[Federal Register Volume 69, Number 87 (Wednesday, May 5, 2004)]
[Notices]
[Pages 25147-25157]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 04-10220]


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OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET


Executive Office of the President; Draft Report of the Small 
Business Paperwork Relief Act Task Force

AGENCY: Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the 
President.

ACTION: Notice and request for comments.

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    Authority: The Small Business Paperwork Relief Act (44 U.S.C. 
3520).

SUMMARY: The Small Business Paperwork Relief Task Force requests 
comments on the attached Draft Report. In this Draft Report, the Small 
Business Paperwork Relief Task Force discusses and makes 
recommendations concerning the improvement of electronic dissemination 
of information collected under Federal requirements and a plan to 
develop an interactive Government-wide Internet program to identify 
applicable collections and facilitate compliance.

DATES: Submit comments on or before June 4, 2004.

ADDRESSES: Comments on this Draft Report should be addressed to 
Jonathan Koller, Office of E-Government and Information Technology. You 
are encouraged to submit these comments by facsimile to (202) 395-0342, 
or by electronic mail to [email protected].

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Mr. Jack Koller, Office of Electronic 
Government and Information Technology, OMB Washington, DC 20503 (202) 
395-4955. Inquiries may be submitted by facsimile to (202) 395-0342.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Under the SBPRA (44 U.S.C. 3520) Congress 
directed the Director of OMB to convene a Task Force to study the 
feasibility of streamlining requirements with respect to small business 
concerns regarding collection of information and strengthening 
dissemination of information (44 U.S.C. 3520, Pub. L. 107-198). More 
specifically, this Task Force is charged with examining five tasks 
designed to reduce the information collection burden placed by 
government on small businesses. These tasks are as follows:
    1. Examine the feasibility and desirability of requiring the 
consolidation of information collection requirements within and across 
Federal agencies and programs, and identify ways of doing so.
    2. Examine the feasibility and benefits to small businesses of 
having OMB publish a list of data collections organized in a manner by 
which they can more easily identify requirements with which they are 
expected to comply.
    3. Examine the savings and develop recommendations for implementing 
electronic submissions of information to the Federal government with 
immediate feedback to the submitter.
    4. Make recommendations to improve the electronic dissemination of 
information collected under Federal requirements.
    5. Recommend a plan to develop an interactive Government-wide 
Internet program to identify applicable collections and facilitate 
compliance.
    While carrying out its work, the Task Force is to consider 
opportunities for the coordination of Federal and State reporting 
requirements, and coordination among individuals who have been 
designated as the small business ``point of contact'' for their 
agencies.
    On June 28, 2003, the Task Force submitted a report of its findings 
on the first three issues. This report, which addresses the final two 
issues, is required no later than two years after enactment, or June 
28, 2004. Both reports must be submitted to the Director of OMB, the 
Small Business and Agriculture Regulatory Enforcement Ombudsman, and 
the Senate Committees on Governmental Affairs and Small Business and 
Entrepreneurship, and the House Committees on Government Reform and 
Small Business.
    The Director of OMB appointed Dr. John D. Graham, Administrator of 
the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and Ms. Karen S. 
Evans, Administrator for E-Government and Information Technology, to 
co-chair the Task Force.
    The Act specifies the following agencies to be represented on the 
SBPRA Task Force: Department of Labor (including the Bureau of Labor 
Statistics, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration); 
Environmental Protection Agency; Department of Transportation; Office 
of Advocacy of the Small Business Administration; Internal Revenue 
Service; Department of Health and Human Services (including the Centers 
for Medicare and Medicaid Services); Department of Agriculture; 
Department of the Interior; the General Services Administration; and 
two other participants to be selected by the Director of OMB (who are 
the Department of Commerce and additional representatives from the 
Small Business Administration).
    The Task Force is now seeking input from all interested parties 
concerning the findings and recommendations contained in this draft 
report. All comments will be considered and may result in modifications 
to the final report. A summary of the public comments with responses of 
the Task

[[Page 25148]]

Force will be attached to the final report.

John D. Graham,
Administrator, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
Karen S. Evans,
Administrator for E-Government and Information Technology.

Executive Summary

    The Small Business Paperwork Relief Act of 2002 (the Act) was 
enacted June 28, 2002. The goal of the Act is to reduce the burden of 
Federal paperwork on small businesses. The Act requires the Federal 
government to (1) publish an annual list of the compliance assistance 
resources available to small businesses, (2) establish a single point 
of contact within agencies to interact with small businesses, and (3) 
establish an interagency Task Force to study and recommend additional 
means of reducing the burden on small businesses.
    On June 28, 2003, the SBPRA Task Force submitted their first report 
to Congress outlining a series of recommendations that would streamline 
the information submission process and reduce the paperwork burden for 
small businesses. It identified a number of steps to be taken to 
consolidate information collections, organize a list of such 
collections, and provide for electronic submission of forms.
    This second SBPRA Task Force report builds upon the recommendations 
provided in the first report and reflects the impact that the first 
report has had upon the small business community. It identifies a 
series of recommendations on disseminating information and specifically 
identifies a solution, developed over the previous year among agencies, 
to identify applicable collections and facilitate compliance with 
Federal paperwork requirements.
    First, the Task Force identifies opportunities for improved 
consolidation or coordination of information dissemination efforts. 
There are significant barriers to the establishment of a unilateral 
requirement or mandate for Federal agencies to coordinate information 
dissemination activities. However, a number of steps are recommended to 
encourage similar access to the broader base of Federal information. 
These steps include augmenting agency SBPRA plans, improving the 
organization and classification of information and establishing a 
partnership between agencies and the small business community.
    Second, the Task Force describes an interactive Internet-based 
system to help small business better understand existing paperwork 
requirements and make it easier for businesses to comply with such 
requirements. The Business Gateway initiative will provide a single web 
point of access for relevant regulatory information on all Federal 
forms, and harmonize industry-specific information collection 
requirements.
    The Task Force and their members have identified a significant 
number of opportunities for the Federal government to support and 
provide better assistance to the small business community. The 
recommendations in both reports, if implemented, will fulfill the 
objectives outlined in the Act.

1. The Small Business Paperwork Relief Act Task Force

A. What Specific Functions Are Assigned to the Task Force?

    The Small Business Paperwork Relief Act requires the Director of 
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to convene and chair a Task Force 
``to study the feasibility of streamlining requirements with respect to 
small business concerns regarding collection of information and 
strengthening dissemination of information.''
    More specifically, the Task Force is charged with five tasks 
designed to reduce the information collection burden placed by the 
Federal government on small businesses. These tasks are as follows:
    1. Examine the feasibility and desirability of requiring the 
consolidation of information collection requirements within and across 
Federal agencies and programs, and identify ways of doing so.
    2. Examine the feasibility and benefits to small businesses of 
having OMB publish a list of data collections organized in a manner by 
which they can more easily identify requirements with which they are 
expected to comply.
    3. Examine the savings and develop recommendations for implementing 
electronic submissions of information to the Federal government with 
immediate feedback to the submitter.
    4. Make recommendations to improve the electronic dissemination of 
information collected under Federal requirements.
    5. Recommend a plan to develop an interactive Government-wide 
Internet program to identify applicable collections and facilitate 
compliance.
    While carrying out its work, the Task Force is asked to consider 
opportunities for the coordination of Federal and State reporting 
requirements, and coordination among individuals who have been 
designated as the small business ``point of contact'' for their 
agencies.
    The Task Force is required to submit a report of its findings on 
the first three tasks no later than one year after enactment, or June 
28, 2003. A second report on the final two tasks is required no later 
than two years after enactment, or June 28, 2004. Both reports must be 
submitted to the Director of OMB, the Small Business and Agriculture 
Regulatory Enforcement Ombudsman, the Senate Committees on Governmental 
Affairs and Small Business and Entrepreneurship and the House 
Committees on Government Reform and Small Business.
    This draft represents the second report required under the Act. The 
first report was submitted to Congress on June 28, 2003 and is 
available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/inforeg/sbpr2003.pdf.

