 This meeting is being recorded. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome and thank you for joining today's FOIA Advisory Committee meeting. Before we begin, please ensure that you have opened the WebEx participant and chat panels by using the associated icons located at the bottom of your screen. Please note, all audio connections are currently muted and this conference is being recorded. If you present a comment via WebEx audio, please click the raise hand icon on your WebEx screen. The raise hand icon is located in the lower toolbar. You hear a beep tone when you are unmuted. At that time, you may state your name and question. Attendees dialed in on the phone only conference line can dial pound two. You will hear a notification when you are unmuted. At that time, please do state your name and question. If you require technical assistance, please send a chat to the event producer. With that, I will turn the meeting over to Dr. Colleen Shogan, Archivist of the United States. Dr. please go ahead. Thank you and good morning. My name is Colleen Shogan. I'm the 11th Archivist of the United States and it's my pleasure to welcome you here to the 7th meeting of the 5th term of the FOIA Advisory Committee. I do want to acknowledge that today is Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day and I would like to honor those who lost their lives on that fateful day 82 years ago. The National Archives mission to provide access to government records goes hand in hand with the Freedom of Information Act and this committee's work. As the nation's record keeper, we preserve truth and the lessons of our past and the work to ensure that our holdings are available to anyone who needs access to them. We are also committed to furthering the principles of openness and transparency by providing guidance to federal agencies about efficiently managing their records. For FOIA to be effective, agencies have to be in a position to be able to locate and share the records that are being requested. This committee is instrumental in helping us find more innovative ways to make that process work better. Just over 10 years ago, on December 5th, 2013, the Second Open Government National Action Plan was released. It included a set of commitments to modernize and improve FOIA and its processes. One of these commitments was to create a FOIA Advisory Committee with members representing both requesters and the agencies that provide this important service. This committee was established the following year. Here we are one decade later and the committee has issued four reports that has produced 52 recommendations. I understand that the current term is evaluating those past recommendations and analyzing how agencies have implemented them. I look forward to reading about what you have learned and reviewing any additional recommendations you may have when I receive them with the final report at the end of this year. Before I turn it over to Alina, I want to give kudos to the dedicated staff of the Office of Government Information Services, known as OGIS, whose hard work supporting this committee has made these 52 recommendations and today's meeting possible. Now, over to you, Alina. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Schilder. Good morning, everyone, and welcome as the Director of the Office of Government Information Services and this committee's chairperson. It is my pleasure to welcome all of you to the seventh meeting. It's hard to believe of our fifth term of the FOIA Advisory Committee. The Federal Advisory Committee Act, FACA, requires open access to committee meetings and operations. That means we will upload a transcript in minutes of this meeting as soon as they are ready in accordance with FACA. The committee's designated federal officer, Kirsten Mitchell, who, as you know, is on a detail right now, but still with the agency. She and I have both certified minutes from the September 7th meeting and those along with the transcript are now posted on the OGIS website in accordance with FACA. Also in accordance with FACA, this meeting is public and I want to welcome all of our colleagues and friends from the FOIA community and elsewhere who are watching us either via WebEx or with a slight delay, as always, on the National Archives YouTube channel. Committees member's names and biographies are posted on our website at archives.gov forward slash OGIS and click on the FOIA Advisory Committee link on the left hand side of the webpage. So I have some quick housekeeping notes today and then we will launch into our meeting. We actually do not have any speakers today because we have a packed agenda with work that the subcommittees have been doing. And I think the committee members are very eager to hear from each other about all the great work that's been going on. I am advised that Tom Sussman is not able to join us today. And Bobby Tullivian is also unable to join us. I don't think anyone is joining us late. Everyone else is here. Dan Levinson who is our alternate committees DFO. I'm going to ask Dan, have you taken a visual roll call and can you please confirm we have a quorum? I've taken a visual roll call and I can confirm we have a quorum. Thank you Dan. Just a reminder to everyone watching, meeting materials for this meeting and all of our prior meetings are available on the committee's webpage. As I mentioned earlier, click on the link for the 2022-2024 FOIA Advisory Committee on OGIS website. Just a few quick reminders that I always go through during today's meeting. I will do my best to keep an eye out for committee members who raise their hand when they have a question or a comment or lean forward or wave frantically at me. Committee members may also use the all panelist option from the dropdown menu and the chat function when you would like to speak or ask a question. Please chat with me or Dan directly. If you want to do that, we'll also be looking out for that. In order to comply with the spirit and intent of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, committee members should keep any communications in the chat function to only housekeeping and procedural matters. No substantive comments please in the chat function as they will not be recorded in the transcript of the meeting. If any committee member needs to take a break today at any time, please do not disconnect from the web event instead mute your microphone by using the microphone icon and turn off your camera by using the camera icon. Please send a quick chat to me and Dan to let us know that you'll be away and join us again as soon as you're able. Also a reminder to all committee members, I am very guilty of this myself so I will try to remember today. Please identify yourself by name and affiliation each time you speak today. This helps us down the road with both the transcript and the minutes, both of which are required by FACA. Members of the public who wish to submit written public comments to the committee may do so using our public comments form. We review all public comments and post them as soon as we are able and if they comply with our public comments posting policy. In addition to the written public comments we have already posted we will have the opportunity for oral public comments at the end of today's meeting. And as we noted in our federal register notice announcing the meeting public comments will be limited to 3 minutes per individual. Any questions so far from any of our committee members just looking quickly everyone looks engaged and ready to go. That's great. So now I'm going to go to our busy agenda for today, which we have posted on our website. As I mentioned earlier, no outside speakers today we will hear from the committee's 3 subcommittees. Implementation modernization and resources co-chairs of each subcommittee and subcommittee members will provide updates on their work. I do plan to take a break today and we will see how the pace of the meeting is going. We do have 3 hours so we have plenty of time but if it turns out that we end early then I will be happy to give the gift of time instead of a Christmas gift or holiday gift to anyone. And give that back to everyone if we need to end early but we will still keep our 15 minutes of public comments at the end. Any questions before we get started. I am seeing no one raising their hand or chatting me so. Next slide please Michelle. So with that, I am going to turn things over to David Cooler and Katrina Pavley Keenan. Implementation subcommittee co-chairs for their report. David over to you. Well, thank you Alina. Yeah, I'm Dave Cooler from the University of Florida Brechtner Freedom of Information project and thanks everyone for all their work. Really appreciate it. Try to keep this quick going through what we've done, what we still have to do and then maybe discuss a few items that will help the subcommittee as we move forward with some of these observations on past recommendations. So let's get going. Next slide please. Oh, yeah. Okay. Those are the members. All good. And let's go ahead and go to the next one. Okay, so just a quick review for those who might be new. Our mission is to review the past 51 recommendations from the previous four terms to just see where they stand. Has there been progress made? Not? Where might we want to re-emphasize? Further work? That sort of thing. You know, take a look and see what's worked well so far. And of course we aren't assuming that these recommendations led to change. They might have. I mean, we'll try to find that and note it if that happens. Maybe, you know, things just happen to improve over time. So, and we'll talk about that. And then we'll probably have a beefy report at the end. Synthesizing all the recommendations. What's happened and what still