 I thought it was going to be cold in here today. We're going to get started. Okay, we're starting. Yes. Yes. Okay. All right, good morning. I'm Deborah Wall, Deputy Archivist of the United States. Welcome to the National Archives and this fifth meeting of the 2018-2020 term of the Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee. We're pleased you're joining us, whether you're here in the McGowan Theater or on the National Archives YouTube channel. This committee is an important part of the FOIA landscape. It's gratifying to see so many FOIA experts from both the federal agency community and the requester community collaborating to improve the administration of FOIA. This committee's work is tightly linked to the mandate of FOIA that the Office of Government Information Services here at NARA identify procedures and methods for improving compliance with FOIA. The committee's work also, as we've said at previous meetings, connects directly to two of the National Archives' four strategic goals, make access happen and connect with customers. Today we welcome representatives from another important group in the FOIA world, the Chief FOIA Officers Council created by Congress in the 2016 Amendments to the Freedom of Information Act. Also co-chaired by the directors of OGIS and the Office of Information Policy at the Department of Justice, established the CFO Technology Subcommittee last fall in accordance with a recommendation by the FOIA Advisory Committee. Today we'll hear from the subcommittee's co-chairs about the group's work regarding what they've learned about the state of FOIA technology across the federal government. As agencies work toward a fully electronic government, we at NARA often note that excellent records management practices help ensure efficient and effective FOIA process. NARA and the Office of Management and Budget jointly issued a memorandum in June titled Transition to Electronic Records with goals and guidance on managing federal records in an electronic environment. I understand that today the committee will begin discussing several draft recommendations from the Records Management Subcommittee, as well as surveys of both agency FOIA professionals and FOIA requesters conducted by the Time Volume Subcommittee. And the Vision Subcommittee has worked with the Time Volume Subcommittee on surveys and begun discussing several of the long-term recommendations with the Records Management Subcommittees. Archivist David Ferriero and I thank you for your work and look forward to hearing your ongoing discussions and deliberations. I'll now turn the meeting over to Committee Chairperson Alina Simo. Thank you. Thanks, Deb. Thank you, everyone. Thank you again for joining us for our fifth meeting, as Deb just said, of the 2018-2020 term of the FOIA Advisory Committee, whether you're here in person via telephone or via live stream. I note that Joan Kaminer is unable to join us today. I also see two other members who are not here yet, Emily Creighton and Lee Steven. We will announce them when they arrive and, you know, make a big deal about the fact that they're late. Otherwise, we will mark them absent. Sorry, Emily said she's calling in. Oh, great. Thank you for letting me know. She sent an email around earlier. I don't know if I went to everybody. Great. So perfect segue into the folks who are on the phone. Thank you, Kevin. I'm going to check in with several folks who are on the phone. Kirsten gave me these in alphabetical order. So now I have to start with Emily Creighton. Emily, are you there? Okay. James Jacobs. Hi, I'm here. Good morning. Lisette Cotilius. Are you there? Yes, I'm here. Good morning. Ginger McCall. I'm here. Good morning. Good morning, Ginger. Michael Morrissey. Good morning. Good morning, Michael. Abby Mosheim. Good morning. I'm here. Good morning, Abby. Patricia Weth. No, Patricia. Okay. If Patricia calls in, she will announce herself. Anyone else on the phone that I missed that I did not mention? Okay. All right. I will work frequently to check in with those of you on the phone, but if I forget, please remind me. We do, again, have a very robust agenda. I will do my best to keep it moving along and stay on schedule so we can end on time. I have a few housekeeping notes. As most of you know, the FOIA advisory committee, which reports to the archivist of the United States, provides a forum for public discussion of FOIA issues, reports of the public, the opportunity to provide their feedback and ideas for improving the FOIA process. We encourage public comments, suggestions and feedback that you may submit at any time by emailing FOIA-advisory-committee at NARA.gov. At the end of today's meeting, we will, as usual, have time for public comments. If you are watching us on the NARA YouTube channel, an OGIS staff member is monitoring the live stream throughout the meeting. If you have any comments or questions, please submit them in writing, and we will read them out loud during the public comment period. We are live streaming this meeting, and we'll make the video, transcript and meeting materials available on the committee's webpage as soon as possible. To promote openness, transparency, and public engagement, we post committee updates and information to our website, blog, and on Twitter, at FOIA underscore on buds. Stay up to date on the latest OGIS advisory-committee news activities and events by following us on social media. We welcome Elise Steven. Thank you for joining us. Information about the committee, including members' biographies and committee documents are available on the FOIA advisory committee webpage on the OGIS website. Another helpful reminder from our sponsors, the AV folks, please remember to say your name before speaking every single time. I'm somewhat guilty of that, so I will really work on that today. And for committee members, we have also laid out the AV reminders around the table, so feel free to refresh your recollections with what's written on the page in front of you. Before we approve our minutes from the last meeting, I would like to recognize the contributions of several of our NARA colleagues who have assisted Kirsten and her duties as designated federal officer. Two of those individuals are NARA employees whose year-long part-time detail to OGIS has come to an end, sadly. Carrie Talashe Smith, an archivist with the Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, has provided research for the subcommittees as well as help with the minutes, which, despite posting the transcript and broadcasting on the National Archives YouTube channel, we are required to take and post by the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Liz Pickford, who also works for NARA, has been helping with many logistical details for scheduling of these meetings. We're definitely going to miss very much both of them. OGIS also has an undergraduate student intern, L'Oreal Lambert, who has helped with some advisory committee work as well. Specifically, she combed through chief FOIA officer reports to help gather information for our report on how agencies use technology in the FOIA process. We are very grateful for their service. Please join me in a round of applause for their efforts this past year. Okay, now we need to approve the minutes meeting, which Kirsten, I believe, sent around by email to everyone yesterday. She has incorporated edits from Tom Sussman. Thank you, Tom. And are there any other changes or edits that we have to make? No, I'm seeing heads shaking no. Folks on the phone, you guys are good with the minutes? Yep. Okay, thank you. Okay. She and I have certified the minutes to be accurate and complete, which were required to do under the FOIA Federal Advisory Committee Act within 90 days of our last meeting. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes? On move. Thank you, Tom. No second required, but I'm always happy to entertain one. Do I have a second? Sure. Thank you, Ryan. All present in favor? Aye. Thank you. Aye. Those in telephone in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Any opposed? No, none. Any comments to the meeting? Thank you, legs on the phone or in person? Okay, the minutes are approved. We will sign them. An important reminder regarding scheduling. Walking backwards from our final meeting in June, 2020, which seems like a long way away, but it'll be here before you know it. We are asking subcommittees to finalize all draft recommendations by early calendar year, 2020 with an eye towards presenting them by that at our December 6, 2019 meeting, I will appoint a small working group of the committee to compile recommendations into a final report between the March 5, 2020 and early May 2020. Thank you to Abby and Ginger who have already volunteered to be on this working group. We could use a few more volunteers. It's never too early. So please let me know if you're interested. I just wanted to check in as Emily joining us now. Emily Creighton, are you on the phone? I am here. Oh, great. Hi, Emily. Good morning. So we could use a few more volunteers. As I said, it's never too early to volunteer. Let me know if you're interested. Ideally, all working group members would be able to get together in person from past experience and the last term of the FOIA advisory committee that seemed to work out best. That doesn't preclude anyone who needs to call in, but it's definitely preferred to be in person. I think we can duke it out better that way. So before we launch into our substantive agenda, I would be absolutely remiss if I did not take this opportunity to recognize that very sadly today is Melanie Paste's last meeting ever with the committee. As most of you know, Melanie announced that she will be retiring from the federal government after October 3. We are immensely grateful for her sustained and tireless contributions to the FOIA landscape, not only as a committee member for three terms, but of course as the director of the Office of Information Policy at the Department of Justice, a total of 36 years at DOJ. It's impressive. Melanie and I have crossed paths many times during our careers, first in 1986 when I joined OIP as a law clerk and she was an attorney advisor. I remember going to DOJ gym with her for aerobic classes. During my 23 years at DOJ, both federal programs and FBI, Melanie and I worked together on a number of high-profile and sometimes stressful FOIA litigations, but I especially enjoyed having Melanie as my client. She was always cheerful, even when things were not going too well. Of course now as a director of OGIS, Melanie and I have worked together not only on this committee, but co-chairing the Chief FOIA Officers Council and working collaboratively on many FOIA issues. As Melanie acknowledged in her email to me back in July when she shared her retirement news with me, we have certainly done a lot in the FOIA world, she said, but she is the one who leaves us with an indelible mark on the FOIA world and on all of us. Please join me in thanking Melanie for her devoted federal service. We will miss you very, very much. Okay, so the fun part's over. Now we have to get to work. So first up is going to be Martha Murphy, our Deputy Director for OGIS. We have shifted the agenda around a bit from our last meeting. She is going to come up to the podium, she is here at the podium, to update us not only on past FOIA Advisory Committee recommendations, but also on best practices at the request of one of our committee members. As you all know, Martha has been doing a great job of tracking those recommendations. And Martha will also introduce our guest speakers for today, Eric Stein from State Department and Michael Sarek from Veterans Health Administration who are linked to one of the past FOIA Advisory Committee recommendations. So with that, Martha, take it away. Okay, Doug, thank you. So as Lena alluded to, in addition to updating the committee on our progress with the previous committee's recommendations, we've been asked to discuss how we've promoted and assessed the implementation of the best practices outlined in the previous committee's final report. So I'm going to begin there and then provide an update just on the three recommendations whose status has changed since our last meeting. So since the best practices were published in the 2016-2018 Advisory Committee report, OGIS has promoted the best practices through presentations and publications. At OGIS's open meeting in May of 2018, we hosted a panel of advisory committee members who went over the work and recommendations of the committee, including the recommended best practices. Then utilizing the opportunity for communication offered by the American Society of Access Professionals, ASAP. In the summer of 2018, we presented on the best practices at an ASAP food for thought luncheon and at the ASAP national training conference. And finally, in an effort to reach out specifically to the chief FOIA officers, we held a CFO council meeting in October of 2018 where the main focus of the meeting was explaining the best practices. Finally, we referred to the best practices in our 2019 annual report to Congress and the President, which was published in March of 2019. As far as assessing the degree to which agencies are adopting the best practices, OGIS assessed the implementation of best practices when evaluating the responses to the CFO report question that went out last year. In our published assessment regarding leveraging technology to improve FOIA searches, we noted that the responses to the CFO question showed some progress on three of the recommendations. I would point you to the assessment which is published on our website for more details. But just at a high level, we found references to designating a point of contact to approve search requests within records management systems, which was one of the best practices. As well as another creating add-on IT systems for exporting records. And finally, making the end goal of responding to FOIA requests a major component when developing the agency's records management system and workflows. OGIS will continue to evaluate the adaptation of the best practices when conducting our agency and issue assessments. So I hope that provided some clarity on OGIS's efforts to forward the best practice recommendations of the previous committee. Moving to the recommendations, there has been progress regarding three specific recommendations. Of the eight recommendations, we've been tracking four are complete. One is basically complete pending action of NARA's FAR representative. And three will be launched next year. Four, there is one change in recommendation number two. This recommendation was completed when the question regarding leveraging technology was included in the CFO report. Now that the report has been published, OGIS analyzed the responses. As I mentioned earlier, OGIS published on July 31st of this year an assessment on leveraging technology to improve freedom of information X searches. This assessment is published on the OGIS website. Our assessment showed that 86% of respondents to the CFO annual report questions indicated that they were leveraging some sort of technology to facilitate efficiency in conducting searches. I urge you to examine our assessment for more in-depth analysis. Regarding recommendation number three, as I have reported previously, OGIS drafted a business case and submitted it to NARA's FAR council representative. We're actually meeting tomorrow to finalize that draft, so it will be ready for submission to the council. And finally, recommendation number one, as you know, the technology subcommittee of the chief FOIA officers council was created about a year ago. They have been working diligently. And the subcommittee presented before the chief FOIA officers council in August. We're fortunate to have the two co-chairs from the technology subcommittee here today to discuss their work. So I'm going to move on to introduce our visitors next, but I wanted to take a second just to ask if anyone had any questions regarding the status of the recommendation. No questions? Great. So I'm very pleased to welcome the co-chairman of the technology subcommittee. Eric Stein is the director of the Office of Information Programs and Services at the State Department. His office is responsible for the department's records management, FOIA, the Privacy Act, classification, declassification, library, and other records and information access programs. That's a lot. Michael Sarek is the Veterans Health Administration FOIA director. He leads a FOIA program with over 300 FOIA Privacy Act officers handling 25,000 plus requests across 151 facilities worldwide. In addition to his work on the CFO council and CFO technology subcommittee, Michael was recently appointed as the vice chair of the American Bar Association's government information and right to privacy section. So thank you and welcome. And I'm going to get your slides up here. Good morning, everyone. My name is Eric Stein. And I'm Michael Sarek. We're the co-chairs of the IT subcommittee to chief FOIA officers council. As mentioned, we spent about the past year reviewing IT practices at federal agencies, soliciting feedback from various groups, ASAP, the chief CIO council, the federal CIO council, the chief FOIA officer council, and then we're here today. This is the end of our tour. And what's coming out of these efforts will be recommendations that we'll be talking about today going into a little bit more detail than we went into at the chief FOIA officer council meeting. Just want to start out by saying thank you to the National Archives, to OGIS, to OIP, and to all of you here with us today here on the phone and online. So if we can go to the next slide. What we've been working on is the past, since December, almost a year now though, just short recommendation that came from all of you to create a