATORY AFFAIRS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JUNE 14, 2005

Serial No. 109–42

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON REGULATORY AFFAIRS

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan, Chairman

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

ED SCHROCK, Staff Director

ERIK GLAVICH, Professional Staff Member

ALEX COOPER, Clerk

KRISTA BOYD, Minority Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on June 14, 2005 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Koontz, Linda D., Director, Information Management Issues, U.S. Government Accountability Office; Kimberly T. Nelson, Assistant Administrator and Chief Information Officer, U.S. Environmental Protection

Agency; Patrick Pizzella, Assistant Secretary for Administration and

Management, U.S. Department of Labor; Daniel P. Matthews, Chief

Information Officer, U.S. Department of Transportation; Kevin Barrett,

certified industrial hygienist [CIH] and certified safety professional

[CSP], Barrett Operational Safety and Health Management Services;

and Sean Moulton, senior information policy analyst, OMB Watch ........ 8

Barrett, Kevin ............................................................................................ 87

Koontz, Linda D. ....................................................................................... 8

Matthews, Daniel P. .................................................................................. 49

Moulton, Sean ............................................................................................ 102

Nelson, Kimberly T. .................................................................................. 34

Pizzella, Patrick ......................................................................................... 70

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Barrett, Kevin, certified industrial hygienist [CIH] and certified safety

professional [CSP], Barrett Operational Safety and Health Management Services, prepared statement of ......................................................... 89

Koontz, Linda D., Director, Information Management Issues, U.S. Government Accountability Office, prepared statement of .............................. 10

Matthews, Daniel P., Chief Information Officer, U.S. Department of

Transportation, prepared statement of ....................................................... 51

Miller, Hon. Candice S., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Michigan, prepared statement of ............................................................. 4

Moulton, Sean, senior information policy analyst, OMB Watch, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 105

Nelson, Kimberly T., Assistant Administrator and Chief Information Officer, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, prepared statement of ........ 37

Pizzella, Patrick, Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management, U.S. Department of Labor, prepared statement of .......................... 72

(1)

REDUCING THE PAPERWORK BURDEN ON

THE PUBLIC: ARE AGENCIES DOING ALL

THEY CAN?

TUESDAY, JUNE 14, 2005

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON REGULATORY AFFAIRS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:06 p.m., in room

2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Candice S. Miller

(chairwoman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Miller, Brown-Waite, and Lynch.

Staff present: Rosario Palmieri, deputy staff director; Erik

Glavich, professional staff member; Joe Santiago, GAO detailee;

Alex Cooper, clerk; Krista Boyd, minority counsel; and Cecelia Morton, minority office manager.

Mrs. MILLER. Good afternoon, I am going to start the hearing. I

think our ranking member Mr. Lynch will be here in any moment.

So we will call the Subcommittee of Regulatory Affairs to order.

I would certainly like to welcome you all to today’s hearing. Of

course we are going to be talking about the efforts of Federal agencies to reduce the paperwork burden imposed on the public.

Today’s hearing is the second, actually, by this subcommittee regarding this subject. On May 25th we examined efforts with the Internal Revenue Service to reduce the burden on taxpayers, which

was a very interesting hearing, I think. The IRS actually accounts,

they say, for roughly 80 percent of the paperwork burden, but there

are certainly many more agencies that have to force individuals

and businesses to take considerable amounts of time filling out

forms and complying with governmental regulations.

Excluding the Department of Treasury, the Federal Government

imposes nearly 1.6 billion hours of burden on the public, with five

agencies imposing more than 100 million hours of burden.

Much of the information collected by Federal agencies is unnecessary, some might say extremely burdensome. And agencies and the

Federal Government—we all need to work together to do a better

job to ensure that unnecessary functions are not unnecessarily burdensome. In response to increases in government-imposed burden,

Congress passed the Paperwork Reduction Act [PRA] in 1980. However, the burden imposed on the public has continued to increase

throughout the years.

Congress amended the PRA in 1995, and they established burden

reduction goals of 5 to 10 percent for the first 5 years of its enactVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:38 Sep 27, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\22572.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ment. Furthermore, the 1995 PRA set annual paperwork reduction

goals that reduced burden thereafter to the, ‘‘maximum practicable

opportunity.’’

Despite the intent of Congress, the burden has not decreased, unfortunately. The non-Treasury paperwork burden now exceeds 1996

levels. It is projected to increase even further. Of course, Congress

has not been without blame. We all have to take a good look in the

mirror sometimes, obviously, because according to the OMB the

non-Treasury burden has increased by nearly 85 million hours over

just the past 3 years because of required program changes.

In a post-September 11th world, many new regulations of course

are necessary to ensure the safety of the Nation. Congress has

passed several laws that have obviously increased the burden.

However, Federal agencies as a whole have not done, I think, as

good a job as they possibly could in reducing burden in areas that

are under their discretion. In fact, there are a lot of discretionary

agency actions and not statutes passed by Congress that have increased the non-Treasury paperwork burden imposed by the public,

some estimate by as much as 51 million hours, as well over the

past 3 years.

So we are very pleased today to have the Chief Information Officers of the EPA, of Department of Labor, of the Department of

Transportation here with us here.

Together these three agencies alone account for over 557 million

hours of burden. We tried to put that into terms of what does it

even mean. Difficult to get your mind around those numbers. To

put it into perspective, that would mean 279,000 employees would

have to spend 40 hours per week for 50 weeks per year just filling

out paperwork for these three agencies alone. Obviously this is a

task of reducing the burden, a very difficult task. And our witnesses, I am sure, will attest to that.

But we also need to always think of the term ‘‘customer service.’’

Customer service cannot be a novel concept for any level of government, Federal, State, local, what have you. We need to think in

terms of our customer and who we are servicing and do the very

best that we can for them.

The intent of Congress was very clear when it passed in 1995 the

PRA. And since burden is imposed by an agency, it is also the

agency’s responsibilities to work with us to minimize that burden.

We will be looking at that today.

We are also pleased to have with us today Linda Koontz of the

GAO. Her testimony will provide the subcommittee with insights,

very vital insights, I am sure, into efforts by Federal agencies to

reduce burden through compliance with the PRA and beyond, in

fact, what is actually required by law.

In preparation for this hearing, both Chairman Tom Davis of the

Government Reform Committee and I requested the GAO to assess

agency compliance with the PRA.

[NOTE.—The GAO report entitled, ‘‘Paperwork Reduction Act,

New Approach May Be Needed to Reduce Government Burder on

Public,’’ may be found in subcommittee files.]

Mrs. MILLER. The GAO has concluded that the governmentwide

industry CIOs generally have reviewed information collections and

certified that they have met the standards outlined in the PRA.

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However, its analysis also showed that CIOs certified collections

even though support for those standards was often missing or partial. This is somewhat troubling, because without support from

agencies showing the standards are met, or the attempts are being

made to meet them, Congress and the public has a hard time being

completely confident that the highest degree of attention was focused on minimizing the burden.

So I certainly want to thank each of our witnesses today. We are

looking forward to your input.

Obviously, every hour spent by an individual or a business completing paperwork for the Federal Government is an hour that

could be spent doing something else, perhaps more productive, and

excessive and unnecessary burden imposed on individuals and businesses hurts job creation. It certainly hinders our ability to be competitive in a global marketplace as well.

I think America’s businesses should have the absolute confidence

that their government is doing all it can to provide economic expansion. And oftentimes, unfortunately, that old saying I am from

the government, I am here to help you is a choking grain of truth,

I think.

So at this time I would like to recognize the distinguished ranking member of the subcommittee, Congressman Stephen Lynch, for

his opening remarks.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Candice S. Miller follows:]

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Mr. LYNCH. Well, thank you, Madam Chairwoman.

First of all, I would like to thank you, Madam Chairwoman, for

convening this hearing to examine what agencies are doing to decrease the amount of paperwork that Americans are forced to do

in compliance with various laws administered by these agencies.

Information collection, I think, if done efficiently, can be one of

the most important and most powerful and necessary tools of the

Federal Government. Information gathering enables our government to collect taxes, administer programs and enforce the law.

Some collections are also used to provide important information to

the public.

For example, under the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory businesses are required to report information about the toxic chemicals

they release into our air and water. EPA then makes that information publicly available, and this holds polluters accountable and it

enables members of the public to find out about the toxic chemicals

being released into their neighborhoods and their towns.

It also has been an effective tool to discourage companies from

polluting and to tighten their operating procedures. They do that

voluntarily under the threat of disclosure. Without the government

mandate to publish that information, and without accurate information, there would be a built-in inefficiency that future companies

and successor companies are forced to pay the cost of the damage

done by their predecessors.

While it is critical for agencies to collect certain information in

order to do their jobs, it is also very, very important that the process be as easy as possible without losing necessary information.

When an agency requests information from the public, individuals and businesses have to spend time and effort gathering that

requested information and then filling out the required forms. Everyone can agree that information requests should be clear and

simple and should be available electronically.

Today we will have the benefit of hearing from the Chief Information Officers from EPA, the Department of Labor and the Department of Transportation. I am looking forward to hearing from

each of you what your agencies are doing to improve how information is collected.