B. Which Agencies Are Represented, and Who Are the Small Business 
Paperwork Relief Task Force Members?

    The Director of OMB appointed Dr. John D. Graham, Administrator of 
the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and Karen S. Evans, 
Administrator of the Office of E-Government and Information Technology, 
to co-chair the Task Force. Dr. Graham is responsible for administering 
the Paperwork Reduction Act and for overseeing the Federal regulatory 
process. Ms. Evans is responsible for overseeing the President's 
Expanding E-Gov Initiative, including a Government-to-Business 
Portfolio of projects.
    The Act specifies the following agencies to be represented on the 
Task Force: The Department of Labor (including the Bureau of Labor 
Statistics, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration), 
Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Transportation, Office 
of Advocacy of the Small Business Administration, Internal Revenue 
Service, Department of Health and Human Services (including the Centers 
for Medicare and Medicaid Services), Department of Agriculture, 
Department of Interior, General Services Administration and two other 
participants to be selected by the Director of OMB (the Department of 
Commerce and additional representation from the Small Business 
Administration were chosen).

C. What Are the Goals, Objectives, and Operating Principles of the Task 
Force?

    Goal: Identify effective, realistic ways to reduce the burden on 
small

[[Page 25149]]

businesses by making it easier to find, understand, and comply with 
government information collections.
    Objective 1: Recommend actions that can make it easier for small 
businesses to find out what information collections apply to them from 
individual Federal agencies, across all Federal agencies, and from 
State and local governments, where practicable.
    Objective 2: Recommend actions that can reduce the difficulty, 
frequency, redundancy, and expense of compliance for small businesses.
    Objective 3: Recommend actions that will help small businesses 
understand why information is being collected and how it benefits them.
    Operating Principles:
    1. Recommendations should be consistent with principles of the 
President's Management Agenda:
    a. Citizen-centered, not bureaucracy-centered.
    b. Small business concerns and burden reduction are a priority for 
the Federal government.
    c. Results-oriented. Success should be measured by benefits that 
are demonstrable.
    d. Market-based, actively promoting innovation.
    2. Recommendations must be technically feasible.
    3. Recommendations should be supportable within existing government 
agencies and management structures.
    4. Recommendations must be achievable given existing Agency 
resources, or sufficient case must be made to support additional costs.
    5. Recommendations should address both short term and long term 
remedies.
    6. Recommendations should leverage and build on efforts underway 
that address the Task Force's goals.
    7. Recommendations should be consistent with lessons learned and 
based on best practices from past efforts.

D. What Methods Did the Task Force Use to Derive Its Recommendations?

    The Task Force began its work with a meeting of the full membership 
to develop a common understanding of the law, project goals, scope, 
roles and responsibilities, resource requirements, strategy, timeline 
and deliverables.
    After the initial meeting, the Task Force formed two subcommittees 
to address each of the two statutorily required tasks questions in 
greater detail. Additional staff experts from Federal agencies joined 
the effort. The subcommittees used methods such as assigning specific 
questions to experts for research, in-person and virtual brainstorming, 
inventorying and investigating activities and projects already 
underway, studying best practices and lessons learned from prior/
current activities, and studying the results of public outreach 
conducted by the Small Business Administration's (SBA) Office of 
Advocacy and other reference material intended to provide input from 
the business community and other stakeholders.
    The subcommittee members and staff experts worked together to 
develop findings and recommendations.
    The SBA's Office of Advocacy held a public meeting on February 9, 
2004, to solicit the views of interested persons regarding the Task 
Force's duties. The Chief Counsel for Advocacy convened and chaired the 
meeting.

2. Findings and Recommendations

A. Task 4: Improve Electronic Dissemination of Information 
Collected Under Federal Requirements

Problem Statement
    As noted earlier in this report, accessing the wide variety of 
public information collected by the Federal government can place a 
difficult, time-consuming, and expensive burden on citizens and 
businesses, particularly small businesses. Understanding the 
information that is available is made more difficult by the size and 
complexity of the government and enormous volume of information 
collections that the Federal government conducts. All sectors of the 
public, including small businesses and private citizens, should be able 
to easily access, retrieve, and use available government information, 
ideally free of charge. A May 2000 report stated the government then 
had an estimated 20,000 separate homepages and 40 million web pages.\1\ 
Substantial growth has occurred since then and current seekers of 
government information often find poorly organized government databases 
and websites lacking user-friendly search capabilities.
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    \1\ Workshop Report on a Future Information Infrastructure for 
the Physical Sciences: The Facts of the Matter: Finding, 
Understanding and Using Information About Our Physical World, 
Washington, DC, May 30-31, Department of Energy, Office of 
Scientific and Technical Information.
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    One obvious challenge is simply the enormity of the volume of 
information collected. Improving electronic dissemination of Federally-
collected information requires enhancing government information 
technology, both in terms of simple agency management and distribution, 
and in terms of capabilities for sharing with the public and other 
government entities. Other issues are the adequacy of searching 
mechanisms and use of government terminology versus common terms.
    During the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy 
Public Outreach Meeting held on February 9, 2004, the following issues 
and problems were identified by small business community 
representatives in the area of information dissemination:
    1. Federal agency web sites need to be customer-centric with 
information organized by topic area, not by the organization that 
collected or reported the information.
    2. There is a need for ``one-stop shopping'' or one source for 
information.
    3. Search engines widely used on the Internet cannot locate Federal 
government information.
    4. There is a need for a contact person or Hotline that can be 
called and that can assist in locating information.
    5. Wherever possible, Federal agency web sites need to clearly date 
materials they post on the internet. The public wants to know when 
material was created or collected. Dating materials provides the public 
with guidance as to how relevant or timely the resources are and in 
some circumstances, whether the materials were prepared prior to or 
after, pertinent regulatory change.
    In addition the Task Force has identified eight specific areas that 
contribute the need for improving the dissemination of federally-
collected information:
    1. Information is frequently difficult to locate.
    2. Some information is not in a useful form. For example, data sets 
should be provided in formats that allow adjustment for specialized 
use.
    3. Not all information that is collected may be disseminated; for 
example, information that may not be useful in aggregated form and 
information collected for enforcement and other protected purposes.
    4. Many small businesses and other citizen groups do not know how 
or where to locate the information, or even that specific information 
is available. Today's public may not realize what information is 
available, may not know how to access it, and may not recognize the 
value of secondary uses.
    5. The needs of small businesses and citizens are many and varied, 
and are sometimes not well defined; and agencies frequently do not make 
adequate efforts to address these needs.
    6. Collected information needs to be more broadly shared among 
Federal agencies, and State and local governments.
    7. Information integrity must be maintained. Assuming that 
Federally-

