[Federal Register Volume 80, Number 26 (Monday, February 9, 2015)]
[Notices]
[Pages 6967-6970]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2015-02435]
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FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION
Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission for OMB
Review; Comment Request
AGENCY: Federal Trade Commission (FTC or Commission).
ACTION: Notice and request for comment.
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SUMMARY: In compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) of 1995,
the FTC is seeking public comments on its request to OMB for a three-
year extension of the current PRA clearance for information collection
requirements pertaining to the Commission's administrative activities.
That clearance expires on February 28, 2015.
DATES: Comments must be filed by March 11, 2015.
ADDRESSES: Interested parties may file a comment online or on paper, by
following the instructions in the Request for Comment part of the
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section below. Write ``Administrative
Activities: FTC File No. P911409'' on your comment, and file your
comment online at https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/adminactivitiespra2 by following the instructions on the web-based
form. If you prefer to file your comment on paper, mail or deliver your
comment to the following address: Federal Trade Commission, Office of
the Secretary, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW., Suite CC-5610 (Annex J),
Washington, DC 20580, or deliver your comment to the following address:
Federal Trade Commission, Office of the Secretary, Constitution Center,
400 7th Street SW., 5th Floor, Suite 5610 (Annex J), Washington, DC
20024.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Nicholas Mastrocinque (Nick M) and Ami
Dziekan (Ami D), Bureau of Consumer Protection, Federal Trade
Commission, Mail Code CC-9232, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW., Washington,
DC 20580, Nick M: (202) 326-3188 and Ami D: (202) 326-2648.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Title: Administrative Activities.
OMB Control Number: 3084-0047.
Type of Review: Extension of a currently approved collection.
Abstract: The currently approved information collection consists
of: (a) Applications to the Commission, including applications and
notices contained in the Commission's Rules of Practice (primarily
Parts I, II, and IV); (b) the FTC's consumer complaint systems; and (c)
the FTC's program evaluation activities.
On November 14, 2014, the Commission sought comment on the
information collection requirements pertaining to the Commission's
administrative activities. 79 FR 68245. No comments were received. As
required by OMB regulations, 5 CFR part 1320, the FTC is providing this
second opportunity for public comment.
Estimated Annual Hours Burden: 222,851 hours (150 + 222,622 + 64 +
15).
(a) Applications to the Commission, including applications and
notices supported pursuant to the Commission's Rules of Practice: 150
hours.
Most applications to the Commission generally fall within the ``law
enforcement'' exception to the PRA and are mostly found in Part III
(Rules of Practice for Adjudicative Proceedings) of the Commission's
Rules of Practice. See 16 CFR 3.1-3.83. Nonetheless, there are various
applications and notices to the Commission contained in other rules
(generally in Parts I, II, and IV of the Commission's Rule of
Practice). For example, staff estimates that the FTC annually receives
approximately 15 requests for clearance submitted by former FTC
employees in order to participate in certain matters and screening
affidavits submitted by partners or legal or business associates of
former employees pursuant to Rule 4.1, 16 CFR 4.1. There are also
procedures set out in Rule 4.11(e) for agency review of outside
requests for Commission employee testimony, through compulsory process
or otherwise, and requests for material pursuant to compulsory process
in cases or matters to which the agency is not a party. Rule 4.11(e)
requires that a person who seeks such testimony or material submit a
statement in support of the request. Staff estimates that agency
personnel receive approximately 10 requests per year. Other types of
applications and notices are either infrequent or difficult to
quantify. Nonetheless, in order to cover any potential ``collection of
information'' for which separate clearance has not been sought, staff
conservatively projects the FTC will receive 75 applications or notices
per year. Staff estimates each respondent will incur, on average,
approximately 2 hours of burden to submit an application or notice,
resulting in a cumulative annual total of 150 burden hours (75
applications or notices x 2 burden hours).
Annual Cost Burden
Using the burden hours estimated above, staff estimates that the
total annual labor cost, based on an estimated average of $115/hour for
executives' and attorneys' wages, would be approximately $17,250 (150
hours x $115).\1\ There are no capital, start-up, operation,
maintenance, or other similar costs to respondents.
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\1\ Figures based on national median salaries, including bonuses
and benefits, divided by a 2,080 hour work year (52 weeks x 40
hours/week), for a ``Managing Attorney,'' ``Attorney II,''
``Attorney III,'' ``Attorney IV,'' and ``Attorney V'' at
www.salary.com.
