 This meeting is being recorded. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining today's OGIS annual open meeting. Before we begin, please ensure that you have opened the WebEx participant and chat panels by using the associated icons located at the bottom of your screen. Please note all audio connections are currently muted and this conference is being recorded. To present a comment via WebEx Audio, please click the raise hand icon on your WebEx screen which is located above the chat panel on the right. This will place you in the comment queue. If you are connected to today's webinar via phone audio, please dial pound 2 on your telephone keypad to enter the comment queue. If you require technical assistance, please send a chat to the event producer. With that, I will turn the meeting over to Alina Seema, Director, Office of Government Information Services. Alina, please go ahead. The Director of the Office of Government Information Services, it is my pleasure to welcome all of you to our sixth annual open meeting. I hope everyone who is joining us today has been staying safe, healthy, and well. Shortly, I will go through some basic housekeeping rules. Michelle, if you could flip to the next slide and set some expectations for today's meeting. But first, some background on why we are holding this virtual meeting today. In the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016, Congress tasked us with meeting annually to share our important work and we have been doing so since 2017. This year, our meeting follows last month's publication of our 2022 Annual Report to Congress and the President for Fiscal Year 2021. We published our report on our website on May 26, 2022. In a few minutes, I will be sharing an overview of Fiscal Year 2021. The PowerPoint for today's presentation is accessible on the OGIS website, www.archives.gov or slash OGIS. Throughout this meeting, we will be monitoring the chat function on Webex. We are also simultaneously live streaming on the NARA YouTube channel and also monitoring the chat submitted on that platform. We will open our telephone lines during the public comment period to give attendees the opportunity to comment orally. I want to note that if you're watching us via NARA YouTube, you will not be able to provide oral comments during our public comment section. You can only provide oral comments via telephone if you have registered via Webex. As we noted in our Federal Register notice, each individual caller will be limited to three minutes each. Prior to today's meeting, we received a number of public comments that we are still in the process of reviewing and posting. We will also accept any additional written public comments via email. Please send them to OGIS Open Meeting, all one word, at NARA.gov. An important reminder with regard to your comments, please be aware that this is not the right time revenue to ask questions about a specific FOIA request or a specific issue you are experiencing that is unique to you. While we are happy to have all points of view shared, please respect your fellow attendees and keep the conversation civil and on topic. We are recording today's session, and we will post a transcript of this event on the OGIS website as soon as it becomes available. The video of the meeting will also be accessible for later viewing on the NARA YouTube channel. Next slide, please. So the year in review fiscal year 2021. Next slide, please. With the May 26, 2022 publication of this 2022 OGIS annual report to Congress and the President, I mark my sixth year as OGIS Director. This report and today's meeting fulfills the FOIA mandate that we report on our activities and any recommendations we have to improve the FOIA process. Fiscal year 2021 continued to pose a number of challenges for the FOIA process due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Next slide, please. Let me say a few words about who we are and what we do in our role as the federal FOIA ombudsman. In our role as the FOIA ombudsman, OGIS serves as a resource for information and assistance about the FOIA process. By listening to stakeholders and observing the FOIA process in action, we help to resolve disputes as a non-exclusive alternative to litigation. By allowing our casework and assessments to serve as a FOIA barometer and studying a range of FOIA issues, we fulfill Congress's mandate to review FOIA policies, procedures, and compliance, and identify procedures and methods for improving compliance to FOIA. By speaking about systemic change in a variety of ways, we are fulfilling Congress's mandate to identify procedures and methods for improving compliance with FOIA. This past year, our office handled 4,200 requests for assistance from both FOIA requesters and agencies. We have published several assessments that are available on our website. These include processes, agencies used to make documents available on their websites, records requested frequently by or on behalf of individuals seeking records about themselves, and how agencies have been using their FOIA websites to communicate with FOIA requesters about pandemic-related delays. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the top concern of requesters and FOIA processors has been delays, and we have experienced a sharp increase in the number of submissions related to total FOIA requests. We have increasingly encountered requesters who are angry and frustrated with the federal government in general and the FOIA process in particular. We are also hearing anecdotal stories of FOIA professionals experiencing frustration and burnout. We see the primary challenges in FOIA today continuing to be a lack of resources, confusion about the FOIA process, and a lack of communication between requesters and agencies. Next slide, please. One of several ways that OGIS tries to improve the administration of FOIA is through our work on the FOIA Advisory Committee, which I chair. The committee brings together members of the FOIA community from inside and outside of government to collaboratively identify the greatest challenges in the administration of FOIA and develop recommendations for improvements. We have completed four two-year terms of the committee thus far. As of today, the committee has voted in past a total of 51 recommendations and has advanced over 35 best practices. OGIS is in the process of finalizing the final report and recommendations that the committee approved earlier this month to be delivered to the acting archivist of the United States in the near future. We will also post the final report on our website. Stay tuned. Next slide, please. We have created a terrific recommendations dashboard in order to keep track of the great work the committee has done since its inception in 2014, and I have included the link here on the slide. We will continue to update the dashboard periodically as we make progress on the recommendations. In particular, we will be updating the dashboard to reflect the additional 21 recommendations made by the most recent term of the committee. The updates will also reflect progress on recommendations from prior terms. This is a great opportunity to let everyone know that earlier this month we issued a call for nominations for the next committee term, the fifth term. While the deadline to either self-nominate or nominate another individual is actually tomorrow, June 30th, 2022, we have decided to extend the deadline to Friday, July 15th, 2022. The committee charter states that we need at a minimum three cabinet-level agency representatives and three non-cabinet-level agency representatives. We particularly need additional government nominations, so please consider applying. On the non-government side, the committee charter states that we need two representatives of organizations that advocate on FOIA matters. Three individuals representing the interests of FOIA requesters who qualify for each of the three FOIA request or fee categories, commercial, news media, and all other. One individual representing the interests of historians and history-related organizations, and one individual representing the interests of academia. So please apply. Slide eight. Next slide, please. Recommendations to Congress. We relied on our 2022 annual report to convey the first recommendation of the 2020 to 2022 FOIA Advisory Committee term that was voted on and passed in 2021, and that is that Congress adopt rules or enact legislation to establish procedures for affecting public access to legislative ranch records and the possession of congressional support offices and agencies modeled after FOIA. More about that in our second panel today. In our annual report, we also renewed four recommendations to Congress that we have made in prior annual reports. The first, adopting rules or enacting legislation to establish procedures for, I'm sorry, I already stated that one. Passing legislation is the next one that we actually renewed to provide agencies with sufficient resources to comply with the requirements of both FOIA and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, especially as they relate to proactive posting of large numbers of records. This continues to be an issue that we see. We also asked Congress to ask GAO regarding systemic and or specific compliance issues at agencies that Congress could then address in a targeted fashion, either through hearings or additional inquiries. And we also asked Congress to ask GAO to conduct a study of the funding for agency FOIA programs to determine whether our agencies have adequate funding to comply with FOIA and respond to requests in a timely manner and what additional resources agencies need in order to improve the FOIA process overall. Next slide, please. So I want to ask my fellow panelists who are going to be joining us to please come on camera. And I want to just introduce this panel that we're going to move on to next. As I have shared in several venues over the last months, including my testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in March, we continue to see a sharp increase in the number of OGIS submissions related to delayed FOIA requests. Specifically, we saw the number of requests for OGIS assistance involving delays jumped at 73% in fiscal year 2021. The majority of requesters seeking our assistance with delayed requests had asked for and were unable to obtain an estimated data completion in EDC. OGIS issued an assessment on FOIA's requirement that agencies provide a request with an EDC upon request in the earliest days of the pandemic. Our assessment found that agencies were challenged even before the pandemic began to provide EDCs and that agencies' responses to such requests were mixed. We also issued an advisory opinion stressing the importance of compliance with FOIA's EDC requirement and a FOIA Ombuds Observer providing requesters with tips for obtaining an EDC. All of these can be found on our OGIS website. Clearly, the pandemic has taken what was already a significant issue and compounded it. Increasingly, as OGIS staff works on requests for assistance involving delays, we are hearing from agency FOIA staff that they are unable to provide an estimated data completion for a variety of reasons. So I am very excited to be able to explore that topic today and I am thrilled to be joined by three very accomplished FOIA professionals to discuss this important topic. First, Mike Seidel, who is currently the chief of the record information dissemination section, RIDS, and the information management division of the FBI. Nancy Shavanna's battle, who is currently the deputy chief boy officer with the privacy and records management office of the United States Postal Service. And Greg Bridges, who is currently the chief of the disclosure branch records management division at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, at DHS. So welcome to all three of you. I know I pivoted very quickly after my remarks. So I was very happy to see you were waiting in the wings. I really appreciate it. And we talked today about the fact that we're going to just have a chat among the four of us so we could try to help our agency professionals that are watching us today and our requesters that may be watching us today with this topic of DDCs. So in no particular order, I would like to ask each one of you if you could talk a little bit about what your agency's approach is to computing DDCs. Who wants to kick it off? Good morning, Alina. I'm happy to get it rolling. Great. Thanks, Mike. