[Federal Register Volume 89, Number 189 (Monday, September 30, 2024)]
[Notices]
[Pages 79511-79512]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2024-22361]


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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

Census Bureau


Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the 
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for Review and Approval; Comment 
Request; Business Enterprise Research and Development Survey

    The Department of Commerce will submit the following information 
collection request to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for 
review and clearance in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 
1995, on or after the date of publication of this notice. We invite the 
general public and other Federal agencies to comment on proposed, and 
continuing information collections, which helps us assess the impact of 
our information collection requirements and minimize the public's 
reporting burden. Public comments were previously requested via the 
Federal Register on May 29, 2024, during a 60-day comment period. This 
notice allows for an additional 30 days for public comments.
    Agency: U.S. Census Bureau, Commerce.
    Title: Business Enterprise Research and Development Survey.
    OMB Control Number: 0607-0912.
    Form Number(s): BRD-1.
    Type of Request: Regular submission, Request for an Extension, 
without Change, of a Currently Approved Collection.
    Number of Respondents: 47,500.
    Average Hours per Response: 2 hours and 37 minutes.
    Burden Hours: 124,450.
    Needs and Uses: The Census Bureau is requesting clearance to 
continue to conduct the Business Enterprise Research and Development 
Survey (BERD) for the 2024-2026 survey years without change. Companies 
are the major performers of research and development (R&D) in the 
United States, accounting for over 70 percent of total U.S. R&D 
expenditures each year. A consistent business R&D information base is 
essential to government officials formulating public policy, industry 
personnel involved in corporate planning, and members of the academic 
community conducting research. To develop policies designed to promote 
and enhance science and technology, past trends and the present status 
of R&D must be known and analyzed. Without comprehensive business R&D 
statistics, it would be impossible to evaluate the health of science 
and technology in the United States or to make comparisons between the 
technological progress of our country and that of other nations.
    BERD is a joint statistical project between the National Center for 
Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) within the National Science 
Foundation (NSF) and the Census Bureau. The National Science Foundation 
Act of 1950 as amended authorizes and directs the National Science 
Foundation ``. . . to provide a central clearinghouse for the 
collection, interpretation, and analysis of data on scientific and 
engineering resources and to provide a source of information for policy 
formulation by other agencies of the Federal government'' and the 
authority was renewed by Section 505 of the America COMPETES 
Reauthorization Act of 2010. This mandate is fulfilled by NCSES. One of 
the methods used by NCSES to fulfill this mandate is the BERD (and its 
predecessor surveys)--the primary federal source of information on R&D 
in the business sector. NCSES together with the Census Bureau, the 
collecting and compiling agent, analyze the data and publish the 
resulting statistics.
    NCSES has published annual R&D statistics collected from the Survey 
of Industrial Research and Development (1953-2007), the Business R&D 
and Innovation Survey (2008-2016), the Business Research and 
Development Survey (2017 and 2018), and the Business Enterprise 
Research and Development Survey (2019-2023) for 70

[[Page 79512]]

years. The results of the surveys are used to assess trends in R&D 
expenditures by industry sector, investigate productivity determinants, 
formulate science and tax policy, and compare individual company 
performance with industry averages. This survey is the Nation's primary 
source for international comparative statistics on business R&D 
spending.
    BERD will continue to collect the following types of information:
    <bullet> R&D expense based on accepted accounting standards.
    <bullet> Worldwide R&D of domestic companies.
    <bullet> Business segment detail.
    <bullet> R&D related capital expenditures.
    <bullet> Detailed data about the R&D workforce.
    <bullet> R&D strategy and data on the potential impact of R&D on 
the market.
    Beginning in 2019, in an effort to reduce burden, BERD began 
rotating select content off the survey in alternating years. In 2019, 
questions related to intellectual property and technology transfer were 
removed from the survey. In 2020, questions related to detail of R&D 
performed by others, activities with academia, industries of business 
and specific federal agency funding R&D, and areas of application for 
R&D were removed and the intellectual property and technology transfer 
questions rotated back on. This cycle of rotating content has 
continued. In 2021, the Capital Expenditures section was revised to 
collect additional information on assets. Proposed at that time was to 
collect two consecutive years of data (for 2021 and 2022) and rotate 
select asset content off the survey in alternating years. So, in 2023, 
BERD would have had a subset of the asset content, and in 2024, all of 
the asset content would have been included on the survey. This proposed 
content rotation did not occur in 2023. However, the rotation will 
commence in 2024. Resulting in a subset of the asset content collected 
in 2024 and all of the asset content collected in 2025 and so on, 
similar to the other rotating content. Census and NCSES will continue 
to explore content that could be collected less frequently than annual 
in an effort to continue to reduce respondent burden.
    Information from BERD will continue to support NCSES' 
responsibility to collect information on Research and Development for 
overall support for Federal policy discussions, as required under the 
America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010.
    Policy officials from many Federal agencies rely on these 
statistics for essential information. Businesses and trade 
organizations rely on BERD data to benchmark their industry's 
performance against others. For example, total U.S. R&D expenditures 
statistics are used by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) for 
incorporating R&D as fixed investment in updates to the National Income 
and Product Accounts (NIPAs). Also, NCSES, BEA and the Census Bureau 
periodically seek to use BERD data to augment global R&D investment 
information that is obtained from BEA's Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) 
and U.S. Direct Investment Abroad (USDIA) surveys. Further, the Census 
Bureau links data collected by BERD with other statistical files. At 
the Census Bureau, historical company-level R&D data are linked to a 
file that contains information on the outputs and inputs of companies' 
manufacturing plants. Researchers can analyze the relationships between 
R&D funding and other economic variables by using micro-level data.
    Individuals and organizations access the survey statistics via the 
internet in annual InfoBriefs published by NCSES that announce the 
availability of statistics from each cycle of BERD and detailed 
statistical table reports that contain all the statistics NCSES 
produces from BERD. Information about the kinds of projects that rely 
on statistics from BERD is available from internal records of Census' 
Center for Economic Studies. In addition, survey statistics are 
regularly cited in trade publications and many researchers use the 
survey statistics from these secondary sources without directly 
contacting NCSES or the Census Bureau. Some of the users of the survey 
statistics and the types of information they request are described 
below.
    Frequency: Annually.
    Respondent's Obligation: Mandatory.
    Legal Authority: The survey is conducted under the authority of 
Title 13, United States Code, Sections 8(b), 131, and 182; Title 42, 
United States Code, Sections 1861-76 (National Science Foundation Act 
of 1950, as amended); and Section 505 within the America COMPETES 
Reauthorization Act of 2010.
    This information collection request may be viewed at 
www.reginfo.gov. Follow the instructions to view the Department of 
Commerce collections currently under review by OMB.
    Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information 
collection should be submitted within 30 days of the publication of 
this notice on the following website www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain. 
Find this particular information collection by selecting ``Currently 
under 30-day Review--Open for Public Comments'' or by using the search 
function and entering either the title of the collection or the OMB 
Control Number 0607-0912.

Sheleen Dumas,
Department PRA Clearance Officer, Office of the Under Secretary for 
Economic Affairs, Commerce Department.
[FR Doc. 2024-22361 Filed 9-27-24; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510-07-P