Editor’s Note: See also Comments on the Draft Report to The Administrative Conference of the United States on the Paperwork Reduction Act.
From: The Regulatory Review
Gisselle Bourns, Jennifer Nou, and Stuart Shapiro
The Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) has long been accused of adding excessive delay to the process of federal agencies producing surveys and other valuable information gathering efforts. Other experts have praised the PRA for serving as a necessary constraint on the ability of agencies to burden the public. In its recent plenary session, the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) approved a set of recommendations to improve the operation of the PRA. These proposals build on related suggestions from 2012, which considered statutory changes.
The PRA, originally passed in 1980 and amended twice since then, is intended to reduce the burden of information collections on the public and to maximize the usefulness of the information collected to the government. To do so, the PRA requires agencies to follow a specific process before they can collect information from 10 or more members of the public.