subcommittee. We formed a diverse subcommittee of about a dozen agencies ranging very small to large cabinet-level agencies, diverse record types, anything from forms, reporting data, classified information, which gets into an area of declassification, and other challenges. And we have heard that there are diverse issues on technology. When you talk about technology, today we're going to drill down and get more specific with regard to what are we talking about? Because people hear technology, we heard search mentioned before, but there's also case processing. How do we work in this new electronic era as we transition to more electronic records as we declassify or move things electronically? What else could be publicly released and save time? But records management is really the foundation of a lot of what we found. So here we just go through and show how we're here today if we go to the next slide, Mike. In September, we were asked to co-chair this body. We've been doing that, Mike and I together. And here's a list of the agencies that have been participating. There's been a richness based on the diversity of this group. And we've seen, we came to the table with a bunch of assumptions, a lot of which were proved to be false. So we had to then go back and really listen carefully to the needs of agencies. For example, you know, you get up here talking about how we're leveraging AI and new tools to search records of some federal agencies, but then a smaller agency says, yeah, but I need a scanner just to digitize records. And some people may be shaking their heads, you're kidding me, right? Well, no, they're really trying to comply with the law, and that's what they need. So you have this range out there. So by trying to figure out, first, like, well, we have this figured out, we're going to go with large agencies. We're going to look at what the IT landscapes are. And we have these great ideas and solutions, and we had to take a step back and really listen carefully to what these agencies had to say. And we learned quite a bit. So with that, and speaking of learning quite a bit, I'm going to turn it over to Mike to talk about how we went about assessing the landscape out there, including reading the previous committee's report and recommendations to get a baseline of work that's already been done so we didn't reinvent the wheel. So, Mike? Great. Thank you, Eric. And again, it is a real thrill and an honor to be here today with this body, especially as we send Melanie off into a happy retirement through my whole career. Melanie's always been that that exemplar that go to for FOIA. And it's going to be a great miss, you know, not seeing you there, but we'll always have your example and your memory and your legacy will carry on for years to come. So thank you. So as Eric mentioned, we had three major mandates here. We had to first study the use and deployment of FOIA across the agencies. Basically, we're trying to get a snapshot of who's doing what, who's using scanner, who's doing predictive AI, where are we at in the field? And as Eric mentioned, we found an incredible diversity in the field. Some folks doing things with ink and pen. Some people, you know, Sharpies and photocopiers and other folks with really advanced robust systems. And we're going to talk a little bit about that sort of digital divide that we have in the field. All of the programs, we're all under the same mandate. We all have the same requirements. We all have to process it under the same deadlines and produce the same amount of records, three requests, we still have to post them. We all have the same job to do, but the resources are spread dramatically across different agencies. And we found in research that chance plays a role in terms of where a program is located in relation to the technology that it has. So for example, if you're in a general counsel shop, then you may be encouraged to use eDiscovery software because that's what the other folks in the office are doing versus if you're in a record shop or a different shop, you may have access to different technology that's more field specific in that field. So that was really interesting. Where people sit determines what they see and what access they generally have. And that'll get into some of our recommendations, or thematic recommendations later in the presentation. But the major takeaway from this first portion to study the landscape of FOIA was that there's a huge market for improvement. People out there are working very hard and they want to be the best. They want to make sure that they're getting requests out in a timely manner. They don't want their agency to be looked at in a negative way. In some ways FOIA can be a public relations issue for some folks, right? They want to make sure that they're getting their information out quickly and that they're being responsive to their requester community. The one thing that we've seen for sure in this process is that if we keep doing the same things that we've been doing with the same level of resources, we're going to get less satisfactory results in the long term. Requests are increased in complexity. Litigation throws sand in the gears of operations. Things become more and more difficult over time. So we must embrace technology. We must embrace new techniques and methodologies if we are going to continue to on the course of improvement that we're all seeking here in this profession. So I'm going to turn it over to Eric to talk about some of the best practices that we've found before we move into some of the more thematic, broad-based recommendations for the profession. So the committee met at least once if not twice a month to discuss how we're going to approach these tasks. The first, Mike and the team went through every single chief FOIA officer report to look at where different agencies were and what they've reported. We then also took the experiences of our members on the committee to understand what real problems do we have within the agencies, but that's very insular. We also thought of the public and those of you outside of agencies, what issues do you have? Most of the time it's we want our information faster and I can tell you from what we've seen agencies really are working to do their best, but the best is different. So we're getting the best practices and what does that mean? It's easy to say well we have this great e-discovery tool here you go just go by it and you're all done. It really came down to understanding what are the process problems and what are the needs of the agency? What type of records do they maintain? And that's probably the biggest point in takeaway is that there will not be one-size-fits-all solutions and the more we looked at this is if we're looking at FOIA IT we're really looking at a broad range of issues which is why our recommendations and there will be several will touch on all of these points because whether you're looking for contemporary reporting something that one of a major cabinet level agency does on a topical issue or something that's really matters to you personally because the privacy matter related to you individually we didn't put weight as to who's more important we looked at what are the issues and how do we resolve them. So identifying best practices well the first one and I mentioned this before is not say well wait a minute you're an IT group what are you talking about records management matters and going to the June 2019 memo that's going to be very helpful in framing how agencies move forward what electronic records you have available. It also gets to making sure FOIA programs and records officers and records programs understand one another and what they're doing and understand what agencies already offer publicly and have really assessed what are they getting FOIA requests for and have they leveraged and put their resources in place in such a way that align with the tools and technology allowed for processing. We found that sometimes again this doesn't sound like a technology recommendation but it is we'd ask agencies did you ask for more resources did you ask the pivot have you put in place have you reviewed your contracts have you reviewed and some of them said yes some of them said no so just starting with records management matters and I think that's something everyone here agrees with so we'll move on. A point that came up and we'll touch on this later is that having champions within agencies matter senior level officials and what does that mean some people think it means the the secretary or cabinet level official it could be your CIO it really depends on as Mike said where your FOIA operation is but having senior level buy-in matters because it says to the workforce here this is serious we should we take this seriously and you should too. The other tool other things we found is interoperability between records tools and FOIA tool FOIA case processing tools matter and what we found is several agencies are using several different tools they're not interoperable and as a result of that you have these piecemeal solutions but we use tool a to do our case processing but we use tool B for the redactions we use tool C and then afterward we release it to the requester but they don't publish them online for example years ago at state we adopted release to one release to all and we use that not just in technology but also to say to requesters have you checked our FOIA website so that's another thing leveraging technology like websites how do you post more records online and a lot of that the agencies have means of doing so although some don't and some have said it's great that you feel like you have that support but we may not so the flip side is publishing records online a lot of the agencies haven't considered doing that yet and there's just a version well if you're going to release everything online you're going to release something you shouldn't right well our view has been we're not doing our jobs then exactly that's why the exemptions exist right in looking at other best practices and recommendations we had interoperable tools we also needed to understand again looking at problems which problems we're trying to solve talked about records we talked about case processing we talked about redaction we'll be looking at and I'll segue now over to Mike recommendations that are meaningful and probably the biggest one that's going to come out of this group is having some sort of body and opportunity for agencies or group that agencies that really want to make change and improve can reach out to I think that's partially what OGIS and OIP do but given their mandates and demands we found that instead of saying agencies you must adopt one of these six practices those that are serious about change don't even know where to start and one small agency after the chief FOI officer council meeting came up and said that's great all the stuff you're talking about it's wonderful however we just need a simple redaction tool and I'm not even sure about how to get that and I appreciated that feedback and the agency preferred not to be named so that's fine but it's me creating an environment where people willing to talk and that also matters from hearing from the public perspective are you getting information the way you want the means you want it in a timely manner and so with that I'm going to turn it back over to Mike to talk about the recommendations we've been looking at yeah absolutely thank you Eric there's and there's a number of additional recommendations that will be in the in our forthcoming paper one in particular that we that we talked about before we transitioned to the broader thematic recommendations is leveraging the budget cycle making sure that you make the opportunity frequently you'll go and you'll ask for something and you'll get rebuffed and then that's it right but try try and try again and especially at this time of year when money's getting swept and budgets are getting consolidated when you're in this business for a few years you learn that you know there is pots of money they need to get used if you have a project that's prepared um you know shovel ready if you will you know shovel ready for programs and improvements this is a great opportunity so kind of strike why the iron's hot understand the dynamics in your agency in terms of where the money is how you can kind of leverage that and keep asking keep knocking on the door until they say yes you know you may not get the full request but through time you may you will get get get more so working through the objectives of the committee or since was the the best practices that Eric outlined and the realistic recommendations I'm about to to share and Eric is going to share really is going to be the value that's going to come because we really wanted to make sure that we had actionable tools for people things that people could actually take away from this and really make a difference in their FOIA programs and the themes of these three recommendations and again recall that we're going from large to small these are things that everyone can do no matter the size of your of your agency the first thing thematically is we're going to talk about leveling the playing field for folks in terms of access to information access to to programs then we're going to talk about as Eric previewed a little bit lending a hand how are we going to help those folks get to where they need to be and where they want to be and then finally something that I'm very passionate about and that's sharing the word and that's spreading the information the success stories because really when you look deeply into what's going on into the FOIA world it's a good news story it's not being portrayed necessarily as frequently as a good news story as I think it should be but I think we can get there and I think we can do that by sharing the word so I would just add as much as there's good news stories there are real challenges as well and so part of these these fora to discuss those challenges in a meaningful way where people put their guards and we really can get to what's the core issue not the one up here because you waste all this time discussing this when really the problem has been down here yeah and one of the great things to talk about level starting to level the playing field is that when we have these meetings you know on our subcommittee level some of the greatest conversations come from kind of the side talk before and the after I think as you guys can all all appreciate when we talk and we learn about the way things are going on at different agencies so one of the things that we found in reviewing the review reports is that there's no fewer than 26 unique programs and platforms used in the FOIA world that people have self reported and these range from the whole the whole world of usual suspects the commercially available off the shelf products the normal office suites of different products to homegrown systems that folks are in the process of either updating replacing or moving forward on and because programs exist in different locations in an organization with differing levels of support some folks have a real challenge in terms of going out they know what they need or they may not even know what they need to start off with right and they have a real challenge in making that argument and moving forward so one of the things that we had a great opportunity to meet with the CIO council and we talked about working with and partnering with GSA to have a kind of a a minimum standards or benchmarks for what these programs should and can and must indeed do to successfully manage a FOIA program and so a big way to to kind of level the playing field is going to be to get these programs or work to get these programs on a GSA schedule so every federal agency will have access to these it doesn't matter if you have 50 or 50,000 cases you have the same access to the same state of the art technology at a price point that makes sense for both the agency and for the taxpayer so having that records management software having those four FOIA products available and when we start when I circle back to to sharing the world I'll talk a little bit more about access to to these programs access to the technology and finding out about that but we're going to transition and talk to the second talk about the second theme and Erickson talk about this about lending a hand how are we going to help those folks out there in the smaller agencies how are we going to make sure you know I'm at a very big agency the second biggest agency in federal government in terms of people we nine million veterans we're doing stuff every day I have resources I can do things right how can I help the other agencies the smaller requesters so Erickson talk about what our committee determined and some possible next steps for how we can lend a hand yeah and I think if you go to the excuse me if you go to the next slide tomorrow is today yeah every day that passes is another opportunity that we were missing to move forward and move in these directions if Mike did you want to go back to the okay so the no sorry go to slide six okay how best to lend a hand we've talked about creating environment agencies can talk we talked about eight agents several agencies did express interest in in understanding better what are their options and so as Mike had mentioned creating a venue or an opportunity where we can discuss here's what we've learned and coming up with these custom tailored solutions to agencies it doesn't have to be hundreds of tailored solutions but maybe buckets or groupings because there are relevant there's overlap in the issues among a lot of the agencies so how to best lend a hand it's first it's creating an environment where do I go and I think we've been saying well you can go to OGIS and we and OGIS can reach out to us or we could work so that's as we look at the