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Again, I'm Mike Seidel. I'm the chief of the FBI's FOIA program. And I'd like to kind of address that question in two parts. Let's talk briefly about methodology and then frequency. So in terms of methodology, we look across our program into our different track sizes. Like many agencies we're a multi-track processing program. And we have four tracks. We have a small track, a medium track, a large track, and an extra large track. So within each of those tracks, and our tracks, by the way, are based on page size. For instance, our small track is one to 50 pages. The medium track is 51 to 950 pages. So we look within each of those tracks, and we compute the average number of days it takes to complete a request. And we get that information out of our automated system. It's called the FOIA document processing system. So we'll look at those dates within those queues of the dates the requests were open. We'll do the math and compare them to the dates they were closed. And we'll come up with that average number of days it takes to complete a request within that queue. In terms of frequency, we do that every six months, if you will. So, Mike, I remember when I was at the FBI, we had a backlog manager. Those were the old days. I guess it's much more sophisticated now. Well, we're busy, as you know, Alina. We're a very, you know, for the benefit of everyone on the call. I mean, we're a very large, we're a large program. So we deal with a high volume of incoming requests of both daily, monthly, and yearly. We're averaging about 30, a volume of about 30,000 incoming requests a year. And that's certainly something I talk about a little bit more when we talk about maybe the challenges that, you know, computing in EDC gives, you know, provides to an agency. Great. Thanks, Mike. Nancy, do you want to go next? Talk about your agency's approach to computing EDCs. How does the postal service do it? Good morning, everyone. I'm Nancy Shavan. I'm the Deputy Chief Officer of the Public Service. And our agency is decentralized, so wherever you meet remote agencies. We have two RSC centers, the request service center, one's the headquarters and one's to the field. And each of these RSC determines where the request records may be located. So three of the things that we looked at when we're trying to approach computing to estimate data completion is how long would it take us to locate the record? To review, to redact records, and depending on the number of records are located. It might be located more than one place. You might have something in the field, something in headquarters. Secondly, emails. Records involve email communications. It involves additional time to review because we have to make sure there's no attachment. What needs to be released and what can be released. And also if more than one department is involved, there's additional time will be needed. And especially with the media, we have to go to communication. Communication office has to review it, and the law department has to review it. That's a lot of moving parts. It sounds very complicated. Greg, can I turn to you and have you talk a little bit about FEMA's approach to computing estimated data completion? Sure. Hi everybody. I'm Greg Bridges. I'm the branch chief for FEMA's FOIA office. And our approach isn't too different from Mike and Nancy's. As far as calculating the time it takes us to do our part of the process. We also rely heavily on the time the received date and the closed date and kind of using that as a gauge as well. The review times that it could take for the records. But then in addition to that, we also work with our programs to get an estimate of how long it would take them to complete the search, which we also factor into the timeline. And we try to encourage them to really rely on their familiarity with the records to get the page volume to get an estimate. For us, when it comes to responding to a disaster, everyone is a little different. There's different challenges. And when we know a highly publicized disaster is on the horizon, I think the last one was probably the Texas power shortage. We kind of start working with the regions to kind of get an idea of what types of records are going to be produced, how big the volume they think it's going to be. So that way when reporters and people start asking for this information, we can kind of start engaging in that discussion with them on how long we think certain things are going to take. So it's really, so using those combinations is how we really work to get an estimate. And it really just comes down to having something to back it up or something to justify why we picked that particular date. That sounds really very proactive on your part that you're actually reaching out when you know the disasters are coming up. So that sounds really very effective. It helps for situations where when we have disasters, a surge of requests can come in at one time. It's helpful to have that information up front because you're going to be having those conversations constantly with different requesters. So getting ahead of that really helps us out to really manage how we're going to respond to all these things and pick those dates. That's very helpful to hear. Thank you. Mike, I know you said you were going to pivot to challenges that you have faced in implementing EDC. So I would love to hear from you first. Thanks again, Alina. So from the program managed by perspective I think the greatest challenge is the challenge that we've experienced is that frequency of the measure. That's why I talked about our methodology. We take that data snapshot semi-annually. So really in terms of how do we better serve the requested community and the public is what is the right frequency? If you take that snapshot too frequently we found because of our increased volume and our increased litigation if we take that frequency snapshot too frequently there's too many peaks and valleys and we found that's not helpful to requesters. On the opposite side if it's too lengthy it's really kind of stale it's not useful in that regard. We want something that's both as accurate as we can make it but that is not so frequent that there's too many peaks and valleys. So I think that was our greatest challenge so where do we land? So based on our experience we found that given our volume if we did too frequently like monthly too many peaks and valleys. That was not helpful information and providing a really realistic expectation to the public. Annually was not frequent enough. Too stale again is not really providing a useful tool, really a useful discussion piece with requesters because it was too stale. So we landed on semi-annually and that seems to be serving us well in terms of what's that right frequency for our program. Great, that's really helpful to hear. Thank you. Nancy if you want to chat with us a little bit about challenges at the Postal Service and implementing the approach to calculating these EDCs. Thank you, Ann. Two of the challenges that we really face in our office since we're decentralized is to make sure that the right department if it goes to our department or if it needs to go to another department additional department besides more than one department we need to know. So that might help the time that we need to complete the request. So we're going to make sure that we communicate with four coordinators in our office in our district. So we have to make sure we communicate with the right one and if we need to send it to somebody else we do that. Secondly, emails are challenges. We've got a lot of emails. I don't know if your office has done a lot of request with emails. Sometimes 10,000 emails and sometimes we have to ask the request and getting them to do that sometimes apart because they want what they want and trying to pull it from them telling them they want it at a reasonable time that we would need to connect them out of scope. And what we do a lot too in our office too is we do partial response of some partial response and to let them know that we are working on it and that we are trying to give it to them at a certain time six or seven or a year later sometime. So we do work with them. We try to work with the request as much as we can so we can get to the completion date as we state in our letter. I'm just curious, I don't know what the number is, but there's an incredible amount of local facilities that are part of your world. How many facilities in different locations are you dealing with? We have at least 30,000 post offices. So depending on what they're asking for where they want we might have to deal with each one and try to find, we have coordinated subsections with different districts. So we just had a reorg, our district got a reorg so each section has a district so it's hard to sometimes locate exactly where the record is located and that's the first and most important thing. Once we know where the record is located we're able to provide an exact date. Any top policies and procedures come up to headquarters. Headquarters handles most policies and procedures so we have no issue with that. But is this sometimes going to more than one department? We have to figure that out and make sure that we communicate with the requestor and make sure that we're providing them what they want and what they're asking for. Well that's definitely a big challenge. 30,000 locations I can definitely see that. Greg, let's pivot over to you to talk to us a little bit about the challenges you face in implementing EDCs. Internally I think the major issue is just getting people comfortable with the concept of doing an estimate. I think a lot of times they feel like they have to give an approximate date or I think the common one is how long it will take without going through the records and just getting them to understand how to do the estimate, what to base it on. One kind of thing we ask them, if you worked on nothing else how long would it take you to complete this? Or if you started the search today, when do you think what date do you think you can get it back to our office? So that way if you can't give us the actual days we can kind of gauge the estimated response based off of the date that you provide. For the requesters, it's really getting them to understand why the date may take so long as we do. Oftentimes they think you guys are an oldest to call it with the magic file cabinet where you do a spin in the chair, you pick up the folder everything is ready to go and redacted and it just goes out the door. Or they think email searches work like searching through Gmail. And explaining to them like that is sometimes I think a big challenge, especially with requesters who are really under the impression that it's not going to take as long as we're saying it'll take. And they don't understand that. That's usually a big challenge there. But that usually just most of the times if you can justify the date and explain why it takes that long that really helps. But if you just throw the date out without no justification then that's where the problem, that's when it really becomes a problem. Greg, some great points that you just made about both internal and external challenges. I think it's very, very helpful. And one thing you touched on actually helps us pivot to the next question I was going to pose to all three of you, but Greg, I'll get started with you. How do you deliver realistic news to requesters to help them manage their expectations? Well, you know, as understanding as the requesters can be. No. I would say that just be as transparent