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(b) Complaint Systems: 222,622 annual hours.
Consumer Response Center (CRC)
Consumers can submit complaints about fraud and other practices to
the FTC's Consumer Response Center by telephone or through an online
complaint form at the FTC's Web site. Telephone complaints and
inquiries to the FTC are answered both by FTC staff and contractors.
These telephone counselors ask for the same information that consumers
would enter on the applicable forms available on the FTC's Web site.
The FTC also hosts a second online complaint form called econsumer.gov.
This form accepts cross-border complaints from consumers through the
econsumer.gov Web site and transmits them into the Consumer Sentinel
Network. For telephone inquiries and complaints, the FTC staff
estimates that it takes 5.9 minutes per call to gather information, and
an estimated 5.3 minutes for consumers to enter a complaint online. The
burden estimate conservatively assumes that the entire phone call is
devoted to collecting information from consumers, although frequently
telephone counselors devote a portion of the call to providing
requested information to consumers.
As of 2014, the FTC now supports web chat for its online complaint
process. Web chat allows consumers to communicate in real time using an
easily accessible web interface to obtain technical support for the
online complaint process. This feature will
[[Page 6968]]
enable the FTC to retain consumer complaints from consumers who might
otherwise abandon the process. Staff estimates that it will take an
average of 5 minutes per chat session to obtain the necessary technical
support.
Complaints Concerning the National Do Not Call Registry
To receive complaints from consumers of possible violations of the
rules governing the National Do Not Call Registry, 16 CFR 310.4(b), the
FTC maintains both an online form and a toll free hotline with
automated voice response system. Consumer complainants must provide the
phone number that was called, whether the call was prerecorded, and the
date and time of the call. They may also provide either the name or
telephone number of the company about which they are complaining, their
name and address so they can be contacted for additional information,
as well as for a brief comment regarding their complaint. In addition,
complainants have the option of answering three yes-or-no questions to
help law enforcement investigating complaints. The FTC staff estimates
that the time required of consumer complainants to the National Do Not
Call Registry is 3 minutes for phone complaints and 2 minutes for
online complaints.
Identity Theft
To handle complaints about identity theft, the FTC must obtain more
detailed information than is required of other complainants. Identity
theft complaints generally require more information (such as a
description of actions complainants have taken with credit bureaus,
companies, and law enforcement, and the identification of multiple
suspects) than general consumer complaints and fraud complaints. FTC
staff estimates that the online identity theft complaint form takes
consumers up to 8.5 minutes to complete.
For consumers who call the CRC with an identity theft complaint,
staff estimates that it will take 6.4 minutes per call to obtain
complaint information. A substantial portion of identity theft-related
calls typically consists of counseling consumers on other steps they
should consider taking to obtain relief. The time needed for counseling
is excluded from the estimate.
Surveys
Consumer customer satisfaction surveys give the agency information
about the overall effectiveness and timeliness of the FTC call center
and online complaint process. An entity called Customer Feedback
Insights contacts subsets of consumers throughout the year with several
preapproved questions to elicit information from consumers about the
overall effectiveness of the phone complaint process. Current estimates
are that each respondent will require 4.4 minutes to answer the
questions during the phone survey and about 2.7 minutes for the online
survey (approximately 20-30 seconds per question).
In addition, the FTC currently uses ForeSee, Inc. for online
customer satisfaction surveys on www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov. It
randomly selects consumers to take part in a brief survey to provide
feedback about the Web site. Estimates relating to ForeSee surveys are
included under ``Misc. and fraud-related consumer complaints (Web
chat)'' in the table below.
The FTC also plans to send an electronic survey to all United
States-located Consumer Sentinel Network users to identify areas where
the system is satisfactory and where it can improve. Staff estimates
the survey to not take more than 5 minutes to complete.
What follows are staff's estimates of burden for these various
collections of information, including the surveys. The figures for the
online forms and consumer hotlines are an average of annualized volume
for the respective programs including both current and projected
volumes over the three-year clearance period sought and the number of
respondents for each activity has been rounded to the nearest thousand.
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\2\ This category includes online customer satisfaction surveys
by ForeSee, Inc., for www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov.