next steps for this group this subcommittee these these groups tend to exist and then they can linger and go on forever our plan is to sunset at some point and the question becomes after we draft these recommendations this month what if any role does this type of group have moving forward and what if anything do we need to provide to agencies so how to best lend a hand I mean first we're just getting and Michael talked about getting the word out letting them know what's available and let's talk about that for a minute sometimes just hearing what the issues are and saying have you thought about contracting out a solution instead of developing one in-house we've had this one forever we love the solution but we have our backlogs growing we're not able to keep up with demand well have you teased that out of and thought about it what's the issue we can't find these records or we're getting now the bigger challenge we're seeing is we're inundated with records a lot of agencies those that have adopted technology for the records are finding a lot of non-responsive material and that really slows down the FOIA process as you're working through you're doing searches and so you're having these overly broad requests that come in that are I want everything on this one word and you're getting a lot how do we better have a dialogue with the public and requesters and understanding what exactly you're looking for because really we want we and the agency talk to want to respond right and this isn't so much a technology issue because some groups we talked to you said well the technology will take care of it AI I have not seen any AI that's quite there yet to do what people expected to do right now so it's rather coming up with the use cases the examples how to what can we do now to find results and I know for example what we're doing is making our e-record solution interoperable with FOIA express be able to port those records over and then find and work through them that way there was another way of looking at things so one of the things how to lend a hand looking at the requirements of agencies we found some federal agencies actually went through the exercise of understanding whether their FOIA programs are centralized or decentralized and gathering the requirements for their program for our intake excuse me we need to do this this and this for our search of records we need to do this that that and that those that actually listed out core requirements are actually moving faster and understand better what the issues are and the solutions they need so we found those other agencies that are struggling had even considered that and I think some of it comes from people are so busy and overwhelmed trying to comply with mandates and increasing demands of just requests volume litigation electronic records that they don't take time to pause and then think about these things so it's helpful to have feedback and recommendations from a group like this where you're coming at it from a different angle and just taking the time which doesn't sound like much but it really does matter to think about these issues and then figure out how do we bridge these gaps so how to best lend a hand the recommendations I previously went through will be written up our plan is to finalize that draft this month and part of that will also be a series of recommendations and then some practical solutions and I think Mike's going to talk about some of those in terms of how to best share the word and and next steps right so we have a hundred plus agencies doing this work and they're working hard every day right so in some ways you have a hundred plus people trying to invent a wheel every day right but there's a lot of people that have really well working wheels that spin and things work there's lots of success stories Securities and Exchange Commission other other agencies that are really getting it getting it done how do we share those how do we share that word I used to think that I knew that I was really in the loop with things but then when I got involved in this committee and really started to have some dialogue and do really deep dives in agency processes and looking at processing manuals and looking at SOPs and how agencies do things and how some agencies embrace technology and how they don't there's a whole world out there that as Eric mentioned most folks frankly don't have the time to to maybe study another agency you're busy studying your agency figuring out how to make your wheel spin a little bit faster and how to how to grease the axle a little bit to move your request out in those 20 days and as Eric mentioned champions having champions in the FOIA community Melanie's always been a champion I've always looked at OIP for for guidance in terms of you know what is the best practices what is the what is the guidance on this issue where do I look for people Mike Marquis I looked at his processing to see how can I you know bring these great techniques this intelligent case management to make sure that I'm assigning cases cases properly and I'm someone that's invested a lot of time to learn that our job I think is with the modalities of communication that we have now it's almost criminal not to be able to spread that word and share that word in the FOIA community and show those exemplars and say look it is possible to get these out someone other people are doing it so it's some in some ways you can't just cut and paste because you don't have the same resources but there's going to be good ideas in those programs right you know you're going to be able to take some intelligent case management ideas from Mike Marquis you're going to be able to pull some things from SEC you're going to be able to pull these in you know in this kind of palette of colors and paint your own picture for your own program but you're not going to be able to do that unless we get better as a field in sharing that word so there's been some discussions in the committee in terms of well how about having something like a FOIA FOSSI there used to be something called a FOSSI a federal a FOSSI where people would come in and people that had programs that would help you in your field they would come in and they would present them and so working with industry to see how we can can make that happen while staying of course in line with contracting procedures and and ethics and etc but we found that we you know through that technology and sharing that word we can sharpen our processes and refine our operations and we can make that improvement through innovation because you know frankly we don't have you know a hundred more people bursting down the door at the Veterans Health Administration to come and process FOIAs so we have to have a solution and one of the great things about working in this field and working on this technology subcommittee is access to those ideas and to be able to bring those those innovations so i'm going to be able to bring those to the Veterans Health Administration Eric's certainly bringing them to the State Department every day we want to for those other hundred plus we want to make sure that they're also getting benefit from that and that we're able to to kind of share the word and in doing that we'd like to transition to engaging this body in a discussion on how you guys think we can best level the playing field how we can best lend a hand and how we can best share the word because as Eric mentioned our report is pretty robust at this point but it can always benefit from the expertise of a panel like this so we can transition to that sure just and the only final because the closing point in looking at FOIA process how agencies process FOIA requests it's also understanding the staffing you have and available a lot of agencies have 306 government information specialist employees some use attorneys and i'd mentioned in the past at state we're going to start leveraging librarians to help do searches who better to find information than people who are trained to find information so especially as we move into this sea of electronic data that's it's overwhelming so in looking at data scientists looking at the different job series and then we get in the contract how is a contract written with the statement of work how what exactly are you asking for what services tools etc so the needs will vary and there needs to be flexibility for agencies to maintain their own autonomy to manage how they're organized for their programs but they're again the sharing these ideas sometimes just leads to oh well that's what they're doing doesn't work for us but i never thought of doing it this way ourselves so with that yes we're very interested in anything any thoughts feedback anything we covered otherwise we open it up thank you thank you guys all right so as eric and mike said they're definitely very interested in our feedback our reactions um anyone have any questions that they are dying to ask and that includes folks on the phone just speak up sometimes it takes a minute for people to yes yes of course melanie go ahead melanie peste um thank you both um i just i want to just say i think that your work's been really excellent and it's it's just captured so many of things of course that you said are so they resonate with me so clearly but particularly i like the idea of recognizing that there isn't a one-size-fits-all we really think there just isn't uh because the diversity of the foyer landscape is so so so vast but at the same time being able to pick and choose and that was a beautiful way of saying it like to draw your own painting was um you know to the extent we can share that share the colors with one another i think it's really it's really for the overall benefit of foyer so thanks for thanks very very much thank you and thank you for the opportunity the members of the committee that that aren't here i'd be remiss if i didn't discuss the robust contributions of the whether it doesn't agencies and groups that have that we've been able to benefit from so to have that large of a sample size of agency operations for people to share their first-hand experiences in doing this work you know day in day out every day and how they're meeting their mandate and working with requesters has really just been fantastic in terms of a foyer professionals own career development you know in terms of learning yeah and it was after those meetings we discussed some of the issues we were having and that helped us go back and maybe think at our own i know in our agency why are we doing it that way exactly and just the opportunity to have agencies as as eric discussed that have taken the time to do those line by line need-based analysis of what exactly do we need that intellectual exercise that exercise to use the resources to to create a product at the end of the day you say hey look contractor hey whoever this is what we need can you do this really makes you refine your own processes you really make you think what do i really need because i'm going to be paying for this i don't really need it why am i going to pay for this right so we've been asked a lot well who's leveraging ai and how are they using it and what we found so far is mainly in records programs we have not i've not seen correct me if you're using a foyer program leverage it yet to do advanced redactions right but i think we're at a point now where we're starting to understand what how the technology works how it works and how it works in federal agencies and in their it landscapes and we're moving and so i know for example i've seen firsthand what machine learning is capable of doing it's very promising both from a records perspective and that only would reinforce foyer programs and any other program for access to public records yeah melanie again um we were we've been we're at the very very beginning stages within oip of of exploring ai we want to as we usually do we really like to try to try things out so that we get some hands on experience first and obviously ai is so promising and the idea of being able to have them have any sort of assistance with processing being done electronically is would be really a huge game changer but you're right it's it's it isn't just it's it's very difficult and challenging it isn't easily translatable yet to foyer but we're hoping as we get moving on our exploration of it that then we'll be in a position to start sharing right some things that's definitely the future and this exploration creates an opportunity to get employees comfortable with technology and ai because people hear it and they think i'm going to lose my job or this isn't going to you're welcome to continue combing through hundreds of thousands of non-responsive records if you'd like or we could get to the actual material that people are looking for yeah exactly right and and not to give away too much of a report but you know that's part of sharing the word inside and outside at the veterans administration we're the first director of ai as a position so first thing that i did was go talk to him and say dr. like that like sarah foyer got here's an opportunity for you to get a program you know to have an early success how can you you know work in this field help helping us so it's sharing internally and externally right like inside of our field but also sharing up the chain and letting people know what your needs are so yeah and i think more and more agencies as eric mentioned are going to be in this field right more and more people are going to be it's really the it's the frontier for us in foyer yeah and when you're looking at resources if you i mean you have present you know you have administration level you know interest in ai so if you can tie yourself to that it's always a good thing yeah yeah so i'm just going to say again thank you for all your work and as co-chairs melanie and i definitely look forward to your report please hurry up retire but i think jason has the question or yeah question or proper maybe both eric my client i'm heartened by your message here about technology and and i think you're as you if you stick around for the rest of the meeting you'll see that you're channeling the thoughts of our own subcommittee that ryan and i are on in in many ways what i didn't hear during the presentation here is an outreach to the private sector which is filled with solution providers both for foyer and e-discovery on ai and machine learning and so i guess the question is would we expect as part of your recommendations to encourage agencies to do rfis or some kind of outreach to that community to tap their expertise and to have things like vendor days or or you know some kind of industry day where you're interacting and you're getting the best thoughts from that community so that's excellent we get the rfi piece in particular i think making sure it the agencies are clearly understand what rfis are and that it's somewhat innocuous and having vendors come in one thing we did discuss with the agencies and we did hear is that's great eric and mike you have all these ideas you're all you're going to show us are tools that we're not going to be able to buy right you know the money you know the resources so we said well that's not really a great approach how about we see what's out there and have you thought about partnering with another agency interagency agreements finding ways to leverage resources across the government in new and innovative ways instead of just saying well no that's not going to work so i think we could definitely incorporate the rfi or some sort of proposal in terms of feedback we have presented at asap we have received some other some feedback but we have not done an outreach because we were trying to understand what are the needs of the agencies and in that incorporate but i think there's definitely value added from not just the private sector but the public as well i also have a follow up did i hear you say that the technology subcommittee is sunsetting and if so we're not letting them sunset they did not ask us for permission uh you have to solve it and go away explain to me why it wouldn't be a continuing mandate for the government to avail itself of a technology subcommittee on an ongoing basis i think we're very open to that but i think also a lot of subcommittees and groups just look to perpetuate their own existence for a long time and so we'd like to do is come up with a recommendation we understand we serve bodies those bodies have to make a decision if that's the decision i know mike and i have discussed whether we would stay on in this role or how that would work we're very open to it but it was but we thought it was presumptuous to say we'll just do this forever because it's needed well speaking only for myself i would be happy to make a recommendation coming out of this committee that the technology subcommittee continue well there i understood exactly what you were saying about and i actually i think i commend you for saying that you see your work as a obviously in no way saying that technology then will be like okay we've solved technology for you obviously we're never going to be when you think of how far we've come but i understand the the the wisdom of saying we we're doing something a discrete thing and then we'll take it we'll take the next challenge as its own thing and we have a wonderful team but we are pulling from resources from agencies and while it's been a nominal commitment of time it still is a commitment of time and but we would i know while there have been challenges and issues we've actually enjoyed this and it's been quite a great opportunity and i'm very grateful that we've been able to do this absolutely other questions oh hi this is patricia west um one i wanted to thank uh erica michael for the presentation um that's your point about getting leadership behind you is is everything i'm i've been at agencies where we've had leadership a difference