The Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) of 1995 requires that agencies obtain Office of Management and Budget approval before requesting most types of information from the public. "Information collections" include forms, interviews, recordkeeping requirements, and vessel and gear marking, just to name a few categories. Refer to a comprehensive reference tool, A guide to the Paperwork Reduction Act on Digital.gov to understand when PRA applies, and how to plan ahead for the PRA process, among other resources. OMB provides an active list of information collection requests across all federal agencies - to see NOAA requests, select Department of Commerce from the selection options on the following OMB pages:
- Currently under review (updated daily)
- Reviewed in the last 30 days (updated daily)
- Recently expired (updated monthly)
- Inventory of Approved Information Collections (updated daily) This listing includes all collections of information from the public for which a Federal agency has received prior approval from OMB, as required by the Paperwork Reduction Act. An ongoing collection must be approved by OMB at least once every three years.
NOAA's PRA oversight and clearance process is managed by the Chief Data Officer within the Office of the Chief Information Officer. NOAA staff should reference the NOAA Paperwork Reduction Act intranet page offsite link for details on processing new requests, tracking NOAA clearance, and much more.