[[Page 25150]]

collected information is quality-verified and reliable, maintaining the 
integrity of the information is a necessary consideration. Some 
information is time-sensitive or short-lived, and may lose its 
relevance or importance if not used quickly.
    The Task Force has considered ways to improve access to information 
collected by identifying actions that Federal agencies can take to 
improve and coordinate their electronic dissemination of information.
Assumptions
    In developing these recommendations, the Task Force made the 
assumption that electronic information dissemination issues are not 
restricted to small businesses, but apply to all businesses, state and 
local governments, and citizens. Therefore the recommendations have a 
general focus, with an emphasis on small business needs.
    These recommendations will not focus on certain categories of 
Federally-collected information (explained below) either because such 
information lacks utility to the public or because of direct 
prohibitions to its release.
    1. As recognized by the Freedom of Information Act's nine exemption 
categories some information in the possession of the Federal Government 
is not appropriate for public disclosure. Such sensitive information 
can include taxpayer data, personal or medical data, certain 
proprietary data, and information that would reveal sensitive 
deliberative processes.
    2. Some information that is collected is not useful in an 
aggregated form or when it is retained in ``raw'' form. These 
recommendations should be focused on the particular stage or stages of 
the information life cycle that is useful to the particular 
constituencies of the information. However, it should be noted that 
multiple specialized constituencies often exist for the information 
that often make proactive dissemination appropriate at many or all 
stages.
Issues
    The Task Force was asked to specifically consider the methods of 
improving the electronic dissemination of information collected under 
Federal requirements. The Task Force conducted a review, which 
identified a number of Federal government initiatives to improve 
electronic information dissemination. Several of these initiatives are 
described in Appendix I.
    The Task Force believes that there is opportunity for improved 
consolidation or coordination of information dissemination efforts. 
This report outlines recommendations for accomplishing this task. 
However, the Task Force recognizes that, given the diversity of Federal 
government activities, no one method or template for disseminating 
information would fit all requirements. Below are four obstacles that 
make it difficult to improve dissemination of information through a 
top-down approach.
Vast Amount of Federal Information
    Federal agencies collect a vast amount of information and make a 
great deal of it available to the public (as allowed by law and 
pursuant to statistical standards). However, this information or data 
is not readily available to the lay public and is spread across many 
different Federal agencies. The sheer volume of Federal information 
makes improvement in dissemination a very complex, time-consuming task.
Capabilities of the Small-Business Point of Contact
    The Act requires each Agency to designate a single point of 
contact. Small business participants in the SBA public meeting were 
very supportive of this measure. The point of contact should be able to 
assist in locating electronic information disseminated by the Agency; 
however, the variety and volume of information collected and 
disseminated by any agency makes that a difficult task for a single 
point of contact. Defining how each agency should accomplish this 
educational service and assistance is difficult. An agency with a 
single point of dissemination, particularly where it is applicable to a 
discrete group of businesses, may find it relatively easy to provide a 
telephone service to address all of the relevant issues. More difficult 
would be the provision of knowledgeable assistance and services to a 
large number of businesses across many populations with different 
information requirements. In addition, if agencies have well-designed 
websites that provide information on whom to call or contact for 
specific types of information, fewer inquiries will go to their small 
business point of contact.
Challenges of Cross-Agency Initiatives
    Although the E-Government initiatives have begun to demonstrate how 
cross-agency initiatives can be governed and financed, it has not been 
without a great deal of struggle. A significant challenge remains for 
agencies to coordinate and integrate their information.
Determining Customer Needs
    One important role that the Federal government needs to fill is 
that of a service organization that provides its citizens/customers 
with the information and assistance they need to comply with Federal 
regulations and other requirements. In order to adequately serve its 
customers, the Federal government needs to be well informed about its 
customers' needs, expectations and abilities. Thus, agencies need to 
devote more time to better determine customer needs and abilities and 
to better inform, educate, and assist them. They need to be proactive, 
using an assessment of their needs and abilities to plan, design, and 
promptly deliver the right information, assistance, and service to our 
customers.
    To determine customer needs, the government must identify its 
customers. Depending on the situation, our customers include the 
citizenry at large, small businesses, the third parties that represent 
them, and many other groups. We need to identify our customers, and 
determine how best to organize the information and services to meet the 
unique needs of specific customer market segments. Often these 
customers and their needs are very different for different agency 
missions. For example, in complying with Federal tax law, most guidance 
is general in nature, applies to a vast number of citizens, and is 
segmented by the type of organizational entity or form. Other 
regulators, such as Department of Transportation, have a narrower 
customer base that can more readily be segmented. Third parties are 
sometimes used to address regulatory compliance. For instance, 80% 
percent of small businesses use the services of a tax professional to 
assist them with tax law compliance, so the needs of third-party 
customers must be addressed as well.
Recommendations
    The Task Force has developed several recommendations to achieve the 
Act's goals. The recommendations discussed below are consistent with 
the operating principles of the Task Force. They have been limited to 
options considered technically feasible, supportable within existing 
government management structures, and achievable given existing agency 
resources. The Task Force also considered the previous legislative 
efforts to address paperwork burden, discussed above, when developing 
the recommendations. The recommendations listed below are intended to 
supplement these prior efforts, and they do not alleviate the need to 
continue those efforts. The Task

[[Page 25151]]