um and then i've been at agencies when you don't and it's night and day um but one thing i wanted to share and that kind of follows up on and jason's point i think jason mentioned something about an industry day um and i um oftentimes when i go to the doj uh trainings or the doj um working groups it that's the only time that you know during a q and a where some of the agencies can share the different technology that that they're using and i feel like we you know with the workload and everything we get a bit isolated and we don't know about all the other technology out there and doing an rfi is it's great but i i i would i would love to have something like what jason said like an industry day or a conference or and maybe that's something that ASAP could facilitate that you know oftentimes they have vendors that come in but i i think the problem for us is we don't know everything that's out there um and it would kind of be nice to have it all under one roof so that all the agencies could could see the possibilities because um you know we we need help and and i think technology is the way to go and i think that's the value of a body like this where we now have enough experience and understanding of what the landscape looks like to say all right you're sitting here the issues you're saying you have but we're also hearing this and this we've seen those other agencies here's what they're doing and then the next step would be and here are the tools available uh and making sure there's awareness yeah exactly the the different stovepipes and one thing that um i started my career at the bureau of land management so i'm very i try to be very aware of this we're in dc and we think that everything is here right but there's a whole big huge government worldwide um especially in the veterans health administration case doing foyes and doing this work all across the world right so we want to make sure that we're able to share the word with those folks that may be based in you know say denver or another or los angeles or san francisco or pica pica in american city where this work is also being done to make sure that they also get the benefit from that so that kind of industry day that foya fossey that kind of ability to to get that word out is is critical we work in these stovepipes sometimes um and we're also busy that to to have the opportunity to learn what what is going on across the federal family is really critical if we're going to keep our programs moving it doesn't do the it doesn't do the field it does my administration a great service if we improve the the foya program at the veterans health administration and veterans administration but it doesn't do that same service to maybe the social security administration or different administration um because we don't tell them about it right so having that industry day and sharing that word i think is critical moving forward if we're going to grow as a as a community other questions on the phone you guys are not very lively today come on wake up these guys came here to get feedback from us too so so that brings us to this slide here if you think of anything after the fact you can email me and mic and share that feedback that next week we have our meeting uh where we really seek to as alina mentioned wrap up our paper get uh while it's robust we also kept it robust yet succinct yes maybe people actually read it yes and um and then see what comes out of that next step so we're submitting that to oip and ogis uh and then waiting to hear our next steps in the meantime uh very happy and welcome feedback we'd share with the group and i know that's a really great team and they're they welcome that thank you thank you thank you all right thank you all right thanks so we're super super early because i expected a robust discussion with eric and mic and so i'm gonna go ahead and uh take a break um which would have been normally at 11 30 but we're gonna just give you a little more time so maybe let's come back at 11 20 is that okay jason okay um so let's take a break just a reminder uh if you want to purchase food or drink from charters cafe which is located on this level you may do so but you can't bring it back in here uh there are restrooms directly outside the theater another set near the cafe so please enjoy your break um and talk amongst yourselves and please be back here at 11 20 thank you listen i didn't even get a folder i didn't even get a folder i usually get a folder i didn't even get a folder here's a folder no it's okay no give it to jason right right It's clearly not really the prime time. Like, you know, it could wind up as we've seen it previously. Too early, it's not really important. Experts seem to be embarrassing. Yeah, I mean, of course, if you don't really get the shot, if you don't really socialize, you're often confused. Or to have people come in and not think that, I mean, that's it. Right. I didn't have an answer to everybody. And the question being, so the question in half, what are we going to do? Well, the question is, how can you, how can you, what kind of personal life are you going to do? Right. I told you, I told you, what are you going to do? You're considering, what are you going to do, what are you going to do, what are you going to try and what are you going to try and what are you going to try and what are you going to apply to yourself? Absolutely. And I'm sure, I never kept you the baby. Yeah. Oh my! I see. that they find a way. One is the question, who is the intent of this situation? Most people, they may or may not be firm with it, but somebody who's pissed off at you is the one who doesn't think you should be honest with them. I use this for you as a weapon. The other subject is the general American request that is clearly open for questions. First of all, I'm just wondering if there's any questions? The general is to ask for all emails from administrators but a two-year period. So it's not that people don't know how to write requests, they know. And the follow-up is, would you now write your request? They said, no, but would you tell us who you're interested in? Well, in fact, we know it's those patients that can still find out about their omniscience. But he doesn't want, A, he doesn't know all of it because he can't answer your question. He doesn't have any idea about any of it. And so, you know, but he's pretty sure that this company is probably not corrupt, certainly being only involved in one side of the issue. And using a whole fishing institution, I do. I was thinking, I would say, but both of those participants, if they're troublesome, and there's a lot of questions under current, under most current laws, there's not much you can do about it except ring your hands and, you know, slay walkers, use fees, you know, do things. I wonder if there's a reason for all of this. Yeah. For the weaponry of this request, it escalates. Right. Unless it's so bad that you get a quarter. I mean, if we were concerned that there are five grand, we would put us out of business, we would put a lot more stake than I thought there was going to be. And so, we said that if you would like a low-ranging response, we would pay as we go, if you understand the difficulties, it's a very precise request. So, what we're looking for, you don't have to, there's a chemical ring of the substance in a common ring. So, we don't really care for anything that doesn't have that meaning. And, you know, so, I said, that sort of has a sort of thing to do with that. Clearly, before it does come to play, because, you know, because it turns out that you can see where it's coming from and it couldn't be because everything has to be solid enough and it started to go down. And rather than have to go through a band and the standards that come back, that you see what's used in artificial intelligence and publicity, you try and go on free. You know, free and trust. You know, I felt as a, as an open government crossword, that it's totally appropriate for the media to see who it is. We're crazy. But the question is, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's where the city council is. You know what? You got to be crazy with the rest of the rain. We have, you know, guys like you guys on my, on my board, you say, he's retired. He's got a NASA suit. He's a lawyer. Yeah. He's a lawyer. He's a lawyer. You know, he'll read some of the papers. Oh, yeah. He's a lawyer. Yeah. We know theWhy. Well that's not the kind of thing people don't know. So those are my tools, what is it? And so you fit, um... I mean, I'm looking for the best practices or all the sort of fixes or something we can do without undermining the basic right to the... And you certainly can't be able to name some sort of, you know, to do the subject. Yeah, right. Okay. I don't have any in my pocket, but if I... Okay. We need to have it up. I do. I do. I do. But I will... I'll keep my ears open. Yeah, one of these days I'll... I'll move back in. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. We join our circle of trust. We join our circle of trust. I told them, but then they... They're yours for us. Unless you want me to maintain... Oh, wait. Are the mics on? Oh, yeah, they are. So we're gathering back everyone. Folks on the phone. If you could re-engage, we would very much appreciate that. Don't hear. Hello, Michael. Is this on? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know. We sent them a draft. I know that. I know. It's very frustrating. I can't. I totally understand. Yeah. OMB feed guideline update. No. All right. So I think we're back. Glad that we have a little more time today for the subcommittee reports. And our folks back on the phone, is everyone there? Do we have Abby? Yes, I'm here. Hi, Abby. Ginger? Yep, I'm still here. Hi, Ginger. Thanks. James, are you still here? I'm still here, thanks. Okay. Lisette? Right here. Great. Michael? I'm here. Okay. Patricia? Hello, I'm here. Okay. Great. And Emily? I'm here. Emily, are you still there? No, I'm here. Okay. Great. I'm going to do the roll call. So we're back. Hopefully everyone enjoyed their break. And I just want to thank everyone, just very, very much for all the great work that the subcommittees are doing. I know everyone's been working very, very hard. And I'm very much looking forward to the reports of each of the subcommittees. A lot of the work has been conducted between meetings, and that's very, very important to the work of the whole committee. So I am going to switch things up a little bit from the published agenda, because the records management subcommittee, Ryan and Jason, actually have a lot to present. And I want to give them the opportunity to have time to present, and time to get questions and comments from the rest of the committee. So with that, I'm just actually going to flip it on its head. And first, I would invite to hear from the vision subcommittee co-chairs. And I believe that's Chris today, since Joan is not here, correct? That's correct. And you're going to update us on where you are and raise any issues you would like for the committee to hear. Absolutely. And again, Chris Knox. And this will be quick in the interest of time and seating some time of records management. As discussed in the previous committee, we broke our subcommittee down into four distinct work streams in order to facilitate our mission of a shared vision for the future of FOIA. Those four work streams are raising the priority of FOIA within the executive branch and agencies that's led by Joan, who is not with us today. Reconsidering the model of OGIS within the FOIA community, and that's led by Patricia, who is on the phone. Managing expectations of FOIA between agencies and requesters that's led by Kevin. And the need for increased and continued financial support for FOIA programs, and that's led by Michael on the phone. Since our last committee meeting, the majority of the work of the vision subcommittee has been focused on crafting, finalizing and releasing our survey, targeting FOIA agencies and requesters. That survey was launched at the ASAP training in July. Kevin has been instrumental in leading that survey and the responses, and I'm going to let him provide an update on that in just one second. In addition, the priority work stream led by Joan is planning upcoming interviews with those on this committee. We have not finalized the structure of that what that's going to look like. That's over the next couple of weeks. And then Patricia and her role with the work stream focusing on OGIS's role in the FOIA community, they've done thorough research into OGIS, and they're moving on to look at other bodies doing similar work. They're looking at state, federal, and international ombudsmen, and they plan on bringing that research back to the subcommittee for digestion and recommendations for the effectiveness committee. So Kevin, if you have a minute to take over the update in the surveys, please. Yeah, thank you. So this will also talk about, this will also double dip a little bit because we're implementing this survey as part of the time volume subcommittee, these two surveys. And I would be remiss if I didn't also thank Sarah for helping to write some of the questions on. Oddly, as a member of the requester committee, I wrote the agency officer questions I actually don't think it's unusual because I have a lot of questions. I would like to ask FOIA requester that have been on my mind for a long time. Exactly, we're thinking. Finally got that opportunity. And Bradley, Joan, Emily, and Michael helped edit a lot of them. And especially as we got more into the actual implementation, Suzanne was really useful in using her research and surveying knowledge and experience in putting these together, and we could not have gotten this done. So we had put out, I think it was 12 questions to the agency officer community, as you said, mainly through the assistance of ASAP with which Kirsten helped shepherd through. And 10 questions to the requester community which Michael and others helped us promote. We have, I believe it is about 100 responses from the agency officers and almost 90 from the requesters, which I like. It's both, it's going to give us a strong base of information to work with but not an unmanageable one. I think, we hope, and Suzanne and I were just talking about this a minute ago as to how we're going to now take what are again about 100 responses to 12 questions, i.e. 1200 individual responses and make sense of them. And on the other side, another thousand individual responses and make sense of them. But that is the next step. And remembering that what we're taking out of these, even though they were the same questions used by two subcommittees, what we're trying to pull out from them are two different things. So time, volume, what we're going to be looking for in the responses are a little bit of here and now and a little bit of future but geared toward what are the individual processes that are not working, and what will our recommendations be for effectively, for lack of a better term, reducing backlogs. Managing expectations, we're hoping to find within the same responses the idea that requesters think this and we can't do this. So there's a disconnect that is also causing problems. So there's going to be overlap but we're really hoping that we're getting information out of it that is going to answer two different questions for us at the same time. And then the next step will be how do we make sense of all this? We'll be talking about that as I'm sure on both sides of the subcommittee but I'm certainly going to work with Suzanne to find a way to make sense of these now magnitude of responses and bring them back to the greater subcommittees for what we're going to do is hopefully pull out themes that then become recommendations. Kevin, you might have, I'm sorry. Do you have any questions because the survey closed? It will be closed on Monday. Because ASAP actually had a privacy convention this week in Chicago and we decided to leave it open. We originally said we're going to shut it down right after Labor Day weekend but then Claire reached out to me and said, hey, would you mind if we kept it open? I said, not at all. So let's do it. So obviously next steps is digesting that survey. That's going to feed the majority of the work that the work streams, the four work streams that we talked about are going to be reviewing and digesting going forward. Yeah, I mean really what we're looking at for vision from this survey was again managing expectations. So again, you have some of these questions of, for instance, on the agency's officer side, a couple of them were, can you identify any common areas of confusion among requesters? Well, that might be useful for time volume if an answer is, well, requesters just don't understand what it means to write a narrow request. We also get answers out of it that are more about managing expectations. The people just call us every day and don't understand how long it takes us to actually do one thing to oversimplify these possible answers. Then we're going to be able to use that and hopefully find these themes that come through and if we do find four, five, six, seven, that's going to hope we're going to plug those in and try to use those recommendations. Absolutely. Kevin, I just want to thank you for your presence at the ASAP training, national training conference. You were there every day and I think that was very helpful just to solicit and get folks to focus on the fact that there was a survey available for them today. We obviously didn't force anyone, it was all voluntary, but I think you did a great job just being there every day. So thank you for that. And I'd like to reiterate that. Thank you, Kevin. And to Suzanne, Sarah and Michael, they've really driven this survey through for us and really appreciate the work that you've done. Thank you. Thanks. Anything