needs to be done. All right. Next slide please. Okay. So, so far to do this, we've, we spent quite a bit of time reviewing the 51 recommendations, trying to cluster them, group them together and logical categories. And we gleaned a lot of the previous reports and studies that OGIS and OIP have already done in relation to some of the recommendations. And that's been helpful. We did a survey last month of chief FOIA officers and we'll talk about that today. Some of the highlights. And we're wrapping up an examination of chief FOIA officer reports. Also relevant to some of the recommendations to see if we can glean something from those as well. Next slide please. Left to do here in our last, what, seven months is to seek further input today from the committee and the public, if the public would like to chime in. Further discussions with OIP and OGIS, next week we'll probably meet with Bobby Telavian and see how things are progressing with some recommendations in regard to OIP. We'll be interviewing agency staff and I think there's some interest in also talking to the requester community to see their observations on how some of these have come through. And then draft that final report with recommendations. And we hope by the next full committee meeting, March 5th, I think that is to have a lot more detail and maybe even broken down by recommendation and let people see kind of where we're at perhaps. We'll have to talk about that as a subcommittee. All right, so let's I think we'd like to just get some feedback on some of the items. These are just some of them from the survey we conducted so go ahead and go to the next slide please. Oh, before we do that. One other slide here. This is worth noting on the OGIS website, the federal FOIA advisory committee website. There's this great dashboard and it's so helpful in keeping track of these 51 and now 52 recommendations since we have one from this term. And OGIS has kind of labeled each one as either completed in progress pending deferred or rejected. And they're spot on and how they code them but we want to make a point, you know, completed could be misleading. One recommendation might be OGIS should write a letter to Congress saying do this, do that, the other thing. And so they did. They submit a letter and job done. That was the recommendation. Now whether Congress actually does anything is a whole nother story or whether there's traction on that particular topic, whole nother story. And that's what our subcommittees kind of trying to get at. You know, where's this issue stand? Where's the gaps still if there are gaps? And so that's kind of how we're taking it to that next level. And that certainly does not mean we are contradicting OGIS' interpretation of the recommendations, not at all. We're just kind of taking that next step on the topics. All right, so let's jump into a few of these items and maybe talk about some of those. Next slide, please. So this survey we did and thanks for everyone's work on it. Thanks to Bobby for sending it around to the chief FOIA officers. We got 22 agency FOIA officers, chief FOIA officers responding, filling it out. That's out of 120 agencies. So 18% response rate kind of low in survey research, you know, it's not terrible. I've seen worse. But we have to interpret the results accordingly. And we may want to think, well, let's see, who's going to be likely motivated to fill this thing out? Maybe it's the agencies that are really engaged in FOIA, really care about it, perhaps do a pretty good job trying to make things work. So I think we have to take that in context. Could be wrong on that. But that would be kind of my guess and how we interpret these findings. And they're still helpful. They still give us a sense, but they're not perfect and we shouldn't get too hung up on the specific percentages. But if there's a lot to say one thing or a lot to say something else, that could be helpful. And we will follow up with interviews and try to tease out the details and the nuances. All right, so let's get to some of the things that popped out. Next slide, please. Okay, so there were some items where it appears there's a lot of good stuff happening. So for example, almost all the agencies said they follow the OGIS reading room guidelines. OGIS provided guidelines as one of the recommendations on making a good reading room. And the agencies that responded said, yeah, they take those into consideration. Now whether they do and whether all 120 agencies have really good reading rooms, we might want to look at that further. That could be as simple as just someone going through and looking at them all. But for the most part, that's promising. Another example of something that looks good, perhaps, are agencies providing simple explanations on how to file a request. So agencies, at least the ones who responded, perceive that they're doing a good job doing that. Again, whether they are or not is up for discussion and could, you know, merit further work. But it gives us a starting point. And, you know, did any subcommittee or committee member want to chime in on these at all or other items that turned out well? And I must say, by the way, the complete survey summary is provided on this meeting website so people can look at all the details in the PDF document provided. Did anyone want to chime in on this before we get to some of the other items which are probably more discussion worthy? No? Good. Okay. Well, let's get to some of the other things which will probably elicit more discussion. Next slide, please. All right. So there were some indication of still some gaps. I'd back up. That's the end. So I'd back up another one, maybe one more back. Yeah, and go one more back just in case. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Forward one, please. Okay. So these gaps. And these are just an example. There are others in the results you could take a look at it, but these are probably the more prominent ones. I'm curious, we're curious what committee members might think about some of these. So some of the recommendations over the years involved the Glomar response, neither confirmed nor denied. And we asked, do agencies provide information about this on their websites? And about two thirds said no. And about a quarter said, well, that's not even relevant. We don't even issue Glomar responses. So it's not relevant. And only a few said, yeah, yeah, we put info on our website. So it appears that this recommendation is not really being followed by agencies closely. And there are a couple other Glomar related recommendations in the batch, which also probably might be a little thin. I know Adam Marshall, I think the reports committee for freedom of press has been working on researching the, the Glomar. And maybe you want to chime in on that, not to call you out, or if any other committee member wants to talk about Glomar at all. Thank you. Thanks, Dave. Yes, the reporters committee for freedom of press where I am a senior staff attorney has been continuing our work to research the problems of go more one more request across the federal government. It's actually produced a another potential recommendation that the modernization subcommittee is going to talk about later on. And I think that we are working towards publishing our first set of kind of initial findings early next year, which will include data from a lot of agencies, but not every agency. Sadly, we're still working on on that but stay tuned for for early 2024. Great. Thank you. Yeah, certainly that's going to be important and I look forward to hearing we look forward to hearing that recommendation, particularly just tracking Glomar requests right. And I think that's the focus of your study right just see the agencies even track these things. So good. Excellent. And again, if anybody wants to chime in, feel free to do whatever we're supposed to do, raise our hands or whatnot. Which I probably won't see. So Alina might have to keep a watch out. Another thing FOIA performance standards and all employee appraisals. So every employee in an agency being appraised to some point on how well they follow FOIA or apply it. And most say no, not in there, perhaps in, of course, the appraisals of FOIA employees, but but not all agency employees. And so, you know, that begs the question, do, you know, do we as a committee say, hey, y'all, you know, keep on this, make this happen, double down on it. Do we cut bait and just say, well, whatever, it's not that big of a deal, pick our battles or something in the middle. And and these are the kind of questions that we have to figure out over the next several months. And if anybody has any thoughts on this particular one, feel free to to chime in here. We've got a hand, Katrina. I would say that this is is very, and I would say I would say my opinion, David is to double down on it. One of the things is, is that, you know, this is a law that that is in place and one that everybody has to comply with whether they are a FOIA professional directly or indirectly, because, you know, records have to be pulled from multiple offices and different parts of organizations. And one of the things that the department that we, we have seen is that we are we are addressing this in our performance appraisals for people who are outside of the actual FOIA profession, because of the fact that we can't do our jobs if others don't help us do our jobs. We can't meet the mandate if they're not held at a level to ensure that we need it. And so this is something that I personally feel, and I've taken a personal interest in this at the department for that kind of thing. And I really do think it is something that we should look at very seriously. But I will stop there and he, he'd forward us from anybody else he'd like to