Force determined that more can and should be done within the existing 
framework created by these Acts to improve access to Federally-
collected information.
    A number of government projects, including multi-agency projects, 
have proven the feasibility and desirability of the consolidation of 
information dissemination activities, as well as improving the 
labeling, organization, and visibility of Federally collected data. 
While there are significant barriers to the establishment of a 
unilateral requirement or mandate to do so, a number of steps can be 
recommended to encourage similar approaches to a broader base of 
Federal information. Based on the analysis of the problem, assumptions, 
and issues discussed above, the Task Force recommends the following 
actions to improve electronic dissemination of information collected 
under Federal requirements. These recommendations should not be viewed 
as discrete actions; the recommendations form an integrated and inter-
dependent set of actions.
    1. Require Agencies to Augment their SBPRA Plan. The First Task 
Force Report, of June 2003, recommended that agencies be required to 
develop an SBPRA Plan. It is the recommendation of this Task Force that 
any such plan be augmented with the following information:
    a. The plan should outline specific steps the agency would take to 
improve electronic dissemination of information collected under Federal 
requirements.
    b. The plan should set goals for improving electronic dissemination 
of information, and establish timelines for achieving those goals.
    c. The plan should identify activities that can be undertaken with 
other agencies having similar or related information collections. (See 
Recommendation 5 below.)
    d. Additionally, each Agency should identify opportunities to 
improve public access to information; provide assistance to the public 
in locating, and using, Federally-collected information; and market, or 
publicize the availability of the information.
    2. Improve the Organization and Classification of Information. 
Unfortunately, much government information is still categorized and 
displayed based on the organizational structure of the agency. This 
approach is not intuitively obvious to the customer, and desired 
information is difficult to find unless the customer is familiar with a 
particular program and where that program falls within an agency.
    For example, within the Department of Agriculture, in order to find 
out about the requirements for conducting aquaculture business or how 
to certify fish health prior to export, a customer must first go to the 
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) website, look under 
Veterinary Service to find the aquaculture program information. Only 
after examining the ``Link to Other Sites'' is the customer directed to 
aquaculture resources. Clearly, from a user's perspective, a search 
based on the topic ``aquaculture,'' which produces the ``Resource'' 
webpage, is a more direct path to the information.
    In order to make government information more readily available to 
businesses or citizens, Federal agencies should move from an 
organizational context to a subject matter and/or audience context to 
organize and classify information. One approach for improving the 
organization and classification of government information is to create 
a standard Federal methodology for classifying information on web pages 
to improve Federal website content management. A methodology for 
organizing government information could include the following:
    a. A common Federal subject tree for Federal Web sites could 
significantly assist small businesses and the general public to find 
the information they seek. The Interagency Committee on Government 
Information is looking at this issue and is considering the public-
centric taxonomies on FirstGov.gov and the departmental portals, as 
well as the business-line taxonomies used in the Federal Enterprise 
Architectures Business Reference Model. The ICGI should also consider 
and compare the Federal Register Thesaurus among the other taxonomies 
it is reviewing. The Federal Register Thesaurus provides standard broad 
topics used to classify all Federal regulations and is particularly 
useful to small businesses.
    b. Assisted and unassisted search and navigation could be improved 
by establishing some basic, common metadata for all top level websites. 
Areas to be addressed include:
    (a) The terminology and taxonomy must include the common terms used 
by customers, especially small business owners, to locate information.
    (b) The Government needs to explore metadata and taxonomies used on 
business-friendly web sites and by web search engines, especially with 
regard to how they classify and organize government data, and to 
identify commonly requested government information.
    (c) Trade and library associations can also assist with 
classification of Federal information, which would make it more 
accessible to the public, including small businesses.
    (d) There is a need to understand and stay current with the state-
of-the-art search techniques and taxonomy structures.
    (e) The Interagency Committee on Government Information (see 
Appendix I), established by the E-Gov Act of 2002, has commissioned 
working groups to address these areas, and their work needs to be 
supported by the agencies.
    Adopting a common Federal subject tree as a Federal taxonomy would, 
at a minimum, simplify a customer's navigation and search for 
information by making the classification of subject and content more 
consistent across the Federal government. Moving toward standard 
metadata tagging of websites and information across the Federal 
government would provide the opportunity to construct search engines 
and wizards that search for information based not only on the subject, 
but on the business context (i.e., taxes, agricultural loans), linking 
the search for information more directly to the customer's business 
needs.
    3. Improve Outreach To Small Businesses. Agencies should also take 
steps to improve outreach to small businesses, including public 
meetings and announcements regarding information that is available from 
the agency, especially the collections of information that are of 
particular interest to small businesses. Additional outreach efforts 
would significantly improve an agency's efforts to identify 
opportunities for improving the dissemination of information. As part 
of this effort, OMB published a summary of the Compliance Assistance 
Resources offered by the various agencies in the Federal Register (68 
FR 38525-38556 (June 27, 2003)). However, more extensive outreach and 
education efforts are required by the regulatory agencies to make 
customers aware of the information, assistance, and services that are 
available to help them comply with regulations and how to access them.
    4. Broaden and Improve Partnerships among Agencies with Similar or 
Overlapping Information Collections. Agencies, with varying degrees of 
success, have tried independently or in small consortiums, to provide 
their customers with the information, assistance, and services that 
meet their needs and expectations. Agencies should be encouraged to 
expand their effort in working across agency boundaries to improve 
information

[[Page 25152]]

dissemination. Agencies should take additional steps to identify other 
agencies, including state and local government agencies, with similar 
types of information and partner with them to develop consolidated 
access to those information collections. This would allow Agencies to 
eliminate duplication of dissemination and better ensure the accuracy 
and currency of information. Additionally, it would assist Agencies in 
identifying sources of information that would be useful in their work. 
For example, links between web sites with similar or related data can 
provide additional ease of use and capabilities to the customer.
    5. Use the E-Government Cross-Agency Initiatives to Improve 
Dissemination of Information. The Task Force strongly supports the 
Administration's E-Government initiatives as ways to further improve 
the dissemination of electronic information. The E-Gov initiatives 
should be a tool to achieve further improvements through process re-
engineering when feasible. In this way the E-Gov working groups would 
complement, rather than duplicate, other information dissemination 
efforts within the agencies. Highlights of activities of some of the E-
Government initiatives are included in Appendix I. Further work will 
need to be done to consolidate or integrate the products of the E-Gov 
initiatives as these initiatives mature.
    6. Determine Customer Needs. Agencies need to conduct a needs and 
abilities assessment of their customer base in order to provide the 
right information and services, in an understandable and accessible 
format that facilitates compliance with Federal regulations and 
minimizes customer burden. The agencies should make every effort to use 
existing opportunities and avenues for administering the data 
collection instrument, including focus groups and surveys, to help 
determine how the collected data could best be disseminated back to the 
public. Focus groups and Government-wide portals, such as Business.Gov 
and FirstGov.gov, should also be employed to collect data regarding 
customer needs.
    7. Market Information. It is the responsibility of the Federal 
agencies to reach out and inform the public about these resources. 
Marketing or outreach can be done by individual agencies or by 
interagency ``workgroups.'' The SBA should develop a cross-agency 
marketing or outreach campaign along the lines described above, 
requesting any additional resources needed through normal budget 
channels. In addition, third-party organizations, such as universities, 
trade associations, trade journals and professional societies, should 
be employed to spread the word to their members (such organizations 
usually have multiple avenues for communicating `` websites, 
newsletters, magazines, conferences, etc.).
    8. Explore Public/Private Partnerships with Web Services Companies. 
Federal agencies need to explore working with companies whose search 
engines look for, classify and link to Agency information. This will 
assist in identifying other ways of looking at the collection of 
Federal information.
    9. Don't Forget the Human Interface. There is much to be said for 
electronic dissemination of information, but, as was clearly 
articulated in the Public Outreach Meeting, there will always be a need 
for a person to be available to directly answer questions and provide 
assistance. This service can be provided through Call Centers and other 
techniques. Federal Help Line employees and small business points of 
contact should be educated on where to refer data requests across the 
government, as should specific program employees who may receive 
questions on data produced by agencies outside their own. Such services 
can be augmented, but not replaced, by providing ``Frequently Asked 
Questions'' on web sites, to respond 24 hours a day to commonly asked 
questions.

B. Task 5: Recommend a Plan to Develop an Interactive 
Government-wide Internet Program to Identify Applicable Collections and 
Facilitate Compliance

