The Office of Management and Budget has reported that while 12 out of 15 Cabinet departments reduced paperwork burdens for citizens filling out their forms last year, the overall paperwork burden imposed by the government in fiscal 2005 grew 5.5 percent over fiscal 2004, mainly because of the Medicare prescription drug program.
Another cause for the increase from 7.9 billion hours in fiscal 2004 to 8.4 billion hours in fiscal 2005 was the implementation of a new CANSPAM act, an anti-spam program, OMB said in its annual report on the paperwork reduction act.
The act requires federal agencies to establish a process for evaluating proposed collections of information, manage information resources to reduce information collection burdens on the public, and ensure that the public has timely and equitable access to information products and services.