[Federal Register Volume 67, Number 117 (Tuesday, June 18, 2002)]
[Notices]
[Pages 41528-41530]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 02-15247]


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NATIONAL FOUNDATION ON THE ARTS AND THE HUMANITIES


Solicitation of Public Comments on Guidelines for Ensuring and 
Maximizing the Quality, Objectivity, Utility, and Integrity of 
Information Disseminated by the National Endowment for the Arts

AGENCY: National Endowment for the Arts.

ACTION: Notice and request for public comment.

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SUMMARY: The National Endowment for the Arts (Endowment) announces that 
its draft Guidelines for Ensuring and Maximizing the Quality, 
Objectivity, Utility, and Integrity of Information Disseminated by the 
National Endowment for the Arts have been posted on the Endowment 
website, www.arts.gov. The Endowment invites public comments on its 
draft Guidelines and will consider the comments received in developing 
its final Guidelines.

DATES: Comments are due on or before July 15, 2002. Final Guidelines 
are to be published by October 1, 2002.

ADDRESSES: Submit comments to the Office of General Counsel, National 
Endowment for the Arts, 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 
20506, [email protected].

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Hope O'Keeffe, Acting General Counsel, 
telephone 202-682-5418, [email protected]. Hearing-impaired 
individuals may contact the Endowment by TDD/TTY at 202-682-5496.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Section 515 of the Treasury and General 
Government Appropriations Act for FY 2001 (Pub. L. 106-554) requires 
each Federal agency to publish guidelines for ensuring and maximizing 
the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of the information it 
disseminates. Agency guidelines must be based on government-wide 
guidelines issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). In 
compliance with this statutory requirement and OMB instructions, the 
Endowment has posted its draft Information Quality Guidelines on the 
Endowment's website (www.arts.gov).
    The Guidelines describe the agency's procedures for ensuring the 
quality of information that it disseminates and the procedures by which 
an affected person may obtain correction of information disseminated by 
the Endowment that does not comply with the Guidelines. The Endowment 
invites public comments on its draft Guidelines and will consider the 
comments received in developing its proposed final Guidelines, which 
must be submitted to OMB for review. The agency's final Guidelines are 
to be published by October 1, 2002. Persons who cannot access the draft 
Guidelines through the Internet may request a paper or electronic copy 
by contacting the Office of the General Counsel.

Guidelines for Ensuring and Maximizing the Quality, Objectivity, 
Utility, and Integrity of Information Disseminated by the National 
Endowment for the Arts

    These Guidelines for Ensuring and Maximizing the Quality, 
Objectivity, Utility, and Integrity of Information Disseminated by the 
National Endowment for the Arts are prepared under the Treasury and 
General Government Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2001, Section 
515(b), and are designed to ensure and maximize the quality, 
objectivity, utility and integrity of information disseminated by the 
Endowment.
    1. The Endowment has adopted a basic standard of quality (including 
objectivity, utility, and integrity) as a performance goal for all 
information that it disseminates. The Endowment has taken appropriate 
steps to incorporate information quality criteria into Endowment 
information dissemination practices.

