Information Collection Budget (ICB)--The Federal Government's projected burden on the public for new requirements to collect information. It is the estimated response time (direct and indirect) for the public to collect, record, and submit information to the Federal Government. Each year the OMB issues a "budget call" for the Federal Government's ICB. determining policy; planning, controlling, and evaluating operations and performance; making
administrative determinations; or preparing other reports. The data or information may be displayed on paper, magnetic tapes, or other media.

Internal Information Collection/Reporting Requirement--Data or information collected by one or more organizational components and transmitted to other organizational components for management purposes. The collections required for management purposes pertain to policy; planning, controlling, and evaluating operations and performance; making administrative determinations; and preparing other reports. It is status, summary, or statistical information in both electronic and manual information systems.

Public Information Collections--Those collections that require responses from the public. The Act defines a collection of information to be: "The obtaining or soliciting of facts or opinions by an agency through the use of written report forms, application forms, schedules, questionnaires, reporting or record keeping requirements, or other similar methods calling for either: (1) Answers to identical questions posed to, or identical reporting or record keeping requirements imposed on, ten or more persons, other than agencies, instrumentalities, or employees of the United States; or (2) Answers to questions posed to agencies, instrumentalities, or employees of the United States which are to be used for general statistical purposes." This includes information collections that are mandatory, voluntary, or required to obtain a benefit.

What is Information Collection Review?

Reginfo.gov gives the public access to current and historical data on information collection reviews (ICRs) by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) under the Paperwork Reduction Act. Since the summer of 2006, OIRA has been using a new, enhanced computer system, replacing a 20-year-old mainframe computer, to support the information collection review process. With the new system, Federal agencies are able to submit materials for review electronically and OIRA can track the entire process automatically. The new system also gives the public the ability to view and search information collection reviews on Reginfo.gov. 

All data previously available in the old mainframe system have now been moved to Reginfo.gov. The old system contained records from as far back as the 1970s. From time to time, the old system was modified, including several instances of adding more data to the information submitted by agencies and retained in the system about each submission. The most recent major system redesign occurred in 1995. One of the biggest changes introduced at that time was saving data about the original agency request, in addition to what was actually approved by OIRA. Previously, only the approved numbers for burdens and expiration dates were maintained in the system. 

Under the review process, approved information collection requests are assigned OMB control numbers. A single control number may apply to several related information collections. The new system gives the public the ability to see the electronic documents associated with the submission, including documents for the related information collections. 

Because the old system did not contain as complete a record as the new system for many of the agency submissions and the move to the new system required fitting the old data into the new record structures, some appear to be incomplete. For the most part, this should not be confusing to users of Reginfo.gov. However, individual searches could be affected by the existence of data in recent records that simply were never requested or retained in earlier years' records. Examples include searches that involve the various conditions listed on the Advanced Search screen under the heading 'ICRs that' and searches under Line of Business, a field added in connection with Federal Enterprise Architecture requirements. The data fields associated with the conditions 'Affect small entities' and 'Employ statistical methods' have been collected since September 1995; the others have only been collected since July 2006. Therefore, you should not check these conditions to search for data older than these dates.