D. E. Project Reports (NBS-228) NBS-228 Project Report dated October 1976 replaces the form dated The new forms and instructions will be issued under separate cover by the Management and Organization Division. Subcategory Document (SD) The SD serves as a report from the Subcategory Manager to the Director. It contains a first draft of the FY 1979 Budget Document and additional information on program plans and needs from which may be extracted highlights and issues for the Director's attention and review. O A Subcategory Document will be prepared annually for each of the following subcategories: A. provide a national system for physical measurement, B. provide services to improve the use of materials, C. provide services to improve the application of technology, D. Experimental Technology Incentives Program, E. improve the application of computer technology, and F. facilities, The Subcategory Document will be transmitted (24 copies) to the Program Office (Admin. A-1123) by the Subcategory Manager on or before January 21, 1977. The Program Office will distribute eight of these copies to the other members of the Executive Board, In instances where the subcategories include programs from different Institutes, each Institute Director concerned with the subcategory will concur in the transmittal of the document. A Subcategory Document for Facilities will be prepared by the Associate Director for Administration to cover all proposals for expenditures for facilities and/or equipment estimated to cost more than $350,000, facilities improvement projects more than $75,000 and miscellaneous improvements or modifications up to $75,000. Updates of SD information will be prepared by the Director's Office (Program and Budget Analysts) with the support of the Subcategory Managers prior to: --the regular submission to the Secretary --the submission to OMB --the submission to Congress The Subcategory Document (SD) will consist of four sections: 1. 2. The Budget Justification Document for FY 1979 which will serve as the first draft of the budget narrative. A summary of general purpose equipment (GPE) needs of the program elements and subelements for FY 1978. 3. A presentation of MBO objectives and associated milestones for each program subelement covering FY 1977. 4. An estimate of changes in requirements for physical space and NBS supporting services. O The first page of the Subcategory Document should be a Table of Contents listing the four sections and, under the heading for Budget Justification, listing each program subelement. 1. Budget Justification Document • General Instructions (a) The purpose of the Budget Justification Document is to: --persuade reviewers of the NBS budget that current and proposed programs should be funded; --provide a mechanism for surfacing policy and program decisions for management consideration; and --establish a permanent record of program objectives and accomplishments. (b) Audience--The audience that will ultimately receive the budget justification at the Department, at OMB, and in Congress is comprised of nontechnical staff, skilled at identifying weak points and logical inconsistencies in budget justifications. For most NBS programs, the written budget justifications are the only vehicle for explaining the programs and persuading the decisionmakers at the Department, OMB, and Congress of the merits of the programs, To be persuasive, justifications should be concisely written and logically consistent, with emphasis on impact and current relevance of program output. (c) Presentation--Good budget justification is based on clear representation of the products of the program, The justification must meet the objective of getting new funds for expansion efforts or retaining the base funding if work is expected to continue. Three useful general principles are: Accuracy: Statements, promises, and financial data contained in the budget justification are potentially subject to a review for accuracy. These checks are usually random. The reviewer will generalize the results of their spot checks so that the discovery of one inaccuracy is apt to engender distrust of the entire budget. --Clarity Staff reviewers at DoC, OMB, and the Congress are under pressure to review the justifications rapidly. Complex sentence structure, technical vocabulary without definition, new or foreign (to the reviewer) concepts without explanation will obscure the NBS point of view. If the reviewer cannot understand a program, he will not recommend the program. --Conciseness Budget justification should be as short as it can be and still do the job. Conciseness is next most important to accuracy and clarity. • Detailed Instructions (a) Format of Justification: (See Budget Justification Typing Instructions below and also refer to FY 1978 OMB budget examples pp. 13-18. The Budget Justification consists of (i) Summary of Requirements for the Subcategory, (ii) Subcategory Rationale, and (iii) Series of narrative program subelement descriptions. i. Summary of Fiscal Requirements--The Subcategory Document should provide a financial summary of requirements for the subcategory. 1Technical positions only; i.e., all positions not covered by Bureau overhead. Bureau overhead will be considered and added by the Budget Division when actual figures are developed. Fiscal program requirements for 1978 will still be under consideration either by OMB or Congress when the 1979 Subcategory Document is submitted. The numbers used should be those most recently approved, either by the Department or OMB. The 1978 base year numbers will be provided to the Subcategory Managers by the Budget Division. These are to be organized by subelement and preceded in each case Base Program: An individual budget justification description of program and performance should be given by subelement in the format of the FY 1978 budget, responsive to the criteria in the Program Description Outline (Appendix A). Program Expansions and New Initiatives: Program expansions and new initiatives should be justified by subelement in the format of the FY 1978 budget. These also should be responsive to the criteria for program description in the Program Description Outine (Appendix A). Heavy emphasis should be given to the need for the program, program impact, and 1978 accomplishments. The guidelines for pricing out expansion items will be provided by the Budget Division. Having concluded justification of one program or element, the Subcategory Document should begin again with the next program. (Text continued on p. 19.) Example 1 Noise Up to 150 million people in the U.S. are exposed to sound levels that interfere with communication, disrupt sleep, and cause severe stress and annoyance. High levels of noise are deleterious to human health and well-being and more people are being exposed everyday to more noise due to increasing urbanization and mechanization. Alleviation of these increased levels of noise exposures often requires costly noise abatement procedures. These factors have resulted in many regulations and level abatement and control programs at all levels of government. Noise measurements are noise needed in order to quantitatively characterize noise levels, to specify noise emissions, to specify the acoustic properties of architectural materials, and to quantify and interpret human responses to sound. The principal user groups for noise measurements include departments, agencies, and laboratories of Federal and state governments; manufacturers of measurement instrumentation, of products for which noise emissions are of concern, and of architectural materials; acoustic consultants, architects, and urban planners; academic noise research laboratories and speech and hearing clinics. in Legislative actions directed toward noise control have provided an incentive to ensure that such factors as product noise emission or workplace noise levels are within prescribed limits. This legislative imperative is a relatively new element the motivating factors for acoustical measurements and has given rise to a burst of activity and attention to noise measurement tools and methodologies. Recent actions by the Congress and the Executive Branch in the area of noise abatement include the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 and the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, which extended the previous regulations on the occupational noise exposure of workers (Walsh-Healey Act) to coal miners and to all industries engaged in interstate commerce; the Department of Housing and Urban Development Circular 1390.2, which establishes strong noise exposure policies and standards to be observed in the approval of all Department of Housing and Urban Development housing projects; and the Noise Control Act of 1972, which requires the establishment of noise emission standards. At the state and local level, numerous regulations have been passed to control traffic, construction, and industrial noise, to provide noise zoning regulations and building codes, and to protect workers' hearing. A recent The impact of major noise regulations is just beginning to be felt. To be effective and equitable, it is essential that the NBS has developed a comprehensive program to provide government, industry, and the research community with a reliable and |