On June 28, 2015, the Trade Adjustment Assistance Reauthorization Act of 2015 was signed into law. Under Section 239(j)(1)(c) of Title II, Chapter 2 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended (19 U.S.C. 2271 et seq.), the Secretary is required to collect "a description of efforts made to improve outcomes for workers . . ." In addition to mandatory annual reporting, the Department collects these descriptions on a quarterly basis in order to track progress of efforts to improve outcomes and speed the identification of new state practices.
The Employment and Training Administration’s Office of Trade Adjustment Assistance (OTAA) is revising the ICR for Trade Activity Participant Report (TAPR) (OMB control number 1205-0392). This ICR removes the collection requirement for the individual record reporting that constituted the bulk of the collection burden, but retains the quarterly reporting requirement of "efforts made to improve outcomes''. Correspondingly, the collection title will be changed to "Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) Efforts to Improve Outcomes." Section 239(j)(1)(c) of Title II, Chapter 2 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended (19 U.S.C. 2271 et seq.) authorizes this information collection.
This collection is being modified significantly as to no longer require the submission of individual participant records under the TAPR. The prior TAPR data constituted the bulk of the burden of this collection, reducing the estimated total burden from 18,500 hours to 104 hours.
The September 25 FEDERAL REGISTER contains the PRA notice . Comments are due by October 25.