about the situation as possible. I think it helps to, I think it helps when discussing the EBC specifically to know what is the part of the process that's the heavy lift, what's the part that's taking the most time. Because then that can really, and if you can explain that to a requester in a way that they understand, you know that really helps them. And it sometimes gives you an opportunity to reduce the scope or maybe discuss everything that's being requested. Sometimes requesters think what they want is easy and we've all had the requesters that ask for way more than what they want because they're either, for what some reason, they're hesitant to say specifically what they want. You know, once they have that timeline that may force them to reduce it because sometimes requesters like the media or law firms they want those records backed by a certain time. And so, you know if you can come in and identify the pinpoints or work with the program offices to identify new search terms that can help the scope do it out quickly, you know one of the things we do at our agency is explain to requesters why searching for all of the emails with the word hurricane during hurricane season might produce more records than you're actually looking for. So, you know, so having that background, having an estimate on the volume and the work it'll take and much of that information that you can have as possible before you discuss this with the requester will be very helpful. You don't have to have all of it but you just have to be able to lay out your timeline and also, you know, if you don't know if you're not sure about this date there's nothing wrong with telling a requester we think it's going to be ready by this date if we think it's if we don't think we can meet that date we'll definitely reach out you know if you're saying the 25th by the 20th or the 24th you should have an idea of if you can meet the 25th and if you know you can't let the requester know before the 25th you know that shows proactivity that shows that your request is on the forefront and that is really the main gripe of a lot of requesters they don't want to be forgot about so even if they don't like the date being extended at least they know that you're actively working on it and even if you have to extend it then that could be another opportunity to narrow the scope always keep trying to do that you know so I think if you can do that with a requester you're not going to satisfy all of them but the majority of them will still be willing to work with you whether they're happy about the situation or not some great points Greg communication is so key and something I would just always stress is thanks for all of that Nancy a hard act to follow up but could I ask you the same question that I have to ask Greg about for realistic news to requesters and help manage their expectations it's a hard act to follow but I agree with Greg I agree communication is number one communication we try to break down how many records we locate and how long we think it's going to take up but sometimes realistically it might take us longer and right clickable we try to communicate with them and I think that's the biggest thing and if we do it before the due date so you know we have and my office is at five days before in case of due we contact the coordinator to provide us an update that is an update and when they do and if we need to do an essential letter or contact the requester then we go ahead with that we don't wait until it's overdue or the requester reaches back to us so we communicate and now in the scope if we have to keep going back up towards to be sure comfortable a lot of times they don't know what they're looking for and we just go any any and every record is a thousand records that you might not need so we try to work with them we have to take up the phone talk to them and you know explain what exactly they're looking for and then try to help them now so if we do that I agree with Greg 100% communication communication without that we're not able to reach them and they wanted yesterday they wanted to produce the records yesterday so we have to communicate and we have to explain what we locate the records we locate they think we might only have a few or we're trying to get them a hard time but that's far from the truth we are trying to be transparent we're trying to provide the records they're looking for right Nancy thank you so much Mike over to you how do you deliver realistic news to requesters and what are their expectations along the way well thanks again Alina I'll try not to sound like a broken record here given the great information that Greg and Nancy provided but yeah a lot of similarities in the concepts there communication, active engagement with requesters and linkage to the overall program picture our negotiation program is I think are the keys that we focus on communication in our standard we've one of the things that we provide is a link to a FBI.gov call it our FOIA status link or FOIA status tool if you will and it's heavily used by requesters so you you can go to that link you can under your request number and it's going to give you some information about your request in terms of what stage your request is you know is it an initial search stage it's in processing and that's helpful information but that link also directs requesters to our public information officer and that's really where the magic happens we we find that a lot of our requesters engage with our public information officer to get more information about the request and that's where the discussion about the EDCs really happens just throw out a few stats for you so far just so far this fiscal year we've received here at the the FBI over 14,000 requester contacts via e-mail and over 1100 phone calls about their requests so our a robust PO team we'll discuss with requesters that EDC so we'll give you the number and we'll be transparent about it certainly if you're one of our larger queues that number is going to be large and people might not understand why that number is so large and so we'll talk about our methodology here's how we take our snapshot please understand it we're a large program your program your request is important to us but just know that we assign to a processing queue and we process on a first and first out basis and we're providing you the best estimate of time that we can give you based on the data we have available and of course then we talk about are you interested in negotiation and we find that most requesters are didn't even know that was an option where hey let's talk about you requested this entire file this entire file is 2000 pages what are you really looking for maybe we could help you find what you're really looking for and in the process gets you to a smaller processing queue which means you'll get the information faster and so we have that discussion with the requesters and it usually happens during that discussion about the EDC well here's the estimate let's talk about how we got there and what your options are and certainly requesters are entitled to everything and that's often part of that discussion the statute requires that you're entitled to it all if you want it but we certainly want to have that discussion we want to engage with requesters about is there something that we can do for you that maybe would resolve this case give you what you really want faster so I thought you were going to call out but I'm going to call it out the best kept secret at the FBI one of the best kept secrets at the FBI and RIDS which is the negotiations team I think it's a great model I warmly recommend it to any other agency that I talk to I think it's just a great way to focus in on a particular talented group of GIS's who are focused and determined on trying to help narrow requests can you talk about that for a minute Mike well sure thing if a questioner is interested in that discussion we find that many are it will go to our negotiation team and a negotiation team will review the file and organize the information for that discussion and then we'll have that discussion we'll engage about you know what are you really looking for maybe are you looking for a specific events maybe in this file are you looking for a certain date range are you looking for a particular interview I mean we can have that you know interactive discussion and narrow down the page range and that's really the gist of it of course we have a very diverse program in the range of information we see you know the Bureau is both a law enforcement intelligence agency so we have a broad range of records and you know that requires some you know work by our team to do some reach up front you know to know about the information that we're talking to the request for about but really that that exchanges where you know the benefit the best practice happens and it really you know we're finding more that we're we're landing that win-win spot where you know that the agency is getting a benefit to processing less pages and we not that's really good stewardship right we're not we're not processing unwanted pages the individual requesters getting benefit because they're getting what they really want faster and many requesters didn't realize that that was an option and you know I would say that there's there's a larger benefit to the entire FOIA community in that you know when that exchange happens we're able to serve more members of the public so since we're not processing unwanted pages we're able to serve more requesters and give more requesters more information more frequently just to clarify a question whether the this FDI model you've described for EDCs does that include not only average times but also is it subdivided categories of records how precise does it get as I discussed it's across that queue size so we're trying to take a snapshot of the the average time within that queue and you know back to our challenges one of our challenges because our information is so diverse and wide-ranging I mean we it's you know it's very difficult to assign a specific time to a specific category request and certainly we still deal with the environmental factors that you know where we get these peaks and values or incoming volume in our litigation demand right so so we take that snapshot you know so it's just pure data okay great thank you so much I'm gonna give you a break Mike back to Greg for a minute to see if we can talk a little bit about what advice you would give to agencies that are struggling to compute and provide an EDC and as I highlighted earlier unfortunately I would just finding that there are a number of agencies who are in that boat so talk to them and what would you tell them I would tell any agency struggling with it your experience with the process is your biggest tool when it comes to the state regardless of what agency you work at at a certain point of time and working in that for your office you will eventually have seen all of the common records that are requested you know a contract is a contract a report is a report email communication is email communication so start monitoring the challenges that you typically come across with those set of records and then that can maybe help you understand what you have to face when it comes to working records so for example if you're dealing with a contract submit or notice is going to be in play it's a 50 page contract you may have to work with the submiter with that information factor that into your timeline how long does it usually take to get a response back from a submiter with that size contract not that particular contract but that kind of contract or if it's email communication what are they discussing is it external communication are they communicating with somebody outside the federal government if it goes outside of the federal government a lot of exemptions are no longer a lot of exemptions are no longer valid so take that into consideration as well and kind of use that as your estimate but then also go to the requester let them know what you're