Estimating Paperwork and Privacy Impacts of Proposed Legislation; A Checklist Approach

The Senate adopted a rule requiring that all committee reports on bills of a public nature contain an economic, privacy, and paperwork impact evaluation of the bill. GAO assistance was requested in developing a process to aid Senate committees in formulating the impact analysis required by the rule. Due to the large number of bills reported out of committee each year, it is impossible for GAO to provide worthwhile assistance on all of them. GAO decided that the best way to assist the Senate and its committees would be to develop guideline booklets setting out suggested questions, data sources, and ways of compiling and analyzing data required for the rule's impact statements. This is the second of two such guideline booklets and deals with the paperwork and privacy assessments required by the rule. The other booklet deals with the economic impact assessments.