speak. Wow. Thank you. This is Dave Cooler again. Great comment. I'm taking notes, by the way, as we go. I've seen Paul and Michael. Paul, you're on mute. So whatever you said, you have to repeat. Sorry. I only introduced myself. This is Paul Chalmers from the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. I think on the employee review standard, if that's something that the committee is interested in pursuing, there are a number of practical issues that need to really be thought about in doing it. For one thing, the person who's doing the review of the employee, they may know one, you know, they may know a little bit about FOIA, but they're not a FOIA professional. And so they're not going to have necessarily the metrics or the information to provide a rating. You'd have to come up with some way of communicating with the supervisor about what rating should be given or some way of providing input. There's just some practical issues like that I think that need to be considered. And at larger agencies, it's going to be more of a problem than in a smaller one. That's just something to think about. Good point, Paul. Excellent. Yes, I'm going to be considered perhaps in our follow-up recommendation if we make one. Excellent. Michael? Hello, this is Michael Heist, Assistant Legal Counsel for the FOIA Division at the EEOC. So with respect to what's on the screen here with the gaps, so the GLOMAR issue, that is, you know, I think that's something that it's very, very important to. I think that as an investigative and enforcement body, at least on the civil side, you know, the EEOC conducts investigations and as a result, GLOMAR is relevant for FOIA purposes at times. And I personally think as a FOIA professional that it would be a very interesting metric to get the request from the community to have kind of as much color as they can get from agencies in terms of how often that case is invoked. Because, you know, it'll lead to interesting conversations between the requestor community and agencies moving forward, we have to kind of get the data. And I know we're already kind of on the road with that, but, you know, with over half saying no. I will say though on that first point, I think other folks on this committee have mentioned this, is that there might be at this time a bit of a delta between the desire or the interest or the intention of agencies to provide this kind of GLOMAR information and kind of the technological systemic wherewithal that an agency might have these of either, you know, whatever FOIA processing system they're using. So there could be a little bit of a curve, you know, kind of a, you know, some time while that happens. It's, at least for us, it's not necessarily as easy as kind of clicking something and then we can run a metric at the end of the year and provide it in an annual report. And I'm sorry, I know I'm talking a bit, but the FOIA performance standards and all employee appraisals. That is very interesting. I think I look forward to having additional conversations on that. And as well as the agency leaders with annual FOIA reminders for two employees. I'll just tell you from, you know, from where I sit and, you know, quite frankly, on behalf of EEOC, I think is that, you know, providing, providing visibility to non FOIA people who let's face it, they're the content creators, right? Now, after I say this, everyone's going to send a FOIA request to me for my stuff. But most people aren't interested in what I do as long as I'm sending out the documents, right? I don't create content. I'm not the meat and potatoes guy for the EEOC. I don't do that core mission. My job is to knock on people's doors and kind of get the relevant documents that they, if they want. It makes my job easier when I, when everyone internally is on the same page. Now, I'm not saying they aren't, I'm just saying just, you know, that's the reality. I think every FOIA professional across the government has. We're not contract creators. We knock on doors with a paper and to the extent that agency leaders can send reminders to employees and maybe attach a performance metric. That would be probably a game changer in terms of the procurement aspect of the FOIA processing system within the agencies themselves. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. I see Alex and then Patricia, please. Thank you for all that, David. I particularly appreciated the reflection that only about a fifth of the agencies got back, which definitely introduces some selection bias. I think that would be the right term for who is sharing what they're doing and what they're not. You know, going back to that last slide or reflected how many of them say they're doing something and how many of the remaining four out of five agencies that didn't respond would say that they are doing it or not. With respect to what they're putting on their websites, what they're complying with. I just had to reflect on the first one. Did any agencies not to confirm or deny what they do with Glomar info. I guess that's the closest to a FOIA joke we've got. I did want to suggest that we offered some ways forward in the survey for recommendations and that's something we can talk about a little bit later in terms of modernization and next steps for improving the FOIA, which is our remit. The thing that I think we've talked about in the past subcommittees or even with the committee is to have some level of appraisal of performance from the FOIA requester, which is to say, could there be a question appended to a response, a disclosure. Were you satisfied with this response or not. One of the other open government commitments years ago was the national petitions platform so called we the people on the Obama White House website was up in the Trump White House website for a little while and that would actually follow up and say were you satisfied with the response to this petition. That kind of feedback from the requester community could inform performance reviews, even if the requester wasn't happy about the amount of disclosure they might be happy about the way the process was handled. Did they hear from someone within 20 days. Did they give them some understanding of what was at least what wasn't did they help them refine their search all the things that make a difference and this is something I think a lot of requesters have experienced with elsewhere across our American society right just about every service now has a rating that's from the other side people right in an Uber know that there's a driver rating and a passenger rate. That's the kind of thing that I love to see. I think the couple of the things here with the gap. I'm glad you called them out. The more that FOIA is seen as the responsibility of every person, the agency, not just the FOIA people, the better this will potentially, I think, shift in terms of the relationship the effective for the carrying out of it. And the more that the common request that people are making for first party requests are pulled out of that process, the better that I think will be serving the public as a kind of a system of infrastructure and I will say finally that the last bit on AI improved processing the fact that three quarters said no very interested in the others that said yes like oh that's very interesting that means there's already experimentation. And one of the most important things we can do as a committee I think is help agencies know what the other agencies are doing in this area and offer some guidelines that are, I think, coherent with what the administration is saying from NIST and OSTP the recent executive order the OMB guidance that just went out that gives them some some like some thinking about how to apply AI and effective and legal and privacy respecting and an open manner right because fundamentally if we let AI processing being put in a black box through AI that that could be problematic. But if it's also made much more, I think, constructed through the through those processes in a way everyone can understand it might improve the administration which I think we're after. So thank you for doing this work on the survey and I'm hopeful that we'll get full results from it over the coming months. So it looks like Patricia has her end up. Hi. Good morning. I'm Patricia Watt from EPA. And I just wanted to touch base regarding the item that you have up here about way of performing standards in all ways appraisals. I do believe that FOIA is everyone's responsibility. But I think I don't know if the goal, if the intended goal to have performance standards in employees appraisals is going to is going to meet the mark. Many times, you know, all of us federal government employees, we create agency records all day long, just in our emails. You know, in addition to reports and other documents that we that we create. I think that to me, I think one of the best approaches is to have leadership support and leadership, loading the importance of FOIA as well as training. I think those two features really will help mode FOIA at an agency. I remember probably 12 years ago or so when I was working at Department of Energy, I just came out with a suggestion that leadership send send a memo to throughout the agency to remind employees of the importance of FOIA. And Ed Nora, we did just that based on his recommendation. I was at Department of Energy at that time, and the secretary of the Department of Energy sent out such a memo. And I saw a big shift in how non FOIA professionals looked at FOIA after after the secretary sent out that memo and said that this is to be your highest priority. I think that might, might be a route to go and I know in the past. This committee has has come out with recommendations. And another item to share about leadership and their importance