else, Chris? No, that's okay. Any questions from the rest of the committee for the vision subcommittee? Any questions on the phone? Okay, it's very quiet today. Okay, so let's move on to time volume subcommittee and I'm looking at Bradley because I can't look at Emily. Did you, the two of you talk about who was going to present? We did. This is Bradley here. We did and our answer was Kevin. Okay, good. So, yeah, the survey was the biggest thing that our subcommittee had going on and as you just heard, Kevin has described it. Okay. That was the shortest report that I've ever heard. Very succinct. But now we have a lot of time for records management subcommittee, so Ryan and Jason. So seriously, any questions for time volume? Any other issues you guys want to talk about? Any other comments from the folks on the phone? For time volume, going once, going twice. Okay. Oh, yeah, please, James. The International Sub-Sub Committee has been meeting in the meantime, too, and maybe we haven't done a good job of reporting in since we just met yesterday. I'm not sure if Abby might want to say something about that because she wrote up some wonderful notes from that right now. Last night, yesterday, we had been doing research on different countries, FOI laws since July. And we got together yesterday to discuss our findings. Everyone is currently in the midst of researching their countries, but we noted a couple of things that we have in common. One is that we're having trouble locating particular pieces of information related and costs. And so we are going to reach out to those countries, FOIA offices, directly to see if we can get that information. Some other things that we discovered is that most of the countries have fewer FOIA requests each year than the US, but it's still unclear to us whether this is because those countries have procedures for accessing information outside of the FOIA. Ginger found out that in Chile, they have very stringent proactive disclosure provisions with a comprehensive list of what must be provided online and a requirement to update that information every 30 days. And then James found that in Switzerland there's an accelerated appeal system that helps the parties reach an amicable resolution. So these three issues, we are thinking they form the basis of our recommendations. We plan on completing our research by the end of October. And that's all I have. Okay, sounds great. Thank you. Okay. Hello? I'm sorry? Someone else on the phone? No, that's all that I have. Sorry. Oh, okay. Thanks, Abby. Really appreciate that. Okay. No other time volume. We look forward to your next committee report. Subcommittee report, rather, at our next meeting. And it has to be more than one minute. So I promised Jason and Ryan a lot of time, and I think you now have it. And I'm very much looking forward to hearing what you have all pulled together. I know you've been working very hard, and I'm very grateful for that. I'm looking around. I know Lee and Tom are also on that subcommittee, so feel free to chime in. And Bradley, sorry about that. Yes. And James Jacobs is on Yes. And I believe that Kirsten circulated and should also be in hard copy in your folders, assuming you have anything in your folders. The hard copy of what the subcommittee has pulled together. And does it look fairly similar to the one that we had circulated a couple weeks ago or has it changed? It has only changed in that we're presenting in the main seven recommendations, not eight here for the full committee's consideration. I do hope that James on the phone has an opportunity to present his ideas about what might still be a recommendation, one or more. Can I just yield? If Ryan can yield to me for one second. As a point of privilege, I'd like to say something to Melanie, which is that I don't know whether I'm going to be invited to your retirement party after the session, but I want to say that you are an unsung hero of the government. The Office of Information Policy Dick Huff, Dan Metcalf and yourself have been pillars for hundreds of agencies for decades. Government service of 30 something years. I had 33 and you said 36. You know, we work outside the spotlight. People don't know what you do. The FOIA Handbook is used by thousands out there in the larger world, larger community. I point to it all the time in private practice with commercial requesters and I say that the expertise is unparalleled and so I just want to say my own thank you for your public service which has gone not unnoticed by some of us. So with that, Ryan is going to start us off and then I think what Alina wanted us to do is rapidly kind of walk through the seven recommendations just as kind of the just to give a little praisy or a summary of each and then go back and for people to dive in on each one, but to sort of give the landscape both for us and for the larger audience as to what the subcommittee has been recommending. And it can be done in a more leisurely pace. You don't have to do it rapidly. Alright, so hi, Ryan Law. So thank you Jason and Alina and I'll second Jason's comments here, Melanie. The one thing I've learned from you and hope to aspire to do is every time you've appeared before Congress you seem so calm and collected and I hope I don't ever have to be in that position but I aspire to be just like you in that regard, so thank you. So the Records Management Subcommittee since our last full meeting has met three times and we've been busy at work going through our recommendations. We have today plan to present seven proposed recommendations and we'll pause after each to collect your feedback and comments and hopefully we have a good discussion. So I want to kick off by jumping right in and talking a little bit about recommendation one. So as part of can you go to the next one Kirsten? And so our first recommendation is around agency handbooks. So section G of the FOIA requires that agencies make available for public inspection electronic format a reference guide for the public. It also includes three requirements. So index of agency information systems a description of those major information systems and record locator systems maintained by the agency and then finally handbook for obtaining various types of information for the public. So these FOIA handbooks and reference guides are available on agency websites and part of our process was to review many of those guides and what we found is some agencies do it very well. Some agencies handbooks have not been updated in some time. We found that there were some agencies that provided really good information about their privacy act systems but not a lot of information about their general records about how records are maintained and stored in some agencies. So we felt this this is an important recommendation because now that agencies are accepting requests via FOIA.gov the FOIA handbook is one of the first things that the requester sees when they go on to FOIA.gov and they select the agency. The FOIA handbook is one of the first things they hear they see. And so the stature has increased as a result. And so we look to those guides or this handbooks and we had several recommendations about we wanted to ensure that agencies would want a recommendation will encourage DOJ and OIP to have agencies review their handbooks to ensure that they're up to date that they they meet the needs of their requester community and to identify record systems and databases that are not limited to privacy act systems to identify record schedules and then importantly information about how email is stored at the agency. Including information about Capstone if agencies have adopted a Capstone approach to managing email records identifying how those records are stored and providing additional information to the public so they can submit tailored, specific narrowed requests for information. And so our recommendations you know ask that we undertake a review and update of agency reference guides to ensure they're incorporating records management related guidance to increase their usefulness to the public. In addition to that we feel that OIP part of that should be that OIP should look at their FOIA website guidance to see if any tweaks or updates to there might support that effort. Similarly the FOIA assessment toolkit might be a useful update to the toolkit for self-assessments that OIP's put together. Might be very helpful in helping agencies ensure that their handbooks are of greatest utility to their requester community. And then finally to also report on their efforts to update their handbooks in the in upcoming chief FOIA officer reports. Similarly I think OGIS also has an important role here in suggesting improvements and identifying best practices calling out agencies that do reference guides very well and putting them on a pedestal for other agencies to see and to hopefully adopt some of their best practices. Also in integrating records management features in FOIA guidance we recently learned that the administrative conference of the United States adopted a recommendation which kind of helps our argument here around ensuring that agencies maintain on their websites information informing the public about the availability of certain guidance documents and facilitating access to those records and we feel that our recommendation here aligns closely to that. And then finally maybe most importantly as agencies are updating these guides we feel it's very important that FOIA staff should collaborate with records management professionals and privacy professionals and others in their agency to ensure that those perspectives are also conveyed to the public as well. Jason what did I miss? I think you got it. Each of these I think we'll pause to see if there's any questions, comments, concerns from the group. Sure. Hi this is Patricia Webb. So I just recently updated my FOIA homepage at NLRB and a big thank you goes to Melanie and her office. I reached out to Bobby to Labian and one of his folks Karen Hopkins was wonderful and she went through our proposed new FOIA homepage and made wonderful comments so I wanted to give her a shout out but I guess I have a couple of comments. One I think there's a difference between the FOIA handbook and the FOIA reference guide as I'm understanding it first when you say FOIA reference guide you're referring to the FOIA reference guide that each agency has on their FOIA homepage is that right? Yes I believe so. Okay and then the FOIA handbook we also have our FOIA handbook online because it's a big bear of a document that lays out like the application of the various FOIA exemptions I have to say in my experience I've never had a FOIA requester ever refer to our FOIA handbook and usually I'm the FOIA public liaison for my agency right now usually I'll get phone calls and I will walk through our FOIA reference guide online and answer questions but a lot of times I don't even think they read that you know it's almost like when I go in to get my car I don't care what the mechanic does just as long as it's running and I think you guys have these are all things that are of interest to me as a FOIA professional but I don't know that most of our FOIA requesters really care about how we store our email or how we store our records I mean in my final response letters I always describe the search and what we did but I don't think that the FOIA requester community really cares about that or I think the bottom line for them is you know really get me the records I asked for but I could be wrong I have folks here on this committee who are part of the requester community so I will defer to them and this is just my two cents for it I find everything that you said of interest to me and by the way when I updated my FOIA website we certainly contacted our records management officer as well as our privacy officer and also had the help of my OCIO folks so we did implement this and I think that would be a great best practice but those are my two cents thank you this is Melanie I can I had a couple comments with this we typically use handbook and reference guide interchangeably so I think most agencies have one thing and we certainly for FOIA.gov have just been using the term FOIA reference guide but it's intended to be the document that agencies have been required for a long long time to have and in the statute it says handbook but we would just call it the reference guide I thought I really liked this idea the couple things I had that just echoed exactly the comments we just heard I think this is it was a perfect project to have input from the requester community as well as agencies in terms of like what features what aspects of agency reference guides do people find the most helpful because we certainly learned when we were building FOIA.gov that requesters totally have that mindset of a Google search they just want to type in a topic in a search bar and so before we spend a lot of time having agencies list things and catalog things that the community is not going to use that to make their request then we haven't really moved the ball forward so it seemed to me like this is a great project and we thought immediately when I read this I thought oh we could do something sort of like what we did with the FOIA REG template have a group with both agencies and requesters look at some examples it would be great like if OGIS could sort of do some screening and say here's like 10 reference guides that are horrific to us here's 10 that look very non-user friendly and then we can kind of go from there but I think there's a lot we can do to work with this and then just to let you know we purposely put the reference guides on the so front and center on FOIA.gov because we had the REG agency REG's there but then we thought oh gosh does Aunt Betty that lives in Omaha really want to look at your FOIA REG's no she'd rather look at something Q&A that says speaks in plain language and so that's why we put both resources there. I think it depends totally on who the requesters you're dealing with are I know I spend an inordinate amount of time explaining to usually lit against rather than requesters what we have where we store how we're able to search those records and what we're able to do with what we have and unfortunately I also spend a lot of time trying to dig into and understand what a system is if I can't readily find that information so I think for those of us who have to deal with the incredibly savvy requesters who really do want to know every single detail and get in the weeds of what you're doing and who are ready to challenge you to challenge your search declarations in court if what you say doesn't exactly comport to what's online I think having this update would be incredibly helpful for those who are in that position. Okay, yeah, James. So James Stoker turned into Washington University, speaking for historians and I think to a certain extent for other researchers in many cases when we make FOIA requests we kind of assume I think correctly that we know more about the subject than the people who are going to end up doing the search and so it's very useful to know what records they're looking at particularly when it concerns historical data because oftentimes we'll have an idea of where the appropriate records lie and kind of guide the person doing the search to the right records so the more transparency there is about that the better from our perspective. I'm going to just call out on Michael Morrissey from the Requestor perspective any feedback you might want to share? Thank you, yeah. Okay, yes. Can you hear me? Yes, loud and clear. Yeah, it's Michael Morrissey. It's great to hear Capstone called out and I think this has been a really wonderful perspective because I think agencies have really, really improved their FOIA pages. A lot of agencies have really improved their FOIA pages over the last few years and I think it's great to see a lot of these reading rooms come to life. I remember for years talking with FOIA offices and they only had like 10 megabytes or 20 megabytes of storage in their FOIA reading room which was pretty limited and it seems like a lot of those limitations are no longer present. One of the things that I think, you know, I think it's really challenging to come up with resources that Requestors are going to take advantage of, I think having sort of indexes or detailed technical dives is sort of how stuff is structured is really tough and I think one of the surprising things to me as sort of Capstone has pushed agencies to improve their email retention and management strategies is like I think that's an opportunity for resources that say hey, if you want to request email from my agency here's what you should know and there are a few agencies that have example requests of like how to, if you request an email this is some stuff to keep in mind. Here's some sample language that might make this more successful and I think Requestors do really respond to materials that are like here's what you should know for requesting emails from Agency X or here's what you should think about when requesting historical files from Agency Y and doing it more less as sort of like our comprehensive FOIA guide where people are kind of expected to really sit down and dive through it and more kind of guiding people with some of the most common request types some of our most popular guides and resources that we've worked on for Requestors are very basic tips on like here's really understandable language about putting together a few waiver requests or what's the definition of this because that's something like even basic stuff like that OIP has really detailed guide in some sort of the criteria and a lot of agencies do a good job of including that but it's really really hard for Requestors to understand okay what does that actually mean in plain language I can understand and I think that sort of