§3505 Assignment of Tasks and Deadlines

Summary

The Director must set governmentwide and agency goals to cut the burden of collecting information from the public. The governmentwide targets are at least a 10 percent cut for each of fiscal years 1996 and 1997, and 5 percent for each of fiscal years 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001. Agency goals must aim to reduce the public’s information burdens as much as practical and to improve how agencies manage and use information to make Federal programs work better. The Director can run voluntary pilot projects with selected agencies and non-Federal groups to try new policies or procedures to reduce paperwork and other information burdens. For a pilot, the Director may, after talking with the agency head, waive an agency administrative rule (including ones that require collecting information) but must give timely notice to the public and to Congress. The Director, working with the heads of GSA, NIST, the National Archives, and OPM, must keep a governmentwide plan that explains goals, ways to cut duplication and share data, ways to improve public access (including electronic access), how to meet IT needs, and progress made. Agency heads must keep a current inventory of their major information systems (including national security systems), list each system’s interfaces with other systems, update it at least yearly, give it to the Comptroller General, and use it to support planning, budgeting, security testing, required system indexes under 5 U.S.C. 552(g), and records-management inventories under chapters 21, 29, 31, and 33. The Director must issue guidance and oversee these inventory requirements.