    A key recommendation from last year's Task Force Report was the use 
of information technology to reduce the paperwork burden on small 
businesses. The Task Force recommended application of several ongoing 
Presidential E-Government initiatives and management reform programs to 
overcome the technology and policy barriers hindering the 
harmonization, streamlining, and reengineering necessary to achieve the 
Act's objectives. Prominent among these recommendations was the 
realignment of the Business Compliance One-Stop (BCOS) initiative to 
focus more specifically on reducing the paperwork burden for small 
businesses. As a direct result of the first Task Force report, the BCOS 
initiative was renamed Business Gateway, and its governance team began 
work identifying a solution to the concerns raised by the Congress and 
citizens, namely to develop an interactive system to identify 
applicable collections and facilitate compliance.
    In developing the recommendation in this second report, the Task 
Force built upon the following recommendations from the first report.
    1. Adoption of a Set of Technology Standards--To provide 
opportunities for consolidated reporting and information sharing, the 
gateway should adopt standards that are consistent with industry 
standards when appropriate. The adopted set of standards should address 
format, design, security measures, and architecture.
    2. Protect and Ensure Privacy--In developing the technology 
standards, the Federal government should include small businesses and 
their representatives in development and validation of a strong privacy 
policy.
    3. Strategic Plan--Establish a strategic plan or business case that 
takes a synergistic approach to an integrated e-forms solution across 
all Federal agencies. The Federal government should work together to 
create a road map to implement the plan, within each agency's strategic 
planning and budget processes. The strategic plan should include burden 
reduction goals for small businesses.
    4. Outreach Efforts to Small Business--Once reporting products 
become available that meet the government-wide standard, work with 
agencies to develop a multi-agency plan for marketing the products and 
services, and training and assisting small businesses to use them.
    5. Work with Businesses and Associations--Fruitful areas for 
streamlining and harmonizing data requirements should be determined, 
including a new look for ways that businesses and associations can 
become viable, trusted, collection and dissemination points.
    6. Approach Change Incrementally--Select each year a limited group 
of stakeholders to provide input on reducing information collection 
burdens.
    7. Identify duplication through electronic forms management--The 
Paperwork Reduction Act requires agencies to self-certify that existing 
and proposed information gathering systems do not duplicate or overlap 
those of other systems in the same agency/department.
    8. Encourage Agencies to Utilize ``Smart'' Electronic Forms--
Consistent with the Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA), 
federal agencies should develop ``smart'' electronic forms that provide 
immediate feedback to ensure that submitted data meet format 
requirements and are within the range of acceptable options for each 
data field. Government forms

[[Page 25153]]

should be a model of ``user friendliness'' and efficiency. Agencies 
should accept electronic submission of forms to avoid errors when paper 
forms are manually transcribed.
Recommendations
    The Task Force proposes adoption of the implementation plan for the 
Business Gateway to help businesses find, understand, and comply with 
Federal laws, regulations, and information collection requirements.
    As a result of the first task force report, the project team 
increased emphasis on consolidating and harmonizing Federal paperwork 
requirements, which would help meet the goals of the Act, the Paperwork 
Reduction Act (PRA), the Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA), 
and the E-Government Act of 2002. In addition to addressing Federal 
paperwork requirements, Business Gateway will provide a Web-based 
portal for small businesses looking to find useful regulatory 
information in one place.
Business Gateway Vision, Mission, and Strategic Goals
    The vision of the Business Gateway E-Government initiative is:

    To reduce the burden on the Nation's small businesses by 
simplifying and improving electronic access to Federal Government 
information, programs and services and provide businesses and 
citizens with a one-stop means to find, fill, sign and submit forms 
and transactions electronically.

    This vision is focused on alleviating the estimated $320 billion 
annual regulatory burden imposed on citizens and business by the 
Federal Government. Since forms account for about half of that burden, 
the initiative's emphasis on customer-friendly forms offers significant 
savings to small businesses that can be reinvested in productivity 
enhancement and job creation.
    In order to achieve the vision, the Business Gateway seeks to build 
a Federal cross-agency infrastructure to provide useful regulatory 
information in one place, eliminate redundant data collection and 
provide electronically fill-able, file-able, and sign-able forms.
    The initiative will result in an interactive Government-wide 
Internet solution that provides a ``one-stop'' access point for Federal 
regulatory and information collection requirements affecting small 
businesses; enables them to find, fill out, and sign the required 
forms; and ensures that information common to multiple Federal 
information collection requirements is gathered only once and used 
multiple times to ensure data integrity and consistency throughout the 
compliance process.
    The goals of the Business Gateway are:
    1. To provide the Nation's small business owner with a single 
access point to government services and information designed to assist 
them to start, run, and grow their business
    2. To simplify, unify, and better manage citizen-facing E-forms 
infrastructure and processes on a government-wide basis
    3. Begin the process of harmonizing and streamlining data.
    Each of these goals is aligned with a specific technology solution, 
and the integration of these solutions will meet the requirements of 
the Act for ``an interactive Government-wide system, available through 
the Internet'' that eases the regulatory burden on small businesses. 
This integrated Internet system will also provide a single Federal 
cross-agency architectural framework that could eventually simplify the 
integration of Federal and state reporting requirements for small 
businesses. This will facilitate further dialogue between the Federal 
Government and the states on the coordination of reporting requirements 
as called for in both SBPRA and the E-Government Act. The following 
information describes each of the three specific goals.
    Goal 1: To provide the Nation's small business owner with a single 
access point to government services and information designed to assist 
them to start, run, and grow their business.
    To achieve this goal, the Business Gateway Program Office will 
develop a business portal on the Web, providing a ``one-stop'' service 
portal that greatly simplifies and streamlines the relationship between 
government, citizens and businesses by being the single access point 
for:
    1. Government services and information needed to start, run, and 
grow a business.
    2. Tools to find information and to comply with government laws and 
regulations.
    The Business Gateway business portal will include a searchable 
library of information that deals with government services for 
businesses, and will provide links to several existing Federal Web 
sites with content and services relevant to small businesses. Examples 
of such sites include cross-agency Web sites such as Business.gov, 
Export.gov, Regulations.gov, and Grants.gov, and department/agency 
specific sites such as SBA.gov. The business portal will save small 
businesses approximately $56 million annually by consolidating relevant 
content and services in one place and by providing a user-friendly 
navigation scheme to make it easier to locate the desired information.
    The Business Gateway business portal will adopt the uniform 
resource locator (URL), or Web address, currently used by the U.S. 
Business Advisor (Business.gov). The content of the U.S. Business 
Advisor will be updated, streamlined, and harmonized with similar 
content on BusinessLaw.gov and portions of SBA.gov to eliminate 
duplication, identify gaps in content or services, and greatly simplify 
navigation for an improved user experience.
    The implementation of the Business Gateway business portal will 
occur in three phases.
    In Phase I, the business portal will, in fact, be a ``metasite'' 
rather than a true portal, simply offering an aggregation of links to 
Federal Web sites selected for content and services relevant to small 
businesses. The metasite model will have a home page with a specific 
user interface, or ``look and feel'', but selecting a link will deliver 
the user to another Web site altogether. Also during this phase, the 
Business Gateway program office will develop an information 
architecture to provide a roadmap for business content to be included 
under the business portal.
    In Phase II, the Web site will shift from a metasite to a true 
portal, utilizing a common look and feel for all offered content and 
services, even though it will access information from different 
agencies and technology platforms. The software tools used to develop 
and maintain the portal will give small businesses the option of a 
standard or custom interface depending on their needs.
    In Phase III, the Business Gateway Program Office will fully 
integrate small business content and services into a common technology 
platform, with common tools to create, manage, publish, and integrate 
content. Federal agencies will still own the content and services, and 
the processes associated with them, but this fact will be transparent 
to small business users, who will have access to a common portal. User 
customization features will be fully available so that small businesses 
can tailor the portal to meet their unique needs.
    Phase I is expected to be completed by September 2004. The timeline 
for subsequent phases are to be determined.
    Goal 2: To simplify, unify, and better manage citizen-facing E-
Forms infrastructure and processes on a government-wide basis.