I have also had a chance to look at the GAO report that Madam

Chairwoman referred to earlier, and I am concerned as well about

the compliance factor in terms of meeting the 10 standards, which

are, I believe, fair and reasonable in reducing paperwork to all respondents, both businesses and individuals.

In the report being released today on agency compliance with Paperwork Reduction Act, GAO highlighted the efforts that have been

made by the IRS and EPA. According to GAO, these agencies have

devoted significant resources to reducing the burden on individuals

in businesses and have proactively involved stakeholders in the review of certain information collections.

GAO also reports that the EPA has made burden reduction a priority because of the high visibility of the agency’s information collection and because, among other reasons, the success of the EPA’s

enforcement mission depends on information collections being properly justified and approved. GAO quotes an EPA official saying

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that information collections are the lifeblood of the agency and its

work.

Because regulatory agencies such as the EPA and the DOL and

the Department of Transportation cannot function without information, it’s important to reduce that paperwork, not cut to the bone,

and focus instead on making information collections more efficient

while maintaining the agency’s ability to collect the information

they need to do their job and that allow the agencies the freedom

to do just that.

I want to thank Madam Chairwoman again for her help and her

leadership on this issue and convening this hearing. I also want to

thank the witnesses for being here today, and I look forward to

your testimony.

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.

Mrs. MILLER. Thank you.

It’s the practice of the Government Reform Committee to swear

in all of our witnesses, so if you could all stand please and raise

your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn].

Mrs. MILLER. As we begin with the witnesses today, we ask you

to try to keep your oral testimony to 5 minutes. I won’t be right

on the money with that. But in the interest of time, if you could

watch the little boxes in front of you. When the yellow light comes

on that means you have 1 minute remaining, and of course the red

light means 5 minutes are up. If you have not concluded by then

I would ask you to try to sort of wrap it up by that time.

Our first witness, Linda Koontz, is the Director of Information

Management Issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Mrs. Koontz is responsible for issues concerning the collection user

and dissemination of government information in an era of rapidly

changing technology. Among many of her official duties Mrs.

Koontz has lead responsibility for information technology management issues at various agencies, including the Department of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development and the Social

Security Administration. Ms. Koontz has a BA Degree, Bachelor’s

from Michigan University, ‘‘Go Green,’’ and is a Certified Government Financial Manager and a member of the Association for Information and Image Management Standards Board.

We certainly look forward to your testimony, Ms. Koontz.

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STATEMENTS OF LINDA D. KOONTZ, DIRECTOR, INFORMATION

MANAGEMENT ISSUES, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY

OFFICE; KIMBERLY T. NELSON, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR

AND CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL

PROTECTION AGENCY; PATRICK PIZZELLA, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR ADMINISTRATION AND MANAGEMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR; DANIEL P. MATTHEWS, CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION;

KEVIN BARRETT, CERTIFIED INDUSTRIAL HYGIENIST [CIH]

AND CERTIFIED SAFETY PROFESSIONAL [CSP], BARRETT

OPERATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH MANAGEMENT SERVICES; AND SEAN MOULTON, SENIOR INFORMATION POLICY

ANALYST, OMB WATCH

STATEMENT OF LINDA D. KOONTZ

Ms. KOONTZ. I thank you, Chairwoman Miller and members of

the subcommittee. I am pleased to be here today to discuss the implementation of the Paperwork Reduction Act. As you know, the

primary goals of the act are to minimize the government paperwork burden on the public while maximizing the public benefit and

utility of the information collections that the government undertakes.

In May 2005, OMB provided its annual PRA report to the Congress. According to this report, the paperwork burden imposed by

all Federal information collections shrank slightly in fiscal year

2004. The total burden was estimated at 7.971 billion hours, which

is a decrease of about 1.6 percent from the previous year’s estimate

of about 8.099 billion hours.

Different types of changes contributed to the overall change in

the total burden estimates, according to OMB. For example, some

of the decrease, about 156 million hours, arose from adjustments

to the estimates, including changes in estimation methods and in

the population of respondents. In addition, agency burden reduction efforts led to a decrease of about 97 million hours. These decreases were partially offset by increases in other categories, primarily an increase of 199 million hours arising from new statutes.

However, there are limitations in the government’s ability to develop accurate burden estimates, which means that the degree to

which agency burden hour estimates reflect real burden is unclear,

and so the significance of small changes in these estimates is also

uncertain. Nonetheless, these estimates are the best indicators of

Federal paperwork burden that we have, and they can be useful as

long as we keep the limitations in mind.

To help achieve the goals of minimizing burden while maximizing utility, the PRA includes a range of provisions, including a requirement for Chief Information Officers to review and certify that

information collections meet certain standards. Government-wide,

we found that agency CIOs generally reviewed information collections before they were submitted to OMB and certified that the required standards in the act were met.

However, in reviewing 12 case studies we found that CIOs provided these certifications despite often missing or inadequate support from the program offices supporting the collections. Further,

although the law requires CIOs to provide support for certifiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:38 Sep 27, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\22572.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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cations, agency files contained little evidence that CIO reviewers

had made efforts to improve the support by program offices. Numerous factors have contributed to these problems, including a lack

of management support and weaknesses in OMB guidance.

As a result the CIO reviews appear to be lacking in the rigor

that Congress envisioned and have not been shown to reduce burden. On the other hand, alternative approaches to burden reduction

suggest promising alternatives to the current review process outlined in the PRA.

Specifically, IRS and EPA have used additional evaluative processes that focused specifically on reducing burden. These processes

are targeted resource intensive efforts that outreach to stakeholders. According to these agencies, their procedures led to significant

reduction in burden to the public while maximizing the utility of

the information collections.

In summary, government agencies often need to collect information to perform their missions. The PRA puts in place mechanisms

to focus agency attention on the need to minimize the burdens that

these collections impose while maximizing the public benefit and

utility of government information collections. But these mechanisms have not succeeded in achieving the ambitious reduction of

goals set forth in the 1995 amendments. Achieving real reductions

in the paperwork burden is an elusive goal, as years of PRA reports

attest.

Although the CIO reviews required by the act as currently implemented seems to have little effect, targeted approaches to burden

reduction such as those used by the IRS and EPA could be effective. These agencies’ experience also suggest that to make such approaches successful requires top level executive commitment, extensive involvement of program office staff with appropriate expertise and aggressive outreach to stakeholders.

Indications are that this would be more resource intensive than

the current process and in fact such an approach may not be warranted at agencies that do not have the level of paperwork issues

that face IRS and similar agencies.

Consequently, it is critical that any efforts to expand the use of

the IRS and EPA models consider these factors. In a report that

is being released today we recommend that the OMB and agencies

take steps to improve reviewing processes in compliance with the

act. We also suggested that the Congress may wish to consider

mandating pilot projects to target some collections for rigorous

analysis along the lines of the IRS and EPA approaches. By taking

these steps, we believe that government can make further progress

in realizing the vision reflected in the PRA.

Chairwoman Miller, this completes my statement. I would be

pleased to answer questions at the appropriate time.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Koontz follows:]

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Mrs. MILLER. Thank you.

At this time I would like to recognize another member of our

committee, Ginny Brown-Waite from Florida, for an opening statement.

Ms. BROWN-WAITE. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman.

I appreciate your holding this hearing today to assess the paperwork burden imposed on the American public by regulatory agencies. I just came from lunch with a road builder who does a lot of

Federal work and with somebody involved in the construction industry, you know, they certainly bent my ear about the paperwork

both at the State and at the Federal level, which often seems to

be duplicative.

The Paperwork Reduction Act was an important piece of legislation that stated Congress’, unfortunately, unambiguous objective to

reduce the paperwork burden on the public. However, since passage of this legislation the paperwork burden imposed by agencies

has increased rather than decreased.

The three agencies represented at today’s hearing singlehandedly account for 557.4 million hours of the total burden imposed on the public by the Federal Government in 2004. To put

this figure into perspective, 279,000 employees would have to

spend 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year filling out paperwork just

for these three agencies. Many believe that this time could be better spent.

The reason for the steady rise in the paperwork are manifold,

and part of the blame can be placed squarely on Congress for passing legislation that causes agencies to administer more paperwork.

I am here today to learn more about how agencies determine

what paperwork is essential to the performance of their duties and

how Congress can help agencies to reduce their paperwork burden.

I look forward to hearing the remainder of the speakers and appreciate you all being here and certainly appreciate you, Madam

Chairwoman, for holding this hearing.

Mrs. MILLER. All right. Our next witness is Kimberly T. Nelson.

November 30, 2001, Ms. Nelson was sworn in as Assistant Administrator for Environmental Information and Chief Information Officer at the EPA.

Since assuming her current role at the EPA Ms. Nelson has been

instrumental in expanding the CIO’s role with the agency and has

overseen the creation and implementation of several major initiatives, including the Central Data Exchange, the release in 2003 of

the first ever draft report on the environment, and has been leading the implementation of the agency’s enterprise architecture.