and in encouraging the importance of FOIA at an agency during Sunshine Week. I know some agencies such as the Department of Education Department of Commerce. have just week long events for their for their employees highlighting the importance of FOIA with different trainings and different presentations. So that is my sense on that. Thank you, Patricia really appreciate that. All of those great comments. So I have two, we have two slides after this one so we'll try to get through the rest of these in the next 20 minutes give time for the other subcommittees I know they have a lot. Before we move on from this slide. Have to know, it looks like a lot of agencies really aren't looking closely at commonly requested records from first persons that could be moved out of FOIA. That that was a major area, a topic of recommendation several over several terms. And I think it shows that there's a lot of work to be done with that. And so I just wanted to note that and and as well on AI and Alex, I think he made a good point. One of these agencies said they're playing around with AI. And that is that surprised me I, I'm not sure that's a gap. That could really be ruled as a promising progress, given the relatively kind of newness but some of you may have thoughts on first person request and AI. I'm going to bring you up Jason, if you want to say anything on any of that. If not, that's okay. And Patricia, did you still want to say anything. See your hand up. And I see Katrina's hand is up to. I do yeah I see Katrina Katrina Katrina go ahead. Okay, so I just wanted to say. First introduce yourself. I'm sorry. I'm Katrina Palvo Keenan. I'm the deputy chief of FOIA officer at the Department of Homeland Security. And we are. We are actually launching a study on first party requests and Lena and Bobby are part of that study with us. And we're looking at that. That was one of the recommendations that came out of the Homeland Security advisory council that reports to the secretary of Homeland Security. And so we're working on that. That's something we're working on this year. And also we are to talk to go to AI. We are actually in the process of looking at creating some different kinds of AI and machine learning. Those of them are different things for us to help take do some of the more administrative functions within the department so that we can free up our processors to do the more analytical portion of their job. So, for instance, like closing out for your requests and things like that that are, you know, can be done by machine. And also one of the things we're looking to develop is actually a a bot that or I guess it's kind of a little a little chat guy that can go in and kind of help you walk when you have questions about how to submit your four year requests and things like that. So we're looking to create things like that that make that experience for the request are a little bit easier. And so we feel like because we're not, you know, resources that we of course mean and everybody needs and in the federal realm to do FOIA is not looking to to probably be increased greatly, even though, you know, we continue to say we need that. We've got to find ways to with technology to kind of fill those gaps that we need in order for us to be able to do processing. You know, we had an increase last year in FY 23 the numbers at the department and by almost close to 100,000 requests from our previous year and was not without getting any more FOIA staff. We have to find a way to be able to do that extra work. And so and do it timely. And so that's some of the things that that we're looking at to try to address that need. So it's very interesting. I'm very excited. I'm, you know, learning a lot about AI machine learning my own self. So as we're going through this journey. And so I think it'll, I think that it's, you know, do twofold it'll help the customer experience and then it'll also help our processors to be able to to do really more of the focused work they need to do. And I'm left with the some of the administrative things. Okay, thanks Katrina. Looks like Alex has his hand up Alex. It's 2023 and I'm still finding the mute button. Alex Howard digital democracy project. I appreciate very much the news that DHS is moving forward on the recommendation from the subcommittee and open government that is particularly important, I think, given the importance of the immigration records that are at USCIS and to the extent that DHS is able to do that. I think it'll be a tremendous win for everybody in the FOIA community to see that built out, particularly if it's a secure privacy protective service that enables people to get prioritized access to records that are relevant to their immigration status something I think people care about in many, many different contexts. I just wanted a quick shout out. Bobby Tullivian from DOJ isn't here. He might otherwise be able to reflect on the for the Department of Justice is going to be applying AI to record search in their so called wizard, which the public can find out FOIA dot gov slash wizard, which enables people to do searches across many of the common categories. It certainly seems likely that every state and city is going to have something like that. That looks across all the open records that are in reading rooms that are public facing already that help people see what's already out there. And to the extent that DOJ is able to work with with DHS and other agencies in ensuring that agency records have the right metadata and are structured online so that they can be findable. I bet these tools to get a lot better. So thank you for bringing that up and sharing what DHS is doing there. That's, that's a great update. Thank you, Alex. This is Dave Cooler again. All right, so, so let's move to our last two slides for our subcommittee. Next, next one, please. And we do have some challenges and things that we noted that there doesn't seem to at least my impression be a lot of movement on yet. And we'll have to decide as a committee again, do we double down on some of these things? Or do we, we cut bait or what have you, right? And so one of those is the recommendation from last term that Congress should enact FOIA-like laws for some of the legislative records like Capitol Police and what have you. And Tom Sussman wrote that recommendation up, did a great job. And I don't think Congress has done this yet. So this is an example of one of these recommendations where I think OGIS was asked to write a letter to the Archivist or Congress to urge this and nothing's happened. And there are several of these recommendations over time where Congress is asked to do something and things haven't moved forward. And as well as 508 compliance, making sure that public records are released in a way that everybody can read or hear them despite any barrier they might have. And I'm just going to list these and then people can address which one they want. One centralized FOIA platform, I think there are strong feelings about this. There are folks who think really the federal government should have something that works, that is simple, that one place you can go to and effective and works well, and we're not there. In fact, we might have backslid this year, but people can comment on that if they want. And then my little baby, Strength and OGIS from last term, that's still waiting more study and funding for study on the repercussions of giving enforcement powers to OGIS or some other entity as an alternative to litigation or in addition to litigation. So anyway, these are some things that just really haven't appeared to have gotten a lot of movement, but I welcome input thoughts on where this committee might go on some of these topics. I see a couple of hands coming up. All right, let's see. I'm looking for new speakers. So, Aira, Aira, you're a new speaker. How about if you go? Hey, thank you. This is Aira Tansy. I have a quick question. I was looking through the survey responses and I noticed that you said of the of the respondents, it was a range of small and large agencies and I know that there's not cross tabs and maybe that's appropriate since you don't because of because, you know, you don't want to be able to reverse engineer which which agency was saying what but are you able to share whether you saw any patterns like we're small agencies doing some things that large agencies weren't anything you could share about the cross tabs. I think would be really interesting. That's a great question, Aira. I thought about doing that and and now I will. Because just skimming the data, I did notice. Things popping out definitely and when we get to the next slide, I know part of that that that we had we had a great cross section of large and small agencies and the small agencies. Do talk about how a lot of these recommendations just aren't feasible for them or make sense. If they're if they're processing 12 for a request a year. Does it really make sense to set up some elaborate system or if they're just a small agency with three people. So I really need to do some of this. So I think that's something that is a really good point we're going to talk about and if it makes sense. But yeah, I'll, I'll go through and see if I could synthesize some of that for our future meetings. Thank you for that. All right, let's see we had Michael go ahead Michael. Hello, Michael Heiss and I am still the assistant legal counsel for the FOIA division at EEC. Can you go back to that last slide that had the little list of the 508 the other things. Yeah, yeah, let's back up. I just wanted to mention on the first three. I think, I mean, I think these are all challenges and I, I share with you David the strengthening or just I think this is. I think it's a great interest. I would think to