View ICR - OIRA Conclusion



1845-0001 200910-1845-005
Historical Active 200810-1845-011
ED/FSA 4120
Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)
Revision of a currently approved collection   No
Regular
Approved with change 12/24/2009
Retrieve Notice of Action (NOA) 11/13/2009
This collection is approved with the following terms of clearance: Upon re-evaluation of the Department's current methodology in assessing burden imposed by the public, the Department acknowledges that the burden estimate as submitted to OMB for the FAFSA application did not include the time required to complete some ancillary processes required in order to accurately complete the application. As required under 5 CFR 1320, agencies are to include in their burden estimates, an estimate for the total annual reporting and recordkeeping burden that will result from the collection of information. As a result, the Department of Education has adjusted its estimate of the burden by including the time devoted to activities such as preparation, submission, and record-keeping. It is important to note that the higher burden estimate does not reflect an actual increase in burden, but rather a more accurate estimate of the burden associated with the FAFSA application process. It is also important to recognize the Department's tremendous efforts in burden reduction through the use of web enhancements such as skip logic and pre-population of IRS data. These are efforts are reflected in the significant program change reduction due to agency discretion. Given the plans submitted by the Department to better assess burden in its 2010-2011 FAFSA submission to OMB, FSA must further re-evaluate their burden estimates before seeking OMB approval for the 2011-2012 FAFSA application. In order to do so, FSA will do the following: • Using the 2010-2011 FOTW application, they will monitor application completion time. The completion timer will start at the Introduction page (after successful login) through submission of the application. The time will not include timeouts by applicant and will be rolled back to last completed action. (FSA)will receive a weekly report of completion average by applicant type (dependent and independent students) and type of FAFSA completed (FOTW, FAFSA EZ and pre-filled FOTW). • In addition to analysis of the 2010-2011, FSA will use existing approved customer satisfaction survey questions and consider adding additional questions pertaining to preparation time (gathering documents, reading instructions, etc) • FSA will also evaluate whether or not to conduct additional studies (usability testing and customer satisfaction) to accurately assess estimates of burden. Options include but not limited to: o Review of comparative analyses of the methodologies used by other federal agencies that are similar in complexity and uses. o Student/applicant focus groups o Financial aid administrator focus groups o Usability studies
  Inventory as of this Action Requested Previously Approved
12/31/2010 36 Months From Approved 12/31/2011
21,696,675 0 17,123,392
26,781,074 0 8,341,867
0 0 0