Congress has also given OIRA other statutory responsibilities related to regulatory management. Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

The objectives of our review were to assess how OIRA has implemented three of its information collection responsibilities under the PRA:
We looked at how OIRA reviews and controls paperwork, including (1) reviewing and approving agencies’ information collection requests; (2) establishing and overseeing guidance for estimating information collection burden; (3) setting annual governmentwide goals for the reduction of that burden by at least 10 percent in fiscal years 1996 and 1997, 5 percent during the next 4 fiscal years, and setting annual agency goals that reduce paperwork to the “maximum practicable opportunity”; and (4) conducting pilot projects to test alternative policies and procedures to minimize information collection burden. OIRA officials said that they have not formally established any pilot projects specifically for this purpose. However, they said that they do not view this section of the act as requiring OIRA or OMB to undertake any special action or review. OIRA Has Not Kept Congress Fully and Currently Informed of Certain Major PRA Activities

Section 3514(a) of the PRA states that OIRA must “keep Congress and congressional committees fully and currently informed of the major activities under ,” and it requires OIRA to “submit a report on such activities to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives annually and at such other times as [OIRA] determines necessary.” The PRA says that any such report must contain a description of the extent to which agencies have reduced information collection burdens on the public and should specifically include (1) a summary of accomplishments and planned initiatives; (2) a list of all violations of the act’s requirements; (3) a list of any increases in the collection of information burden (including the authority for each such collection); and (4) a list of agencies that did not reduce information collection burdens in accordance with the goals established in section 3505(a)(1), a list of the programs and statutory responsibilities of those agencies that precluded that reduction, and recommendations to assist those agencies to reduce their information collection burdens. Although the ICBs in these reports presented the changes in burden-hour estimates from year to year, neither of the reports clearly stated that the governmentwide burden-reduction goals contemplated in the act were unlikely to be met. Neither did those reports indicate that OIRA believes that the sum of the individual reduction goals that is the maximum practicable for each agency need not equal the governmentwide goal. Conclusions

This report examines some, but not all, of OIRA’s specific responsibilities under the 1995 PRA. Although OIRA officials noted a variety of actions that the agency had taken regarding those responsibilities, we do not believe that OIRA has fully satisfied the act’s requirements in any of the three areas we examined: (1) reviewing and controlling paperwork, (2) developing and overseeing federal IRM policies, and (3) keeping Congress and congressional committees fully and currently informed about major activities under the act. Although OIRA’s August 1996 and September 1997 reports on the PRA and the CIO Council’s strategic plan contain some of the elements that the PRA requires in an IRM strategic plan, none of these documents describe, in a clear and comprehensive manner, (1) the objectives and means by which the federal government should use information resources to improve agency and program performance or (2) agencies’ progress in applying IRM to improve their performance—two of the three basic elements that the act says an IRM strategic plan should have. The office has less than two dozen staff who review between 3,000 and 5,000 PRA information collection requests each year, analyze the substance of about 500 significant rules each year under Executive Order 12866, and perform other duties pursuant to other statutes and executive orders. To date, OIRA has not done so. The PRA requires OIRA to set both governmentwide and agency specific burden-reduction goals. The act does not require agencies to meet the burden-reduction goals, only that OIRA and the agencies establish them.
Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed how the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has implemented selected responsibilities assigned to it by the 1995 Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), focusing on: (1) how OIRA reviews and controls paperwork; (2) OIRA's oversight of federal information resources management (IRM) activities; and (3) how OIRA keeps Congress and congressional committees fully and currently informed about major activities under the act.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) OIRA has taken between 3,000 and 5,000 actions on agencies' information collection requests in each year since the 1995 PRA was enacted; (2) at the same time, 20 to 25 OIRA staff members assigned to this task were responsible for reviewing the substance of about 500 significant rules each year and carrying out other statutory, executive order, and policy responsibilities; (3) although OIRA has provided agencies with some guidance on how they can estimate paperwork burden, the guidance is not very specific; (4) as required by the PRA, OIRA has set both governmentwide and agency-specific burden-reduction goals; (5) however, OIRA officials said they do not believe the act requires that the agencies' burden-reduction goals need to total to the governmentwide goal; (6) also, OIRA established the agencies' goals for fiscal years 1996 and 1997 at nearly the end of each of those years; (7) OIRA has not formally designated any pilot projects under the PRA to test alternative policies and procedures to minimize information collection burden; (8) OIRA officials said that other burden reduction efforts are under way, and pilot projects used to satisfy another statute meet the PRA's requirements; (9) OIRA's annual reports do not provide a central focus on how agencies should use information resources to improve agency and program performance, and they only partially describe agencies' progress in applying IRM to improve their performance and the accomplishment of their missions--elements that the PRA requires in a governmentwide IRM strategic plan; (10) however, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) does not explicitly require agencies' information collection requests and budget submissions to contain all of the elements that the PRA specifically mentions as agencies' general IRM responsibilities; (11) OIRA officials said that they keep Congress and congressional committees fully and currently informed of major activities under the act through their annual reports, the Chief Information Officer Council's strategic plan, and other reports and informational mechanisms; (12) however, OIRA's and other reports do not contain all of the specific information that the act requires; and (13) although the annual reports present the changes in burden-hour estimates from year to year, OIRA has not clearly notified Congress in those reports or elsewhere that the burden reduction goals contemplated in the PRA are unlikely to be met, or that OIRA believes that the sum of the agency-specific goals need not equal the governmentwide goal, or that other PRA-required actions have not been taken.