[[Page 25154]]

    This goal will be met through the development and deployment of a 
single point of entry to ``Government to Business'' (G2B) and 
``Government to Citizen'' (G2C) Federal forms and forms systems from 43 
Federal departments and agencies. This capability will be accessible 
through the business portal (Business.gov) and will eventually allow 
small businesses to electronically find, fill out, and file the 
necessary Federal forms for compliance with Federal laws and 
regulations, all from a single Web location.
    The forms component of the Business Gateway will include a forms 
portal containing a catalog of G2C and G2B forms, regardless of format 
(electronic, paper, Web questionnaire, etc.). This catalog will perform 
two functions. First, the catalog will enable small businesses to 
locate a form in the Federal Government that they may need and point 
them to the appropriate Federal site to acquire the form or fill it out 
directly online and submit it for further processing. Second, the 
catalog will provide Federal agencies with a common architecture to 
manage common forms processes, including inventory, version control, 
access management, utilization metrics, metadata (data about the data 
elements on the form), search, and user customization.
    The forms architecture will also provide a shared services utility 
for forms deployments in the Federal Government. This means that 
agencies seeking full compliance with GPEA by converting their paper 
forms to an electronic format will have a Federal cross-agency platform 
ready to support their requirements. This will eliminate the need for 
future agency-specific investments in new forms systems.
    Eventually, the forms architecture will mature to include a forms 
engine that will support electronically ``fill-able, file-able, and 
sign-able'' forms. The forms engine will be integrated with an 
Extensible Markup Language (XML) Gateway, allowing the data collected 
by these forms to be routed to the appropriate agencies in XML format 
and fed directly into legacy systems for processing. The use of XML 
provides a common data standard for information sharing across the 
Federal Government and with other public and private sector 
enterprises.
    The implementation of the Business Gateway forms component occurs 
in three phases. In Phase I, 43 Federal agencies will create and 
populate an electronic forms catalog by checking in their G2C and G2B 
forms. This will give small businesses a ``one-stop'' service portal 
for finding Federal customer-facing forms. Since all of the G2B and G2C 
transactions will have their metadata in one place, small businesses 
will be able to find the forms they need, no matter where they reside 
and regardless of the format, since the catalog links to existing 
agency-specific forms systems. In addition, the Business Gateway will 
sponsor a select number of hosted and brokered forms systems. Federal 
agencies that have yet to invest in forms systems will be supported by 
an e-forms shared services organization which will offer them 
assistance and e-forms options and help bring them into full GPEA 
compliance. Finally, select industry segments that are highly regulated 
will be used as a proof of concept to reduce overall forms burden 
through data harmonization and streamlining. This process will be 
explained under Goal 3.
    In Phase II, hosted and brokered forms systems will continue to 
operate as an interim step between multiple agency-specific forms 
systems, which will also continue to exist, and a common forms engine 
to support all Federal forms requirements. These forms systems will 
facilitate the migration of those agencies that use them to the common 
forms engine and the XML Gateway when they are deployed.
    In Phase III, the hosted and brokered forms systems under the 
shared services model will be migrated into the Federal forms engine 
that allows small businesses and citizens to find, fill, file, and sign 
forms, and the XML Gateway to facilitate data exchange with Federal 
agency legacy systems.
    Goal 3: Begin the process of harmonizing and streamlining data 
collection in order to reduce burden and make it easier for businesses 
to interact with the Federal government.
    To achieve this goal, the Business Gateway team will work with 
specific industries and Federal agencies to harmonize data elements, 
forms, and processes and reduce the regulatory paperwork burden by 
reducing the duplication and overlap in data and forms. The model 
resulting from these industry-specific pilot programs will be used to 
harmonize data in other industry sectors and business life cycle 
categories. The success of this effort will reduce the number of forms 
used across agencies, and allow small businesses to submit information 
common to multiple forms one time and have it reused many times. Both 
of these outcomes will reduce the amount of time small businesses spend 
complying with Federal laws and regulations.
    The pilot projects identified for the Business Gateway address two 
heavily regulated industry sectors, trucking and surface coal mining 
that could benefit greatly from burden reduction. The development tasks 
to be accomplished during these pilot programs include the:
    1. Identification of common data across diverse forms;
    2. Definition of business rules for the industry vertical 
sector(s), and;
    3. Creation of ``one form'' to collect common data, and another for 
the remaining unique data.
    The value of this effort to the small business is apparent when 
multiple customer-facing forms are reduced to a single form for common 
data, and a single form for unique data. The data collected from these 
forms can be used to populate all the forms required for the small 
business to be compliant with Federal laws and regulations.
    These pilot programs are scheduled to be completed in October 2004.
    Conclusion: Based on the analysis of the problem, assumptions, and 
issues discussed above, the Task Force recommends the development of 
the Business Gateway as an interactive Government-wide Internet program 
to identify applicable collections and facilitate compliance. This 
initiative is designed specifically to meet the Act's objective of 
reducing the paperwork burden on America's small businesses. The 
initiative accomplishes this by:
    1. providing a single Web point of access for relevant regulatory 
information and all Federal G2C and G2B forms, and
    2. harmonizing industry-specific information collection 
requirements to collect information once and use it many times and 
reduce the overall number of forms to be completed.
    The Business Gateway, using the Internet as a service delivery 
channel, will promote the rate and accuracy with which citizens and 
small businesses comply with the myriad of government regulations, and 
save them millions of dollars which can be reinvested in the growth of 
our economy.

Appendix I--Highlights of E-Government Activities That Are Improving 
Electronic Information Dissemination

    U.S. Government Gateway (GSA): http://www.firstgov.gov. 
FirstGov.gov, the official U.S. gateway to all government 
information. On FirstGov.gov, you can search millions of web pages 
from Federal and state governments, the District of Columbia and 
U.S. territories. Most of these pages are not available on 
commercial websites. FirstGov has the most comprehensive government 
search engine anywhere on the Internet. Government information on 
FirstGov is also presented to visitors through various channels such 
as by audience, by topics, and by organization. For visitors that 
are unable

[[Page 25155]]

to find the information on their own, FirstGov accepts and responds 
to e-mail and provides a telephone number to the National Contact 
Center which is equipped to answer questions and provide referrals 
to appropriate agencies. See USAServices below.
    Federal Statistical Information: http://www.fedstats.gov. 
FedStats provides the full range of official statistical information 
available to the public from the Federal Government. It uses the 
Internet's powerful linking and searching capabilities to track 
economic and population trends, education, health care costs, 
aviation safety, foreign trade, energy use, farm production, and 
more. It accesses official statistics collected and published by 
more than 100 Federal agencies without having to know in advance 
which agency produces them. All of the statistical information 
available through FedStats is maintained and updated solely by 
Federal agencies on their own web servers.
    E-Rulemaking (EPA): http://www.regulations.gov. Allows citizens 
to easily access and participate in the rulemaking process. It 
improves the access to, and the quality of, the rulemaking process 
for individuals, businesses, and other government entities while 
streamlining and increasing the efficiency of internal agency 
processes.
    International Trade Process Streamlining (DoC): http://www.export.gov. Makes it easy for Small and Medium Enterprises 
(SMEs) to obtain the information and documents needed to conduct 
business abroad.
    Business Gateway (SBA): http://www.business.gov. Reduces the 
burden on businesses by making it easy to find, understand, and 
comply (including submitting forms) with relevant laws and 
regulations at all levels of government.
    Geospatial One-Stop (DoI): http://www.geodata.gov. Provides 
Federal and state agencies with a single-point of access to map-
related data, enabling consolidation of redundant data.
    Disaster Management (DHS): http://www.disasterhelp.gov. Provides 
Federal, state, and local emergency managers on-line access to 
disaster-management-related information, planning, and response 
tools.
    Grants.gov (HHS): http://www.grants.gov. Creates a single portal 
for all Federal grant customers to find, apply, and ultimately 
manage grants on-line.
    Recruitment One-Stop (OPM): http://www.usajobs.gov. Outsources 
delivery of USAJOBS Federal Employment Information System to deliver 
state-of-the-art on-line recruitment services to job seekers 
including intuitive job searching, on-line resume submission, 
applicant data mining, and on-line feedback on status and 
eligibility.
    Recreation One-Stop (DoI): http://www.recreation.gov. Provides a 
single-point of access, user-friendly, web-based resource to 
citizens, offering information and access to government recreational 
sites.
    GovBenefits.gov (DoL): http://www.govbenefits.gov. Provides a 
single point of access for citizens to locate and determine 
potential eligibility for government benefits and services.