basing that off of and then leave room to say hey if we think this data is a little off you know go back we'll go back to the requester doing that and then also put all of your request on some type of schedule don't wait don't give it don't identify an EDC just for the purpose of getting a requester off your back if you put all of your request on an EDC that could also help you factor in how long it'll take you to work on a particular request because you're considering your current workload that's something you have to consider too so it really comes down to just monitoring your work relying on your experience with the records and then just staying in communication with the requesters when you think you're going to be off there's nothing wrong with being off on the estimate as long as you can justify why you did it and you let the requester know before if you can do that then most requesters will work with you on that but assuming that you have to be approximate or assuming that you got to get it right the first time you let the requester know that actually puts you in a bad position but your experience with the records is what you want to rely on if you don't know it now then start monitoring that now and for each individual staff member don't assume that one staff member if one staff member gets it out in 20 days that the next staff person will as well base it off of the average time that it takes that person if you know who's going to be working on it base it off of theirs if you don't know get an average for your team and that's really where the managers can come in and really help with that by monitoring you know response times and how well your team can put information out the door so if you got that going for yourself you can at least do the estimate you may not do the approximate date but that's not necessary for an estimate so as long as you can keep that and stay on top of those things you should be good there okay some great advice thanks Brian Nancy same question to you what advice do you have for other agencies who are struggling to provide EDCs first of all we really stick with obtaining the records and communicate again with the request also the officers should break down what increases the time they should be referring to other officers like our office we have to go through corporate communication that fits the media the law department needs to be reviewed especially when it includes numerous records so we have to be accountable to that also if it's e-mail we have to in our office we have a standard how to calculate the numbers of hours it would take each specialist to go through e-mail we have a standard standard calculation so when we get a certain amount of e-mail we'll run the calculation that the request is going to take us this amount of time for us to provide the response to e-mail and then again we ask them if they want to know the scope so I think there needs to be a standardized in their department each specialist every time Greg says you're not going to all do it the same way I mean the same hours and time but if you're a standardized on how you do it then you'll all be on the same page so I think it's very important to have a partial response when needed not to just sometimes we say 20 days and I say 20 days I say 6 months we all know we've all been there it's taken a while so we need to provide partial response standardized within your department and also to break down what you see will increase timeline will increase the time to provide response or provide enhanced e-mail from providing a response or an issue you might encounter when you're trying to provide it thanks very much Nancy Mike same question to you what advice do you have for other agencies who are struggling sure three items the first one would be automation is your is your methodology automated if not it ought to be so we take that data snapshot I talked about and we're able to do that in automated fashion so is this the numbers that we need fairly quickly so automation is really key you know the second one is really the engagement I talked about that really goes to staffing so do you do you have an adequate public liaison with information officer staff to engage with requesters then finally right is negotiation so link it to negotiation let me provide you a few words so the negotiation process I described to you so far this fiscal year we were our program is reviewed almost 8 million pages in that process and we've eliminated from processing based on that discussion and to achieve that win-win I talked about wow that's really very impressive I'm going to pivot to the next question I was going to pose to all of you I'm going to ask Nancy maybe she could feel this first getting by and from agency for a leadership I'll just preface my question by just highlighting the fact that in our assessment we found that support for an agency leadership is crucial to success in meeting for a statutory requirements including providing EDCs so talk to us a little bit Nancy about getting an agency FOIA leadership buy-in agency leadership from the top we communicate with our general council when we need assistance or if we need in providing update upgrades we meet with our general council and then he provides he sends out emails to other agency heads and they follow and nothing that we do we provide training training is very important a lot of employees don't realize how important FOIA is and how important FOIA plays in their role every day and each one of them to become to get a FOIA at any time we make sure that we provide the training and we show them what we need and why so important for them to assist us and farm when we contact them so by going to our general council and other managers that allows us for them to assist us when we need any assistance with a FOIA update with a system we for express so that we need to go to they're very helpful they provide us they support us and we we have a great team we have a great team at the post service to assist us and provide what we need to the requesters and if we need an assistance or anything else when it comes to FOIA great, Craig can I ask you the same question how do you get by and from the leadership and I know you're one of 22 agencies within DHS as well so you have a larger framework to work with as well talk to us a little bit about that I think kind of like what Nancy said a relationship with OGC is very helpful for us and not just the attorneys that work directly with us not the FOIA attorneys but also the program attorneys because what they can cause what they can do is kind of that legitimacy especially when you're dealing with senior managers who aren't familiar with the FOIA process and you're coming into their program trying to tell them why they need to make our work a priority against their work so it really does help I think when it comes to senior leadership it really is just understanding what that particular manager or leader cares about when it comes to the FOIA process they care about that they're in compliance some do some don't often times they care about not getting in trouble they care about not having to spend money they care about not having to get sued so it's really when you go to them and use them because often we use the senior managers as enforcers or trying to get them to compel their staff to comply touching based on the part of the process that would most concern them coupled with the support of OGC understanding the move and understanding the urgency and why we get them because usually by the time we have to get them involved and stuff we need their assistance in some way so it helps if you do have a good working relationship with them already that makes it easier but in the times when you don't appealing to them based on their actual concerns coupled with OGC usually helps and not just your FOIA attorneys their program attorneys that's the thing don't just come in with the FOIA attorneys come with their program attorneys because those are the people that they're most used to dealing with they understand the program in a way the FOIA folks and your FOIA attorneys don't so having their buy-in when you go to senior leadership just helps legitimize the concern and really can compel them to take the type of action you need them to that's really helpful I'm going to pivot to Mike and ask the question in a slightly different way relying on my years of experience at the FBI always there's a big struggle between the FBI's primary mission collecting information and FOIA releasing information how is it that you manage that and how do you get buy-in from FBI leadership to make sure that everything gets done the way it should it all boils down to educational I think it's a constant process probably in many agencies the constant process of educating everyone in the agency in particular leadership about what our statutory obligations are you know so this is a statutory program in terms of EDC that's a statutory requirement we're required to provide this to requesters if they request such so you know it's really an education there's many facets to education but I think if I had to distill it all down to the discussions that we would have here within New Brewer with other agencies it's educating everyone on those obligations and well uses obligations and with price tags we have to have resources to meet these obligations so I think I just kind of leave it there as education's the key okay I still like my idea of getting the t-shirts that say FOIA is everyone's responsibility that I think all the team should be wearing walking around the buildings that's my vote so my last question and I know we're sort of getting ready to wrap up very shortly is benefits you have seen from the approach each of you has adopted in terms of EDCs have you seen benefits and what would you say they are Nancy do you want to go first oh yes thank you both requesters please please with our efforts to provide the record the high quality customer service and it gives them confidence knowing that we're trying to be transparent that we're not trying to hide anything and we're trying to work with that and most of the time with that it helps us to conflict on the estimated EDC the EDC date that we provide it allows us to give them what they're asking for and what they're looking for on time and it's not a communicating with them and letting them know where we stand like nobody in my office might get on the phone the office every question we don't mind get on that phone we don't mind emailing them to let them know that we're here to work with you what can we do to assist you if you need now scope we use our website a lot we list many records frequently requested records you put on our website we tell them where to go we walk through with them we want them to know that we are here to be transparent we're here to provide the service that they're looking for and we all know that Post Service is on the news a lot so we try to make it seamless so they still want to make sure that they're going to get what they ask for so I think if I know that we are there for them and we are there to provide what they want that's very helpful thanks Greg what about you would you be able to address a little bit about benefits you've seen from your proactive approach it sounds like you take a very proactive approach to addressing incoming FOIA requests and providing ADCs we really started implementing these new procedures back in 2018 and since 2018 we've been sued twice in those four years two of the fiscal years we actually didn't receive any litigation and then as far as the number of appeals out of anywhere from 1200 to 17 depending on the year we've received no more than 45 appeals on any one of those given years so I think that speaks to the quality of our responses and it isn't because we don't have the same watchdog groups the same reporters the same freelance journalists that all the other agencies get we all know who they are we're not going to name we're going to be six their names we all know who they