context is really challenging so I think using Capstone as an opportunity for the agencies that are participating in it to think about resources like how can we guide Requestors all right well how can we help Requestors wait the other comments on the first recommendation okay so we'll move on we have six more to go Alina how do you wish to proceed do you want to get a sense of the committee or do you want to march through sure I'm happy to get a sense of the committee maybe Michael tune back in do you want to take an I don't think we need to take an informal vote at this point okay I mean what I'm generally hearing I'll just try to quickly summarize I'm hearing some support from some corners of the table and so it seems like it's a good idea generally to move forward on the recommendation how it's implemented I think is the key right it's always the follow-up so is that a fair summary everyone agree everyone on the phone who's still left on the phone who hasn't hung up on us as procedurally here what Ryan and I and the committee members would do is take back whatever feedback from here and we'll proceed march forward either whether it's December or the next meeting to present what we are proposing as our subcommittee report and so we really do want to you know take the temperature of the room and figure out if there is a consensus to move forward on all of these so so Jason before you go on I heard a beep Michael are you back on hi sorry about that I'm in a basement for solidarity with everybody so you left us on a cliffhanger what requesters want I think I think trying to experiment with really readable targeted materials rather than hey here's our fully a guide maybe almost more similar to sort of the wonderful blog post that they would just put out you know like here's what you need to know about requesting emails from our agency and that sort of thing you know I think requesters do really really appreciate it and use stuff that sort of simple action as item oriented and kind of written from sort of specific point of view versus a more comprehensive resource that does put more work on them okay thanks Michael I'll just say that I respect the opinions that Patricia and Melanie and others have said that it may be that the the typical forerequest doesn't necessarily ask for things or think about records categories or records management as part of a FOIA request but those of us who know what the resources of agencies are in terms of their file plans their schedule particularly their record schedules the fact that a capstone 6.1 general record schedule exists it seems to me that with a minimal effort one could provide links and provide just a little bit of a guide in wherever FOIA requesters are so that they know something more about the workings of the agency not every requester will care I suspect that there's a segment of requesters that would benefit from the way the government itself categorizes its records and talks about its policies and so it's in that spirit that we're putting this forward this is Emily can you hear me yeah if you can speak up a little bit that would be even better okay great sorry I've tried to call back in a couple of times I keep getting questions I'm not sure what's going on probably on my end I just wanted to echo the sentiment that this sort of information would be extremely helpful to requesters and whether or not organizations like mine or others that you know attempt to really understand how records are managed and cast before filing a FOIA request even the most savvy requester I mean cases where it's rare but we've gone to discovery to understand how records are managed and cast and I think it's not just that this would be helpful to the savvy requester but I think it would really build a culture of understanding where if people were more accustomed to this information being available and there were more trainings and more you know in my world we develop practice pointers for attorneys or others so we're interested in doing FOIA requests where this information is kind of filtered down a little bit more and there becomes a culture around that and an understanding that that information is available I think that it might it would have long term beneficial effect okay well thank you Emily this is Ryan again so your point is a really natural transition to our second recommendation which is around training for FOIA professionals on records management so can I pass the ball to you Jason we have it up on the screen for the wider audience we recommend that the archivist of the U.S. direct NARA and request the DOJ OIP offered targeted training selected topics in federal records management to FOIA officers, FOIA public liaisons and federal agencies and otherwise include a FOIA module and selected records management training courses open to all federal employees it's certainly clear it's been clear to me for many years as a person in my past and that OIP does a tremendous job in teaching FOIA and is looked to as the you know the gold standard there are other places that one could have FOIA training but it is OIP that has led the effort similarly on records management NARA has in the past done both face to face courses I participated one course for lawyers for many years and is now I think concentrating on online training for the most part going forward regardless of how the formatting is what this recommendation is saying is that we're urging that there's be some consideration on both halves that in when FOIA training is conducted that there's some reference some module some something that ties in records management concerns so that FOIA people in the larger FOIA community that are taking the wonderful FOIA courses DOJ and other places are you know understand what capstone is and understand what electronic record keeping is at their agencies and so know where to go for potentially responsive records so I think that's on that side and on the NARA side if there's the opportunity to build in some FOIA awareness or access purposes that records management is not just to preserve stuff but also to make available to the wider public I think that would be a good thing I think people know it generally but the people who take courses may I think only to the benefit of knowing something so that you don't have siloed worlds of FOIA over here and records management expertise over here it's all federal records slash agency records with an asterisk I know the difference and one could have an esoteric conversation about that but in general the Venn diagram is that 98% is all records of the government and should be thought of in a way that's more integrated so that's what this recommendation is all about Hi this is Patricia Watt I wholeheartedly support this recommendation and I hear Jason compliments about OIP their courses are excellent and I think they would do with all a great service if they were able to offer courses on anyone else comments around the table comments on the phone okay that was an easier one great okay next recommendation put up on the screen number three working on it great we recommend the archivist of the US request that the DOJ OIP provide further best practice guidance on what constitutes FOIA for FOIA purposes an adequate search of agency records managed in electronic form including but not limited to email in capstone repository so when we looked at the across the board on the chief FOIA I'm going to dovetail this conversation very much follows on what Eric and Michael were speaking to we also read all the reports there is definitely a movement in government recognizing leveraging technology many agencies are talking about it in various ways across the spectrum of expertise what we didn't see in the chief FOIA officer reports and it may well be that agencies are doing it but not reporting out in that vehicle but mention made of e-discovery tools that use what I consider and what many consider to be best practices in the space involving AI machine learning technology assisted review predictive coding we are entering a world of electronic government the transition to electronic records memo is pointing the way post-2022 for the entire government to be essentially thinking about digital forms of records and permanent preservation and FOIA access will be to those ever larger collections of electronic records of which capstone is the first harbinger but it's not the last it will be in all kinds of formats and whatever it seems to me that we should be doing more work on this and what makes this recommendation is would build on the excellent guidance that DOJ already has with respect to FOIA processing but to put an emphasis on using the best available tools out there. Now part of this recommendation still is to be drafted which is that we suggest an appendix A to a report out by the subcommittee that we have the requirements with respect to conducting searches using e-discovery protocols and we think that such a best practices guide a protocol set of specs would be of help in developing RFIs or RFPs by agencies including under the current GSA Schedule 36 for records management or otherwise and so what we're saying is that we would be recommending that there's some focused attention on the world of search technology very much in parallel with what the technology subcommittee I would expect would be reporting out as best practices here. So with that we'll pause to see if there's any comments or questions. This is Chris Knox. Jason under the last subcommittee there was a recommendation included for agencies to adopt or look into adopting e-discovery technologies for search. Is this just further deepening that recommendation or can you explain the difference between this and what the I think this goes a step further because I think there is when you read the chief FOI officer reports there is a in many cases there is a touchstone of mention of e-discovery tools but the e-discovery tools as you know that are out there are they provide a tremendous opportunity to do searching in more efficient ways than simply the baseline of deduplication or email threading or keyword search and so what we didn't see is some at least mention it's really a vision for the future but mention of the fact that there is this ability to perform more efficient searches and there's going to be a need given the growth of capstone repository so I think the prior recommendation was there as kind of a baseline this builds on it and it's focused on giving greater direction and again it would be helped by an appendix I think to our report where it gives an e-discovery workflow that's applicable to FOIA and certainly would want to have conversations with the technology subcommittee as well so that we're not at cross purposes and I think I heard someone on the phone someone on the phone so I always love being a guidance from VIP but I think this one might be a bit difficult for them because you know just as the gentleman who we're presenting earlier today Eric Michael mentioned you know every agency is different and has different tools and I think we're all using what we have to as best as we can so I don't know you know I'm just looking at it I wonder if that might be a difficult task for OIP and I you know I I'm very I'm very aware of the you know with capstone I do know the volume of emails that we have to review it's just going to increase and increase more and more it's already quite voluminous and I'm not sure what the solution is there but that's my piece okay thanks Patricia anyone else on the phone want to comment or ask questions anyone at the table on recommendation 3 okay you have now gotten the sense of the committee thanks okay thank you I will go on so recommendation 4 we're up to 4 Kristen the clipper is being a little temperamental difficult there we go and recommendation 4 is that we recommend that as part of the federal electronic records modernization initiative known as FIRME the archivist of the United States Direct Narrative Incorporate and further develop the idea of public access to federal records including through FOIA this is a recommendation that essentially is raising the profile of FOIA as part of FIRME access is already embedded if you look at the details of FIRME it's there somewhere it's in a maintenance and use section of FIRME in some specifications that at 2.01 records of current and former employees must be managed in a manner that supports searching in response to information requests including FOIA but what we're advocating here is that NARA's initiative in this area include a use case involving FOIA access we had conversations with NARA we should say the subcommittee all along has been working Alina and Kristen put us with a liaison of Kyle who works for Lawrence Brewer and Kyle Douglas and we've appreciated his efforts and the efforts of others who come in to talk to us about this so I think we sort of we had this conversation at some point along the way and we got support in that NARA would it's a good thing for us to be advocating for a FOIA use case I'll defer to Alina if you want to supplement what NARA's are on the NARA side but anyway this is something that we believe NARA is already on board with I think that's a fair characterization based on the feedback we've gotten so far so I'm watching Martha Shakerhead she's been working on the Fermi initiative as well and understands it a lot more than I do questions from anyone at the table or comments on the phone Jason I'll take five and you can fill the whereup where I've missed go right ahead okay so recommendation five want me to get a curious please as soon as he stands up though the battery may be dead okay sure so the subcommittee for recommendation five recommends that the archivist in the United States make a formal request to the chair of the agency the group from which we heard earlier this year we heard from some members of that group earlier this year and consider designating as a cross cutting project or priority area the issue of how agencies are doing and providing FOIA access to agency records in electronic or digital form as I mentioned we previously heard from several members of the committee and we heard this group is an independent entity established with an executive branch that addresses integrity, economy and effectiveness of issues that transcend government agencies so they're common to most federal agencies and one of the potential areas that we discussed one of our last committee meetings with that group was that we may consider recommending that we seek out that group to establish as a cross cutting area of interest or area that they'll look into in the future records management and FOIA and so we recommend that that the archivist either on his own or with the inspector general of NARA to formally request that they elevate the issue of how agencies are doing and providing access to records maintained in electronic form and so this may align with the new goals that were established in OMB memo 1921 which is electronic records management initiatives requiring agencies to manage all records in electronic format by the end of 2022 and to no longer store and maintain records in paper form and then finally we recommend that inspector general officers should consider establishing a point of contact who will function as in-house expert on records management access issues that will keep track of any audits conducted with respect to records management and potentially make recommendations there would I miss Jason I think you summarized it I think this recommendation came directly out of a public meeting where it seemed like it would be a good thing for us to formally recommend a that SIGI seriously consider the issues that are cross cutting across all agencies involving FOIA and we wanted just to push the issue forward in terms of a recommendation I'm looking at Tom because he I know commented earlier that you thought it was a very good idea any other thoughts he suggested at the meeting any other comments okay good job questions from anyone else at the table on recommendation 5 okay folks on the phone anyone have any questions or comments on recommendation 5 if anyone drop off it might be yeah all right I think you have a good sense of that so we're going to go on we're going to try to go on to number 6 thank you recommendation 6 is that we recommend the Archive of the United States Direct NARA and request that DOJ OIP each establish a liaison with the newly created Chief Data Officer CDO Council for the purpose of ensuring that CDO officials set a record keeping and FOIA requirements and how such laws apply to the maintenance of data within agencies the foundations and evidence based policy making act that passed in January of 2019 which incorporated the Open Government Data Act provides for a new Chief Data Officer Council the OMB memo M1923 that was dated July 10th 2019 which implements phase 1 of what will be a three phase program according to OMB implementing the evidence act talks about the setting up of a data governance body in each agency to enforce priorities for managing data as a strategic asset to support the agency in meeting its mission and the appendix to that OMB memo states that each agency's data governance body is to include the agency's General Counsel information officer senior agency official for records management and others in my perspective as a kind of information governance guide this is exactly the kind of thing that that I've been speaking to finding a champion a set of C-suite people who care about data strategy and the management of information what is missing in both the statute as well as the OMB memo other than the mention of Chief FOIA officers is a paragraph discussing the Federal Records Act or FOIA because the memo takes its cue from the statute talking about data and open data and the need for Chief Data Officers to be on top of