Federal Paperwork Law Poses Obstacle To Valid Research

WASHINGTON—In 1985 the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health decided to find out if computer monitors cause miscarriages. So it did what any good research body would do: It drew up a questionnaire to ask women about their medical history, work and home life, and fertility. But because NIOSH is a federal agency, the survey first had to pass muster at the Office of Management and Budget (0MB). 0MB rejected it, carrying out its authority under a 1980 law, meant to reduce the burden on citizens from government paperwork. According to two separate reports, that decision is an example of the heavy hand that 0MB has wielded in monitoring the activities of federal research agencies. 0MB too often acts out of ignorance or ideological bias, say the reports, rather than following the law’s intent to reduce the amount of paperwork generated by the federal government. The new reports, from the federal General Accounting Office (GAO) and an independent watchdog group known as 0MB Watch, reveal that research-oriented agencies face substantial obstacles from 0MB in winning approval for surveys they wish to conduct. Ironically, the 1980 law has had the smallest impact on the two agencies most responsible for the “paperwork burden”—the Treasury Department (including the Internal Revenue Service) and the Department of Defense, which together account for 58% of the nearly 2 billion “burden hours” the federal government asks of its citizens each year. ‘Just Not Done’ Why does OMB give research agencies a harder time? The 0MB Watch report says there are two reasons: 0MB is frequently not qualified to review technical proposals, and zealous officials have misused the paperwork act to meet ideological objectives. One well-known example is a proposed national sex survey that could help epidemiologists better predict the spread of AIDS. The study, by the National Institutes of Health, has been delayed nearly a year by 0MB, giving rise to charges of political bias. After interviewing. officials at research agencies GAO observed: “The area of AIDS and estimates of its transmission by drug users to the general heterosexual - population was cited as an example of an area and a type of research that just is not done because of OMB’s review requirements.” Indeed, a 1985 order from President Reagan requires 0MB to analyze agency activities to ensure that they are ‘consistent with the president’s policies and priorities. “The fact that [0MB] can delay a regulation indefinitely gives it virtual veto power,” 0MB Watch notes. The combined effects of 0MB delays, rejections, and modifications has had a “chilling effect” on federal research agencies, the reports conclude. In the case of one National Science Foundation telephone survey of women in research, OMB’s conduct resulted in a six-month delay for no apparent reason, according to NSF officials. “We didn’t change our questions much in the end, but it cost us a lot of time,” says NSF program evaluations head James McCullough. In the case of the NIOSH survey, months of acrimonious negotiations produced a compromise that removed 69—nearly half—of the questions. The excised portion included all queries dealing with factors that can cause stress at work, a topic that 0MB felt was not germane to the issue and would require too much of the respondents’ time. The study is expected to be released early next year, but OMB’s actions will make it difficult for scientists to use the results to answer the original question of whether the use of video display terminals are linked to miscarriages. Many people blame the problem on OMB’s unfamiliarity with the conduct of scientific research. Of the 34 0MB “desk officers” within the Office of Information and Regula tory Affairs (OIRA), which reviews the incoming proposals, only one has any scientific education (a B.S. in mathematics). 0MB desk officers “seem to have no compunction about passing scientific judgment on studies designed and reviewed by agency and outside scientific experts,” says 0MB Watch. “A small number of agencies have had persistent difficulties in securing approval to collect information,” the GAO report found. “New submissions, in particular submissions directed at research, evaluation, or statistical data collection, were considerably more likely to be disapproved.” Agencies that have felt the impact of 0MB policies most strongly include the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services (which includes NIH), both of which had 34% of their submissions rejected, changed, or withdrawn in 1988. In the wake of such rejections, several agencies are submitting fewer requests. The GAO report notes ‘that, since the early 1980s, agencies that have had difficulty with 0MB have proposed between 14% and 23% fewer research-on-cited surveys. The agencies have also found ways to collect needed data without going through 0MB. In the case of the crippled NIOSH survey, another agency—NIH’s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development—essentially re-created the original research concept by awarding a grant to New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Because the new survey is not being done internally, it does not require approval by 0MB. 0MB, for its part, says it agrees with many of the complaints. In response to criticism that desk officers are not always qualified to appraise research proposal 0MB says it plans to bolster training for its staff, consult outside statistical experts, and strengthen its internal Statistical Policy Branch. But 0MB officials are unrepentant on the question of whether their actions produce a “chilling effect” on federal research efforts. “If the 0MB process discourages agencies from. seeking approval to collect unnecessary or excessively burdensome data. . . the result may in fact have a salutary effect on American citizens,” the agency said in a written response to GAO. “The fact that agency requests for 0MB approval have declined is neither necessarily a result of the process itself nor necessarily a matter for concern.”

Federal Paperwork Law Poses Obstacle To Valid Research

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