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    2. As a matter of good and effective agency information resources 
management, the Endowment reviews the quality (including the 
objectivity, utility, and integrity) of information before it is 
disseminated. Information quality is integral to every step of the 
Endowment's development of information, including creation, collection, 
maintenance, and dissemination. The Endowment substantiates the quality 
of the information it has disseminated through documentation or other 
means appropriate to the information.
    3. Generally, the office disseminating the information, such as the 
Office of Communications, the Office of Policy Research & Analysis, the 
Office of Guidelines and Panel Operations, or the Office of 
Congressional Liaison, will be responsible for reviewing the quality of 
information before dissemination, with appropriate oversight by the 
Endowment's Chairman or the Chairman's designees. The originating 
offices will use internal peer reviews and other review mechanisms to 
ensure that disseminated information meets quality standards including 
objectivity, utility, and integrity in both presentation and substance. 
Each office is responsible for ensuring that the pre-dissemination 
review is performed and documented at a level appropriate for the type 
of information disseminated.
    4. To facilitate citizen review, affected persons may seek and 
obtain, where appropriate, timely correction of information maintained 
and disseminated by the Endowment that does not comply with OMB or 
Endowment guidelines.
    a. Requests for correction should be sent in writing, by mail, fax, 
or email to: Information Change Request, Office of General Counsel, 
National Endowment for the Arts, 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW., 
Washington, DC 20506, (202) 682-5418, (202) 682-5572 (fax), 
[email protected].
    b. The request should clearly identify the information asserted to 
be incorrect, including the name of the publication or other source of 
information, the date of issuance, and a detailed description of the 
information to be corrected. The request should state specifically why 
the information should be corrected and suggest specific changes.
    c. The request should include the requester's name, mailing 
address, fax number, email address, and telephone number. The Endowment 
needs this information to respond to the request and to contact the 
requester as necessary.
    d. If a request does not reasonably describe the information 
asserted to be incorrect, the Endowment may request additional 
information.
    5. The Endowment will investigate and respond to requests for 
correction in a flexible manner, taking into consideration the nature 
and extent of the complaint, the nature and timeliness of the 
information involved, the significance of the correction to the use of 
the information, and the magnitude of the correction needed. Should the 
Endowment determine that a correction is necessary, appropriate 
responses might include personal contacts by letter or telephone, press 
releases, website postings, errata sheets in publications, or mass 
mailings to correct a widely disseminated error or address a frequently 
raised complaint.
    6. The Endowment will generally notify the requester of the agency 
decision on whether and how any corrections will be made within 30 
business days of receipt of the request. If the requester does not 
agree with the agency's decision regarding corrective action, the 
requester may file for reconsideration by the Chairman within 30 days 
of the Endowment's decision. Such reconsideration requests will 
generally be resolved within 45 business days.
    7. The Endowment's pre-dissemination review, under paragraph 2, 
applies to information that the Endowment first disseminates on or 
after October 1, 2002. The Endowment's administrative mechanisms, under 
paragraph 4-6, apply to information that the Endowment disseminates on 
or after October 1, 2002, regardless of when the Endowment first 
disseminated the information.
    8. The Chief Information Officer of the National Endowment for the 
Arts is responsible for Endowment compliance with predissemination 
review under these guidelines. The General Counsel of the National 
Endowment for the Arts is responsible for resolution of requests for 
correction.
    9. On an annual fiscal-year basis, the Endowment will submit a 
report to the Director of OMB providing information (both quantitative 
and qualitative, where appropriate) on the number and nature of 
complaints received by the Endowment regarding Endowment compliance 
with these guidelines and how such complaints were resolved. The 
Endowment will submit these reports no later than January 1 of each 
following year, with the first report due January 1, 2004.
10. Definitions
    a. ``Quality'' is an encompassing term comprising utility, 
objectivity, and integrity. Therefore, the guidelines sometimes refer 
to these four statutory terms, collectively, as ``quality.''
    b. ``Utility'' refers to the usefulness of the information to its 
intended users, including the public. In assessing the usefulness of 
information that the Endowment disseminates to the public, the 
Endowment will consider the uses of the information not only from the 
perspective of the Endowment but also from the perspective of the 
public. As a result, when reproducibility and transparency of 
information are relevant for assessing the information's usefulness 
from the public's perspective, the Endowment will take care to ensure 
that reproducibility and transparency have been addressed in its review 
of the information.
    c. ``Objectivity'' involves two distinct elements, presentation and 
substance.
    (1) ``Objectivity'' includes whether disseminated information is 
being presented in an accurate, clear, complete, and unbiased manner. 
This involves whether the information is presented within a proper 
context. Sometimes, in disseminating certain types of information to 
the public, other information must also be disseminated in order to 
ensure an accurate, clear, complete, and unbiased presentation. Also, 
the Endowment will, where appropriate, identify the sources of the 
disseminated information (to the extent possible, consistent with 
confidentiality protections) and, in a scientific or statistical 
context, the supporting data and models, so that the public can assess 
for itself whether there may be some reason to question the objectivity 
of the sources. Where appropriate, supporting data should have full, 
accurate, transparent documentation, and error sources affecting data 
quality should be identified and disclosed to users.
    (2) In addition, ``objectivity'' involves a focus on ensuring 
accurate, reliable, and unbiased information.
    (a) In a scientific or statistical context, the original or 
supporting data shall be generated, and the analytical results shall be 
developed, using sound statistical and research methods.
    (b) If the results have been subject to formal, independent, 
external peer review, the information can generally be considered of 
acceptable objectivity.
    (c) In those situations involving influential scientific or 
statistical information, the results must be capable of being 
substantially reproduced, if the original or supporting data are 
independently analyzed using the same models. Reproducibility does not 
mean that the original or supporting data have to be capable of being 
replicated

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through new experiments, samples or tests.
    (d) Making the data and models publicly available will assist in 
determining whether analytical results are capable of being 
substantially reproduced.
    (3) These guidelines do not alter the otherwise applicable 
standards and procedures for determining when and how information is 
disclosed. Thus, the objectivity standard does not override other 
compelling interests, such as privacy, trade secret, and other 
confidentiality protections.
    d. ``Integrity'' refers to the security of information--protection 
of the information from unauthorized access or revision, to ensure that 
the information is not compromised through corruption or falsification.
    e. ``Information'' means any communication or representation of 
knowledge such as facts or data, in any medium or form, including 
textual, numerical, graphic, cartographic, narrative, or audiovisual 
forms. This definition includes information that the Endowment 
disseminates from a web page, but does not include the provision of 
hyperlinks to information that others disseminate. This definition does 
not include opinions, where the Endowment's presentation makes it clear 
that what is being offered is an individual's opinion rather than fact 
or the Endowment's views.
    f. ``Government information'' means information created, collected, 
processed, disseminated, or disposed of by or for the Federal 
Government.
    g. ``Information dissemination product'' means any book, paper, 
map, machine-readable material, audiovisual production, or other 
documentary material, regardless of physical form or characteristic, an 
Endowment disseminates to the public. This definition includes any 
electronic document, CD-ROM, or web page.
    h. ``Dissemination'' means Endowment initiated or sponsored 
distribution of information to the public in all media and formats. 
Dissemination does not include:
    (1) distribution limited to government employees or Endowment 
contractors or grantees; intra-or inter-agency use or sharing of 
government information;
    (2) responses to requests for Endowment records under the Freedom 
of Information Act, the Privacy Act, the Federal Advisory Committee Act 
or other similar law; or
    (3) distribution limited to correspondence with individuals or 
persons, press releases, archival records, public filings, subpoenas or 
adjudicative processes.
    i. ``Influential'' when used in the phrase ``influential 
statistical information'' means the Endowment expects that information 
in the form of analytical results will likely have an important effect 
on the development of domestic or international government or private 
sector policies or will likely have important consequences for specific 
technologies, substances, products, or firms.
    j. ``Capable of being substantially reproduced'' means that 
independent reanalysis of the original or supporting data using the 
same methods would generate similar analytical results, subject to an 
acceptable degree of imprecision.

    Dated: June 12, 2002.

    For the National Endowment for the Arts.
Hope O'Keeffe,
Acting General Counsel.
[FR Doc. 02-15247 Filed 6-17-02; 8:45 am]
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