She also serves on the Executive Council of the Federal CIO

Board and acts as both the co-chair of both the CIOs Council Architecture and Infrastructure Committee and the Federal Government-wide e-Rulemaking Committee as well.

Thank you for your attendance today, and we look forward to

your testimony, ma’am.

STATEMENT OF KIMBERLY T. NELSON

Ms. NELSON. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and to your colleagues for the opportunity to be here today. As you are probably

aware, EPA is responsible for implementing and enforcing eight

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major environmental statutes that protect our land, air and water

as well as the Superfund law, which includes the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act.

Over the last three decades our laws have dramatically improved

human health and the environment. Citizens are better able to

boat, swim and fish in thousands of miles of formerly contaminated

rivers and streams. Industrial waste areas have been cleaned up

and returned to productive use, and our air is the cleanest it has

been since the establishment of EPA. Total emissions of six principal air pollutants have been reduced by 54 percent from 1970 to

last year. Enforcement of the environmental laws by both the Federal Government and our States has been critical to these achievements.

Assuring compliance with these statutes requires EPA to collect

information from the public. As new regulations develop, so does

the need for collecting information associated with implementing

the regulations, which usually translates into an increase in burden.

Over the past 4 years, though, EPA’s burden on the public has

leveled a bit with the total burden of hours imposed by the EPA

on the public between 140 and 146 million hours.

To put these numbers in perspective, which you have done when

you opened up the meeting today, EPA’s burden on the public is

less than 2 percent of the total Federal Government burden, and

we now rank sixth in terms of the Federal Government.

EPA is very proud of the culture that we have that’s developed

over the years in terms of reducing burden. From the outset, our

programs develop regulations and information collections, seeking

the least burdensome approach to collecting the information while

retaining the integrity of our environmental mission.

EPA complies with the Paperwork Reduction Act by first ensuring through an independent review that the 10 standards you mentioned specified in the act are met and that the analytical processes

to derive those burden estimates are sound. We ensure that the requirements for burden reduction are understood by our program offices through guidance measures and consultation, and we track all

the information collection requests, and we notify the program offices of their impending need to respond in a timely manner.

The fact that we have had only two violations in the past 41⁄2

years speaks to the success of the program that we have in place

today. We ensure the practical utility of the information we collect

by considering statutory requirements, industry practice, past regulatory requirements and opportunities for further reduction and reporting burden. We believe that we have taken steps to reduce the

burden above and beyond what is required, including taking advantage of information technology to do so.

One of the things I am most proud of is some of the work that

we are doing with our State partners, which has released the Toxic

Inventory State Exchange Pilot. This pilot reduces the times and

the resources expended by regulated facilities to submit annual reports to the EPA and to the United States. Beginning this year facilities in Michigan, South Carolina and in Virginia are able to use

the TRI-ME software to report simultaneously to the EPA and the

States via the Internet using our Central Data Exchange.

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This is an important notion, because Representative, you mentioned that often there’s duplication between the Federal Government and States. This is a law that requires a facility to submit

two reports at the exact same time. What we are doing is putting

into place that they only have to submit one. The CDX will then

electronically forward the information on to the States, which enables the facilities to submit the reports only one time.

It streamlines the submittal process for the facilities and the

data acceptance and processing for both the EPA and the States.

The simultaneous reporting also will greatly enhance our data

quality and allow the EPA and the United States to share information much earlier in a release cycle. Very soon, we are going to be

pleased to have Indiana join that list of States, and we expect next

year another 10 to 20 additional States.

Some of the other things we are doing that might be of interest,

we have in the Toxic Release Inventory Program a modernization

effort that will help increase the amount of electronic reporting and

a major regulatory burden reduction effort that consists of two proposed rules that will come out this year. Those rules will eliminate

duplication and possibly allow a no-significant change option,

which means that a facility will be able to submit a very simplified

streamlined report if they haven’t had significant changes in their

releases.

In our Research Conservation Recovery Act program we also

have a burden of reduction effort that will include 150 regulatory

reporting changes that we expect to be promulgated later this year.

We expect that to significantly reduce or eliminate a lot of the recordkeeping and burden associated with the hazardous waste program. By only asking for the most critical information needed to

run that hazardous waste program, we believe that we can ensure

that environmental expenditures are devoted to environmental protection rather than generating unnecessary paper.

You have already mentioned our Central Data Exchange. We believe that provides that single portal through which all States, regulated facilities, tribes and others can provide data to EPA simplifying that process. Right now we have 19 different kinds of collections coming into one single portal both by States and industry

using a fully electronic approach.

One of those examples that we put in place last year was our

stormwater form, which reduces the burden by nearly one-third

while reducing the processing time by an average of 33 days, a very

significant savings by taxpayers. EPA’s Small Business Division

has convened an agencywide work group to identify and develop

the best approaches across the agency to reduce further paperwork

burden on our small businesses, and we are very much looking forward to the progress of that group as the year rolls out.

You have my testimony. I have submitted more complete information there that describes some of our compliance activity, and I

look forward to answering any questions you might have.

Thank you again.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Nelson follows:]

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Mrs. MILLER. Thank you so much. Our next witness is Daniel

Matthews. He is the Chief Information Officer of the Department

of Transportation, was appointed to his position in March 2003. As

CIO, Mr. Matthews is responsible for providing advice and guidance on how to best use information technology resources and ensuring that the Department of Transportation investments in technology are sound ones.

CIO Matthews is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, having served

from 1971 to 1975, and worked in logistics and computers there.

We certainly look forward to your testimony.

You have the floor, sir.

STATEMENT OF DANIEL P. MATTHEWS

Mr. MATTHEWS. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Madam Chairwoman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear today to discuss the Department of Transportation’s compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act [PRA].

DOT is improving the information collection and management

processes, but we also face some challenges. To put things in context, as of May 31, 2005, the Department of Transportation had

376 approved active information collections which totaled over 253

million burden hours.

Of the DOT’s information collections, one, truck driver’s hours of

service account for 65 percent, 160 million hours, of DOT’s public

burden hours. The remaining 366 information collections account

for 35 percent.

DOT’s process requires the program officials with the Operating

Administrations first validate the need for an information collection in response to a new requirement, a public law or a new rule.

If the Operating Administration or the DOT/PRA compliance officer

determines that the collection is overly burdensome on the public

or does not comply with any of the 10 PRA standards, the information collection request package is returned to the originator with

suggestions for more complete compliance with the PRA. What is

important about the process is that it allows DOT at various checkpoints to determine the need for and the practical utility of the information it proposes to collect.

It is in everyone’s interest that DOT ensure that all of our information collection activities impose the minimum possible burden

on the public and that the information gathered is of the utmost

utility. It is in the best interest of the Operating Administrations

to keep their information-gathering burdens to a minimum by ensuring that the program office is collecting only the information

necessary for the proper performance of the program function and

then only to the frequency that is needed.

Also, the Department works with the Operating Administrations

to ensure that the information gathered satisfies the program’s

needs and the collection methods used are sound and appropriate.

As to what steps DOT is taking to reduce the reporting burden,

I first note that the majority of the Department’s information collections are in response to enacted laws that are intended to ensure

the safety of the traveling public. As a result, the reality of making

annual percentage decreases and collection burden hours is a challenging task.

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For example, as I noted earlier, one collection alone imposes 160

million hours, 65 percent of DOT’s total public burden hours. This

collection is the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration

Hours of Service Rule, a rule which has been in effect since the late

1930’s and has been revised and issued in final form several times.

The Hours of Service regulations require certain commercial motor

vehicle drivers to prepare and maintain a record of duty status.

DOT expects to publish a newly revised final rule no later than

September 30, 2005.

But beyond the Hours of Service collection, and considering the

other 93 million burden hours, DOT is taking steps to reduce that

burden above and beyond what is required by the law.

Agencies such as the Federal Railroad Administration are demonstrating that information technology can and does reduce burden. For instance, FRA grants waivers to railroads to capture and

retain hours of duty data in an electronic form. Converting paper

to electronic records has been a longstanding and important initiative to improve the performance of this vital safety program while

reducing the burden on affected railroads. This not only saves the

railroads paper and storage costs, but it also serves to reduce the

paperwork burden which to date has saved over 772,000 hours.

Finally, DOT has initiated a cross-agency approach to institutionalize substantive burden reductions. DOT is focusing on several

critical strategies to achieve reductions. Improving the efficiency of

information collections, reducing the burden per response, promoting where feasible the use of electronic reporting, making adjustments where possible to the frequency of the collection and creating

partnerships internal to DOT and with other Federal agencies to

ensure there is no duplicative reporting and to maximize data sharing.

Again, I thank you for the opportunity to comment on this important topic, and I look forward to answering any questions that you

may have.

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Matthews follows:]

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Mrs. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Matthews.

Our next witness is Mr. Pizzella. Am I pronouncing it correctly?

Mr. PIZZELLA. Pizzella.

Mrs. MILLER. Pizzella. He was confirmed as Assistant Secretary

for Administration and Management by the U.S. Department of

Labor on May 9, 2001. As Assistant Secretary of Labor, Mr.