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Number of Number of
Activity respondents minutes/activity Total hours
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Misc. and fraud-related consumer complaints (phone)....... 367,000 5.9 36,088
Misc. and fraud-related consumer complaints (online)...... 221,000 5.3 19,522
Misc. and fraud-related consumer complaints (Web chat) \2\ 31,200 5.0 2,600
Do-Not-Call related consumer complaints (phone)........... 627,000 3.0 31,350
Do-Not-Call related consumer complaints (online).......... 2,860,000 2.0 95,333
Identity theft complaints (phone)......................... 224,000 6.4 23,893
Identity theft complaints (online)........................ 88,000 8.5 12,467
Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire (phone)............... 8,000 4.4 587
Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire (online).............. 17,000 2.7 765
Consumer Sentinel Network Survey.......................... 200 5.0 17
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Totals................................................ 4,443,400 ................ 222,622
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Annual Cost Burden
The cost per respondent should be negligible. Participation is
voluntary and will not require any labor expenditures by respondents.
There are no capital, start-up, operation, maintenance, or other
similar costs to the respondents.
(c) Program Evaluations: 79 hours.
Review of Divestiture Orders--64 hours.
The Commission issues, on average, approximately 10-15 orders in
merger cases per year that require divestitures. As a result of a 1999
study authorized by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and
conducted by the staffs of the Bureau of Competition (BC) and the
Bureau of Economics, as well as more recent experience, BC monitors
these required divestitures by interviewing representatives of the
Commission-approved buyers of the divested assets within the first year
after the divestiture is completed.
BC staff interviews representatives of the buyers to ask whether
all assets required to be divested were, in fact, divested; whether the
buyer has used the divested assets to enter the market of concern to
the Commission and, if so, the extent to which the buyer is
participating in the market; whether the
[[Page 6969]]
divestiture met the buyer's expectations; and whether the buyer
believes the divestiture has been successful. In a few cases, BC staff
may also interview monitor trustees, if appropriate. In all these
interviews, staff seeks to learn about pricing and other basic facts
regarding competition in the markets of concern to the FTC.
Participation by the buyers is voluntary. Each responding company
designates the company representative most likely to have the necessary
information; typically, a company executive and an attorney represent
the company. Each interview takes less than one hour to complete. BC
staff further estimates that it takes each participant no more than one
hour to prepare for the interview. Staff conservatively estimates that,
for each interview of the responding company, two individuals (a
company executive and an attorney) will devote two hours (one hour
preparing and one hour participating) each to responding to questions
for a total of four hours. Interviews of monitor trustees typically
involve only the monitor trustee and take approximately one hour to
complete with no more than one hour to prepare for the interview.
Assuming that staff evaluates approximately 15 divestitures per year
during the three-year clearance period, the total hours burden for the
responding companies will be approximately 60 hours per year (15
divestiture reviews x 4 hours for preparing and participating). Staff
may include approximately 2 monitor trustee interviews a year, which
would add at most 4 hours (2 interviews x 2 hours for preparing and
participating.).
Annual Cost Burden
Using the burden hours estimated above, staff estimates that the
total annual labor cost, based on a conservative estimated average of
$135/hour for executives' and attorneys' wages, would be approximately
$8,640 (64 hours x $135).\3\ There are no capital, start-up, operation,
maintenance, or other similar costs to respondents.
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\3\ See supra note 1 (attorney salary source data for ``Managing
Attorney'').
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Review of Advocacy Program--15 hours.
The FTC's advocacy program draws on the Commission's expertise in
competition and consumer protection matters to encourage state and
federal legislators, agencies and regulatory officials, courts and
private entities to consider the effects of their decisions on
competition and consumer welfare. The Commission and staff send
approximately 20 letters to such decision makers annually regarding the
likely effects of various bills, regulations, and other policies.
In the past, the Office of Policy Planning (``OPP'') has evaluated
the effectiveness of these advocacy comments by surveying comment
recipients and other relevant decision makers. OPP intends to continue
this evaluation by sending an electronic, or where necessary, a paper
questionnaire to relevant parties within a year after sending an
advocacy.
Most survey questions ask the respondent to agree or disagree with
a statement concerning the advocacy comment that they received.
Specifically, these questions ask about the consideration, content,
influence, and public effect of our comments. The questionnaire also
provides respondents with an opportunity to provide additional remarks
regarding the comments they received, advocacy comments in general, and
the outcome of the matter. These survey results are also included in
the FTC's internal performance management indicators, and are used to
guide the FTC's selection and prioritization of future advocacy
opportunities.