many different aspects of the life cycle of data but as we all know data that is either generated by the U.S. Government or received and used by the U.S. Government are Federal Records and they're in large board agency records that are FOIA-able and so all this recommendation is is that when CDOs are set up at NARA and DOJ and that they be that we are recommending that they be tasked with the kind of clearing house function where they're at because of the future CDO Council when it's set up in whatever shape or form it's in that there's some attention paid to records along with considerations of putting data up on the web and making it available and making it accessible and machine-readable and all that so it's really injecting the notion of records because of this sort of a priori two statutes that have been long-standing for 50, 60, 70 years but not mentioned in otherwise, you know, recent guidance and so that's why we're pushing this forward as I think we have standing to do that as part of our committee. Jason I'll just add three points so first you mentioned the guidance I'm told is imminent and should be really soon on the some action items for the chief data officer role at each agency second one of the primary responsibilities of the chief data officer is to be responsible for the complete information life cycle and so that touches not only records management but the paperwork reduction act, the privacy act disclosure of information under the privacy act under FOIA as well and so it's important that professionals from those areas are involved in that process the recent guidance does as Jason point out suggest that agencies ensure that those professionals are included in the agency councils for the chief data officer there will be the government-wide council which will need representation so I think that's part of a recommendation here a third point which we discussed briefly at our last subcommittee meeting is to something we will need to think and talk about with our lead and Kirsten is on timing our recommendations for this committee will come out for the FOIA advisory committee will come out in 2021 2020 2020 I'm sorry the activities around the chief data officer and the evidence act implementation are happening now OMB is having orientation sessions for the three specific roles created under the evidence-based policymaking act I believe next week and so there will be a number of activities that begin as soon as this fall and winter that will need you know that we believe that FOIA officers and records professionals will have a role in participating in so it may be unprecedented to push forward a recommendation prior to our full recommendations coming out but it's something we should consider based on the timing of this so are there any questions comments about her reactions to that Patricia Lath I'm glad that you brought this on to my attention I'm not familiar with it can you tell me the who the chief data officer should be at each agency what are the requirements to designate this is Ryan Patricia you should look to OMB memo 1923 which was issued in July it doesn't specifically say who should be a chief data officer but it lists a number of roles and responsibilities and also knowledge and experience that that individual should have my experience is that agencies are doing different things I think the intention wasn't to require agencies to do any one specific thing they wanted to be flexible in that and so many agencies are hiring chief data officers as a new position some of those are GS employees and others are executive level other agencies some agencies are appointing existing staff for example at Treasury we've appointed not just one person but several to be the chief data officer until we're able to hire a designated chief data officer of which I am a member of that group so FOIA and records management already have a seat at the table so we're very happy about that so I would encourage you to take a look at that for more information but there is more guidance coming soon from OMB okay thank you I will look at that after the meeting thank you very much I believe in communication and talking together so I think it's a great idea for to establish this is Melnay I just wanted to let you know that within DOJ our chief data council includes OIP so we're already there good and you have a chief data officer yes our CIO is the chief data officer this is Tom Sussman I don't believe there is any protocol that would prevent the advisory committee from issuing a final recommendation on the subject in December I think we probably need that much notice with what we have and I guess the other question is given the speed at which this wonderful subcommittee especially you two guys have been working we may be ready to vote on the entire subcommittee recommendation in December and then either assist the other two subcommittees or perhaps come up with some more refined sort of stage 3 issues out of this that we could begin the process of exploring this is Ryan Tom I agree I think Jason could probably come up with 18 more recommendations for records management so that's a good idea I think if we might want to depending particularly on the guidance that comes from OMB next that will lay out some timelines, deadlines for specific action items for the CDO council for the CDOs at each agency and we could I think if we get some guidance if we're able to get a recommendation particularly that one done by December I think that would be very helpful and as for your broader point Tom it's appreciated as a friendly amendment to our remarks the thing is that I want to build in time for James and we are still talking about one or two possible further recommendations and so I'm not sure that the cycle will permit a complete slate being presented in December but we could certainly work on a report you know I'm sure Ryan and I can come up with something by this weekend if you want to again I think we've talked about this before I think we can be very flexible so piecemeal is also okay this recommendation in particular number six sorry this is Alina see I do it all the time this recommendation if it's time sensitive we can certainly entertain it sooner rather than later so December seems to be a good time is that can I see some nods around the table yeah nods on the phone okay I got a shore alright we'll hear my head nodding but I was agreeing well thank you thank you alright we'll talk about procedurely how we can transmit that to the full committee for about okay and the seventh recommendation Ryan you could change the slide yes oh you got it very good technology so we recommend that the archivists of the United States work with other governmental components and industry in promoting research into using artificial intelligence AI including machine learning technologies to do two things one to improve the ability to search through government electronic record repositories for responsive records and two to segregate sensitive material in government records including but not limited to material otherwise within the scope of the nine FOIA exemptions and so this this also comes from our reading of chief FOIA officer reports and what this committee has done in the past the I think as has been alluded to by our guest speakers Eric and Michael that there is a world of AI out there and but it hasn't specifically been tuned to FOIA or to sensitivities that are represented within the nine FOIA exemptions so part of this recommendation is to encourage research that the night or D part of government the agencies that are responsible for the networking information technology research and development program and other possible candidate agencies like OSTP or NIST who are chief privacy officers from selected agencies that this initiative is put forward to solve the problem that is looming which is that there will be hundreds of thousands millions tens of millions of electronic records for FOIA to do its job it would be great I think if machine learning tools that are out there could be tested and that supported through whatever grant or initiative or whatever money can be found to advance the ball so that we basically have a world where we can take a collection of a million electronic objects and through machine learning have the FOIA exempt material be brought to the four clusters that see patterns in the larger data set that oh this blob of stuff this subgroup is more likely to contain deliberative and predecisional stuff or privileged stuff or confidential proprietary stuff or law enforcement stuff these are not impossible tasks they are they are very much like the basic machine learning tools that any discovery for responsive records are not responsive it's just tuning the responsiveness question to a specific set of what the exemptions hold but it is something that you can't buy off the shelf as far as I'm aware although there are some solution providers that say some things in this space but it's not so easy to just take it and run with it today I think it would be more research that is focused on that and of course the broader issue of searching through large collections generally and I'm sure we can do a better job for capstone and otherwise for the government supporting machine learning tools that accomplish lots of search purposes so that's what this recommendation is about okay comments, questions hi this is Patricia Well I like this recommendation I had to I was assisting our congressional affairs office and I had to weed through 1600 emails none of them were my agency uses great search tools I support this the one thing Jason and Ryan maybe you could some thoughts I had is you know if someone's doing the research on this it would be the research is great but getting it out sharing it with the agencies is huge and I'm wondering could this be something that the chief FOIA officers council technology subcommittee is this something that these gentlemen so I guess one way of framing that is whether the recommendation should be revised to specifically call out the technology subcommittee to be a part of the process whether to be taking the lead or at least part of this I don't call them out in the current text and so I think that's well taken of course you guys need to not suns up but I mean to me it's Patricia Web again it seems like they've already begun the process I think they would be the perfect candidate for this research well they would be a platform for taking the good efforts that have been done by whomever ends up actually doing the work of this with a megaphone to the FOIA community and that I think is a very valuable point that you envision the agencies doing the research and sharing the information so it would be my dream that the NIDERD community which is the president publishes a research budget every year and that we get a line item for a billion dollars you know devoted to FOIA exception sensitivities in large data collections to use AI techniques short of that but what this is calling for is really a research by scientists at government agencies or at least the ability to grant or provide funds for that kind of research it's not for people with serious jobs doing FOIA work to devote some portion of their time to thinking about the best AI machine learning efforts while it can be supported by a whole bunch of agencies that we listed in our recommendation I think we really need to focus on those parts of the government that enable partnerships with the private sector to happen and produce real research this is Chris Knox as a side note I guess I'm sorry Jason I'm not clear you would have industry and who would be doing the research? Well that's for the NIDERD community and for whoever's involved in the rosiest scenario the archivist would make this recommendation it would be picked up by one or more places in government as putting on a regulatory agenda to do an action item agenda and then it can be figured out by an interagency task force it could be figured out by NSF there are any number of players in the space and as to how exactly the money where it would come from and how it would be spent we're not fleshing that out in this form if the sense of the committee is that we need to drill down and have a path forward for this I'd be happy to entertain that and have further conversations so that we're giving more direction to the archivist more is better than less and I see you also envision establishing a private public partnership definitely yes that would be prime of the options for this AI machine learning again it's Chris Knox AI machine learning has been mentioned 10 different times in this meeting would it be beneficial I don't know what our speakers look like in future meetings but if there was some way to find a government thought leader in this area that can talk about the part of the possible you touched on some of the possibilities but maybe driving a little deeper spending 15 minutes in a presentation maybe even 30 minutes thinking about what could be possible if research was done in this area would that benefit from that the committee benefit from that or does everybody have a general understanding of what we could be doing what is the art of possible here I think it's I'll defer to Alina for future meetings and what the agenda might be I think Chris we could certainly have a conversation offline as to whether having speech in a public forum would be a beneficial both to us as well as to the greater public at large I think the administration is very supportive in executive order on AI there are a lot of experts on AI what we need is to focus them on FOIA and on records concerns and so I'm happy to work with you and others to find the right people to maybe be the go to people who would receive such a recommendation and carry it forth there are people at NIST and there are people at NSF and there are people at NIDERD that I think would be interested my thought would be if we could get them to come speak to us and then we peak their interest in our particular topic that's kind of goes both ways I think we're open to that absolutely Kirsten and I this is Alina we don't have a speaker on deck for the December meeting so if there's interest in that we can certainly work on making that happen Kevin? This is Kevin I would actually have a personal interest in hearing that I wasn't sure how it was going to fit in at first because these recommendations are pretty far down the line and I wasn't sure if we would have time where we have scheduled but if you're telling us there's an opening and based on what Chris said I do buy into the idea very much that we can help prime the pump for the recommendations to go outward we've got nothing else lined up I'd love to hear that Sorry, is that Michael? No James James A quick comment if I may at the risk of seeming to be a shill my library, Stanford library is creating some open source software called EPAD EPAD and it is sort of what we're talking about here is incorporates techniques of CS and computational linguistics, AI and machine learning in the analysis and preservation and discovery of email archives so it might be something of interest for this committee to look at Sounds great and just one last comment I wasn't recommending that in any way hold up this recommendation I definitely support this recommendation 100% Alina, I twice have promised that James has an opportunity to speak about a further recommendation that we didn't include because it still is in play among ourselves but if with your allowance James Jacobs will can speak to what his idea is it's sort of a vision both the records of management and the vision committee here but James, go ahead Thanks Thanks for giving time Yeah, there's one further recommendation that is in the process of being discussed and hashed out I really appreciate Jason's perspective on this so the recommendation is for the Archivist of the United States to direct NARA and OGIS and request DOJ and OIT to encourage agencies to work toward a goal of collecting, describing and giving access to FOIA related records in one or more central repositories in standardized ways and this is just the current draft recommendation that we're coming to it's really it might split into two recommendations one about the use of central FOIA repositories as a good goal and one on the use of XML and machine readable formats and metadata and it comes out of FOIA kind of coalesced from two places for me one is Document Cloud Public Catalog and Database and a hat tip out to Michael and the Muck Rock gang for putting that together and the other place that it comes out of is Representative Quigley's Transparency in Government in Government Act that he has submitted, introduced in every Congress since at least the 111 Congress and one of the pieces of that Transparency in Government Act is a section on creating a structured database of completed FOIA requests and so we're we're still working on the wording of these of this recommendation slash perhaps two recommendations but that's coming down down the line and we hope to have that together in the next month or so Does that make anything Jason? Yes, great I just, this is Melanie we I just want to direct you to the work of ATNF that we did prior to launching the National FOIA Portal because one of the things we were researching was the concept of a World Government-wide FOIA Library and the conclusions, the bottom line conclusion of ATNF and DOJ at the conclusion of our work there was that metadata tagging was really the best way to do it as opposed to I think what a lot of us thought about which was like sort of having a website where all of the stuff like physically resides we're sort of past that now so the work is there in the report from in connection with the National FOIA Portal so that's just be an important thing to look at Thanks Melanie, I appreciate that