Pizzella serves as the principal adviser to the Secretary of Labor

in the Administration and Management Programs of the Department and as the Department’s Chief Information Officer and Chief

Human Capital Officer. He is a native of New Rochelle, NY.

Mr. Pizzella has served in both the private and the public sectors. He is the former Policy Coordinator for the General Services

Administration, and he was also selected in 2004 as 1 of the 25 top

doers, dreamers and drivers by Government Technology Magazine.

We did a little research on you. We thank you for your presence

here today and look forward to your testimony.

STATEMENT OF PATRICK PIZZELLA

Mr. PIZZELLA. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairwoman Miller,

Ranking Member Lynch and Congresswoman Brown-Waite. Thank

you for inviting me here to discuss the Department’s efforts to reduce paperwork burdens through compliance with the Paperwork

Reduction Act and through burden reduction initiatives beyond

what is statutorily required of the Department. I appreciate this

opportunity to discuss the Department’s responsibilities under PRA

and our efforts to provide relief and fair treatment to all business

owners and individuals.

The Department is committed to reducing the burden that America’s businesses and individuals deal with every day as a result of

Federal regulations and paperwork. The PRA is an important tool

for the Department in all Federal agencies to use in reducing unnecessary burdens on the American public.

In carrying out the Department’s broad and varied mission, the

Department of Labor enforces more than 180 Federal laws. In administering these laws and related programs, the Department actively seeks to minimize the paperwork burden it imposes on the

American public while maintaining its mission and fulfilling its

statutory and programmatic responsibility.

The Department has also successfully adopted the Office of Management and Budget’s zero tolerance policy for PRA violations, and

this is something we are very proud of because this is an indication

of the responsible and fair administration of the PRA and because

it’s also just good customer service.

Following the PRA requirements for review and approval provides a regular fresh look at our information collection practices,

helping us keep them up to date and relevant. The Department remains committed to the goals of the PRA and continues to explore

and implement new ways to reduce burden hours imposed on the

public.

To this end, since fiscal year 2002 the Department has submitted

12 burden reduction initiatives to OMB, several of which have already resulted in a reduction of approximately 221,000 burden

hours. These initiatives involve three main burden reduction strategies: One, a comprehensive evaluation and updating of regulation;

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two, streamlined information collections and, third, a deployment

of automated collection techniques.

The Department takes the PRA very seriously. The PRA requires

each agency head to designate a senior official to carry out the responsibilities of the agency under the PRA. At the Department, as

the Chief Information Officer, I report directly to the Secretary and

am responsible for ensuring agency compliance with the PRA.

Accordingly, as CIO, I established an independent process to

evaluate proposed information collections and issued internal policy

for implementing the Department’s information collection management program. Through its vigorous internal review process, the

Department aggressively controls the amount of burden it imposes

on the American public and ensures practical utility of its information collections with five main strategies in mind: The review of

rulemaking actions; assessing the use of technology; routine review

of information collection activities; burden reduction initiatives;

and, finally, business public consultation.

Through a rigorous internal review process and aggressive burden reduction strategies, the Department of Labor is committed to

reducing the paperwork burden on the American public. In addition, the Department has a very strong program of compliance assistance to help all businesses comply with those requirements we

place on them.

That concludes my prepared testimony. I look forward to answering your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Pizzella follows:]

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Mrs. MILLER. Thank you, sir.

Mr. PIZZELLA. Thank you.

Mrs. MILLER. Our next witness is Kevin Barrett. He is testifying

today on behalf of the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers

Association [SOCMA]. Mr. Barrett is a certified industrial hygienist

and also a certified safety professional. He has worked for the

chemical industry for about 16 years. He has been a member of the

SOCMA for at least 10 years, and as a member of that he has

chaired the Employee and Process Safety Committee for 5 years.

Mr. Barrett, we welcome you today and look forward to your testimony, sir.

STATEMENT OF KEVIN BARRETT

Mr. BARRETT. Good afternoon, Madam Chairwoman and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the invitation to testify on

our experience with the Paperwork Reduction Act.

My name is Kevin Barrett, and I am currently an industrial hygiene and safety consultant. I worked in the chemical industry for

18 years, and as a consultant I continue to provide support to

chemical and industry clients.

I am testifying here today on behalf of the Synthetic Organic

Chemical Manufacturers Organization [SOCMA], a trade association representing the interests of custom and specialty chemical

manufacturers, 70 percent of whom are small businesses. My comments today focus on two particular weaknesses in implementing

the Paperwork Reduction Act, specifically the cumulative effect of

numerous regulatory requirements on affected facilities and the inaccurate calculations of the burden required by specific regulations.

Federal regulators have made significant strides in assessing and

reducing the readily identifiable burdens, but regulatory burden

still weighs on the chemical industry in terms of both cost and paperwork. We have picked all of the metaphorical low-hanging fruit

of paperwork burden reduction and must now retire.

What I mean by the cumulative effect of regulatory requirements

is the number of records and reports a facility is responsible for,

including both overlapping and separate requirements imposed by

State and Federal regulators.

In many cases, States are free to impose tougher standards on

industry than are imposed by the Federal Government. The results

are often regulatory strategies with similar goals but very different

requirements. Consider the experience of one typical SOCMA member company.

This company is a small single-plant committee with approximately 110 employees and only one full-time employee dedicated to

environment, health and safety issues. It is subject to over 150

State and Federal environmental regulations, must keep records to

satisfy 98 different regulatory requirements and is obligated to submit at least 48 environmental reports per year. Alone, any one of

these requirements seems unbearable. Only when they are aggregated is the extent of the regulatory burden clear, especially when

it all falls on the shoulders of a single environmental health and

safety professional.

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ative in their assessment of a burden imposed by a particular regulatory requirement. This consistent underestimating of regulatory

burden prevents Congress, the Federal regulators and interested

citizens from understanding the full scope of the regulatory burden

imposed on an industry.

One prime example of both cumulative effects and underestimating burden is the EPA’s toxic release inventory reporting requirements. This rule has been a major focus of EPA’s burden reduction

efforts over the past several years and EPA has claimed positive

results. At the time of the EPA’s last information collection request

to the Office of Management and Budget, the burden for repeat filers dropped from 47.1 hours to 14.5 hours.

In contrast, one SOCMA member, who is a repeat filer, spent approximately 250 hours completing his TRI report in 19—excuse me,

in 2003. Additional requirements imposed by the State add another

80 hours to this total.

A second example of an agency’s underestimation of reporting

burden is evident in OSHA’s lockout/tagout burden calculations.

This rule addresses the safety of work on equipment that, if unexpectedly energized during servicing or maintenance, could cause injury. In their most recent information collection request to the Office of Management and Budget, OSHA calculated the burden of

compliance with this program anywhere between 15 seconds and

80 hours. The low-end estimates do not appear realistic.

Specifically ensuring compliance with each written lockout procedure requires an annual inspection of that procedure, which must

be documented in the written certification for each occurrence. In

addition, the training provisions require written certifications and

any retraining performed.

Considering these and the other requirements, one SOCMA

member calculated the low end of the annual burden for lockout/

tagout at about 7 hours per facility. Again this does not sound like

much, but it is almost a full day’s work and is significantly more

than 15 seconds. If aggregated over 818,532 respondents identified

by OSHA and if every respondent spends the minimum 7 hours,

OSHA would need to double their estimate of burden hours.

In conclusion, focusing attention on the Paperwork Reduction Act

provides a promising opportunity for OSHA, the EPA and the regulated community to reassess existing requirements, specifically the

problems caused by the cumulative effect of numerous regulatory

requirements and inaccurate calculation of burden. We hope that

agencies actively engage the regulated community on future burden reduction efforts in order to enhance American small business

competitiveness in the global economy.

Thank you for your invitation to present our views today. I am

happy to answer any questions you might have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Barrett follows:]

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Mrs. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Barrett.

Our last witness today is Sean Moulton. He has been the Senior

Policy Analyst for OMB Watch since early 2002. Mr. Moulton specializes in environmental information and right-to-know issues.

Before joining OMB Watch, Mr. Moulton was a political analyst

at Friends of the Earth. His background in environmental issues

and policy analysis is extensive. We certainly welcome you here

today, sir.

Mr. Moulton.

STATEMENT OF SEAN MOULTON

Mr. MOULTON. Thank you for the opportunity to testify here

today on the Paperwork Reduction Act.

My name is Sean Moulton. I am Senior Information Policy Analyst at OMB Watch, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that works to encourage a more open and responsive and accountable Federal Government.

OMB Watch cares greatly about the life cycle of government information from collection to dissemination to archiving. Accordingly, we have been involved in each reauthorization of the Paperwork Reduction Act since it was enacted.

I have provided written testimony that I would ask to be included in the record, and I will use this opportunity to summarize

some of those points.

Mrs. MILLER. Without objection.

Mr. MOULTON. Thank you. The point I would like to emphasize

most is that we must keep in mind the importance of information,

the benefits of information. The Paperwork Reduction Act and the

discussions that surround it focus primarily on viewing paperwork

and information collection, I would say, as a burden. Information

has always been the fuel that powers the engine of progress for the

government, whether it is for environment, government spending

or health and safety regulations.

