Notice2026-02453
Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for Review and Approval; Comment Request; Annual Business Survey
Primary source
Metadata and text below are from the Federal Register, a public-domain U.S. government work. Always verify the official published version before relying on it for any legal matter.
Published
February 6, 2026
Issuing agencies
Commerce DepartmentCensus Bureau
Full Text
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<title>Federal Register, Volume 91 Issue 25 (Friday, February 6, 2026)</title>
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[Federal Register Volume 91, Number 25 (Friday, February 6, 2026)]
[Notices]
[Pages 5425-5426]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [<a href="http://www.gpo.gov">www.gpo.gov</a>]
[FR Doc No: 2026-02453]
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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
Census Bureau
Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for Review and Approval; Comment
Request; Annual Business Survey
The Department of Commerce will submit the following information
collection request to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for
review and clearance in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of
1995, on or after the date of publication of this notice. We invite the
general public and other Federal agencies to comment on proposed and
continuing information collections, which helps us assess the impact of
our information collection requirements and minimize the public's
reporting burden. Public comments were previously requested via the
Federal Register on September 2, 2025, during a 60-day comment period.
This notice allows for an additional 30 days for public comments.
Agency: U.S. Census Bureau, Department of Commerce.
Title: Annual Business Survey.
OMB Control Number: 0607-1004.
Form Number(s): ABS-1.
Type of Request: Regular submission, Request for a Revision of a
Currently Approved Collection.
Number of Respondents: 230,000.
Average Hours per Response: 1 hour and 17 minutes.
Burden Hours: 295,858.
Needs and Uses: The Annual Business Survey (ABS) measures business
demographics, research and development (R&D), innovation, and critical
and emerging technologies among businesses in the United States. The
ABS is a joint statistical project between the National Center for
Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) within the National Science
Foundation (NSF) and the Census Bureau.
The ABS combines Census Bureau firm-level collections to reduce
respondent burden, increase data quality, and reduce operational costs.
The ABS is designed to be adaptive, allowing content to be rotated on
and off the survey based on topics of relevance.
Content previously collected on the Business Enterprise Research
and Development (BERD) Survey will now be collected as part of the
Annual Business Survey. The BERD survey will no longer be fielded
independently. Integrating the survey instruments necessitated changes
to the questions which were then tested with the target populations.
The Census Bureau and NCSES worked collaboratively to determine these
necessary changes.
R&D data collected from for-profit businesses and nonprofit
organizations account for nearly 75 percent of the total U.S. R&D
expenditures each year. A consistent R&D information base is essential
to government officials formulating public policy, industry personnel
involved in corporate planning, and members of the academic community
conducting research.
Prior iterations of the ABS used the collection year as part of the
survey name. Moving forward, and to be discernible from the past ABS,
the survey will omit the mention of the collection year and use the
data reference year in all collection materials, informational
documentation, and publication tables. As a result, the data collection
that starts in May of 2026 will be referred to as the ABS Reference
Year 2025.
Statistics from the ABS will be used by government program
officials, industry organization leaders, economic and social analysts,
business entrepreneurs, and domestic and foreign researchers in
business, government and academia.
Frequency: Annually.
Respondent's Obligation: Mandatory.
Legal Authority: The survey is conducted under the authority of
Title 13, United States Code, Sections 8(b), 131, and 182; Title 42,
United States
[[Page 5426]]
Code, Sections 1861-76 (National Science Foundation Act of 1950, as
amended); and Section 505 within the America COMPETES Reauthorization
Act of 2010. Sections 224 and 225 of Title 13, United States Code,
require a response from sampled firms.
This information collection request may be viewed at
<a href="http://www.reginfo.gov">www.reginfo.gov</a>. Follow the instructions to view the Department of
Commerce collections currently under review by OMB.
Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information
collection should be submitted within 30 days of the publication of
this notice on the following website <a href="http://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain">www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain</a>.
Find this particular information collection by selecting ``Currently
under 30-day Review--Open for Public Comments'' or by using the search
function and entering either the title of the collection or the OMB
Control Number 0607-1004.
Sheleen Dumas,
Departmental PRA Compliance Officer, Office of the Under Secretary for
Economic Affairs, Commerce Department.
[FR Doc. 2026-02453 Filed 2-5-26; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510-07-P
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</html>Indexed from Federal Register on February 6, 2026.
This is legal information, not legal advice. Laws vary by jurisdiction and change frequently. Always verify current law with official sources and consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction for advice on your specific situation.