by Meghan Maury

Survey + Rule of the Week: Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. OPM is proposing to redesign the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey following its cancellation of the survey in 2025. Under the new model, OPM would stop centrally administering the government-wide survey; each agency would conduct its own annual survey using 10 required questions rather than 16 and submit the core results to OPM and OMB. A companion proposed rule — Personnel Management in Agencies: Strategic Human Capital Management — would also let agencies decide what information to publish, removing current requirements to disclose details such as survey methodology, response rates, and question-level results. OPM says the changes will give agencies greater flexibility and more useful management information, but the decentralization, reduced set of common questions, and weaker transparency requirements could make results less consistent across agencies and over time while limiting public accountability.
Comments on the survey are due August 31; Comments on the proposed rule are due August 3.

Every time the government makes a change to a survey or a form — or introduces a new survey or form — you have the right to weigh in on that decision. The Take Action! newsletter highlights surveys or forms the government is changing, renewing, or introducing. Click the links to tell the government what you think about the changes they are making.

Note: The Take Action tab of dataindex.us provides information about even more surveys, forms, evaluations, and records notices than are listed in your weekly newsletter.

Child Welfare

  • Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS). This listing implements a 2024 rule change expanding state reporting on the Indian Child Welfare Act. Beginning with children entering foster care in 2028, states will collect more detailed information about whether ICWA protections were followed, including inquiries into a child’s Tribal status, notice to Tribes and parents, transfers to Tribal court, efforts to prevent family separation, and compliance with foster-care and adoptive-placement preferences.
    Comments due July 30.

  • Reporting of the Essentials for Childhood (EfC): Preventing Adverse Childhood Experiences through Data to Action Program. CDC is revising reporting by Essentials for Childhood grantees, a program focused on preventing adverse childhood experiences through surveillance, prevention strategies, evaluation, and data-to-action work. The notice appears to formalize earlier EO-driven changes that remove or soften references to health equity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender/sex discrimination, and undocumented status.
    Comments due August 17.

Health

  • Rural Health Care Coordination Program Performance Improvement Measures. HRSA is revising the performance measures for the Rural Health Care Coordination Program, which supports rural care-coordination strategies focused on heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory disease, stroke, and maternal health. The changes are fairly limited. Commenters asked HRSA to add stronger measures on behavioral health, substance use disorder services, demographic detail, workforce characteristics, upstream drivers of health, and EHR interoperability; HRSA did not appear to add those changes, saying instead that it will consider them in future measure development. In the supplemental materials, HRSA justifies collecting race/ethnicity data by saying it needs the data to assess whether projects are meeting the needs of the populations served.
    Comments due July 29.

Data Sharing

  • Credit Alert Verification Reporting System. This notice establishes a new data-matching program under which SBA will provide HUD with information on people associated with delinquent or defaulted SBA disaster and business loans. HUD will add the records to a government-wide database used by agencies and approved lenders to screen applicants for federal loans; any match must be verified before an application is denied or other adverse action is taken.
    Comments due August 3.

Immigration

  • ORR Annual Survey of Refugees. This survey collects nationally representative information from refugees who arrived within the previous five years to support congressional reporting, program planning, policymaking, and budgeting. ORR is testing a future online version intended to reduce burden but does not seem to be making any changes to the survey at this time.
    Comments due August 3.

Waste, Fraud, and Abuse (WFA)

  • Fraud.gov Federal Program Waste, Fraud, and Abuse Tip Intake and Referral System. This new form will act as a government-wide intake and referral portal for members of the public to report suspected waste, fraud, abuse, improper payments, misuse of Federal funds, and related misconduct affecting Federal programs.
    Comments due August 17.

  • Modernizing Suspension and Debarment Rules. In this notice, FCC is creating new disclosure and certification requirements tied to its modernized suspension and debarment rules, so participants in programs like Lifeline, E-Rate, Rural Health Care, High-Cost, and TRS have to certify compliance and disclose certain prior misconduct or exclusions. The stated purpose is to prevent “bad actors” from receiving federal communications funding; the compliance requirements attach to programs that support low-income people, schools and libraries, rural health providers, rural broadband, and people with disabilities.
    Comments due August 17.

Disability

  • Application for Disability Compensation Benefits. VA is revising its main disability compensation application to make it shorter and easier to use, reducing the form from 15 pages to 5 pages and lowering the estimated time to complete it from 25 minutes to 15 minutes. This appears intended to reduce administrative burden for disabled veterans applying for benefits, which could be especially important for veterans with disabilities, limited time or support, lower literacy, or less reliable access to legal or claims assistance.
    Comments due August 24.

Criminal Justice

  • Census of Tribal Court Systems (CTCS). Last fielded in 2014, BJS is reinstating the CTCS, a voluntary survey of tribal courts about staffing, court functions, caseloads, civil and juvenile justice matters, and court operations. The census is intended to update national data on tribal court systems, identify emerging challenges, and create a time series that can inform Congress, federal agencies, tribal justice practitioners, researchers, and the public.
    Comments due August 28.