Public spends less time on government paperwork, OMB says

For the first time in seven years, federal agencies have succeeded in reducing the amount of time the public spends filling out government paperwork, the Office of Management and Budget reported Tuesday.

Americans spent 8.1 billion hours filling out federal forms in fiscal 2003, representing a 1.5 percent decrease from 8.2 billion hours the previous year, OMB said in a report to Congress. As in past years, tax forms for the Internal Revenue Service accounted for the most time. The public spent 81 percent of total paperwork hours in fiscal 2003 filling out information for the IRS.

The overall 2003 statistics appear impressive, but are deceiving, Patricia Dalton, director of strategic issues at the General Accounting Office, told lawmakers at a hearing on the report. A majority of the 116-million hour drop would have happened without any effort at all from agencies, she testified.

Agencies cut down on hours by correcting errors in previous estimates or adjusting methods of calculation, Dalton told members of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs. With no adjustments, time spent on paperwork actually would have increased by 72 million hours in fiscal 2003.

Even if the OMB estimates tell an accurate story, agencies are not meeting targets set by the Paperwork Reduction Act, passed in 1980 and updated in 1995, Dalton testified. That law requires the administration to send Congress an annual report on the amount of time the public spends filling out government-related documents. Under the act, agencies must seek permission from OMB before imposing new paperwork burdens on citizens.

"At 8.1 billion burden hours, the governmentwide paperwork estimate is 3.5 billion burden hours higher than the act's target estimate at the end of Sept. 30, 2001." Dalton said.

OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has substantially reduced unresolved violations of the Paperwork Reduction Act, John Graham, the office's administrator told lawmakers. The office currently has 18 outstanding violations, as opposed to 62 a year ago, he said. Administration officials have taken steps to eliminate the remaining problems.

Agencies can reduce paperwork burdens by eliminating questions, or exempting certain groups of citizens from filling out the forms. The use of electronic filing also can speed up the process, Graham explained.

For instance, the Defense Department started collecting information from supplies, services and technology contractors electronically, saving private companies 26 million hours a year. The IRS exempted companies with total receipts and assets of less than $250,000 from completing certain forms, saving them 37.4 million hours.

But factors outside of agencies' control, including policy changes, often prevent them from making a substantial dent in paperwork, Graham testified. The IRS saved individual filers time by eliminating worksheets on the income tax form, for example. But recently enacted laws required additional lines on forms and new instructions, offsetting any savings achieved, he said.

"We must not lose sight of the truth regarding IRS paperwork," Graham said. "The reality is that our complex tax system is not the product of administrative actions of the IRS but of well-intended choices made by elected representatives of the people."

Democrats on the House Government Reform Committee still criticized the Bush administration for inflating achievements in paperwork reduction. "There is a large gap between President Bush's rhetoric about the need for paperwork reduction and the performance of his administration," the committee's Democratic staff concluded in a report released Tuesday.