Eliminating or weakening collections of information to achieve an

arbitrary reduction goal, as the PRA requires, Is shortsighted and

I would say irresponsible. We began collecting this information to

fill a need. While it is reasonable to try to minimize the work associated with that collection, we should not do so in a way that we

fail to fulfill the original need.

It is striking that the PRA only mandates disclosure of burden

for the collection and not the benefits of what that information

achieves. As a result, the debates on PRA are often one-sided. Congress hears from those filling out the paperwork, who are the first

to complain, but seldom hears from those who use the information

and benefit. The users often know little of PRA.

I would like to highlight one example of the importance and use

of information, one that has been raised earlier, the TRI program.

As mentioned earlier, TRI has been an enormously successful and

sufficient method in promoting significant reductions in pollution.

Since reporting began in 1988, the original 299 chemicals that they

began tracking have been—the releases of those chemicals have

dropped 59 percent. As new chemicals have been added, reductions

have continued to be seen. The TRI list in 1998 had grown to 589

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chemicals, and in the 6 years that we have had data on those

chemicals we have seen 42 percent reduction.

One might think that with a track record like this, TRI would

be immune to significant changes or cuts, but as Ms. Nelson testified, the agency is considering significant changes to TRI reporting

because of the TRI’s demand for burden reduction. Each of the burden reductions being considered by EPA, including the no significant change, we would say represents a significant loss of information to the public. This is burden reduction at any means necessary, burden reduction by reducing the amount or accuracy of information.

In the interest of time, I will highlight some of the recommendations I made in my written testimony. I would recommend that the

PRA be refocused as Congress goes forward with another round of

reauthorization. The real strength of the PRA is its potential to

help government manage its information resources.

Unfortunately, the theme of reducing paperwork no matter the

repercussions conflicts with a strong law of managing information

resources. I would urge that Congress make appropriate changes to

clearly establish that the primary purpose is to improve management of government information.

The first change I would recommend would be to rename the law

the Information Resource Management Act or similar title to reflect a new purpose.

I would also suggest that Section 3505(a) be eliminated. This is

the section in which Congress has mandated annual burden reduction goals. I am not against reducing reporting burdens, but any

burden reduction must be examined within the context of the purpose and use of information. Given the information age in which

we live, the growing need to know more, it simply may not be possible to collect the data we need and to reduce burden at the same

time.

Congress should rebalance the PRA with less emphasis on burden reduction and more emphasis on filling information gaps and

improving the quality and timeliness of the information we collect.

There are legitimate methods to minimize reporting burden without compromising information, and the PRA should emphasize

those as well. The most widely noted one would be electronic reporting. Several people have talked about that.

I would also like to make a point about the public access and dissemination under PRA. Under like burden reduction, it has received too little attention. Prior to the 1995 reauthorization, PRA

did not even contain a definition of public information, nor was dissemination included in the purpose of the law.

Dissemination of information to the public promotes the use of

data. It promotes the improvement of data. It squeezes the maximum amount of benefit out of that data. Without use the information serves little purpose. Many users of the government data currently must resort to the lengthy and laborious process under Freedom of Information Act to obtain their information. Congress

should make FOIA a vehicle of last resort. This could be achieved

by including a provision in the PRA that requires government

agencies to publicly disseminate in a timely manner all information

they collect unless that information would be exempt under FOIA.

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Finally, I would like to make two points about the politicization

of PRA. A major weakness of the Paperwork Reduction Act has

been susceptibility to manipulation. It creates a back door for

achieving politically motivated goals with regard to the regulatory

process. Many believe that OIRA has used its paperwork authority

to interfere with substantive agency decisionmaking.

Another problem has been the imbalance of attention that the

paper has gotten at agencies from OIRA. I apologize, OIRA is the

Office of Information Regulatory Affairs. For instance in 1999,

EPA’s paperwork burden was less than 2 percent of the total government burden. Yet the agency had six OIRA desk officers there.

At the same time, Treasury constituted, as it does now, over 80

percent of the paperwork burden from government but only had

one desk officer.

We would recommend that Congress mandate that OIRA assign

staff to agencies in proportion with the amount of paperwork burden those agencies produce. We would also recommend that OIRA

be required to publicly explain and justify any information collection request that it alters to clients or delays.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to testify here, and I

look forward to answering any questions on this issue. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Moulton follows:]

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Mrs. MILLER. Thank you very much, Mr. Moulton. I thought your

remarks were interesting, all of you. I am not sure quite where to

start. A lot of interesting testimony here today.

My personal thought is one of the filters we need in order to look

at the PRA again is a good, clear, analytical analysis, I think, of

the cost benefit of not only the regulation itself but the paperwork

requirement that we have for collecting all of this data and what

we are going to get out of it.

It has been interesting to me, as the Chair of this committee, and

some of the different hearings that we have had. You have had

Small Business Association testifying that the regulatory burden

that the government has placed on small businesses, about $7,000

per employee, just to comply with government regulations, which

is quite a bit of money, a little bit of change in your blue jeans,

I think. You hear the National Association of ufacturers say that

with our regulatory burden that we have, the structural costs of

our manufactured goods here in our country are 22 to 23 points

higher than any of our foreign competitors, including Canada, what

have you, principally based on the regulatory burden that we do

place on them.

I was interested to hear Mr. Barrett talk about 70 percent of

your group are small businesses. You mentioned—I was listening

to the one example you gave where they had 98 different forms

they had to fill out from State and Federal Governments about the

Toxic Release Inventory, which is something this committee hears

quite a bit about as well.

Is there an ability now—I think this is to Mr. Barrett and Ms.

Nelson—is there an ability now for agencies to file online with the

Toxic Release Inventory, where they could report online for the

Federal requirements as well as the States? Is that one of the

things that you have done?

Ms. NELSON. There is. As I have mentioned, we have something

that is called TRI-ME, it is the Toxics Release Inventory Made

Easy software akin to TurboTax, which allows somebody to walk

through the report and be prompted for the correct information.

Last year we had about—almost—over 80 percent of the TRI forms

come in electronically. The numbers keep getting higher and higher

each year. So we are seeing great success there.

But what is more important is the example I just mentioned in

my testimony where the current law requires a facility to submit

two reports at the same time to a State and EPA. Keep in mind

that law was passed almost 20 years ago when things came in via

paper. Under an agreement with four States, with Michigan and

South Carolina, Virginia and then Indiana added to the mix, those

reports that are being submitted now, that are due July 1st, the

facilities in those States have the option to say when I submit this

report it counts as my State submission, which means when EPA

gets it we automatically take that information, and using our exchange network, a network we are using to share information with

States and tribes, we automatically feed that information back to

the States.

As to why that is significant, Representative Brown-Waite mentioned that oftentimes the forms are different. So even though it

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is the same law that requires the submission of the information,

States may change the forms and add information to it.

We think with the States getting this option they will be less

likely to do that because they won’t have to build their own information systems. They won’t have to build their own electronic systems that have to authenticate and identify and receive those reports electronically, which means there will be more standardization between the States and the Federal Government.

Facilities submit the report one time, and it’s much easier to reconcile those reports when there are errors. And often there are errors that come in from the facilities. So we think it is a real

streamline process that benefits everyone.

Mrs. MILLER. I am not surprised to hear Michigan is one of the

States on the leading edge there with technology. They always

weren’t many times in the area.

Ms. NELSON. They are one of the leaders in the area all the way

around. So we thank you.

Mrs. MILLER. Mr. Pizzella, from the Department of Labor, you

mentioned in your testimony, you said that you had identified unequivocally some of your key goals. You had said that your Department had identified 12 different initiatives to reduce burden. I

wonder if you could give us one or two specific examples of what

some of those 12 initiatives are and what kinds of goals you are

hoping to achieve with that and what you are—perhaps an example of some of your best practices with those initiatives, if they are

working?

Mr. PIZZELLA. Sure. We have an example of using technology and

prove how the public does business with the Department in our initiative on e-grants. The Department’s e-grants initiative is an enterprise-wide response to the President’s management agenda for

an electronic government by streamlining and automating the application process for Federal and grant programs.

Previously, the DOL agencies used it for a variety of processes,

some automated, some manual. There was no central depository in

the Department, and we decided to put our arms around it, make

it a little bit unified. We are currently implementing that in an effort to eliminate redundancy and disparity of data collection that

takes place. We hope to improve the efficiency and simplify the application procedures. That is one that we are in the process of implementing. It also has governmentwide implications, because some

of my colleagues are involved in that same effort.

Another example is the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They have a

quarterly consensus and wages program. It also reports to the Federal Employment in Wages. I guess the acronym, for those of you

who follow that, is RFEW. Also BLS has an initiative to again simplify this process by going from manual to automated. A collection

in the past has been very paper intensive, very manual, and they

have now been pursuing an automated one in which Federal agencies are very responsive and also the private sector implementing

that. Those would probably be the two best examples I could cite

right now for the Department.

Mrs. MILLER. Thank you. Talking about paperwork extensively,

I guess that leads me to my next question to Mr. Matthews. You

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cipally from truck drivers trying to monitor from their logbooks, I

suppose, what their time is on the road and whatever information

that you are gathering from there.

