by Meghan Maury and Christopher Marcum
The dataindex.us project revels in revealing insights into federal data - and who gets to influence them. Every survey you fill out, every federal form you complete, and every dataset you use has a backstory. Each one went through a careful and surprisingly democratic process before the first question was ever asked. Often, individuals and organizations are part of that backstory and have a voice in how the government collects and shares data.
This process, established by the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), gives the public the opportunity to weigh in on how - and whether - the federal government collects data. It’s an underappreciated part of how democracy functions: ordinary people help shape the information the government uses to make decisions about everything from school funding to disaster relief.
In this piece, we examine how agencies move from inception to collection when gathering data from the public - and how you can participate - in that process.
The Mundanity and the Mysteries of the ICR Process
First passed in 1980, the PRA is enforced by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) inside the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). OIRA oversees every proposed data collection, also known as an Information Collection Request (ICR) to make sure it meets the standards set by law.
For the most part, the ICR process is an administrative bore: a mundane set of procedures meant to lower burden, maximize transparency, and involve public input into how the government collects data. The General Services Administration (GSA) and OMB have previously described an idealized five step timeline for the ICR process. We think that’s pretty optimistic. A more typical process looks like this:
Identifying the Need – The agency determines it needs to collect information to carry out part of its mission or responsibilities.
Developing the Proposal – The agency prepares an ICR explaining what data will be collected, why it’s needed, how it will be gathered and analyzed, and how much time and money it will take. The agency also specifies whether it’s a new collection or a revision of an existing one.
Opening the First Public Comment Period (60 Days) – The agency publishes a 60-day notice in the Federal Register. This is the first opportunity for the public to weigh in (usually through regulations.gov or by email) on whether the collection is justified and how it could be improved.
Reviewing and Revising Based on Comments – The agency reviews all comments received and may revise the ICR in response. A summary of feedback and the agency’s responses is added to the ICR package.
Submitting to OIRA and Opening the Second Comment Period (30 Days) – The revised ICR is sent to OIRA for review and appears on reginfo.gov; initiating a second, 30-day review period.
OIRA Review (Up to 60 Days) – OIRA desk officers review the ICR to ensure it is necessary, fit-for-purpose, non-duplicative, clearly justified, and minimally burdensome. They also verify that the agency responded appropriately to comments and that collection methods and costs are reasonable. This review happens concurrently with the second 30-day comment period and any new public comments are added to the record.
OIRA Decision (“Conclusion”) – Between 30 and 60 days after submission, OIRA issues a decision to approve, disapprove, or return the ICR for revision. Approved new ICRs receive an OMB Control Number and expiration date while renewed ICRs just get an updated expiration date. ICRs usually expire after three years, though agencies can request longer or shorter periods and OIRA uses its discretion in consideration of those requests.
Implementation – Once approved, the agency can begin collecting information, displaying the OMB Control Number and expiration date as required by the Paperwork Reduction Act.
If that process comes across as complicated, that’s because it is complicated even in this best-case-scenario. In practice, things rarely go this “smoothly” and there are a lot of other considerations that could be at play - including exceptions to the PRA, emergency collection requests, and behind-the-scenes work - that may accelerate or slow down the process. At the earliest, it takes 120 days from the initial Federal Register Notice (step 3, above) for an agency to start collecting data under the PRA process. A more realistic timeline from inception to collection is between 6 and 9 months.
The behind-the-scenes work is among the more mysterious aspects of the ICR process. Often not immediately transparent to the public, we hope these facts demystify this part of the ICR process:
The process can take years – ICRs associated with statistical collections may undergo years of methodological research and cognitive testing before ever being published in the Federal Register. For example, the Census Bureau announced last year that it would change how race and ethnicity would be collected on the 2027 American Community Survey cycle. This announcement followed OMB’s release of updated government-wide race and ethnicity collection standards in 2024. The updated standards reflected the culmination of more than a decade of testing, retesting, and public engagement. Such extensive methodological work is necessary for collections that may be used as evidence for high-stakes purposes like Congressional apportionment or benefits provisions.
OIRA coordinates with the agency – There are frequent negotiations between OIRA desk officers and their agency counterparts about ICRs before, during, and even after an ICR becomes public. For example, earlier this year the National Center for Education Statistics decided to eliminate strong legal protections against unlawful disclosure for the nation’s report card. Despite appearing to come organically from the Department of Education based on the Federal Register notice, the decision was done in consultation with OIRA over concerns about the agency’s greatly diminished capacity to enforce their obligations under the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act of 2018 to protect the data. Civil rights groups that submitted comments about this change were understandably displeased and advised against it.
