The American public s federal paperwork grew by nearly 180 million burden hours during fiscal 2000, the second largest increase since Congress passed the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, which amended the 1980 law. Information collection is one way that agencies accomplish their missions and protect public health and safety. The total number of burden hours now stands at about 7.4 billion, said Mihm. At the end of fiscal 1995, before the passage of the 1995 Paperwork Reduction Act, agencies estimated that their information collections imposed about 7 billion burden hours on the public, he said. A burden hour is the measurement used to estimate the amount of time and expense it takes for people to fill out agency forms, reports and other types of paperwork for the government.
Agencies compute their paperwork in burden hours.
Burden-hour estimates are classified as either program changes or adjustments, explained Mihm. A program change occurs when the government takes deliberate action, such as the IRS adding or deleting questions to a tax form. Adjustments, on the other hand, are not caused by a deliberate government action. For example, if the economy declined, causing more people to fill out applications for food stamps, the increase in the Agriculture Department s paperwork estimate would not be due to a direct action by the government. The Paperwork Reduction Acts of 1980 and 1995 require agencies to reduce the public s burden of providing information to the government by cutting back on unnecessary paperwork.