E-Loans (ED)

    Creates a single point of access for citizens to locate 
information on Federal loan programs, and improves back-office loan 
functions.
    USA Services (GSA) http://www.firstgov.gov 1-800-FedInfo and 
Pueblo CO 81009. Develop and deploy government-wide citizen customer 
service using industry best practices that will provide citizens 
with timely, consistent responses about government information and 
services.

Additional Cross Agency Portals

    A more complete list of other Cross Agency Portals and 
initiatives can be found on FirstGov.gov at http://www.firstgov.gov/Topics/Cross_Agency_Portals.shtml.
    Interagency Committee on Government Information (ICGI) Work 
Groups: http://www.cio.gov/documents/ICGI.html. In response to the 
E-Gov Act of 2002, the ICGI has formed cross-agency working groups 
which are addressing categorization of information; electronic 
records policy; and web content management.

Appendix II--Business Gateway Governance

    The Business Gateway is a coordinated effort of 14 Federal 
agencies, with the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) as the 
managing partner. The Business Gateway Governance Board is chartered 
by the participating agencies, and comprised of senior 
representatives from each agency. The participating agencies include 
the Small Business Administration (Managing Partner), Department of 
Labor, General Services Administration, Department of 
Transportation, Department of Homeland Security, Environmental 
Protection Agency, Department of Commerce, Department of Health and 
Human Services, Department of Energy, Social Security 
Administration, Department of Interior, Department of Treasury, 
Department of Justice and Department of Agriculture.

Appendix III--Summary of Public Comments on Implementing the Small 
Business Paperwork Relief Act of 2002, Excerpted From the Transcript of 
a Public Outreach Meeting Held by the Office of Advocacy on February 9, 
2004

Electronic Dissemination of Information Collected Under Federal 
Requirements

    ``I think that there's a lot of discussion about industry-
specific information. But I think you should also think in terms of 
doing general industry information * * * they have some idea they've 
got to put all their ducks in a row outside of their industry-
specific information. Other information would be useful * * * by 
size standard * * * Another thing is triggers by organizational 
structure * * *'' Anita Drummond, Associated Builders and 
Contractors, pp. 20-21.
    ``The biggest complaint that our members (NFIB) mentioned * * * 
was trying to understand whether or not they were required to comply 
with a given regulation. In some cases * * * it costs a business 
owner more money to find out if they had to comply than they 
actually spent complying * * * (there should be) something that 
would direct a business owner directly to certain requirements of 
their business, to try to tell them within a few short clicks.'' 
Bruce Phillips, National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), 
pp. 25-26.
    ``One of the major complaints we get from our small business 
members, frankly, is that the language in the websites is just not 
real business friendly. It is too stilted. It's too complex. It's 
too `government-ese.''' Bruce Philips, NFIB, p. 27.

Regulatory Compliance Information on the Web

    ``We have a weekly newsletter that's more government oriented 
than anything else, but it also has compliance and regulatory on 
there. And we're finding it very helpful to hyperlink directly from 
the newsletter. So instead of just having a website that's back 
there, we actually are proactively printing out requirements that 
we'll get calls on * * *'' Michael Wilson, Textile Rental Services 
Association, p. 32.
    ``I find it a little disconcerting that an agency would not want 
to put all of its regulatory information up on the Web. You know, if 
the businesses have to comply with it, they have to be able to find 
it, and for a lot of them, the only place they're going to be able 
to go to find that information is the Web. We've found out from our 
own polling, you know, businesses find out about regulations by 
talking to other businesses, or they find out by going to the Web or 
doing some basic research.'' Andrew Langer, NFIB, p. 35.
    ``A big pet peeve of mine * * * not being able to find the 
document because you don't have the exact name that it's searchable 
under.'' Andrew Langer, NFIB, p. 45.
    ``Our members tell us that when they finally find the 
information, they think they find the information they're looking 
for, what they really want is a phone number, toll free or not, or a 
fax number that they can get their answers to immediately.'' Bruce 
Phillips, NFIB, p. 46.

Compliance Assistance Hotlines

    ``We use the EPA refrigerant hotline a lot, and that used to 
have funding so they would be able to have a contractor do it. Now 
it's the actual division head at EPA who answers all the calls, 
which put a tremendous burden on him as well as not meeting the 
needs of people that are calling in, since you only have one person 
that's answering the phone now.'' John Herzog, Air Conditioning 
Contractors of America (ACCA), p. 49.
    ``I would just like to comment on the importance of there being 
hotlines that are somewhat available because in all of our e-
strategies and e-government, I think sometimes we do lose sight of 
the fact that there are some small businesses and small business 
owners who either aren't on the Web or at least aren't comfortable 
on the Web.'' Todd McCracken, National Small Business Association, 
pp. 49-50.

Single Point of Contact Within an Agency

    ``Colorado in the '80s started an ombudsman for business, and 
they set a single spot--it was Wellington Webb, who later became the 
mayor of Denver. And that

[[Page 25156]]

was so a business could go to this one single center and get all the 
information in terms of licenses needed and what paperwork they had 
to do in order to be in business in the state.'' John Herzog, ACCA, 
p.24.
    ``You need to have someplace the small business person can go 
outside of the Web to get a real-time answer to a question, because 
usually there may be some sort of urgency, or they may just get 
carried away in the course of their business that they may not have 
time other than that moment when they have however long it takes 
them to call.'' Andrew Langer, NFIB, p. 53.

Update on Business Gateway Project

    ``I'd like to say that the good part is, what you're telling us 
is what we've heard, and that's the direction we're moving in. * * * 
We wanted to focus more specifically on making an easy way to find 
the information and compliance, all the things in terms of making 
the one-stop access to who wants information specifically from a 
website that's posted almost without the agency to it; more of a 
portal of information.'' Shivani Desai, Office of Management and 
Budget, pp. 59-60.
    ``(On forms) So of the thousands of transactional forms, one 
place across 43 agencies at this point in one website. Those forms, 
plus the access to many different portals that have different 
content needs. There's business, there's grants, there's benefits. 
There are other portals already there from the federal perspective 
that have content informational things that will guide a person to 
understanding what they need to do to comply.'' Sandy Gibbs, U.S. 
Small Business Administration, p.64.

