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[Federal Register Volume 90, Number 5 (Wednesday, January 8, 2025)]
[Notices]
[Pages 1482-1490]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2024-31659]

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GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION

[OMB Control No. 3090-XXXX; Docket No. 2025-0001; Sequence No. 2]

Information Collection; Student Loan Repayment Application and 
Service Agreement (GSA Form 5015)

AGENCY: Office of Human Resource Management, Strategic Planning, 
Policy, and Training Division, General Services Administration (GSA).

ACTION: Notice; request for comments.

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SUMMARY: Under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act, the 
Regulatory Secretariat Division will be submitting to the Office of 
Management and Budget (OMB) a request to review and approve a new 
information collection requirement.

DATES: Submit comments on or before March 10, 2025.

ADDRESSES: Submit comments identified by Information Collection 3090-
XXXX; ``Student Loan Repayment Application and Service Agreement (GSA 
Form 5015)'' to: http://www.regulations.gov. Submit comments via the 
Federal eRulemaking portal by searching for ``Information Collection 
3090-XXXX; ``Student Loan Repayment Application and Service Agreement 
(GSA Form 5015).'' Select the link ``Submit a Comment'' that 
corresponds with ``Information Collection 3090-XXXX; Student Loan 
Repayment Application and Service Agreement (GSA Form 5015).'' Follow 
the instructions provided at the ``Submit a Comment'' screen. Please 
include your name, company name (if any), and ``Information Collection 
3090-XXXX; Student Loan Repayment Application and Service Agreement 
(GSA Form 5015)'' on your attached document. If your comment cannot be 
submitted using https://www.regulations.gov, call or email the points 
of contact in the FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT section of this 
document for alternate instructions.
    Instructions: Please submit comments only and cite ``Information 
Collection 3090-XXXX; Student Loan Repayment Application and Service 
Agreement (GSA Form 5015),'' in all correspondence related to this 
collection. Comments received generally will be posted without change 
to http://www.regulations.gov, including any personal and/or business 
confidential information provided. To confirm receipt of your 
comment(s), please check www.regulations.gov, approximately two-to-
three days after submission to verify posting.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Colin C. Bennett, Human Resources 
Specialist, Office of Human Resources Management, Strategic Planning, 
Policy, and Training Division, at telephone 240-418-6822 or via email 
to [email protected] for clarification of content.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

A. Purpose

    Federal civil service personnel law, codified at 5 U.S.C. 5379, 
allows Federal agencies to use appropriated funds, revenue funds, or 
revolving funds, to pay for all or part of student loan debts incurred 
by job candidates or existing agency employees. By law, each candidate 
or employee is limited to a benefit of $10,000 per calendar year and a 
lifetime limit of $60,000 (at any agency or combination of Federal 
agencies). This benefit is paid by the Federal agency directly to the 
financial institution, and not to the job candidate