I heard that an estimate of the burden in order to fill out a logbook was 3 minutes, and you had determined that it should really

be 6 minutes and that the truck drivers might actually tell you it

is actually 10 or 15 minutes.

I am not sure if any of that is actually true, having talked to

some of the truck drivers that I know. But is there a way electronically to—I mean, if that’s a huge majority of the burden that you

have in your Department, is there a way to use an electronic keyboard? And when you do get the information currently in a paper

format, how is it transmitted from the chicken coops back to you?

Mr. MATTHEWS. Starting with the first part of the question,

Madam Chairwoman, if I could, the use of electronics is done for

hours of service in other modal operations. For instance, I mentioned Federal railroads collects hours of service electronically from

railroad and conductors. Certainly that technology is extensible to

other modes of transportation.

The Department of Transportation has looked at using electronic

collection in submission of information in the other modes. In some

cases the people responsible for doing the paperwork submissions

would prefer not to have electronic submission, but rather continue

to fill out logbooks for whatever particular reasons that they seek.

For the hours of service that you asked about, the Department

of Transportation currently has an open rulemaking going on to ascertain public comments about the revision to that rule. So we look

forward to comments from the public and will use those comments

to revise, amend and republish that particular legislation.

Currently, those paper records are sent in manually to the Department of Transportation if summarized by or collected by companies and then submitted to the Department of Transportation.

That is true for all hours of service submissions, including pilots,

who also have a similar requirement to log the number of hours

that they are flying aircraft.

Mrs. MILLER. I see. The rule you are talking about, that is the

one you testified that is coming out in the fall of this year?

Mr. MATTHEWS. Yes. It is due out September 30th of this year.

Mrs. MILLER. All right. I will at this time recognize the ranking

member, Representative Lynch for his questions.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you. Again, I thank you for your testimony.

I think, Madam Chairwoman, I have an initial question that sort

of came out through the GAO report. I just wanted to ask Ms.

Koontz and also Mr. Moulton, because you both sort of brought it

up in your remarks.

One of the 10 standards that we have within the PRA, I think

it’s standard No. 9, says ‘‘the collection should use effective and efficient statistical methodology.’’ In the GAO report it says that the

method that we are using within OMB to measure the burden that

we are trying to reduce, that is limited in itself. So we are counting

up all these billions of hours? It sounds like people in America do

nothing but paperwork. But based on the assessments I have heard

this morning, maybe we don’t want to reduce paperwork. We will

have massive unemployment.

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But, really, can you sort of give me a fix on the accuracy on the

way we are measuring burden? Because there seems to be a big

swing here. It either takes 15 minutes or it takes 8 hours, same

thing. They have sort of a wide range of possibilities there.

Is there a way that we can tighten this up to say this is how

much time it is taking, and the idea here, if we do this right, this

is what our reasonable expectation should be in terms of reducing

a certain amount of paperwork?

I was just trying to get my arms around that whole part of this.

You know, how much of this is overstated and what is really accurate here? Ms. Koontz.

Ms. KOONTZ. We didn’t look in depth at agency estimation methodology, but we do know from studying this for a number of years

that the burden estimates are just that, they are estimates. There

isn’t necessarily a consistent way of measuring this from agency to

agency. So we always view the burden estimates as having a number of limitations.

As I said in my statement, it’s probably OK to use them as an

estimate, but you have to keep in mind what the limitations are.

I understand that IRS, for example, has gone through a lot of

work. They are not here today, but they have gone through a lot

of work to actually refine their burden estimation methodology.

You may have heard from them in the previous hearing that the

subcommittee held.

Efforts like that might be helpful. I think they have to be balanced, however. You could spend a lot of time and money deciding

what number to put on this. It doesn’t necessarily then actually reduce the burden of anyone who is actually reporting. We just have

a better number. So I think, yes, we maybe need to do more than

the actual burden is. We have to balance that with, also, efforts to

make sure that we have fewer people filling out less paperwork.

Mr. LYNCH. That is fair enough. Thank you.

Mr. Moulton.

Mr. MOULTON. Yes. I think this is certainly a case, as you have

categorized, of fuzzy math. The burden hours are generated from

a very complex equation. It’s not based on actually surveying, anyone actually filling out the paperwork.

Very often the paperwork burden hour is generated initially.

Common sense would tell us that as you continue to refile you are

going to see a significant reduction in how long it takes you to fill

out that paperwork. But we often don’t see in a lot of the burden

estimates of that level or that attribute taken into account.

But I agree that what we really need to focus on, regardless of

the fuzzy number, I think, is whether or not the burden is useful,

whether or not it provides us with enough information or important

enough information that regardless of the burden we are doing it

as efficiently as we can. It is taking as long as it takes. We are

going to see a range of hours it takes people. Some people fill it

out faster than others. I think what we need to focus on is, is the

information important and useful to us?

Mr. LYNCH. All right. Thank you. I agree. As I see it, you know

the standard that could probably be most helpful is indeed just

that, that we are not gathering needless information or information

that has low utility at the end of the day, as opposed to something

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that I do believe is important, which is if people are dumping

chemicals, you know, toxic substances out the back door of their

factory or releasing that into our treatment systems, they should

probably report that to the general public. We shouldn’t limit the

access of the public to that type of information.

Ms. Nelson, you have testified that the EPA will, I don’t know

if it is this summer or later this year, introduce a couple of measures to make it easier. I am concerned that maybe some of the proposals would have an effect of eliminating access to important information.

For example, one option, at least discussed, I am not sure if it

is part of this proposal, would raise the reporting thresholds for

small to medium-sized businesses. That may sound good, but what

they intend to do, I think, if I am reading it correctly—say there

are two businesses that emit the same quantity of toxic chemicals

but one is a larger business while the other is a smaller business,

under the approach you are suggesting the larger business will

have to report its toxic chemical releases, but the smaller businesses will not?

While the other is a smaller business and you are suggesting

that the larger business will have to report its toxic chemical release—and I’m not sure of that. Because I think, in some cases, it

has no bearing on the amount of damage this caused; and the concern I have is that the public will only find out about the toxins

released by the larger company. That is not necessarily a good

thing, in my estimation, at the end of the day; and I wonder if you

could comment on that.

Ms. NELSON. Sure. This year, I did say we will have two proposed rulemakings. The reason we decided to have two, we based

it on stakeholder interest that we had a couple of years ago and

decided that some of the changes we could make were relatively

minor in nature and that we should process those a little faster.

In fact, we put those out for comment last January. We received

30 comments on an EPA TRI package, which is pretty miraculous;

and we’re moving forward with those. Those changes are really

eliminating duplicate information that was being collected, and we

felt we could use our enterprise architecture to collect the information one time and use it for multiple programs. That was one rule.

The rule you’re referring to, sir, is the more substantive burden

reduction rule; and, quite frankly, we have not made any decisions

yet internally within the agency as to what will be included in that

rule. I did mention one option we are looking at is no significant

change option. But what you’re referring to is changing the thresholds, and we have not made any decisions within the agency as to

whether we would do that or not.

The reason we are pursuing in all likelihood one of the options,

the no-significant-change option, is we have often heard from industry that though there are changes, their releases change very

little from year to year, which is why Mr. Barrett’s number about

the estimate being so high for one particular industry is a little

surprising, although it just may be an anomaly in one industry.

But we are proposing the no-significant-change option because

that way we can reduce the burden on industry if, in fact, things

are generally the same but still provide the information to the comVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:38 Sep 27, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00125 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\22572.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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munity. You’ve touched on a very important point with the TRI

program. It is not simply a matter of the agency getting the information for its use, but the TRI program started out as a community right-to-know program. The purpose was for citizens to know

what is happening in the community.

So we’re walking a very fine balance with these burden reduction

rules of how do we eliminate redundant, duplicative information,

maybe information that isn’t really needed or used by anyone, with

the fact that many, many people across the country want to know

what is happening in their community. So we are really trying to

focus not on reduction of information to citizens but where can we

still provide the same level of information to citizens but reduce information that might not be of use to the consumers of the information, or information we can provide because we have it from other

sources.

Mr. LYNCH. I know you said it is not final, but I don’t think that

asking the information from a smaller company is regarded as redundant just because we are asking for the same information from

a larger company.

Ms. NELSON. No, it would not be. As I said, that proposed rule

is not out yet, so what you’re suggesting there is not something

that is being considered by EPA.

Mr. LYNCH. That is good news. So we are not going to assume

that a small company doesn’t have to report just because they’re

only polluting a little bit?

Ms. NELSON. That is correct. That is correct.

Mr. LYNCH. The other—Madam, should I come back for a later

round?

Mrs. MILLER. Go ahead.

Mr. LYNCH. Another option that I have heard of is for changing

the program to raise the reporting thresholds for certain chemicals

or certain types of facilities that represent a smaller portion of Nationwide emissions so that, because they’re a smaller proportion,

even though their amount might be significant but because of a

Nationwide emission level they’re only a small player in that.

