Building on the 1942 Federal Reports Act, the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 (44 USC 3501) establishes the guiding policies for the collection and dissemination of government information. Since its inception, the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) has had a major impact on both agency rulemaking and on the principles of the Administrative Procedure Act.

The PRA created the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and gave the agency broad authority over information management activities, including meeting annual paperwork reduction goals, reviewing each agency's information management activities, and improving federal information policy.

The Paperwork Clearance Process

The central component of the law is the paperwork clearance process, a provision resurrected from the 1942 Federal Reports Act. Under the PRA, every time a federal agency proposes collecting information from ten or more people, the information collection must first be approved by OIRA. Everything from tax forms to health research questions is reviewed by OIRA. Information collections that fall under the purview of OIRA reviews also include application forms, questionnaires, surveys, and reporting or recordkeeping requirements.

To accommodate this broad standard to the APA rulemaking process, Congress distinguished between regulatory and nonregulatory paperwork. The latter is referred to as "information collection requests" and involves gathering data independent of a rule, such as when an agency wants to research an issue for some future agency action. Reporting or recordkeeping requirements contained in or associated with a regulation, on the other hand, are known as "information collection requirements."

When an agency proposes to collect information from ten or more people, it must first send OIRA its information collection proposal and supporting documentation. At the same time, the agency sends a public notice to the Federal Register regarding the request that has been forwarded to OMB.

The results of OMB's review are referred to as "public comments." While the law uses the term "public comments," in deference to the notice-and-comment principles of the APA, the OMB action is actually a clearance decision. The agency knows that if OMB does not approve, the agency will not be able to keep that information collection provision in its regulation.

When the final rule is published in the Federal Register, the agency must explain how it has responded to OMB's comments. However, OMB still has the last word; after the final rule is issued, OMB can disapprove the paperwork requirement if the agency:

• Missed any of the required procedural steps;
• Substantially changed the paperwork requirement without giving OMB sufficient opportunity to review it; or
• Gave an "unreasonable" response to the OMB comments.

This provision of the PRA effectively means that if the paperwork requirement is intrinsic to the regulation, then OMB disapproval of that paperwork requirement could potentially derail the entire regulation. An OMB disapproval will likely force the agency to reenter rulemaking to address the information collection provisions. It also means that public comments, which may have shaped the regulation, will be moot. Because agencies collect information in order to determine when and how to regulate, an OMB disapproval can impact an agency's rulemaking ability even if the information collections are not embedded in the regulations. Finally, there can be no judicial review of OMB's paperwork review decisions.

There is one exception to OMB's tight control on information collection; independent regulatory agencies can override an OMB disapproval.

The Paperwork Reduction Act was also amended in 1995.

Read the Center for Effective Government's factsheet, "The Paperwork Reduction Act: What it is and How it Works"