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or employee. When paid by an agency to the lender, these benefits are 
considered taxable wages and are subject to income tax withholding and 
Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes.
    There are many eligibility requirements that must be met before 
agencies can transfer funds to a candidate's or employee's lender. 
First, the student loans must be made, insured, or guaranteed under 
parts B, D or E of title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (20 
U.S.C. 1071 et seq.). Normally these loans are part of the U.S. 
Department of Education's William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program. 
Direct Subsidized Loans, Direct Unsubsidized Loans, Direct PLUS Loans, 
and Direct Consolidation Loans are all common types of Direct Loans.
    Only certain types of Federal appointments are eligible. Non-career 
temporary appointments limited to 1 year or less are not eligible. Non-
career term appointments of less than 3 years are also excluded. 
``Schedule C'' political appointments in the Title 5 excepted service 
are also not eligible. All candidates or employees who are eligible, 
and who receive benefits, must sign a service agreement to remain with 
the Federal Government (sometimes with the specific agency) for a 
period no less than 3 years. In practice, if payments are made annually 
over the course of multiple years, the service agreement length can 
last as long as 6 years under this recruitment and retention bonus 
authority.
    To ensure that Federal funds are only used in an appropriate and 
strategic manner, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has 
promulgated civil services implementing regulations, found at 5 CFR 
part 537. These regulations stipulate that this authority is available 
to job candidates, who are not currently part of the Federal civil 
service, when the candidates are highly-qualified and the agency 
otherwise would encounter difficulty in filling the positions with 
highly qualified individuals. This authority is also available to 
facilitate the retention of agency employees when those employees would 
otherwise be likely to leave the Federal service agency for outside 
employment. In the retention context, agencies must determine that it 
is essential to retain the employees based upon their high or unique 
qualifications or a special agency need.
    GSA, like many Federal agencies, has administrative approval 
controls to make sure that funds are only used for the most appropriate 
recruitment or retention cases. At GSA, the administrative approval 
process is currently very cumbersome and laborious because it requires 
a custom-written memorandum by a ``Requesting Official'' (i.e., the 
selecting official or employee's supervisor), routed through a senior 
``Reviewing Official'' for budgetary approval, and then finally routed 
through three different divisions within the Office of Human Resources 
and then one additional office in the office of the Chief Financial 
Officer. Because each memorandum is custom-written, the agency is only 
able to transactionally process a very small number of requests each 
year (i.e., typically 1 to 7 requests annually, across an agency of 
nearly 13,000 employees).
    In an effort to improve Government efficiency, GSA proposes to 
standardize and streamline its agency process for this personnel 
authority by creating a new agency form, GSA Form 5015, ``Student Loan 
Repayment Application and Service Agreement.'' The purpose of this form 
will be to collect together, in one place, information necessary to 
determine a job candidate's or employee's eligibility. The information 
collected will include the type of loan, the name and address of the 
lender, and a justification statement summarizing the candidate's or 
employee's knowledge, skills and abilities that support a ``highly-
qualified'' designation. The proposed form also will contain standard 
signature blocks for all 6 agency signatures that are required for 
transactional processing. The agency's current processing procedures 
are contained within the public administrative Order 9537.1B, ``Student 
Loan Repayment Plan,'' found at http://www.gsa.gov/. The proposed form 
also contains the Service Agreement itself, so that all signatures and 
binding terms and conditions of the agreement are centralized into one 
location.
    Public notice for GSA Form 5015 is sought because non-Federal job 
candidates may partially complete certain selections of the form, to 
aid the selecting official who is responsible for the vacancy 
announcement. For student loan repayment applications that are approved 
and processed, the GSA Form 5015 will be placed into the future or 
existing employee's Official Personnel File (OPF) as an agency 
temporary document, in accordance with the OPM Guide to Personnel 
Recordkeeping (available at http://www.opm.gov).

B. Annual Reporting Burden

    Respondents: 25 per year.
    Responses Per Respondent: 1.
    Total Annual Responses: 25.
    Hours per Response: 8.
    Total Burden Hours: 200.

C. Public Comments

    Public comments are solicited to help GSA understand whether or not 
creating the proposed new GSA Form 5015 will help to streamline the 
current consideration and approval process as well as save labor hours 
in the creation of requests and their subsequent approval and 
administrative routing. The agency would also like to know: (a) whether 
this collection of information is necessary, (b) whether it will have 
practical utility, (c) whether our estimate of the public burden of 
this collection of information is accurate (and based on valid 
assumptions and methodology), (d) whether or not there are ways to 
enhance the new form's utility and clarity of the information to be 
collected, and (e) whether or not there might be ways in to minimize 
the data collection burden through the use of information technology.
    Obtaining Copies of Proposals: We have provided a copy of the 
proposed draft GSA Form 5015 at the end of this notice below the 
signature block. A copy of the proposed draft form can alternatively be 
obtained through GSA's Regulatory Secretariat Division by calling (202) 
501-4755 or emailing [email protected]. Please cite OMB Control No. 
3090-XXXX, Student Loan Repayment Application and Service Agreement 
(GSA Form 5015), in all correspondence.

Lois Mandell,
Director, Regulatory Secretariat Division, General Services 
Administration.

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[FR Doc. 2024-31659 Filed 1-7-25; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6820-FM-P
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