Again, I have a similar concern about the impact on a local

neighborhood. A very small company that turned out to have a leak

in one of their petrochemical storage tanks, it leaked out into the

neighborhood, and now I have a lot of young women with lupus

and young people with cancer, and there are all kinds of chemicals

under their homes. A small company wouldn’t have come up on

anybody’s radar screen, and is probably a very small percentage of

emissions Nationwide and contamination Nationwide but an enormous and tragic impact to a very small community. So just concerned about whether or not that proposal, in doing a proportion

of the analysis nationally, whether that is an effective way to limit

polluters.

Ms. NELSON. I don’t think you’ll see a proposal like that either.

Mr. LYNCH. That is great, Madam. I yield back, Madam Chairwoman.

Mrs. MILLER. OK, I recognize Representative Brown-Waite.

Ms. BROWN-WAITE. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman.

I remember the old cartoon where it says we have met the

enemy, and it is us. So I would ask each of the chief information

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officers, what can Congress do in conjunction with your agencies to

reduce the burden imposed as required in the various statutes?

And I would ask a second question; and that is, have you ever

gone to Congress to say, you know, while you have asked us to collect this data, we really don’t use it for anything and don’t see any

real future use for it?

So have you been proactive in helping to reduce the paperwork

by asking for some relief? And I will start with Ms. Koontz.

Ms. KOONTZ. Was that a question for the chief information officers.

Ms. BROWN-WAITE. Yes.

Ms. KOONTZ. I’ll pass to a chief information officer then. If you

want me to come back and talk about some of the things that GAO

believes Congress can do, I’ll do that as well.

Ms. BROWN-WAITE. I will ask Ms. Nelson.

Ms. NELSON. In terms of your first question, what can Congress

do to help reduce the burden, one of the things I would ask is perhaps we have a dialog about the benefits of using technology today

versus when the law was first passed.

I know there are some that are reluctant to say simply submitting a report electronically is not really a reduction in burden, but

I think there are things going on today where in fact the use of

technology can be a tremendous reduction in burden. One of them

I alluded to, things like creating turbo-tax-like systems.

But the second is—let me give you an example. For instance, we

currently have a situation today where under the current Paperwork Reduction Act we would have to submit an information collection request for a situation we have where a safe drinking water

program needs additional information from the States. We generally are responsible and we are made aware from the States of

violations in drinking water. We get general information about

those violations. We don’t get specific information on the contaminants.

Both the Safe Drinking Water Association, the association that

represents all safe drinking water administrators across the country, and EPA want to share this information so we can more effectively manage a program. But getting this information from the

States would require an ICR, which would be about a 2-year process. That is a significant burden on taxpayers to put that through

the process when in fact the States are voluntary willing to share

that information. They want to give that to EPA.

Using the technology that we have in place, this exchange network that we’re building, this is very simple computer-to-computer

communications because they have the information already. The

States have it. They collect it. This is simple computer-to-computer

communications with really a few seconds worth of computer time

to share the information, but it will take us 2 years to process that

information collection request, just to get that information when

the States want to share it with us. I think as we look to burden

in the future, we need to think a little bit differently about situations like that and how technology can help us.

In addition, you know, to answer your second question, how we

approach Congress, I would very much like to come to Congress in

the future on this TRI issue.

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Because, for instance, that example I gave you, the law currently

says a facility shall report simultaneously to a State and EPA. We

may be stretching the law a little bit here with what we’re doing,

although we think we’re on safe grounds because when a facility

submits that report to EPA they are saying this constitutes my

State filing as well. There may be some who question whether that

is legitimate or not, but we felt it was important to demonstrate

the fact that technology exists today that allows a facility to submit

one time and we can automatically get that or within 24 hours get

that information back to the States with a huge savings to taxpayers at the State level because they don’t have to create duplicative systems in 50 States to collect that information. That didn’t

exist when that law was passed almost 20 years ago.

I think they’re the kinds of things we have to take into consideration. So we wanted to demonstrate the fact that we can do that,

and we would like to come back to Congress as that is an example

of the kinds of things we can do in the future.

Ms. BROWN-WAITE. If I could just ask a followup question of Ms.

Nelson, can you think of one report that you’re aware of that your

agency has—and I’m going to add this to the list for the others,

too—one reporting requirement that your agency has that you

know that when you all get these reports they get filed away in a

box and probably no one has ever looked at them?

Ms. NELSON. I can certainly speak from some of my State experience. Let me say that, because I did spend 14 years in a State Environmental Protection Agency, in the environmental field the vast

majority of all environmental reporting happens at the State level,

not the EPA. EPA gets its information then from the States, which

get it from the facilities.

In a particular situation for discharge monitoring reports, we received 60,000 of those a year in the State of Pennsylvania. Only

about 25 percent of those ever made it into an information system

because of the volume. We could not afford to pay staff to do all

the data entry to get those into an information system; and, quite

frankly, if they’re not in an information system, the likelihood that

you’re examining all of those is pretty slim. So, yes, I would say

a good percentage of those may have been eyeballed but certainly

not the kind of analysis we’re doing.

I will point to the chairman’s State once again, though, with

funding from EPA, the State of Michigan has last year became one

of the first States to fully automate the submission of those discharge monitoring reports from facilities fully so that the monitoring data goes from the facility to the State and into EPA’s information systems. That is a huge success.

Because that program that collects those discharge monitoring

reports—that is the system which is called the Permit Compliance

System—is the second-largest information collection in the entire

country. We may rank sixth in terms of agencies, but that particular collection itself for the PCS system is the second largest in the

Federal Government, second only behind the tax collection, the IRS

tax collection. So that demonstration which is real, not just a pilot

demonstration for the State of Michigan, is one that we’re looking

to replicate across the country and for Michigan alone has saved

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hundreds of thousands of dollars in that agency and resulted in

much higher quality today that we can use and analyze.

Ms. BROWN-WAITE. Mr. Matthews.

Mr. MATTHEWS. What can Congress do to help reduce the paperwork burden working with ICIO? I do believe looking to technology

and how it can be employed would be useful.

The fact of the matter is, it is my opinion in the Federal Government that agencies have a stove-pipe requirement. They have vent

systems based in that stove-pipe. Perhaps it is time to take a look

at best practices horizontally in organizations, not just, say, in

DOT but DOT and EPA, and how do we leverage them and, as Ms.

Nelson mentioned earlier, reach out to State and local agencies so

that we can consolidate governmental reporting of information

across the government. I do believe that it is time to have a conversation about how technology can help do that.

Have we at the DOT come to Congress requesting relief? I do

know that we come up here frequently asking for clarification on

laws that have been proposed and what data needs to be collected.

We also come to talk about our intention in collecting the data in

seeking comments. But, typically, the agencies themselves would

engage in that conversation. The departmental PRA responsibility

may or may not be aware of that conversation that has gone on.

So I do think that DOT does come up to have conversations. Perhaps establishing a centralized checkpoint on those conversations

would be useful.

Then, do we have any stuff in the box that we don’t take a look

at? I promise you if I was aware of it I would be seeking an end

to it with some dispatch. As a citizen who is loath to fill out any

single piece of paperwork to tell anyone about me or my family, I

would pursue that with a vengeance; and I would encourage anyone, if they’re aware of it, to let me know and I will go after it at

the DOT.

Thank you very much.

Mr. PIZZELLA. Thank you.

Let me first say that my colleagues, Kim and Dan and myself,

we through the CIO Council work to coordinate our efforts in the

executive branch to try to push e-government initiatives and reduce

sort of the manual processes that have been in place for years and

move toward a more electronic processing of information and so

forth.

I thought about your question about how people read these reports, and what bounded in my mind immediately is how many

times I call an agency head in the department where my office is

reviewing a submission for Congress; and I will say, you know, I

saw something in here and I’m wondering if you think this might

need to be clarified a little more before we send it up. And I on

more than one occasion have heard that comment, which report is

that? And I’ll tell them the report; and they will say, nobody reads

that anyway. So I think there is some skepticism on our end of the

reports being read by anybody, whether it is Congress or the citizens in some cases.

What can Congress do regarding PRA? I guess they could maybe

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ing and maybe working in conjunction with the departments that

are most affected by that.

Last, you should know and you probably do know this, that in

the agencies when there is internal debate about whether or not

this report may make sense that we’re providing to Congress or

this report is necessary, the very phrase ‘‘Congress requires’’ is sort

of a debate-ending sentence. In a discussion of people, many of

them very talented and capable professionals within the Civil Service structure, who are questioning why we’re doing X, Y and Z and

somebody says, look, Congress requires this, it sort of drives them

to complete the project, make the submission on time, try and sort

of take a thorough review and try to make an argument back to

Congress.

I guess my final suggestion would be that perhaps together we

can work some type of agreement, maybe even a sort of reverse

data call where Congress asks the agencies or departments to tell

us which reports you think are probably least useful to provide and

maybe we can have an honest dialog. I suppose we have to coordinate amongst the various parts of the executive branch, we have

to coordinate on things like that, but I bet there is a font of information there.

Ms. BROWN-WAITE. Thank you very much.

