Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) was established by the American Inventors Protection Act of 1999 and provides for day-for-day adjustment of patent term (i.e., the period of time a patent is in force) for certain USPTO administrative delays (“the 14-4-4-4-36 timeframes”) for certain patent applications.  The specified timeframes are to:  issue an Office Action within 14 months after application filing, respond to a reply or appeal within four months, act on the application within four months after a decision from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) or from a Federal court, and issue the patent within four months after payment of the issue fee. Additionally, a 36-month timeframe applies if the USPTO does not issue a patent within three years of the filing date or national stage commencement, with certain exceptions.  Further, time consumed by interference or derivation proceedings, delays caused by placing the application under a secrecy order under 35 U.S.C. 181, or time consumed by a successful appellate review may result in positive patent term adjustment (PTA). Any positive PTA is offset by any period that an applicant failed to engage in reasonable efforts to conclude prosecution. This measure reports the PTA for all remaining inventory.

Show that critical activities funded through the State and Local Implementation Grant Program (SLIGP) spurred the critical coordination with FirstNet and the necessary activities to adopt wireless broadband in a public safety environment. Those activities will be continued by States and Territories after the SLIGP grant funds expire.

This measure evaluates Global Markets’ effectiveness in helping companies achieve their export objectives. Global Markets offers U.S. companies a robust set of capabilities to help them achieve their international exporting goals, whether those goals are to set up an overseas distribution channel, gain easier access to challenging markets, or meet additional foreign buyers for their goods. Global Markets focuses on understanding clients’ exporting needs, and providing services to meet those needs.

This measure captures a range of efforts by NOAA’s Aquaculture Program that together will lead to a more efficient federal permitting process. These efforts include: working with federal partners under the White House/OSTP's Subcommittee on Aquaculture to coordinate and streamline inter-agency permitting, working with industry partners to establish and manage offshore aquaculture pilot projects, conducting spatial analysis and developing siting tools, developing engineering solutions, efforts to assess and reduce risk (e.g., entanglement) from aquaculture operations, conducting programmatic environmental reviews to reduce burden on individual applicants, and drafting/revising guidance to permit applicants to improve application quality. We will also continue to support, as requested, any Congressional initiative to develop aquaculture legislation.

The Census Bureau has initiated several enterprise programs focused on establishing shared services, minimizing redundancy, lowering complexity, and identifying cost savings for data collection, processing, and dissemination.

Ensuring that data products are released on schedule is essential.

The Fish Stock Sustainability Index (FSSI) is comprised of 175 stocks (down from 199 beginning in FY 2020) selected for their economic, ecological, and social importance, that represent 83% of total catch. Each stock is given a score between 0 and 4 (0=status unknown; 4=meets all sustainable fishing criteria). The index (scored on a 1,000 point scale) increases when NMFS determines that a stock is either no longer subject to overfishing, no longer overfished, or its biomass has rebuilt or increased to at least 80 percent of target.

Deploy, maintain, and operate the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN) - a mission critical, prioritized, nationwide interoperable broadband network for first responders throughout the nation, with adoption by firefighters, paramedics, law enforcement officers, and other public safety personnel.

Pursuant to the Presidential Memorandum, NTIA will modernize the current spectrum access ecosystem by: 1) Documenting current spectrum use and future requirements 2) Establishing the data and tools needed to automate spectrum management functions and securely make them as transparent and predictable as practicable 3) Updating spectrum access policies to provide greater flexibility and incentivize efficiency 4) Enhancing spectrum enforcement mechanisms 5) Pursuing workforce development initiatives that are critical to long-term success.

Complete and effective customer feedback loops will be identified for the Department’s 20 highest volume externally facing processes. Process owners must demonstrate how customer feedback is used to inform operational improvements and decisions before the loop will be counted as complete.