everybody both on the agency and the requestor side. But Congress should enact play like laws for some legislative I'll be honest is I'm a rookie here at the. At the advisory committees now, you know, I wasn't around when. You know, Tom Sussman made that recommendation or at least drafted it. And I haven't looked at it recently. So this might be a little bit coming from ignorance, but what I will say is just what strikes me in my gut is that. Trying to think, maybe this is pretty horrible, but what are all the things that are attended to that? Like, let's say it actually was a thing, right? So I can, you know, someone in the public can submit a FOIA request to Congress kind of with a capital C, like just them. And then what happens when if, let's say, there was a constructive denial of that request. So then what I mean, I'm not and I'm thinking of like, how does that work with. I mean, agencies get sued all the time. It's, you know, that's, that's just part of the part of the program. The executive enforces the laws to Congress passes and the Supreme Court says what the law is. And that makes sense that agencies would have to defend themselves before a court before the Supreme Court. But what happens when. You have a suit where the law making body. And at least as far as I understand things, maybe capital replacement, there's some carve outs, but just Congress with a capital C, like if you wanted it FOIA. Some subcommittee congressional subcommittees internal records or something. Okay, is this is the Supreme Court is any court really going to get into that. The law suit, I don't know they, I would think courts tend to. I mean, it's one thing to say Congress, that law you pass was unconstitutional, but they usually do it via and the executive trying to enforce it. What happens when you move that out. I don't know if courts are going to like want to get into that. I don't know. 508 compliance, hugely important. I think it's a resources thing too, because as much as I would like this to be true. There's not an easy button on anyone's computer to make something 508 compliant, right. So, rule of three, you get hit with the rule, you know, you're not hit, but you get, you know, get rule of three going on. And so now you got to, you know, lawsuit FOIA says you have to post it. 508 says yes, but you have to post it so that it's compliant. And it's easier said than done sometimes with certain kinds of records. It just, that's just a reality I think across agencies. So it's so I think that is a, if that's a challenge. I think that, you know, the interesting to talk about maybe this is where the resources of committee to talk about. Whether or not there is a need for agencies to have funding specifically tied to making sure that there is enough wherewithal in terms of resources for agencies to get rule of threes, or whatever they want to affirmatively, you know, post like under a section they release a, you know, thing that they have the wherewithal to actually make that happen because it's not an easy button. One centralized FOIA platform. I guess I'll I'll say with that is fascinating issue that I think will spend quite a lot of time talking about. And I'm not sure where I'm at with that myself. And that's myself not speaking for the EOC in that particular regard, I think it's very interesting. I think that, well, I don't think this I know the federal government is not a monolith. There are certain agencies that like for example have D class and all kinds of declassification issues. I don't know. I see the federal government as a whole bunch of different suits that it's better to have bespoke, rather than just grabbing it off Nordstroms rack. Right. Like just getting it. Maybe there's a maybe and I've said this before in other areas, maybe there is an ability to bucket certain federal agencies that are similarly situated. Maybe ones that don't have D class maybe ones of this and that and the other where there can be a FOIA platform centralized as it were for that particular kind of tranche of agencies. But I don't know if the EEOC that I don't I can't remember anything having a declassification being in the same shoes as the CIA. So, that I think is the big wrinkle that would have to get on your job. Thank you. Hey, thank you, Michael. I'm, I know Alex you have your hand up but wondering, I thought Lauren. Yeah, let's go with Lauren and then Alex and we have about five minutes left so we can hit the last slide after this. So go ahead, Lauren. Yeah, I wanted to address this is Lauren Harper from the National Security Archive. I wanted to address Michael's comment about the Congress should enact FOIA like laws for some legislative records. Then I'd love it if Alex probably talks about the FOIA platform and I'm sure I'll have more to add on to that. But Michael, if I remember correctly. I'm with this recommendation. I don't think it was referring to congressional committees kind of writ large. I think it was kind of a public route. mirroring the declassification authorities that the Senate Select Committee on intelligence and the House Committee on intelligence already have for releasing classified national security information that's in the public interest. So I think it was fairly focused. If that kind of helps illuminate any or inform any thoughts you might have on it. I don't think it was kind of a writ large kind of thing and the courts already do engage in those kinds of classification challenges with agency records. I think the bigger question is, is Congress going to enact a law that so I think there's more to it there, but that's I just wanted to flag that. Yeah, and I was actually looking for the recommendation. I don't know, Alina or Dan, if you could throw it in the chat with a link to the report that Tom wrote where it really goes into detail of what he intended and and that they attended it. That might clarify people have questions. And those questions came up last term too. So, so very good. And I just wanted to say to Michael's point. And just to remind everyone, wait, who's this talking. I'm so sorry. This is Alina, your chairperson director, but also the chairperson of this committee. Thank you. See, I said, I'm always guilty. I just want to remind everyone when we were debating and discussing this particular recommendation. It was right after the January 6. Incidents that occurred. I didn't want to use any other word. And so there was a lot of interest in getting access to records for the Capitol police. And so the focus of the recommendation is really on offices associated with Congress, not necessarily Congress itself. I don't think they would ever want to submit themselves to FOIA, honestly, or FOIA like procedures or any of their committees or subcommittees. So it's focused on other offices. And so Michael, your points of, you know, of constitutionality, constitutionality issues and Supreme Court review. I don't think would come into play. And just wanted to make sure I address that. Thank you. I stand corrected. Thank you. Great. Dave Cooley again. Alex a short comment before we go to our last slide. Very short. So lightning round. Yes. FOIA like laws for some legislative support branch agencies like GPO already does that GAO already does that. The Capitol police department is one of the within the top 10 police departments in the country. It absolutely should be subject to the same transparency and accountability provisions of every other one. Full stop. That's my view is someone outside. Right. There's no reason to exempt them from that because they happen to work with a legislative branch. I will know 46 states and the district of Columbia, which should be a state, have a FOIA like provision applying to the legislative branch. Many other countries have that applied to them. Now, while it's possible that Congress will never do that to itself. It is, I think important for me as a committee member to say that my personal feeling is that they should not just the Capitol police and the support branch agencies. It does not mean they have to disclose everything. They could apply the same exemptions, but it is very clear that other legislative bodies across the United States can and do apply to themselves. That's the first thing. On 508 compliance, if records are created in an open format to begin with, if data is structured and open as is mandated by the Open Government Data Act to begin with, it is accessible to begin with. Full stop. 508 compliance does not a problem if things are created open from the beginning. I definitely think we should be looking at strengthening OGIS and thinking about how OGIS or the DOJ and other entities could be more independent, have more capacity, have more funding and have more ability to engage in mediation in the way that ombuds in other countries do. I think that's a very fruitful direction for us to go in as a committee. And finally, I would just say as far as the centralized FOIA platform goes for people who've been paying attention, the U.S. just sunset its centralized FOIA platform. That was FOIA online. That was a commitment in the second National Action Plan for Open Government. The same one created this committee. Improving it was a commitment in the third National Action Plan. And I would just say, if you go back and read the National Action Plan, it notes that there's a hundred different agencies subject to FOIA for the average requester that's a lot of time searching for them going through a unique process. The administration committed to making a consolidated portal that would enable you to submit a request to any agency from a website, which FOIA.gov now does, and then including more tools to improve that in the third one. And think about what they were committing to back. This is 2015. If an