Mrs. MILLER. One thing I guess would I say, we certainly want

to encourage you all to be extremely creative as much as you know

you can, as you say if you know of a report you would be after it.

But maybe you do know of some reports, as you think about it, that

aren’t being read; and of course utilizing technology as well is absolutely critical as we try to move away from some of this paperwork.

My job since I came to Congress has almost been administrative

in nature. At one point in my career I was a county treasurer in

my county. I can remember going in there my first week. We were

trying to do an operational audit of all the different paperwork.

They were reconciling all this. We are the third-largest county in

all of Michigan. We were reconciling all the bank books. They had

their little lights on with their pencils. Unbelievable, quite frankly.

But I remember this huge stack of paper in this closet, and they

were—you watched them every other day moving it off to somewhere. I don’t know where they were moving it to. And I said to

this woman, what are those reports? Well, I’m doing this and this

and this. Where do they go to and who reads them? And she said,

I really don’t know. I said, we are just not going to do that anymore. And she said, we can’t do that because ‘‘they’’ will be upset.

I said, who do you think ‘‘they’’ are? You are looking at ‘‘they.’’

We’re not doing that any more.

So I guess I would simply encourage you to all be as creative as

you can, and I would be looking for some specific instances or recommendations from any of you. I’m sure this committee will find

very fertile ground here on things that you think require some legislative initiative, but oftentimes I think it can be in the rulemaking, promulgating rules to eliminate some indicia requirements

and forms.

Again, I think this subcommittee and entire committee would be

very receptive to working with you in those regards. You live it

every day. We have a lot of other things we are trying to focus on

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here, but I think we would be very receptive to listening to some

specific recommendations on what Congress can do to help you.

I have a question to Mr. Barrett. I think I may have cut you off.

Do you have any particular response to Ms. Nelson from the EPA

about some of the different comments she was making about compliance and what your industry’s experience has been and if you

have any comments on whether that’s being helpful or not.

Mr. BARRETT. Thank you very much.

I think the question that you posed was with respect to the TRI

reporting. I think SOCMA members—SOCMA folks have canvassed

their membership and there is a lot of support for what EPA is

doing in terms of automating the TRI reporting and that is certainly a step in the right direction. It is my understanding that

EPA claims a 25 percent reduction as a consequence of electronic

reporting, but, in actuality—and I’ve seen this myself within the

ocean realm primarily—the vast majority of the work that goes into

completing forms that goes into all this paperwork happens before

you ever pick up a piece of paper or ever sit at the computer. It

is having meetings, pulling the information together, doing a lot of

calculations.

So in the particular instance of the TRI report that was mentioned in my testimony, the individual indicated that in that company it took 250 hours to complete the TRI requirement but 10

hours to do the actual paperwork. So there is a lot of background

work that goes into actually developing that piece of paper.

That is something that needs to be borne in mind, and that carries through to all aspects of regulatory reporting. There is an

awful lot that goes on behind the scenes that isn’t normally captured and oftentimes I think is not necessarily reflected in the estimates that come out of the various agencies.

Mrs. MILLER. One of the things that we’re talking about here is

the GAO report that we’re releasing here. Obviously, these burden

estimates, as you talk about, are very difficult certainly not a fine

science, that is for sure. I don’t know if they could—they should

call them estimates or guesstimates, I suppose. But they cannot be

guesstimated in a vacuum. You have to talk to real people who are

the end users of all these forms and what their personal experiences have been, individuals or businesses or what have you.

I’m noticing that the report states that only 37 percent of the collections government-wide were in compliance with the PRAs actually to consult with the public on the proposed collection. So I am

just wondering—perhaps we could have a comment. How can that

compliance be better and have we made it too restrictive to reach

out to actual people?

Ms. KOONTZ. I think what we saw in our review was that few

of the four agencies that we looked at in detail had complied with

the requirement to otherwise consult beyond publishing a notice in

the Federal Register. However, the reason that this occurred was

because OMB’s guidance states that agencies are to otherwise consult only when the collection merits such attention. Our feeling was

that did not meet the requirements of the act. OMB disagrees.

They believe that their interpretation is correct. We have agreed to

disagree on this.

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But I think what it means is that possibly this is something that

the Congress might want to clarify during reauthorization, and

that is what are their expectations as to consultation beyond the

public comment period that is allowed in the Federal Register notice. So that is the principal reason that agencies did not feel that

they were required to do this, and that is not why it didn’t happen.

We did talk to a number of agencies who did consult with the

groups. They published proposed rules on their Web site. They conducted focus groups, they worked with professional organizations,

and in many cases they were able to give us examples where that

helped shape the collection in a significant way.

However, I do think it is a fair question also about whether it

is appropriate to consult directly on every single collection. Agencies pointed out to us that in many cases collections are renewals,

longstanding collections. These have been out in the public for a

long period of time, and they’re not sure that is the cost-effective

approach, to do it on each and every collection. So I think it is

something that probably merits some more debate and attention as

we move forward on PRA.

Mrs. MILLER. OK. Mr. Lynch.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you.

Ms. Nelson, just to clarify this, I guess what I had read earlier

was a stakeholder review that the EPA conducted, and I do believe

that the EPA requested comments on whether higher reporting

thresholds for small businesses would actually become a rule or be

proposed by EPA and whether higher reporting thresholds for categories of facilities or classes of chemicals with small reportable

amounts would be no longer disclosed by those facilities. Is that—

are these coming out as rules proposed? I don’t know I don’t want

to——

Ms. NELSON. No, you are correct. They are part of a stakeholder

dialog that we held 2 years ago where we put a lot of issues out

on the table electronically to receive input in terms of various options. We used the stakeholder input that we got through that

process to help us formulate our proposed rules, one of which has

already been proposed and is ready to be final, the second of which

has not been proposed yet. And we are still having those conversations within the agency as to which options we should move forward with.

So we have not decided within the agency which of those options

will go out in the proposed rulemaking. We still need to consult

with the administrator on what those final options will be. We do

feel fairly confident that one of them will be—at least there is a

proposal—the no-significant-change option, which means that your

releases didn’t change much from last year.

Mr. LYNCH. I understand.

Ms. NELSON. But the other options are all still under discussion,

so there’s no decision made and no proposal on the street yet.

Mr. LYNCH. And I understand the no-significant-change option

really goes to the redundancy of the information already provided.

Ms. NELSON. Well, I wouldn’t say redundant as much as trying

to make it easier in the industry. If my processing hasn’t changed

and my releases haven’t changed too much since last year, I’m just

going to certify that you can use the numbers we gave you last

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year because for all intents and purposes my releases are the same

as last year.

That way, the public still knows everything in terms of what releases have been in their community and they have a general idea.

Because we’re looking at generally, how do you determine what no

significant change is? A 5, 10, 15 percent change? But the public

still has all the information they have had in the past. But it is

much less burdensome on the industry in terms of not having to

fill out the complete set of TRI forms. They can just certify my releases are essentially the same as last year.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you.

Mr. Moulton, I know earlier we heard from each of the CIOs in

terms of what Congress can do. I read your testimony, and you

mentioned OIRA and the allocation of officers that are with various

agencies and how sometimes that is not proportionate to the

amount of paperwork that they’re producing. Do you have a response to other things Congress could be doing to make sure that

the focus is not politicized, as you’ve described in Roman numeral

V of your report?

Mr. MOULTON. Sure. I do think that all the CIOs’ emphasis on

using technology is a good one, and I think Congress can encourage

that and maybe even put a little pressure on the agencies. Or

maybe the better phrase would be to give them a bit more authority and feeling that they can push forward more aggressively on

implementation of technology.

In terms of the politicization of the PRA, I think that what Congress needs to do is make sure if what we’re really after is a reduction in paperwork and we have a few agencies producing the lion’s

share of that paperwork, even if the three agencies here made the

reductions relative to their own paperwork burden of 10 percent or

5 percent of the year, it would be swallowed up by the IRS. So if

IRS has the lion’s share, then we should be focusing a great deal

more attention, as this committee did by having them here for

their own panel a few weeks ago, which I applaud. But I think we

need to mandate that attention be paid or special attention be paid

on the IRS and that proportional attention be paid on the agencies

as you move down the tiers of how much burden they impose on

people with their paperwork.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.

Mrs. MILLER. Thank you very much for coming.

You know, talking about the IRS, I made this comment to Mr.

Everson during that hearing. I would just share this with you as

well.

When I was a kid, my dad was an aeronautical engineer, worked

on a Redstone with Wernher Von Braun at the beginning of the

rocket program; and he said it was very exciting times until the

Federal Government got involved in the process and with all the

paperwork that they always had to fill out. Daddy used to say that

they would never shoot off a missile until the paperwork equaled

the weight of the rocket.

So I think here we are today still looking at what we can do, but

I certainly appreciate all of your attendance today. Certainly as

Congress moves toward renewal of PRA we will certainly take into

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sightful and helpful to the Congress here. We also will be looking

forward to receiving specific suggestions, as we talked about, from

many of you as we talk about what we can do to assist you in expediting some of these different processes that we have currently in

place.

With that, the meeting will be adjourned. Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 3:43 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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