Public comments aren’t always public – Agencies and OIRA should make comments from the 60- and 30-day notice periods available to the public. ICRs often include this boilerplate language “Please note that written comments received in response to this notice will be considered public records.” The Federal Register notes, however: “Agencies review all submissions and may choose to redact, or withhold, certain submissions (or portions thereof). Submitted comments may not be available to be read until the agency has approved them.” In reality, many comments remain hidden from public view - for reasons OIRA has never fully explained - and there can be a confusing discrepancy between the comment response counter on regulations.gov and the number of comments available for review in the public record. In part, this is a technical issue chalked up to differences in how each platform counts comments, and in part this is due to a failure to disclose all submitted comments by OIRA or the agency.
Approval can come with limits – OIRA can put restrictions or conditions on collection. For example, when, the Census Bureau sought approval to add an artificial intelligence module to its Business Trends and Outlook Survey, OIRA approved the request, but with added conditions that Census could use a non-substantive change request for the new items only after cognitive testing and analysis of the module was complete and that any future request had to go through the full 30-day comment process.These “terms of clearance” are one of OIRA’s most powerful tools for shaping how data get collected and shared.
OIRA can have a heavy-hand – OIRA may push an agency to ensure that each question is fit-for-purpose and meets agency programmatic or mission needs. When the US Fish & Wildlife Service wanted to add a sexual orientation question to the National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation in line with a Biden-era Executive Order on LGBTQ+ equity, OIRA pushed back because the agency failed to demonstrate how knowledge about queer fishermen (for instance) fit into the purpose of the survey as described in its ICR justification.
Tracking ICRs is hard – OMB Control Numbers cannot be used to uniquely identify a specific ICR because OIRA allows for multiple forms, questionnaires, surveys, et cetera to be associated with a single control number in what’s known as a “generic information collection” or Gen-ICs. In fact, there is no easy way to track ICRs throughout their entire life-cycle between the Federal Register, regulations.gov, and reginfo.gov.
OIRA has a special incantation – OIRA has the ability to modify records in ROCIS and change what’s publicly accessible on reginfo.gov, known informally within OIRA as ROCIS-pocus. Earlier this year, for example, the Bureau of Justice Statistics uploaded a memo addressed to OMB in ROCIS about changes to gender identity questions in the National Crime Victimization Survey that automatically appeared in the public docket on reginfo.gov. When OIRA realized that the memo might contain deliberative information that is usually not disclosable , it used ROCIS-pocus to remove it from public view about a day later.
Following the PRA can be expensive – The ICR process is not without cost to the agencies. Publishing in the Federal Register has run at $453 per page since 2018. That can quickly add up for complicated ICRs and cut into agency operating budgets. This is one reason that notices published in the Federal Register do not include the full ICR package, which can consist of hundreds of pages of documents.
Collections can end without OMB approval - When an OMB control number expires, an agency has to stop collecting data. Terminating a collection before the control number expires can happen for lots of reasons, including that the collection had a natural end date, a lapse in appropriations or resources, and shifts in agency priorities. If the terminated collection was associated with a rule or regulation, then agencies have to notify OMB and make a public notice, and go through the approval process. However, an agency has no obligation to do so for ICRs that are not associated with rules. It is, however, good practice. When USDA decided to end its long standing “Mink Survey” this fall, it published a notice in the Federal Register. Despite not requiring OIRA involvement, USDA disclosed in the notice that it had obtained OMB approval to end the collection.
Public Comments Make an Impact
The PRA was designed not just to reduce paperwork, but to bring the public into the conversation about what data the government collects. Every 60-day or 30-day notice in the Federal Register presents an opportunity for individuals and organizations to influence federal evidence-building.
Public comments can and do shape outcomes. They can flag methodological flaws, push agencies to include marginalized populations, or challenge whether a data collection is justified at all. One notable example on how public comments shaped the outcome of an ICR comes from when the Census Bureau proposed changing how it collected disability status on the American Community Survey.
In the 30-day notice, Census directly states how more than 12,000 public comments received during the previous 60-day notice shaped their decision:
“In deference to the large number (12,188) of comments that expressed concerns about the proposed change to the disability questions, the Census Bureau plans to retain the current ACS disability questions for the 2025 ACS.”
Submitting comments is easy and agencies appreciate both short and detailed comments alike. Individuals and organizations are equally welcome to submit comments. For those needing help writing more substantive comments, OIRA wrote an excellent guide on how to write effective comments for proposed rules and regulations. The best practices in this guide apply to ICRs too. OIRA also has a guide on how to submit comments through reginfo.gov during the 30-day period.
The next time a 60- or 30-day notice about an ICR that matters to you appears in the Federal Register, consider submitting a comment. To find ICRs open for comment under the 60-day period, you’ll have to check the Federal Register. Searching for “information collection”+”60 day” and sorting the results by “newest” is a reasonable way to start. For ICRs open for comment under the 30-day period, clicking on the “Currently under Review - Open for Public Comments” on OIRA’s ICR dashboard will provide an active list. You can also find a list of information collections open for review on the dataindex.us Take Action page; we provide weekly updates to our newsletter subscribers about open comment periods we think might be especially interesting to our readers. Your comments may improve the next labor report, fisherman survey, or OSHA form.