2020-16543. Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for Review and Approval; Comment Request; Report of Organization

The Department of Commerce will submit the following information collection request to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and clearance in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, on or after the date of publication of this notice. We invite the general public and other Federal agencies to comment on proposed, and continuing information collections, which helps us assess the impact of our information collection requirements and minimize the public's reporting burden. Public comments were previously requested via the Federal Register on March 30, 2020 during a 60-day comment period. This notice allows for an additional 30 days for public comments.

Agency: U.S. Census Bureau.

Title: Report of Organization.

OMB Control Number: 0607-0444.

Form Number(s): NC-99001(L), NC-99001(S), NC-99007.

Type of Request: Regular Submission, Request for an Extension, without change of a Currently Approved Collection.

Number of Respondents: 98,000.

Average Hours per Response: 1.276 hours.

Burden Hours: 125,016.

Needs and Uses: The Census Bureau requests an extension of the currently approved Report of Organization data collection for survey years 2020, 2021 and 2022.

The Census Bureau conducts the annual Report of Organization to update and maintain a centralized, multipurpose Business Register (BR). In particular, the survey supplies critical information on the organizational structure, operating characteristics, and employment and payroll of multi-location enterprises.

The BR serves two fundamental purposes:

• First and most important, it provides sampling populations and enumeration lists for the Census Bureau's economic surveys and censuses, and it serves as an integral part of the statistical foundation underlying those programs. Essential for this purpose is the BR's ability to identify all known United States business establishments and their parent companies. Further, the BR must accurately record basic business attributes needed to control sampling and enumeration. These attributes include industry and geographic classifications, measures of size and economic activity, ownership characteristics, and contact information (for example, name and address).
• Second, it provides establishment data that serve as the basis for the annual County Business Patterns (CBP) statistical series. The CBP reports present data on number of establishments, first quarter payroll, annual payroll, and mid-March employment summarized by industry and employment size class for the United States, the District of Columbia, island areas, counties, and county-equivalents. No other annual or more frequent series of industry statistics provides comparable detail, particularly for small geographic areas.

Affected Public: Business or other for-profit organizations.

Frequency: Annually.

Respondent's Obligation: Mandatory.

Legal Authority: Title 13 of the United States Code, Sections 131 and 182.

This information collection request may be viewed at www.reginfo.gov. Follow the instructions to view the Department of Commerce collections currently under review by OMB.

Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information collection should be submitted within 30 days of the publication of this notice on the following website www.reginfo.gov/​public/​do/​PRAMain. Find this particular information collection by selecting “Currently under 30-day Review—Open for Public Comments” or by using the search function and entering either the title of the collection or the OMB Control Number 0607-0444.

Sheleen Dumas,

Department PRA Clearance Officer, Office of the Chief Information Officer, Commerce Department.