administration were committed to improving this, leveraging the current National Action Plan, which DOJ has been working on implementing that wizard was a commitment in there, to improve things like adding features, right, a guided request to which they've done tracking the request status, reporting methods for agencies, contact information that's mandatory, being able to submit through email and correspond through email and other tools that enhance public's ability. I don't think there's any question that FOIA.gov is going to be the future because FOIA online is the past. But as a committee, I hope that we think about how FOIA.gov will interoperate with all the case management systems and all of the FOIA libraries and elevate this as something that the Office of Management Budget should be funding and overseeing as part of a cross agency priority goal and FOIA like they did before. And I'm very grateful that we're continuing to talk about it because I think it's part of the long time vision for how FOIA should work in the US. Okay, so we're a little over on time, I think, and I want to make sure other subcommittees have, because they have some, I think some recommendations are proposing. Real quick, Lauren? Yeah, Lauren, National Security Archive, I'll be super quick. I think regarding the centralized FOIA platform, there are some really tangible ways to improve it that are even farther out and more easier to tackle than kind of the things that Michael and Alex were talking about. And this includes, you know, every agency highlighting FOIA.gov on the website, it's something a third of agencies still don't do. And we're also talking about, you know, one national FOIA portal, a lot of agencies have their own standalone siloed portals and things like the password and logins for FOIA requesters are different for the siloed portals and the national FOIA portal. These are kind of practical steps that I think it would be great to look at that would make it less confusing and cumbersome for the public. Okay, thanks, Lauren. Michael, one sentence please. Okay. Michael, heist, EEOC, comma, and what I'll say is that with the 508 Alex, I take your point. I wonder if what we need to think about for the monetization subcommittee, which maybe is a good segue to that is, is talking about is again, FOIA professionals, we generally knock on doors, you know, we don't have the, we don't have the paper right in front of us necessarily. A recommendation that agencies, if they're not doing it already, create, you know, they take their blank page, whatever they're doing in terms of creating an agency record that they they make it in such a way that it's 508 compliant because I can tell you that, you know, when we knock on doors, we get, we get records as we find them. And I think that this is the nexus between FOIA knocking on doors and the content creators creating the stuff that everyone's interested in. Maybe a recommendation goes to like the non FOIA people in agencies via this committee saying recommendation is agencies need to 100% of the time create records in the way that is consistent with what you talked about in terms of the law. So I would be interested in talking further on that. That's it. Thanks. Okay, thanks. All right, let's go to the last slide. And this was kind of interesting. This wasn't specific to a recommendation, but we wanted to find out to agencies, even are they aware of the recommendations? Do they, do they take them into consideration? And while most of these agencies who responded said they've heard of the committee, about half didn't know they committee issued recommendations or didn't know what they were about. And so, you know, that's something we as a committee might want to talk about this spring to prepare recommendations. And maybe OJIS folks have recommendations on this, because, you know, if these committees are going to all this work, and no one's seeing it, then that seems a little frustrating. So, so we might want to talk about, we don't do that today. But I want to plant that seed, because I think we, we should talk about that maybe at the March meeting. What can we, what should the committee do, or NARA, or what have your OJIS to make sure all this work is being seen and heard. Just a thought. All right. So, this is Dave Kulier, F. O. I. Project signing off and take it away to the next subcommittee. Thank you all for all your work. You're all wonderful. Thanks, David. You're wonderful. We really appreciate all of your work. This is Alina Simo again, chairperson. Michelle, next slide please. I want to hand things over to the modernization subcommittee, Jason Arbaren and Gorka Garcia-Malene, who are the co-chairs, over to the two of you. Good morning. Can you hear me? Yeah, it's loud and clear. Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Gorka Garcia-Malene. I'm the FOIA officer for the National Institute of Health. And as Alina alluded to, I work with Jason Barron, who's also here today, of the University of Maryland, and we coach here this advisory committee's modernization subcommittee. Next slide please. So, on this slide you see all the members of our subcommittee. And it's just, you know, Jason and I are really grateful for everyone's valuable perspectives, their ideas, and their hard work. I feel like sometimes people sort of go unnamed, but the people doing all the hard work in the subcommittee are listed here. And it's worth their moment to just highlight who they are. Thank you all. Next slide please. Our subcommittee continues to meet every two weeks with working groups convening in between. As you all know, we can already claim an early success in our collaborative efforts, especially, most specifically this advisory committee has already approved recommendation 2023-1, which is on your screen, in which we recommend that DOJ's Office of Information Policy issue guidance that whenever an agency withholds information pursuant to exemption five, that agency should identify the corresponding privilege and vote. So, this should help to clarify or requesters why exemption five is being asserted in the records they were seeing, whether it's because the information is comprised of internal deliberations, or attorney client communications, or some other protected category under exemption five. So, I'm sure the public will find that useful. Next slide please. Our subcommittee is now focused on several initiatives at various stages of development. For example, we're now, we're now very far along in our effort to recommend a proposed model agency determination letter. Adam Marshall of reporters committee for freedom of the press is spearheading this effort and can provide us with an update on our work thus far. If you're inclined to, the floor is yours. Thanks, Gorka. This is Adam. As Gorka mentioned, this is a project that we have reported on before in our committee meetings. For those who aren't deeply steeped in FOIA, a determination letter is essentially the letter of the communication from the agency that accompanies its substantive response to FOIA request. Our project is really seeking to help both requesters and agencies by setting forth best practices about the information that is provided to requesters in these determination letters. The premise of our project is that good communication between agencies and requesters can help reduce friction. It can reduce administrative burden and overall can just improve trust in government and help understand what agencies are doing in response to FOIA request. So, as we previously reported, over a few months our subcommittee drafted an initial model determination letter. We presented that initial draft at the June 2023 meeting of our committee. And we saw feedback from both federal agencies and the general public in order to improve and further refine that letter. We did receive comments over a period of a couple months from a huge array of entities, civil society groups, professional associations, federal agencies, and members of the public. So again, thank you to everyone who commented, who put time and energy into those. Since our last meeting, we've continued to review and chart and discuss all of the comments that we received, which we have now completed. We found I think a lot of those comments to be very helpful. They provided great feedback. They raised some important issues. Many of those comments have already been incorporated into our ongoing working draft of the model determination letter, which we are continuing to improve and refine. And I'm hopeful in the next couple of meetings, we'll have a more finished project for everyone to review as our work on this continues. Gorka, back to you. Gorka here again. Thank you, Adam. We're all really excited to bring this recommendation to the advisory committee soon. Thanks again, Adam. Let's move on to the next slide. So the modernization subcommittee is also working on other recommendations and they're listed on the screen. The first bullet has to do with Jason Baron's work. Again, Jason Baron is a co-chair with me on the subcommittee. And so he's working on two recommendations. One is on early engagement with requestings. And another one is on negotiated search protocols. And another recommendation that we're working on, this one's being spearheaded by Alex Howard of the Digital Democracy Project, is a recommendation on enhancing agency engagement with FOIA requests or communities. And we're excited to continue to work on all of these. But Alex and Jason are both here and they can both provide us with some of the details on where they are in these initiatives. Next slide, please. Wonderful. Jason, I wonder whether it can turn the floor over to you so you can share a few words on your work so far. Thanks, Alec. Thanks, Gorka. Can