Opportunities To Reduce Regulatory Burdens

    ``But one of the problems that we see is a state/federal 
interface. On the Boiler MACT standards that are coming up, the 
paperwork for the federal requirements may not be so onerous that it 
be devastating. It's going to be onerous, but we've accepted it. But 
there's going to be an even greater paperwork burden at the State 
Title V levels with regard to that rule, and that's not really been 
addressed.'' Bob Bessette, Council of Industrial Boiler Owners, pp. 
66-67.
    ``New York City actually had a terrific website, and I'd use 
that as a model of where actually the Federal Government should be. 
You go onto the website, and it asks you a series of questions * * * 
it will go through a flow chart; and as it goes through that flow 
chart, at the end it produces all the regulations and all the 
different submissions that you have to have at the end or submit and 
provide the state and licenses'' Giovanni Coratolo, U.S. Chamber of 
Commerce, pp. 22-23.
    ``Business owners complain actually that half their burden 
approximately is state-local and the other half is federal. So any 
formal or final version that uses the Web as a compliance tool 
should have some sort of links clearly to the state in which your 
business is located * * *'' Bruce Phillips, NFIB, p.26.
    ``For sending hazardous waste off-site to be treated and 
disposed, or even recycled in some cases, you have to submit a 
hazardous waste manifest. There's been an initiative at EPA for a 
couple of years now to try to create electronic manifests where you 
could go onto a EPA site and fill that out and then submit it. There 
are about 25 states that have agreed to that arrangement * * * that 
would be very helpful.'' Jeff Gunnulfsen, SOCMA, p. 71.

Reducing IRS Paperwork Requirements

    ``I think if you can combine forms as often as you can so that 
you don't have the duplications, and then when you fill the form out 
it goes to the various agencies that need to know that would be one 
step * * *'' John Herzog, ACCA, p.75.
    ``I've worked very closely with the Office of Burden Reduction, 
and my biggest complaint is it's just not big enough. I think they 
have like three people over there, and 80 percent of the paperwork 
is in the IRS. I mean if you really want to make a meaningful foray 
into reducing paperwork, I think the IRS has to really increase that 
office.'' Giovanni Coratolo, U.S. Chamber, p. 76.

Miscellaneous Comments

    ``I think there should be an effort made by every agency to make 
sure that their websites are Google searchable.'' Andrew Langer, 
NFIB, p. 35.
    ``There doesn't seem to be a consolidated place for them--for us 
to go find the partner we want for small business firms in a lot of 
business. You can't find them at any websites for any of the 
organizations. You know, certifications, for the most part you have 
to certify for the small business owners. It's cumbersome and it 
takes an enormous amount of time for the paperwork to be filled 
out.'' Johnnie Simpson, National Veterans Association Business 
Forum, p.57.

Appendix IV--Small Business Paperwork Relief Task Force Members

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                             Agency                                                      Member                                       Title
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Office of Management and Budget................................  Dr. John Graham......................................  Administrator, Office of
                                                                                                                         Information and Regulatory
                                                                                                                         Affairs.
Office of Management and Budget................................  Karen S. Evans.......................................  Administrator, Office of E-
                                                                                                                         Government and Information
                                                                                                                         Technology.
Department of Agriculture......................................  Marty Mitchell.......................................  Chief of Information Collection
                                                                                                                         Division.
Department of Commerce.........................................  Karen Hogan..........................................  Deputy Chief Information
                                                                                                                         Officer.
Department of Energy...........................................  William Lewis........................................  Office of Economic Impact and
                                                                                                                         Diversity.
Department of Interior.........................................  Edwin McCeney........................................  Office of the Chief Information
                                                                                                                         Officer.
Department of Interior.........................................  Peter Ertman.........................................  E-Gov Program Manager, Bureau of
                                                                                                                         Land Management.
Department of Labor............................................  Robert Gaddie........................................  Associate Commissioner for Sale
                                                                                                                         Operations.
Department of Labor............................................  Barbara Bingham......................................  Director, Office of Compliance
                                                                                                                         Assistance Policy.
Department of Labor............................................  Audie Woolsey........................................  Directorate of Cooperative State
                                                                                                                         Programs, OSHA.
Department of Labor............................................  Paula White..........................................  Director, Directorate of
                                                                                                                         Cooperative State Programs,
                                                                                                                         OSHA.
Department of Labor............................................  Jeff Koch............................................  Special Assistant to the Chief
                                                                                                                         Information Officer.
Department of Labor............................................  David Gray...........................................  Acting Assistant Secretary for
                                                                                                                         Policy.
Department of Labor............................................  Tyna Coles...........................................  Director, Office of Small
                                                                                                                         Business Assistance.
Department of Justice..........................................  Robert B. Briggs.....................................  Program Manager, Information
                                                                                                                         Collection Svcs, Justice
                                                                                                                         Management Division.
Department of Transportation...................................  Steve Lott...........................................  Manager, Strategic Integration,
                                                                                                                         IT Program Management, Office
                                                                                                                         of the CIO.
Environmental Protection Agency................................  Jay Benforado........................................  Director, National Center for
                                                                                                                         Environmental Innovation,
                                                                                                                         Office of Policy Economics, and
                                                                                                                         Innovation.
Environmental Protection Agency................................  Jim Edward...........................................  Director, Compliance Assistance
                                                                                                                         and Sector Programs Division.
Environmental Protection Agency................................  Kim Nelson...........................................  Assistant Administrator, Chief
                                                                                                                         Information Officer.
Environmental Protection Agency................................  Karen Brown..........................................  Director, Small Business
                                                                                                                         Division, Small Business
                                                                                                                         Ombudsman, SBPRA POC.
Environmental Protection Agency................................  Tracy Back...........................................  Team Leader, Compliance
                                                                                                                         Assistance and Sector Programs
                                                                                                                         Division.
Environmental Protection Agency................................  Catherine Tunis......................................  Senior Analyst, Small Business
                                                                                                                         Division.
General Services Administration................................  Felipe Mendoza.......................................  Associate Administrator, Small
                                                                                                                         Business Utilization.
Health and Human Services......................................  Arthuretta Martin....................................  Deputy Director, Office of Small
                                                                                                                         and Disadvantaged Business
                                                                                                                         Utilization.

[[Page 25157]]

 
Health and Human Services......................................  Michael Miller.......................................  Director, Audit, Analysis, and
                                                                                                                         Information Group Office of
                                                                                                                         Strategic Operations and
                                                                                                                         Regulatory Affairs Centers for
                                                                                                                         Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Internal Revenue Service.......................................  Ron Kovatch..........................................  Senior Advisor, Office of
                                                                                                                         Taxpayer Burden Reduction.
Small Business Administration..................................  Ron Miller...........................................  Program Executive Officer for E-
                                                                                                                         Government.
Small Business Administration..................................  Jody Wharton.........................................  Director of Information, Office
                                                                                                                         of Advocacy.
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Appendix V--Contributing Staff

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                             Agency                                                      Member                                       Title
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Office of Management and Budget................................  Donald Arbuckle......................................  Deputy Administrator, Office of
                                                                                                                         Information and Regulatory
                                                                                                                         Affairs (OIRA).
Office of Management and Budget................................  David Rostker........................................  Policy Analyst, OIRA.
Office of Management and Budget................................  Keith Belton.........................................  Policy Analyst, OIRA.
Office of Management and Budget................................  Jonathan Womer.......................................  Policy Analyst, OIRA.
Office of Management and Budget................................  Shivani Desai........................................  Policy Analyst, OIRA.
Office of Management and Budget................................  Jack Koller..........................................  G2C Portfolio Manager.
Small Business Administration..................................  Keith Holman.........................................  Assistant Chief Counsel, Office
                                                                                                                         of Advocacy.
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[FR Doc. 04-10220 Filed 5-4-04; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3110-01-P