Paperwork Reduction Act Materials

Presentation by Don Bieniewicz - 10/22/2013

The Rulemaking Process and the Paperwork Reduction Act

PROPOSED RULES

(1) When a proposed rule is being developed, the information collections in the draft rule need to be identified.  The expert on this is your bureau Information Collection Clearance Officer (ICCO).

(2) The preamble of the proposed rule needs to describe the information collections in the rule and the estimated hour burden on the public.  The preamble needs to direct public comments on the information collection requirements to OMB and to the bureau.

(3) The proposed rule needs to be reviewed and approved by the bureau ICCO, then by the Departmental ICCO, before the proposed rule is published.

(4) On the day that the proposed rule is published, the Departmental ICCO submits the Information Collection Request (ICR) associated with the proposed rule to OMB-OIRA via ROCIS.  A 30-day public comment period on the information collections in the proposed rule begins. The ICR appears to the public on the website reginfo.gov.

(5) After 30 days, OMB can act on the ICR.  OMB can approve the ICR but rarely does.  It usually “comments” on the ICR and tells the bureau to re-submit the ICR before publishing the final rule.

FINAL RULES

(1) The bureau needs to review any public comments received on the information collections in the proposed rule and address them in the preamble of the final rulemaking.

(2) The preamble of the final rule must describe the information collections in the rule, state their hour burden on the public, and that the information collections have been approved by OMB.  The text of the rule should contain a section that says that the rule contains information collections that were approved by OMB and state the OMB control number.

(3) The draft final rule language needs to be reviewed and approved by the bureau ICCO and the Departmental ICCO before the final rule is published.

(4)  When the final rule has been finalized and nearly ready for publication, the Departmental ICCO will submit a new ICR for the final rule to OMB-OIRA via ROCIS.  This ICR is “silent” in that no notice of this submission is made public and the ICR will not appear on the website reginfo.gov. (Such public appearance would violate the Administrative Procedure Act.  ROCIS is designed to prevent that.) 

(5)  OMB will “preapprove” the ICR, usually in about a week, and will assign an OMB control number and an expiration date three years in the future.  Sometimes OMB requests changes in the preamble of the rule related to the ICR. These changes need to be made to the final rule language before the rule is published.  The preapproval will be activated by the Departmental ICCO when the rule takes effect.

(6)  The bureau then can proceed to publish the final rule.

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