Paperwork reduction?

A major goal of the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) is to minimize the burden of Americans providing information to federal agencies while maximizing the public benefit of the information collected. Under PRA, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is required to approve all information collections and to make an annual PRA report, the Information Collection Budget (pdf, 140p.). The Government Accountability Office (GAO) presented testimony, released July 18, on OMB's annual report on estimates of agencies' paperwork burden and on a May 2005 GAO report on PRA processes and compliance.

GAO testified on OMB's report that paperwork burden increased 5.5 percent to 8.4 billion hours in FY2005. "Nearly all this increase is the result of the implementation of new statutes. For example, there was an increase of about 224 million hours from the implementation of voluntary prescription drug coverage under Medicare." OMB expects an increase of 250 million hours in the burden estimate of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for FY2006 because of a new model for estimating, but it will not affect the burden on taxpayers.

PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT: Increase in Estimated Burden Hours Highlights Need for New Approach, GAO-06-974T, July 18, 2006
     Full testimony (pdf, 448KB, 36p.)
     Highlights (pdf, 60KB, 1p.)
     Abstract (html)

PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT: New Approach May Be Needed to Reduce Government Burden on Public GAO-05-424 (pdf, 1.3MB, 82p.), May 20, 2005