you hear me all? Yes, I can hear you. So I really appreciate, Alina, allowing space for a conversation in a public meeting with sort of the deliberations of our subcommittee. I think transparency is important and it's an occasion here to invite members of the committee as a whole to comment on ongoing work that we may or may not end up submitting to the full committee for a formal vote in a subsequent meeting. I also just forgot to say at the top that I absolutely second what Gorka said about the work of our subcommittee and I appreciate every member of the subcommittee contributing so much. I don't consider that the next couple of recommendations are from one individual. We're all discussing them. My own background is a currently professor of the practice at the University of Maryland College of Information Studies. But for those who don't know, I spent 33 years in the federal government, including being the first director of litigation at the National Archives. Alina succeeded me in that capacity and I have more recently in academia become a frequent foyer requester. So I've been on both sides and I am informed by that experience by suggesting a couple of recommendations for consideration. The first one here, we recommend that OIP issue guidance to federal agencies stating that within a reasonably short timeframe after a request has been filed, either as part of an acknowledgement letter or in separate correspondence, agencies should offer requesters the opportunity to discuss their request with an agency representative for the purpose of clarifying narrowing and expediting their request. This is something that many agencies do in some way or form already. In fact, let me, if you indulge me, DOJ says in the CFO report, the CFO reports that OIP put up, ask a specific question about outreach to the public. And DOJ itself says, as part of the standard request process, DOJ's FOIA professionals proactively contact requesters concerning complex or voluminous request to clarify or narrow the scope of request. So requesters can receive responses more quickly. Many components achieve success through early and frequent communication with their requesters. I'd like to emphasize frequent in that sentence. As part of the processing of their request, such communication helped ensure that requests were directed to the proper component and more well-defined at the outside. Components reported that their request or outreach enabled them to clarify requests, narrow search requests, and avoid litigation in many instances. Communication also provided opportunities to explain certain limitations components have regarding their record-keeping systems, their search capabilities, and their ability to release certain privacy-related records. I could go on with many other examples in the CFO reports where agencies say this. They generally have a self-limiting feature, which is that they're doing this outreach for complex requests. And it could be FOIA liaisons that are communicating with the public or FOIA staff themselves. The intent of this recommendation is to broaden this practice, to extend it to all agencies being receiving this guidance from OIP, and that they make an effort to invite any requestor who wishes to enter into a conversation the chance to do so. I can tell you that in my experience, while there are some of us who are on this committee who are not shy about communicating with agencies and asking them how the FOIA request is going and to suggest even at the opening letter that we're here to engage in a dialogue, many requestors are intimidated by dealing with the federal government and they just wait. And there is enormous frustrations in waiting for those requests that take more than 20 days, or in my case, 20 months, to get a response out of a number of agencies. And so this is a way to open a dialogue. It's simply to attempt more transparency so the agency invites individuals to ask for a conversation, which doesn't have to be at tremendous length, but it would be a conversation. I can anticipate. The last thing I say on this matter before opening it up to comment from the full committee is I can anticipate from our government representatives on the committee that they will say that this takes time and it takes a devotion of resources that are already strained. My response as anticipating this is to say that the possibility of clarification and the possibility of narrowing requests for those individuals who take advantage of this. I think balances out that concern and I do not believe I honestly do not believe that a large percentage of FOIA requesters will take the government up on this but we should invite everyone to do so. On that note, I will open it up for comments. Michael go ahead. Michael with EEOC and Jason's one of my favorite people FYI just so that everyone on YouTube knows. Okay, so what I this recommendation is I like it. I think I just have a couple of nits just just nits on this. And that is so so as an attorney I I always I always think about that parade of horribles on its way and words to me matter really, really, really much. So I don't like the word expediting there because expediting is a term of art, at least I think so. And that's a track. And so I wouldn't want folks on the requester community to think that somehow the agency is even considering an expedited track let's say the person didn't ask for it. Let's say that you know that's you know that's going to be an issue if they did ask for it's going to be dispositioned by the agency at some point. So I'd be better to use a different word there's a lot of words out there, maybe find a different one. And then with, and I agree with you at least really you see we already do you know this kind of thing reaching out to requesters. But I will say though, and I think other agencies maybe DHS when they when they process a files or something at the EOC, I'll just kind of tell you basically how it works for everyone in the world to know. There are two major types of buckets right there are charge files. And there are everything else. And everything else is the kind of thing that Jason you would probably request from us emails counters whatever it is. I would say that a healthy majority of those request descriptions require clarification or narrowing, and I understand why they're on the outside looking trying to look in, they may not know how to really, they don't really know the ramifications of the of the description as we read it right. And if they're asking at the EOC for 99% of what the EOC processes as an agency, I want my charge file or I want charge file numbered XYZ 123. That doesn't require clarifying or narrowing. It is what it is. And so I think there ought to be some nuance in this so that folks on my side, we get 16,000 requests a year, even though we're a small agency 13 to 16,000. I don't want my folks out in the field to have to necessarily think that they have to reach out to the requesters not that they don't want to or anything, but it's just, is it actually going, going to help they already know what the requester wants they want charge number 1234567 period. And so I think there ought to be some reflection on that. And I'll just say last thing. You mentioned Jason that people are intimidated sometimes well, I'll tell you that boy a professionals are humans too. Right. And so they also, depending on, I love talking to people, and people don't like talking to me. And they sometimes like talking to me. But there are other people I know who are a little intimidated with talking to requesters depending on the requesters so I think they're just ought to be acknowledged but you know there's humans on both sides of this equation. But I do think that that at least for the EOC, I would be far more comfortable getting rid of expediting on this and having that nuance that sometimes a request speaks for itself. Thank gosh, and we don't really need to go through all this stuff. I think these are all excellent points, Michael. I actually think your friendly amendment of changing the word expediting is spot on because of what you said. Secondly, in the commentary that we would provide should this subcommittee think that this goes forward. We should make those points about a file and nuances. And lastly, this recommendation is like, you know, I can structure the guidance in a way that also makes clear. It's a scope and applicability and I agree with the last point as well. I saw Patricia first and then Luke and then Alex Patricia. Hi, good morning. Patricia left from EPA. The one point that I will echo that Michael made is there's quite a few members on this committee that probably want to form a Jason Bay on fan club. Including myself. I do like this recommendation a lot. I will say that this has been a best practice that I have used in several offices that I've worked at and I have seen firsthand how simply having a conversation with the requester. Can really help the agency and the professional learn what it is the requester wants and hone in on those records versus giving the requester a huge volume of records. None of which is what they really want. I think this is a great recommendation and I think it can be accomplished either by contacting the requester via email and then some people not have that comfort level. Speaking on the phone, but I also find sometimes that you do, you know, picking up the phone. It does help a lot. Just having that conversation and setting the back and forth and email, but, but this can be accomplished. But I support this recommendation. Thanks Patricia Luke. Thanks Jason, Luke Nick to our Chavin University. So just a quick comment. I'm assuming that this proposal is made in the interest of the requester to benefit the requester. And as