are though so it isn't because we don't get those kind of people it's because of implementing this new procedure and really establishing these response dates because that's a part of setting the expectations with the requesters so immediately once we got it going and got people familiar with it we really started to see appeals and challenges to our final responses reduced significantly those are great examples Mike I'll pivot to you and see if you can address the benefits you've seen over the years with your approach well sure I'm just going to double down on two of the themes that I've talked about and it's really it's the stewardship of our finite resources that we receive and really establishing the rapport with requesters and that's led to the number I just gave you this fiscal year we've eliminated over six million pages of one one in processing so that allows us to serve the public better so that's really how it all works together so you know automates resource your staff to deal with the public to talk to your requesters frankly talking about your program and we find a lot of requesters appreciate that especially not everybody's happy but they appreciate the frankness here's the reality if you really want all those records you're entitled to them but here's here's what the number is based on our first and first out queue let's have that discussion about what you really could use or what you really need and if we can get there let's work together to get there so stewardship of resources and request your report okay great thank you very very helpful comments from all three of you today I am extremely grateful for all the information you've shared with us definitely the struggle to estimate processing time is real but I do want to add and I think Greg actually referenced to earlier EDCs are just an estimate they don't have to be set in stone and it's a great opportunity to set expectations open negotiations with a requester as Mike has also described and Nancy has also discussed so any other party comments can I say one comment I was getting ready to say this whole concept of EDC is not for the it shouldn't just be for the requesters this is something that you should be incorporating into your processes you should be establishing EDCs just for your office's knowledge it'll help you gauge your output what can you expect to go out the door so even though this does benefit the requesters in a big way it can also benefit your office for managing your request in a big way too don't do this for the purpose of the requesters incorporate this into your normal processing of all your records and it will definitely benefit you probably even more than a requester in a lot of ways that's really helpful Mike any parting thoughts well I just want to thank you for the opportunity to speak here today to everyone I think I've pretty well covered everything I need to say today again for this opportunity I really appreciate your time Nancy any parting thoughts no thank you thank you for giving us the opportunity to share our experience I appreciate it and it was a great experience thank you thank you very much to all three of you I'm clapping everyone else in the audience is clapping really appreciate your time so we're going to pivot now to our next panel Mike and Greg and Nancy you're welcome to stick around I've got the great work of the advisory committee I'm going to turn things over now to my colleague Kirsten Mitchell and I got a tiny break right Kirsten tiny break tiny okay I'm going to stay on camera though great thank you so much Alina and thank you Nancy and Greg and Mike that was really informative and interesting and thank you again next slide please great thank you so I'm Kirsten Mitchell and I'm the designated federal officer for the FOIA advisory committee as Alina mentioned earlier the National Archives established the committee in 2014 as a way of bringing together representatives of both agency and requester communities to examine and make recommendations for solving some of FOIA's toughest challenges one of the things that makes the committee special is that it allows OJIS to hold space for important conversations about FOIA's challenges that builds trust and establishes a shared understanding that is the foundation for building solutions and fulfilling Congress's mandate that OJIS identify procedures and methods for improving FOIA compliance so the committee is really a very big part of OJIS's activities along with the helping the more than 4,000 people that Alina talked about so I am thrilled to have four FOIA advisory committee members here with us today to discuss the committee and its important work these members are Alexis Graines who is the FOIA officer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Thomas Susman strategic advisor for governmental affairs and global programs at the American Bar Association Bobby Tullibian director of the Office of Information Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice and Alina Simo who needs no introduction but in addition to directing OJIS Alina also chairs the FOIA advisory committee Alina and Bobby are the two members of the committee who are on the committee by virtue of their positions everyone else is Alina alluded to earlier are nominated and then the Archivist of the United States appoints those those seats or those positions in this case it will be acting Archivist of the United States I know a wall So Tom Let's start with you You have served on three of the committees four terms and I understand that you have also re-reviewed the reports the final reports of all four terms so I'm curious what are some of the themes and why was the fourth term or different from the others the others and how you may be on mute. Yes, there we go. I want to take a quick point of personal privilege to commend the previous panel because each of the members used the keyword in dealing with requesters, which I have been for over 40 years now, and that is communication. And I'll single out the FBI long before anyone had any thought of estimated time of completion. I had a request and I would get a phone call every couple of weeks from one of the program people in the FOIA office saying we're still working on it. We don't know when we're going to find the information or when we're going to be able to go through it, but we want you know we're still alive, basically. And I have always felt that that is the way to deal. I mean, I wasn't a journalist, I wasn't on deadline, I wasn't in litigation, but I felt that that was the way to deal with requesters to avoid litigation and avoid frustration. So thank you very much, all three of you, for stressing that issue. Okay, advisory committees. Let me say that in my many years of dealing with the Freedom of Information Act, I still found that participating in the advisory committee provides an incredible learning experience. Having an array of both public sector and government officials with interest, expertise, and commitment provides a level of excitement and education that goes beyond developing the recommendation. So I want to start with that and urge any of those who are watching this or will be listening, apply for the next advisory committee. I realize that they'll make it more difficult for me to get on with all the competition, but it is not truly a rewarding experience. On to the details. So there are recurring themes in all of the advisory committees. The first one just had a single recommendation on fees and I'll come back to that. But the recurring themes are accessibility and section 508. And Alina mentioned the recommendations that OJIS has made to Congress to try to help address those issues. The second is a technology, including search technology, and Mike stressed that issue in dealing with both records management and also estimating the time of completion. For oversight by both Congress and OJIS, but enhancing online access. And that includes proactive disclosure. And that's a theme throughout because I think both on the government side and the private sector. Any information that can be made available online proactively in advance of a request is that much less work the agency has to go through. And that much easier it is for the public to be able to understand what's going on in the agency and find information, especially in this last committee really focused on personal requests. And I'll come back to that. But online requests, including proactive disclosure. And finally, training and raising the profile of FOIA within agencies sort of a 30,000 foot need for continuing to make sure that new government officials as well as FOIA program officials understand what FOIA is all about and has had the same respect for it that most of the rest of us and probably all of those who are tuned in today. The first advisory committee on which I didn't serve. I said it had a single recommendation on FOIA fees. The second one made seven recommendations. The third 22. And you know, at the end of that term, I was on those second two. It's 29 and 30 recommendations. I felt a little bit like the patent commissioner in 1899 who wrote President McKinley a letter saying you can close a patent office. Everything that needs to be invented has been invented. The truth is our advisory committee came up with 21 recommendations and broke ground in doing so. And I'm convinced that the next advisory committee, and I'll end with a couple of suggestions, will do even better. So let me mention the the the unique nature of recommendations of the 2020 to 2022 advisory committee. Access to legislative branch records, which Elena mentioned. We had a little bit of a debate early on about whether the advisory committee had jurisdiction to recommend legislation to Congress relating to its own record keeping and public access and decided we did. And we'll probably carry that further in the next advisory committee because there's discussion that perhaps the judicial branch also ought to be at least studied for the issue of access to records for the administrative office in the judicial center, not courthouses or judges offices. Classification and the GLOMAR or response, the that issue was one that challenged litigators and national security experts and lawyers. And there are some robust recommendations in that area, but perhaps a little in the weeds for most civil requesters. But nonetheless, pretty interesting recommendations. I'm not going to go into detail because they're all on the website publicly available. And I urge you to read them in detail. I mentioned first person requests, and I want to emphasize that because it turns out that didn't take much time to focus attention on the fact that the agency with the largest number of requests is Department of Homeland Security. And the largest percentage of those requests relate to individual requests for information about themselves. And among those immigration related silent related files are the ones that get asked for the most. And that proved to be a challenge to this advisory committee. We had a lot of experts talk to us. And I think that the recommendation was not micro managed, but really took a big picture suggestion that there ought to be a closer, more intensive study of the situation. It ought to be done by someone outside the government, think tank or organization that has expertise in both technology and FOIA and and DHS one benefit from having that kind of a deep dive into how better to serve the public that causes such a backlog and requires so much time and energy and takes up so much space in Iron Mountain for all the records. And we hope that that can be done in the future. And then reimagining OGIS, that was a new one I mentioned oversight previously. And Alina did a nice job of with a diagram showing us for all the various things. OGIS as on buds does, all quite useful and quite, quite effective. But the the working group that looked at OGIS decided that perhaps there, there could be an yet a next step in empowering OGIS to look at records that are the subject of their