OPP staff estimates that, on average, respondents will take 30
minutes or less to complete the questionnaire. OPP staff estimates that
15 minutes of administrative time will be necessary to prepare a survey
for return via mail or email. Accordingly, staff estimates that each
respondent will incur 45 minutes of burden, resulting in a cumulative
total of 15 burden hours per year (45 minutes of burden per respondent
x 20 respondents per year). OPP staff does not intend to conduct any
follow-up activities that would involve the respondents' participation.
Annual Cost Burden
OPP staff estimates a conservative hourly labor cost of $100 for
the time of the survey participants (primarily state representatives
and senators) and an hourly labor cost of $20 for administrative
support time. Thus, staff estimates a total labor cost of $55 for each
response (30 minutes of burden at $100 per hour plus 15 minutes of
burden at $20 per hour). Assuming 20 respondents will complete the
questionnaire on an annual basis, staff estimates the total annual
labor costs will be approximately $1,100 ($55 per response x 20
respondents). There are no capital, start-up, operation, maintenance,
or other similar costs to respondents.
Request for Comments
You can file a comment online or on paper. For the Commission to
consider your comment, we must receive it on or before March 11, 2015.
Write ``Administrative Activities: FTC File No. P911409'' on your
comment. Your comment--including your name and your state--will be
placed on the public record of this proceeding, including, to the
extent practicable, on the public Commission Web site, at http://www.ftc.gov/os/publiccomments.shtm. As a matter of discretion, the
Commission tries to remove individuals' home contact information from
comments before placing them on the Commission Web site.
Because your comment will be made public, you are solely
responsible for making sure that your comment does not include any
sensitive personal information, such as anyone's Social Security
number, date of birth, driver's license number or other state
identification number or foreign country equivalent, passport number,
financial account number, or credit or debit card number. You are also
solely responsible for making sure that your comment does not include
any sensitive health information, like medical records or other
individually identifiable health information. In addition, do not
include any ``[t]rade secret or any commercial or financial information
which is . . . privileged or confidential,'' as discussed in Section
6(f) of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 46(f), and FTC Rule 4.10(a)(2), 16 CFR
4.10(a)(2). In particular, do not include competitively sensitive
information such as costs, sales statistics, inventories, formulas,
patterns, devices, manufacturing processes, or customer names.
If you want the Commission to give your comment confidential
treatment, you must file it in paper form, with a request for
confidential treatment, and you are required to follow the procedure
explained in FTC Rule 4.9(c), 16 CFR 4.9(c). Your comment will be kept
confidential only if the FTC General Counsel grants your request in
accordance with the law and the public interest.
Postal mail addressed to the Commission is subject to delay due to
heightened security screening. As a result, we encourage you to submit
your comment online, or to send it to the Commission by courier or
overnight service. To make sure that the Commission considers your
online comment, you must file it at https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/adminactivitiespra2, by following the instructions on the web-based
form. If
[[Page 6970]]
this Notice appears at http://www.regulations.gov, you also may file a
comment through that Web site.
If you file your comment on paper, write ``Administrative
Activities: FTC File No. P911409'' on your comment and on the envelope,
and mail or deliver it to the following address: Federal Trade
Commission, Office of the Secretary, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW., Suite
CC-5610 (Annex J), Washington, DC 20580, or deliver your comment to the
following address: Federal Trade Commission, Office of the Secretary,
Constitution Center, 400 7th Street SW., 5th Floor, Suite 5610 (Annex
J), Washington, DC 20024. If possible, submit your paper comment to the
Commission by courier or overnight service.
The FTC Act and other laws that the Commission administers permit
the collection of public comments to consider and use in this
proceeding as appropriate. The Commission will consider all timely and
responsive public comments that it receives on or before March 11,
2015. You can find more information, including routine uses permitted
by the Privacy Act, in the Commission's privacy policy, at http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/privacy.shtm.
Comments on the information collection requirements subject to
review under the PRA should also be submitted to OMB. If sent by U.S.
mail, address comments to: Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, Attention: Desk Officer for
the Federal Trade Commission, New Executive Office Building, Docket
Library, Room 10102, 725 17th Street NW., Washington, DC 20503.
Comments sent to OMB by U.S. postal mail, however, are subject to
delays due to heightened security precautions. Thus, comments instead
should be sent by facsimile to (202) 395-5167.
David C. Shonka,
Principal Deputy General Counsel.
[FR Doc. 2015-02435 Filed 2-6-15; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6750-01-P