Sure I had looked at ATNF and the other place that's interesting to me is data.gov which is doing forward data across the government what I feel like would be interesting to do for FOIA records so I'll definitely look at the ATNF work and incorporate that part of what we're working in as well is the FOIAonline.gov which does start to have a central digital repository but there are only a small subset of agencies currently currently using that system so we're working on that Okay, any other comments on potential recommendation number eight Okay Before we move on to public comments, I want to just give an opportunity to Eric and Michael to say yay or nay to continuing your mission because it looks like we're giving you some more homework So they're conferring they'll get back to us Alright, Ryan and Jason do you have a good sense of where you're at feedback from the committee It's very helpful the comments today and frankly I'm going to have to return I'm going to have to go back to REI and return the flak jacket that I bought last night in anticipation of today I think it's been a very useful session and we'll just move forward finalizing the report as best we can Alright, great Thank you very much for all your hard work I appreciate it Okay, so believe it or not we're already at 12.45 12.44 I should say so at this time I want to give members of the public the opportunity to comment for the next 15 minutes we will hear comments from those of you who are in attendance I'm also going to look to Sheila Portanova our attorney advisor at OGIS who's been monitoring the live stream if there are any comments or questions from those folks watching us on live stream you'll read them out loud to us that would be great when you come up to the mic please state your name and affiliation if applicable Thanks My name is Alex Howard I'm currently affiliated with eplurbusin.org though I have worked with non-governmental groups that focus on open government transparency and government for good governance so it's great to be back here thank you again for making this forum open and accessible to the public particularly on a live stream which extends the reach and also makes this accessible to people thereafter and as you know on YouTube there's automatic transcription it's great to see accessibility continue to be a priority here at the archives I was unable to find the FOIA recommendations OGIS this discussion on its website blog or social media when I asked about it on YouTube the archive staff responded to me where they had linked to that document at PDF I asked if they could tweet that out and they said they would and that experience is a great example of how the US government can be immediately responsive when they hadn't made an asset available to the public in a proactive way and I wanted just to highlight that as an example that I personally experienced always the case across the agencies second I wanted to give some thanks to Director Presta for her long record of service while we've had our differences on policy and the performance of OIP at various times I've always appreciated your willingness to meet, to take questions particularly in the new FOIA.gov and to stand up for the value of transparency and open government on behalf of our country at a lot of international forums so thank you for that I hope the Department of Justice finds a worthy candidate who will build upon your record at OIP and improve compliance across the federal government particularly in the creation of some of the resources that have been discussed here which I believe really should fall within DOC's work not just to ask questions but to lead in terms of compliance and maybe to use your authority to enforce compliance at some point which you have under the statute there was an earlier reference from the State Department staff adopting a release to one release to all policy for the FOIA for disclosure which many the public knows about because of the publication of former Secretary of State's email at FOIA.state.gov Issues on discoverability of those records in a personal system highlighted a major issue for FOIA officers across state and federal governments with respect to responsive searches in the use of e-discovery tools that have been referenced here and I'm grateful that OIP, OGIS, and NERA have reminded the agencies their records must be memorialized when public business is conducted in private systems and hope that you will all remind agencies of the guidance with respect the need to make sure that anything that happens on personal devices or email is put into places where the FOIA officers can find it. Director Postey is there any update on the policy for release to one release to all that DOJ took public comment from over two years ago are members of the committees aware of any agencies that have adopted such a policy on their own or the impact of doing so? I always thank you for your initial comments especially, Alex. I always like to make sure people remember that release to one release to all is a DOJ initiative and so we started it with the pilots and obviously we've been champions, we've used that word before, we really believe in the idea of it but as you know and as I've explained time and time again in answer to your question there are these difficult resource issues that agencies face with posting everything that's released under the FOIA and concerns by agencies that doing more posting means they might have less resources available to do processing and so it's a tradeoff that's it's not an easy tradeoff so what we've been we encourage agencies to release as much proactively as they can and obviously you know I am a big proponent of to the extent agencies can feasibly post FOIA process records online they should and I of course smiled when I heard that State has been doing it for quite some time and we do have other agencies that are following on their own a release to one release to all and then of course with the amendments to the FOIA we now have all agencies are required to post at three requests so we definitely have a lot more proactive posting going on obviously I share the interest that you have in making as much information available proactively so that people don't have to make requests for it that benefits everyone in FOIA and we certainly love it to be able to point someone to something on the website so we continue to encourage agencies to do it and definitely have examples of agencies that are doing it thank you for that the research I've seen at the state and city level shows that proactive disclosure as open government data does in fact have an impact upon FOIA and the costs thereby and since our federal budget is quite a bit of money on FOIA hundreds of millions of dollars perhaps annually it seems to make sense from a cost perspective to continue to drive agencies to be posting those documents and to direct people to that I'm glad to hear that data.gov came up since that does seem to be the natural place for the government to be posting responsive records in a structured format there's a specific question that is also relevant to your office I'm glad to hear from other members of the committee you all may be well aware that when President Obama directed DOJ to look at extending this policy in December 2016 he also established a cross agency priority goal in the freedom of information act that cap goal was then posted to performance.gov it was removed from performance.gov in this administration and there has been no one in the administration who has been willing to explain why it was removed. Can anyone here speak to why that cap goal doesn't exist anymore or whether it might be a useful thing for achieving many of the goals that you all have described I'm sorry to hear that or not hear it given that we're discussing recommendations to improve our nation's FOIA compliance and performance it seems relevant that a directive from the past president to make this a cross agency priority was removed will consider making a recommendation that such a goal be restored since it seems to be directly relevant to improving records management and to saving the nation money and being more accountable to the public with respect to that will the committee making your recommendations to Congress regarding the FOIA reform bill that members are drafting in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision on FOIA I can certainly respond to that it has not been on our agenda on any of the subcommittees so for committee members something to chew over and see whether you want to discuss it within your own subcommittees so putting it out there draft is an active participation and I would encourage you all to participate in offering your expertise on this count I just feel like I don't want to leave your other your previous question just completely left hanging you've been here for the whole meeting and this is the quintessential example of a significant agency and both private and public sector group right here and you heard from all these different subcommittees you heard recommendation after recommendation to me what you just witnessed for two hours is a beautiful example of solid FOIA work being done across the government there's certainly no lack of interest motivation initiative for FOIA across the government so I'm sort of surprised that you would say that after listening for two hours well I've been recording on the United States government's compliance with FOIA for a decade here in DC and I've gone to the hearings at which Congress has held your office accountable for that performance and I think we all can agree that when a president's management agenda includes certain CAP goals it creates an understanding that this is a priority that also sends a signal across government so while I am very grateful for the service and the commitment and the people here who are in government and for the people who are volunteering to serve in this community across the country I think it is also fair to point out where and when given priorities have been deep prioritized without any accountability or transparency and the impact that may be having upon the shared goals of the people around this table and online now the US law respect the evidence-based policymaking act which contains the open government data act requires agencies to publish an enterprise data inventory here's what we've got it does not require them to publish the data underline it but it does require them to make a listing of that that data inventory should help both FOIA officers and request to just know what agencies record have and whether they've already been disclosed and the press and watchdogs and congress time are members of the committee aware of any guidance from the office of management and budget regarding harmonizing the open government data act which was signed into law in January and proactive disclosure of records released under FOIA if not would you recommend that they do so Jason Barrett I think your point is is one that should be thought as part and parcel of the recommendation we're putting forward here which is that CDOs of agencies make CDOs of NARA and DOJ and those that are well aware of records issues make known to the greater CDO community what kind of expectations there are FOIA and the Federal Records Act and so I think we could certainly incorporate your point in conversations going forward with the CDOs that are knowledgeable about records issues informing the greater CDO community Thank you as I've raised at different forums related to this committee I mean others there's a substantial community of practice around the proactive disclosure of information as open government data that existed prior to the enactment of this law if you look under project open data online many of the best practices and ways to improve disclosure already exists there the challenge that advocates continue to see is there is a void between the web staff publishing this information and the people who are operating FOIA reading rooms and I encourage your committee in addition to these recommendations to look at how and where these reading rooms are actually being used we heard a comment from this gentleman about some people agencies still talking about publishing records online of course Congress has repeatedly instructed agencies to use these reading rooms but when advocates realize we see this usage is not actually steady and if there's a difference between what's being published in these reading rooms and what's happening elsewhere in the agency it's not serving the public well so I'm really glad to hear that you all are actively discussing these things but it's surprising that there are still staff who aren't thinking about publishing records online since the FOIA is not just for the press it's not just for the business it's for the public to gain records and benefit from them so one last question on this count EPA's recent FOIA regulations which I think we can all agree are not harmonized with the 2016 FOIA Improvement Act recited by the agency as reason not to accept FOIA requests over email do any of the members of this committee have a view on whether agencies should accept FOIA requests by email or relatedly the character limit at FOIA online which poses an artificial limit upon a given FOIA request that is not laid out in the statute there's alright you just really wanted to have a nice debate here so there are sound reasons for agencies if they have a portal to you have direct agencies to portals rather than emails that's efficient that gives efficiencies to everyone these are all things that you've heard me explain before Alex that if you have a portal like we did with the national FOIA portal where you have the requirements for each agency for making a request and you have them have the request to then have to fill out those boxes in order for their request to go in that means that when the request goes in it's perfected it's perfected you don't have to then go back and forth you didn't give us this you didn't give us that there is obviously a a gut appeal to using email I understand that people think oh I'd rather just shoot an email to the agency but if they just shoot an email and don't give all the information that they need to give for it to be a proper FOIA request we haven't helped improve FOIA administration you know we've just made it worse so there are we we're studying the national FOIA portal that became very clear that there are benefits to using a portal over email now we have at DOJ long told agencies that there needs to be electronic ways to make a request and we've actually asked agencies in chief FOIA officer reports do you accept request electronically so we certainly are well past the days where you had an agency say I only take it by paper copy that's gone I don't have either email or portal one or the other that's definitely our guidance to agencies and I don't know of any agency that doesn't take one or the other so are you saying that justice department is saying that there needs to be one or the other so that the agency cannot accept it online for whatever reason then they need to have an email address sure it's hard for me to think I mean at this day and age it's hard for me to imagine that you can't do one or the other obviously not every well every agency has electronic availability through the national FOIA portal so I can answer that if you want to make a request electronically to any agency use the national FOIA FOIA portal and there you go so you would never be forced to use anything other than electronic I would encourage you all to continue to speak and engage with the requestor community I think you will find that the experiences and stories that they have to share are evidence that in 2019 there are still things which we would be surprised by in this day and age and that as you research recommendations that the requestor community's experiences are incorporated into your recommendations and they're represented here at the table and in different forms because I do think that the concentric nature of these discussions sometimes doesn't incorporate those perspectives or the realities that people experience on the ground when people receive records that are wholly redacted and then that's counted as being partially responsive I think it jukes the stats that's one example but there are certainly many others too and I do appreciate the opportunity to ask these questions I do wish that more people made use of this time Alright, thank you Alex Just wanted to ask Sheila are there any questions or comments or statements on online Unfortunately I'm having some technical difficulties here on our live stream I can't see it but the last time I checked there were the last time I was able to see it there were not any questions Alright, well I don't see anyone else lining up at the mic so I think we're done with the public comment section and I think we're three minutes over so I appreciate all the hard work that has been going into everything we've been talking about I think we're doing some great work please keep it up, the subcommittees should continue to meet we certainly invite everyone to visit OGIS' website and social media for more information about our activities next meeting is Friday Friday December 6, 2019 Not this Friday I just wanted to emphasize Friday because it's a little off day we usually are on Thursdays Friday December 6, 2019 at 10am, you'll be watching us on live stream Melanie Thank you again for your time and participation Kirsten always reminds me to remind everyone on the committee please leave behind their National Archives folder so we can recycle them for the next time and actually have content in them so we can reuse them for future meetings Any questions from anyone? Not hearing anyone on the phone of any questions? Okay, great We stand adjourned Thanks everyone