mediation. And ultimately, to give to make decisions on disclosure. And we recommended further study because there are a lot of potential unintended consequences. But at least, and I think, certainly, Alina and Kirsten know that my view for decades has been that the future of effective administration of the Freedom of Information Act in the United States is likely to be at this is offices. And and so empowering OGIS in the future is something that we felt very strongly about. Okay, where do we go from here? You know, each of the advisory committees, after the first one, admonish the next one, pay attention to implementation. Okay, the first advisory committee in 2016 recommended the archivist recommend OMB updating fee guidelines. Well, OMB family did after it was sued a number of years later, and responded to only half of the recommendations made by the advisory committee. So we're talking, almost eight years later, still unfinished business on FOIA fees. Then there's section 508 accessibility, every advisory committee discussed that issue. OGIS has made recommendations to Congress on that issue. Congress, not surprisingly, has done nothing. Unfinished business. Then there's a recommendation 2018 that the federal acquisition regulation should require agencies when acquiring management and related software to consider features facilitating FOIA access technology as a previous panel discussed. OGIS prepared a business case marked completed on its dashboard. Well, I think we'll revisit that dashboard in the future because completed means that OGIS has simply referred the recommendation to the appropriate agency or let us or Congress in one case, but not that anything further has been done. And so I think that first order of business for the next advisory committee should be a deep dive into implementation. And also pick up the slack on technology and records management and really stress depth rather than breadth. And I think that the next committee has its work cut out for it. But I was really proud to have participated with the distinguished colleagues, including Alexis and Bobby and Elena and Kirsten on the panel. And and hope that we can see some of our recommendations fully implemented in the months and years to come. Great. Well, thank you, Tom. That was a good overview of the four terms thus far. And I've I've taken some notes and we're going to come back to some of these things that you've you've noted. But I'd like to bring Alexis, Bobby and Alina into the conversation. Alexis, this was your first term on the committee. It was Bobby's second term. And Alina's third term. So if we could go in that order, Alexis, Bobby and Alina and talk a little bit about what what Tom said. And Alexis, I suspect you're going to talk about the first party request. So if you could talk a little bit about that and your experience, and then we'll go to Bobby and Alina. Perfect. Thank you for having me, Kirsten and Alina. Alexis Graves, I'm the director for the Office of Information Affairs at the United States Department of Agriculture. Couldn't agree more with all of the comments from my colleague. Tom, just a couple of other quick thoughts, particularly about this term. So I think, you know, the committee members, particularly the subcommittee, the process of committee, we were really committed to expanding upon refining prior recommendations. And in some instances, you know, giving prior recommendations a bit more teeth, so kind of picking up on that work from prior terms. And this, of course, was the case with the first party working group and the recommendations created from that working group. We expanded upon recommendation 14, you know, from the 2018-2020 term. For those who may not be familiar with that earlier recommendation, basically it was an ask of OGIS and OIP to have agencies identify common categories of records frequently requested under the FOIA and or Privacy Act, you know, either by or on behalf of individuals seeking records about themselves. And so, of course, the purpose was to establish an alternative process, or maybe in some instances, processes to provide access much more expeditiously. And so the first party working group, we really set out to find the categories of information that were frequently being requested, honed in on the area of immigration and then set out to meet with the agency's heavy on the immigration records to determine a course forward. I think we charted a new territory by providing a recommendation aimed at hopefully improving processes within one particular agency. And so unbeknownst to us, I think we were kind of setting the framework for future committees on, you know, how to develop and how to execute a recommendation that is agency specific. I think certainly there were quite a few lessons learned along the way, one of which is that certainly if you're going to do an agency specific recommendation, you have to start really early in the term, two years goes by really quick. And there's certainly a lot of conversations that you have to have before you're actually putting pen to paper. I think agencies really should be very open and excited about the student new direction of the committee. You know, look at it as another, you know, tool in your tool belt, possibly bolster some of the discussion that your prop, as you say, discussions you're probably having with folks, senior leaders on budget and resources. And certainly my advice would be that, you know, allow the FOIA advisory committee to be your champion. I also think that this, this particular committee was invested in creating recommendations that could trigger immediate action by agency officials. And so I think we definitely saw this with the technology subcommittee recommendations, number seven and number 10, because those were both aimed at improving agency websites. I love, love, love the simplicity of these recommendations. They are essentially a to do list and action list. And so I'm a girl who loves a good flowchart, a decision tree, a to do action item list. And I think a lot of other FOIA professionals really appreciate this too. So those were just some of the common trends and themes I saw. That's great. Thank you, Alexis. Bobby. Thank you, Kirsten. And thank you for moderating and inviting me to the panel. And thanks to my fellow colleagues on the, on the FACA. It's good to be here with everyone. So one thing I definitely want to, I echo many of Tom and Alexis comments, but one specifically, especially the first thing Tom mentioned is that one of the things I enjoy most about and especially this committee is the sharing of perspectives. There's a lot of learning on both sides. I specifically sat on a number of the classification and Glomar and some of the process. And you can see, you know, each side, the agency side and the, and the question side, have these different perspectives coming in that we may not each be aware of. And that was really helpful in the discussions and not just the recommendations, but just, just learning what both sides is experiencing and what they're thinking. And so that was, I think it's really invaluable part of the process that largely occurs in the subcommittees, I think, in those discussions and a lot of great work. And I think this committee, I think each committee, what I've seen has built on not just the work of the prior committees, but has become even more robust and the number of issues that are being tackled. And the, and you can see because the number of recommendations escalate as each, there's a new committee. And I think over the years, you know, the committee's done a really great job of focusing on some of the really core areas of FOIA, which we all believe is is critical and helpful for improving government FOIA administration, proactive disclosures are, you know, FOIA website, that's huge. We've been, I know that, you know, at the Department of Justice, proactive disclosure has been a big part of what we've tried to push this policy. And also the process and technology, and of course, training, then that's critical to what we do at OIP and very invested in. And so I will push back a little bit on the dashboard. I think some of those recommendations aren't as easy. And that's why there's a lot of progress, especially those that are aimed specifically for OGIS to do something or OIP to do something. But we are working on a number of them. There's a lot of recommendations. So I don't have it on top of my head. But like, for example, the standard operating procedures, we've issued guidance on that. We're asking agencies every year. Do you have up to date, not just standing up, you have starting operating procedures, and are they up to date? Because of course, that's important, too. And how often are you updating them? But examples like that, I look forward to building on the recommendations. Many of them are aimed, many of them provide suggestions for what OIP and OGIS should look at and work on. And I very much value that. In my work, I want to hear all the different perspectives of agencies and FOIA Requesters and the FOIA Requesters community. And we do that a number of ways. But the fact is a really incredible tool to get that feedback from an equal share of very passionate requesters and very passionate agencies. There's also a reason I enjoy working on the faculty. But I guess I'll stop there and let's hear it over to Alina. Yeah, so before Alina jumps in, I just wanted to thank you, Bobby, for bringing up the whole issue of learning. That's been one of the really very satisfying things to watch is as both sides learn about, you know, the Requesters learn more about agency work and agencies learn more about Requestor work. It's been, it's been interesting to watch and it's been a great privilege to help facilitate those discussions. So over to you, Alina. Thanks, Kristen. Hard acts to follow. I really don't want to take up too much more time to say, Tom, Alexis, Bobby, ditto. I especially really want to just take a second to thank Bobby. He's been an incredible partner in not just the FOIA advisory committee process itself, but also in helping implement many of these recommendations. And I am extremely grateful for that partnership. Definitely deserves a huge round of applause. We couldn't do it without you. Sometimes it just feels a little, you know, overburdened because we've got all these responsibilities. But OIP has been an amazing partner in making sure as many of these as possible are getting implemented. So just a big thank you to OIP and to Bobby in particular. Thank you so much, Alina. I can't tell you how much I appreciate our partnership and working with your office and our team. So thank you so much. Great. So this has been touched on a little bit this next question. But and Alexis did a nice job with talking about this, but I wondered what some of the challenges and to coming up with these recommendations are the challenges and considerations in formulating them. And I think I'll kick it back over to you, Tom, because you also briefly touched on this when you talked about the congressional records, legislative recommendation, records recommendation. But what are some of the challenges and considerations? Talk about the sausage making, if you will. Sure. And that that is the beauty of having such a diverse membership on the committee is that I think all of us know a lot about our area, whether it's national security information, or processing for you, or, you know, the media requesters or whatever, historians, and and also the agency, people by and large, have extensive expertise with their agency and sometimes others that they may have worked in. But few of us have the breath to make general recommendations that touch that really are addressed to all agencies and be certain that we're not missing something. And so the process, and I will say that I've been on a lot of boards, commissions, committees, this last two years probably had more meetings and more involved more time than anything I've been on. And part of it was because to meet that challenge of coming up with 21 recommendations covering everything from, you know, Glomar to first person request to legislative records required a tremendous education. And so we had subcommittees, probably too many. We have four subcommittees. I was on two and sort of audited another one and they met every two weeks, rain or shine, whether they had anything to meet about or not, not just and you know, but then there were task or working groups under the committees. And the working groups not only met regularly, but had guest speakers from the agencies from outside expertise from academia. And so the challenge was, I think feeling comfortable that you know enough to make a recommendation that's going to have credibility across the board. And therefore needing to have education for all the members of the committee to come up to that level of confidence to be able to say to vote I when a recommendation comes up for a vote. And we did it, didn't we, Alexis and Melina and Bobby? I mean, you know, it worked. So Alexis, can you do you have anything to add about the sausage making? Yeah, yeah, just to give people a little bit of flavor of the process, I'm going to talk from the perspective of the process subcommittee. And so you know, Kirsten, you probably remember, but we started with a very, very ambitious agenda. I think we may have had 20 plus topics on the table for consideration for recommendations. And then, you know, we kind of took those topics and put them in buckets, categories, you know, tempted to map them back to listing recommendations. You know, we, we ultimately decided some of those buckets or categories of information, you know, were probably better suited for other subcommittees. So maybe, you know, technology or legislation, you know, some we put aside if there wasn't enough interest among the existing members. And then others were explored, you know, but because of time constraints, you know, no, unfortunately, no recommendation came to fruition. As far as the drafting process for recommendations, I just, I had no idea what went into this. But, you know, we went through multiple and multiple iterations, lots of word smithing over the course of weeks, months, and equally, if not more important, you then, of course, want to ensure that you've done sufficient research, right, to help create and develop the underlying analysis, the underlying analysis, excuse me, that supports your recommendations. So it is an incredibly detailed process. I think, you know, the biggest challenge is time. I know when I initially started, I got two years, that's plenty of time. But as you begin to explore certain topics and learn more about certain topics, you realize that, you know, that two year period in some instances only really allows you to I know we're talking about challenges, but one thing that I just, I would say, I think mitigated a lot of the challenges and really worked well, I think better than any of the years of the subcommittees, that the sub, or any committee, the subcommittees and the working groups really did grind and make that sausage really well before it came to the committee. I think that was extremely helpful. So that the discussions in the full committee were much more, you know, well informed and smoother. I thought that that really stood out to me with this, this, this term of the committee. So Elena, did you want to add anything? Yeah, I just had one comment that I just want to add to everything else that everyone said, again, a ditto. But I also just want to say for me as chair, the challenge has continued to be something that I continue to struggle with. Tom knows about this. I've talked about it with him many times in the past as to what the overall scope of the recommendations can be since the recommendations are by charter directed to the archivist of the United States. And how much further can we ask the archivist to go beyond his authority, which, of course, you know, he does not control FOIA writ large for the federal government. His responsibility is focused, of course, on records management for the federal government. So that's always been a little bit of struggle. Tom has managed to sort of take us out of that box. And I think has helped helped us formulate the recommendations in such a way that they are broader, but still able to be effectuated. But I will say that was definitely a struggle for me that I always feel like I need to look out for I'm wearing multiple hats. I have to wear the hat of the chairperson, but also looking up for the interests of the archivist of the United States. So if I can get a word in, you know, going back to the origin of OGIS, there was a question of where it should be within the federal government. Should it be in the Justice Department? Well, Justice Thorn already has an Office of Information Okay, that's fine. Should it be in GAO? That's a congressional that might be good for an ombuds role, but Congress was uninterested in expanding its own legislative authority jurisdiction. Should it be in GSA, but cross government? No, they that's a bricks and mortar. They're not interested in information. And the archives, I mean, that's the repository of records and information in the federal government and has it level of independence. Okay. And so I think that's why, you know, ultimately, the National Archives, which chosen as OGIS is home was because and frankly, you know, thanks to the archivist and GAO's director, you've exercised your authority with independence. And so I think that's one of the reasons that those of us on the advisory committee have pushed the envelope, perhaps a little bit in your perspective, because, you know, we think that it's really, you know, OGIS really does have the broadest view in terms of coming up with new ideas and pushing recommendations. The Justice Department certainly has a lot of authority, but Justice Department also comes with, I think, the handicap of being identified as the agency that defends agencies when they're sued for, you know, denying information under the Freedom of Information Act. So, and I realize, you know, that's a balance that Bobby certainly has done a great job of providing a level of independence from the litigators that that's important. But in any event, I just want to I just want to observe that I think that I'm hoping that future advisory committees will continue the view that, you know, OGIS really has a broad responsibility across government. And as you know, in most countries, the AmBudd's function is a parliamentary function, so that it is independent from pressure from the agencies. OGIS doesn't have that luxury. But so far, you've done a hell of a great job of, you know, exercising what authority you have and gaining their respect of agencies in doing so. And I also want to comment, you know, we've all talked about the number of meetings, the number of recommendations. You know, it would have been normally committed group this advisory committee was. I mean, everybody showed up on those calls and we were zooming from people in the cars or whatever. And, you know, but staying abreast, keeping up with doing the writing, doing the research, making the phone calls. And it was, you know, just miraculous because everyone else, everyone had a day job and yet invested a tremendous amount of time and energy and an intellectual energy in the process. And that's what I'm sure Alexis agrees. I mean, that's what made it wonderful for us to, you know, have that level of collegiality. So thank you for that, Tom. You actually set up a nice segue to my next question to Alina. And that is that there are several recommendations aimed at reimagining OGIS. Ultimately, the big one was that this whole idea of reimagining OGIS needs further study and that the archivist of the United States should commission someone. We don't know who to further study this issue. So Alina, I'm wondering what your responses are to the recommendations and does OGIS need reimagining? So this requires me, of course, again, to take off my chairperson hat, put on my OGIS director hat, which I actually did have the opportunity to do at our most recent and final meeting in June. So my my needed answer is no, I don't believe that we need reimagining. Our approach from the very first day that we open our doors as the FOIA ombudsman is we believe we have been serving and the capacity consistent with what Congress envisioned for us to do when we establish the office. Several of the recommendations intended to reimagine OGIS are of concern to us as I've articulated before. These recommendations would erode and significantly shift away from our role as the FOIA ombudsman that we've staked out for the last 12 or so years. Some of the proposed functions and duties would interfere with our role as ombudsman is what I've argued in the past, and it would turn us into an enforcer and an adjudicator, which we have not been up until now. We are definitely supportive of recommendation number six, Kirsten, to which you alluded described earlier, which would ask the archivist to commission a feasibility study, incorporating input from requesters and agencies to more deeply explore the costs and benefits of reimagining our office. An NGO or another nonprofit organization of some sort could definitely undertake that kind of study and delve deeper into the pluses and minuses. There's definitely a lot more to uncover, and I'm excited to see that the next term of the committee may actually continue to consider that as much as I remain fearful of whether I'll still have a job when we're all done, but I'm going to hang in there. An important caveat to all of this, though, is that we have not yet had a chance to present the acting archivist with the committee's final report and recommendations. We will be doing that in the not too distant future. So we have no idea how far the recommendation will advance that recommendation number six, but we at OJ is certainly very much are in favor of it. So hopefully that answers some of your questions first. Yes, thank you so much. And thank you for also adding that these recommendations have not been presented yet to the acting archivist and nor have they been put on our dashboard, but that's all on our dance card for this summer. So I want to return to something that a couple of you alluded to, and that was talking about all the hard work of this committee, this prior term of the committee and all the frequent meetings. And I'm afraid people out there who are listening might think maybe they had thought about nominating themselves or someone else and heard that and said, oh, I don't want to get involved with that. So what would you say to someone who's on the fence about whether they should submit a nomination? I'll take that one first. Thanks. Yeah, no worries. So. Honestly, you know, if you are passionate about records access, I cannot stress it enough. Please, please nominate yourself. This is an opportunity to bring those issues, those topics that are near and dear to your heart to the forefront. This experience is also a really, really great vehicle for networking and establishing some really great professional connections. But most importantly, most importantly, you and I think my colleagues kind of alluded to this earlier, but you will acquire new perspectives that can positively impact how you lead and support your current and also your future for your professionals. It has been, honestly, an absolute pleasure to serve as a committee member. And honestly, it has been one of the highlights of my professional career. So if you needed a nod or a push, this is the push to nominate yourself. I promise I did not pay Alexis and neither did Alina. Bobby, Tom, anything to add to that? I would echo all that and just say, you know, you especially if you're passionate about FOIA agencies or requesters, you want your voice to be heard during these discussions. And like I said, I mean, hearing the different perspectives has been invaluable. So we want to get as many of those different perspectives as possible. And even if the recommendations aren't something that relates to your agency, there is a lot of great connections that are made, especially at the subcommittee level. And there's a lot of great cross collaboration with, like, for example, the CFO council. And so it's an incredible opportunity. And so I would highly recommend we want as many nominates and in order to get as many nominations as possible so that we can picture them a good group. Yeah, thank you. And CFO council, that's the chief four officers council, which Bobby and Alina co-chair. Tom, did you? Yes, I would only say that as you and Alina both know, I've strongly recommended that the number of committees, subcommittees, task forces, working groups and meetings be cut for the next. And so that for those of you thinking about it, but is it going to really take as much time? Because Alexis and Tom have been talking about all of meetings and time. I'm expecting things to be a little more manageable. On the other hand, I agree with everything Alexis and Bobby said. I mean, it's, you know, it's a it's a hell of a look. It's a incredible opportunity for anybody. And I'm hoping that it'll get back into in person meetings because as much as in some ways, all of this Zoom has made it too easy to get together and spend too much time. Whereas when you're in person, you've got a sort of finite time, you're going to have to leave it, you know, you want to get it done. And and I think, you know, more likely to to be able to focus attention when the committee meets in person. But I think that as everyone has suggested, there's still a lot of work to be done. I just want to echo Bobby's point, which I thought was really excellent about some of the FOIA advisory committee recommendations have actually flow directly to the CFO Council, the Chief Way Officers Council. And as a result of that, we have two committees that the CFO Council has formed, both the Technology Committee and Committee on Cross Agency Collaboration and Innovation, Kokaki, I can't believe that I remember that whole acronym. So I was very excited to be able to be able to implement that. And Bobby and I are very excited to continue to lead those efforts. And that's just been a really tangible positive outcome of some of the great committee work that has been done. Tom, I will say, yes, I agree, there were definitely a lot of meetings. In part, we let the first committee term, the first meeting of this committee term organically decide what subcommittees they wanted to break up into. And so it turned out there were four subcommittees this time, which was more than usual. And that probably added to the volume and number of meetings. I think Kirsten and I are hopeful that we can keep it to a more dull roar of three subcommittees in the next term. Working groups obviously conform at any level. And there are great opportunities for cross agency, sorry, across subcommittee and cross working group collaboration. There was definitely a lot of that that happened this past term as well. So we definitely hope that we will get some great nominations. But this is not a commercial for that. It is definitely a tribute to all the great work that this task committee term has done and to the prior committee terms as well. So thank you to everyone for all the great work you've done. And Alina, as a commercial, go to the OGIS website. Tap on advisory committees on the side link. And it is a wealth of information, not just the final reports, but, you know, committee documents, notes, minutes of meetings, papers that were written by members, presentations by guests, et cetera. And plus you're we've talked about the I've lost the word the dashboard dashboard, right? That thing that that thing on a car, right? The dashboard. And so I mean, it really provides one stop shopping for everything that's gone in the past and all the recommendations for the future. Although it is in need of an update. And as I said, that's on our summer dance card. So. So before we sign off, or at least move to the next phase of the meeting, is there anything anyone would like to add? Any final words, thoughts? Okay, I'm. Thank you and thank Alina and Bobby for coming when when when Lexus and I talk about we were maybe two meetings or three task force and y'all have had to cover all of them. Plus, Alina has to run the ship when the committee meets and keep everybody under control and keep keep us coloring within the lines. And Kirsten is sort of the manager of, you know, I can't imagine how many emails you get through the transom on these issues. So you all have done a wonderful job of managing and administering the keeping the advisory committees on track. Well, thank you. We really appreciate it. It's a bit like hurting cats. And I say that in in a fond way because I love cats. But anyway, thank you. So those thanks to both Alina and in person, especially your leadership, Alina, on the backup. My pleasure. Thank you. Well, thanks. You're going to reapply, right? Not to put you on the spot, but you're thinking about it, right? Me or Tom? Alexis. Alexis. Yeah, I'm putting her on the on the line. Well, I was just sharing with Kirsten. I said, we have a major initiative that we're deploying. But if you will have me at another term, I would love to serve on another term. Okay, all right. If you have me, absolutely. Okay, well, thank you so much, Bobby and Tom, Alina and Alexis for being in this conversation with me. I've really enjoyed it. And I am turning it over to Alina. Great. Thanks again. Thanks again, Kirsten. You did a masterful job as always. We are if I could ask Michelle please to advance to the next slide. We are now reaching the public comments part of our annual meeting. I am proud to say that we're pretty close to on time. So that's great news. Congress has instructed us that in conducting our meeting that is open to the public on the review and reports by the office, we allow interested persons to appear and present oral or written statements at the meeting. We will open our telephone lines up momentarily to give attendees the opportunity to present oral statements. As I noted at the top of the meeting, if you're watching us via our YouTube, you will not be able to provide oral comments during our public comments section. As we noted in our federal register notice, each individual caller will be limited to three minutes each. An important reminder with regard to oral comments. This is not the right time or venue to ask questions about the specific FOIA request or set of requests or specific issues you're experiencing with the particular agency that are unique to you. We are happy to have all points of you shared, but please respect your fellow attendees and keep the conversation civil and on topic. So at this point, I'm going to turn to our event producer. Michelle, if you could please provide instructions again to any of our attendees for how to provide oral comments via telephone. Absolutely. So ladies and gentlemen, as we enter the public comments session, as Alina indicated, please limit your comments to three minutes. Once your three minutes expires, we will mute your line and move on to the next commenter. Each individual again will be limited to three minutes. All right, we're moving to the first commenter in queue. Call your line is unmuted. You may go ahead. This is Bob Hamlin. Can everybody hear me? Yes. Hello. Yes. Yeah, great. And listen, I first like to echo everything that Tom said. And the advisory committee this year was absolutely awesome. Community members, they call you the whole team. I appreciate the recommendation for posting, proactively posting FOIA logs. There is massive, massive error in the annual reports. It's just massive. And if you force the logs to be publicly posted, that will be discovered in real time. And Alina and Bobby can do their FOIA compliance oversight jobs much better than they are. We got into public comments late, so I want to ask that we have the full 15 minutes. If there's nobody behind me, let me call. If my time runs out, I'm going to call back in. I've submitted 17 public comments. Some of those got posted as late as this morning. Others didn't. And admit I submitted some of those late. But I've posted in the YouTube chat how to get those. You can review them at documentcloud.org. Just select you public comments and search by user. Robert dash Hammond 106 693, and perhaps, oh, just we'll get those posted. I have been asking the same question for last three meetings, and I had some additional ones this time. In my view, the biggest problems in FOIA or lack of oversight compliance and a complete and utter lack of mediation. And I don't fear that the bad people, it's a lack of funding. NARA has not funded OGIS. The OGIS budgets have gone down. Back in, I guess, since 2013, they had three mediators and they were doing three to 400 mediation requests per year. I expected Elida to defend her report saying she closed 4100 cases this year. That's impossible. She still has three mediators and the money has gone down. So they need more money. The problem is that they never ask for it. They don't ask for it in public and they don't ask for it in the budgets. So I submitted the same question and I'm going to ask Selena one word to answer. What is the dollar amount that you need for FY23 to effectively accomplish your compliance oversight and mediation What's the dollar amount? Mr. Hammond, we're not answering questions. At this time, we are accepting statements or written. Thank you. Yeah, so you don't answer questions. You don't ask for money. I spent two years trying to get your money and you won't even tell the American public how much money you want. How much money you need. You're grossly underfunded. Bobby, may I ask you that same question? Mr. Hammond, thank you so much for your comment. Your three minutes has expired. We're moving on to the next caller. Thank you. I'm talking back and dialing back. All right. So let me see if there are any additional callers. All right. I don't see any additional calls at this time, but I know that we wanted to go to the chat box. Right. So thank you, Michelle. Martha, I'm our deputy. Oh, just director, I'm going to ask if there have been any chat comments that you would like to read out loud. So there are a lot of lots in the chat, but I am not seeing any general comments that don't speak to specific individual issues or comments that have already been submitted via written public comment. However, I do want to urge everyone to take a look at the public comments that we have published on our website. And as Alina mentioned, there will be more published in the coming week or so. Thank you. Yeah, Michelle, if you could go to the next slide, please. This is just to remind everyone if you want to submit additional written public comments, please submit them to this email address. Oh, just open meeting at nara.gov and we will consider posting them. And at this time, I am going to wrap up as we have indicated we are only allowing three minutes for individual Michelle. We don't have any other callers waiting in queue other than Mr. Hammond, correct? Yes, that is correct. So at this time, I just want to thank again our panelists. It was a great discussion that we had on two very different topics, but both equally important. Despite all the challenges presented by the ongoing pandemic, I am happy to report that OJIS has remained resilient and well positioned to continue our work as advocates for the boy process. I would be remiss if before we end, I did not thank the terrific OJIS staff for their amazing work that they do each and every day. The work of the OJIS team has continued to further two of nara's four strategic goals, making access happen and connecting with customers. I want to thank all of you today for joining us for our annual open meeting. I hope everyone and their families remain safe, healthy and resilient. And thank you. Have a great day. That concludes our conference. Thank you for using event services. You may now disconnect.