a requester myself, I would just say that it seems the key word on the slide is really the word opportunity. And I say that because, you know, oftentimes with an agency, I'll have a complex or large track request. In some cases, sometimes the agency will contact me and when they do, I feel pressure to reduce the scope of my request. You know, an agency might say something like, you know, there's six pallets of records that have just arrived from off site and we estimate it's going to take 600 months to process this. That's an actual example that I've got in writing. And so sometimes I know what I want and I really don't want to be pressured to talk to an agency, but other times it would be beneficial to talk to someone. And it really, and I'm not quite sure what I'm looking for and I'd be more than happy for my sake, as well as for the agencies to reduce the scope or otherwise I've never tried to expedite a request so I don't have any experience with that. But it seems like the key is the key word is opportunity. And if this were included in as it suggests partly possibly an acknowledgement letter. I just wouldn't want this to be an additional hurdle that slows down the request somehow in cases where a requester often in my case. I know what I want to Michael's point. And I really don't need to clarify or slow down. And I wrote, I'm appreciative of the agency and I don't really want to cause them any more work. Thank you. It's an opt in. It's only one wants to have a conversation, but I hear you about that. Alex. I would add myself to the Jason Baron fan club and would also note that the dialogue we're having here is, I think representative of the one that we often have in the subcommittee. And that I'm very grateful for the opportunity to learn from all the FOIA professionals and one thing we don't hear as much from the request to community or indeed in general, is that the FOIA professionals the staff the leadership are the backbone of open government United States and that in my experience with the committee I've learned a tremendous amount about their commitments to doing that and to uphold what people outside of government generally view as their right to know. And that actually gives us the right to make a request and then the FOIA staff and agency then have a determination of whether to give us access to records and different exemptions like it's quite titrated. But the, the, the recommendation here, I think gets to something very important, which is that in order to uphold someone's right to know, they have to have a right to think of an ability to understand to understand the agency, its processes, its systems, where records are created, how they're created by whom, and that by having an expectation of dialogue with a person, there's a tremendous opportunity to leave the requester in a much better place with respect to their knowledge of government, and indeed to improve I think their trust in government because there is a person there speaking with them whose job it is to help them. Often the FOIA process devolves into very adversarial situation where lawsuits come in. And I would say on that count that one of the visions for OGIS itself was to create a mediation process to avoid that and the considerable cost to a requester and the US government which paid for with public dollars. And that the extent to which that can be averted through dialogue and correspondence and honing these, the better it is. There is an expectation of 20 business days for our request to be acknowledged and in fact one of the things I've heard consistently from requesters and those who sue is that they don't hear back. And I think that offering guidance to ensure that there's a human reaching out would be valuable. This could create a considerable burden for agencies that are quite like get a lot of requests, which will go I think to the resources subcommittees recommendations for a lot of the things that we recommend I think as a subcommittee or committee. There's got to be more appropriations and little more human capacity and technical capacity. And the, the more that we can, I think, be clear about that and the need to celebrate FOIA service and attract a new generation of people, particularly as the past generations retire. The more successful will be. Okay, so Stephanie's hand up to it HHS and the FOIA officer there. I have a few quick questions. I would like a little bit more background of why you all found this to be an issue. Did you find that it was a problem sort of what was your basis for saying that this needed to be done, as well as we're one of those agencies certainly that process huge amounts of requests. And my concern is that it would slow us down is there a time frame here that you know they would have to as soon as the request come in for us right we are immediately processing them right. So if someone comes in 1015 days later and says, oh, no. You know, this is what I really wanted one hour. You know, we're we've already written the letter we've gotten the records and now we're going to have to start back over from scratch. So that's sort of my just my only concern from an agency perspective that. Is this is this really an issue that is out in the community that the requesters are not able. To get in touch with people, I know what, you know, like Michael and others have said, I know in my agency, you know, if we don't understand or we need to clarify, we'll toll it and, you know, quickly get in touch with the requester and say, Hey, is this what you really meant. And we have, you know, all over the place our contacts where they can talk to us. So those are my concerns is this really necessary and is has there any thought been given about that it will actually slow down the processing and being able to get out the request. Thank you. Stephanie, I'm happy to let others weigh in on that. Although for time purposes, I think we do want to continue our conversation, perhaps ourselves offline the all committee members. On the FOIA advisor committee bring their own long experience. And so this request is informed by all of our experience we as a subcommittee have not done the same kind of survey as other subcommittees as for resources. My strong view on this is that only a very small percentage of requesters would avail themselves of the opportunity here but we should be transparent as a government in allowing for the opportunity for people to have a conversation and not just have it as agency initiated in certain instances. And I applaud the fact that your office does do this much outreach and agencies generally reported the CFO report that they do so in what they consider to be complex requests. But I believe there is a concern out there and what I was going to say at the end of both of these recommendations and I'd like to move on to the second one is that this opportunity here at this public meeting is to have public comments. And also government comments from agencies and so I would invite anyone to to write into just a new your comment will be posted. So we should get some feedback. Without. Okay, Lauren. Yes. I'll be really quick just to kind of respond to Lauren Harper National Security I curve to respond to Stephanie's question. I take the point about potentially slowing down the process. I will say our organization does file a lot of complicated requests. And the issue that we have is not so much that we don't have contact information but there's not necessarily a human being responding to our queries through that contact information. So I would say yes it is it is an issue. But I do take your point about timeliness and wanting to actually continue working on the request. And I also want to address Stephanie I think you hit the nail on the head that's been the main topic at the subcommittee level on this recommendation is how do you balance. Working with requesters being open and not making things more difficult taking more time so building on that on what Michael had said about maybe carving out certain very discreet request I want to copy of this report. That was issued on the state with the topic. You probably don't need to go back to the requestor to get information on that. But if there's some large balloon is request, then maybe it is worthwhile to spend some time talking to the requester and say. Do you really mean you want everything that says. FOIA or do you really looking for something more particular or certain custodians or these are the offices that would work on that particular topic, and try and actually make the workload a little bit easier on the FOIA staff and getting the request or the documents that they want. A little bit faster I won't say expedited but faster than it would have been otherwise. So I just want to give you a little background on what our discussions have been like. Luke. Yeah, it's very briefly from my own experience as a requester. I think what I, I appreciate so much about this recommendation is that I still have a challenge with a lot of agencies. Where there's no contact information provided for the agency or I get a no reply email, you know, with no ability to follow up. Or I get a phone number that goes to a phone number that no one answers or goes to a full voice mail box. And I think that at least speaking for myself and I would like to to to your point. I'd like to have some data behind this. I'd be curious to know what, you know, what agencies do and whether my experience is typical or not. I think that if I had a way to have a dialogue with an agency, I'm not sure that a recommendation like this is necessary. But the fact is in 2023, in a lot of my requests, there is no way to communicate with the agency. And so I think that that it is a concern with some. Thank you. I call I I do want to go on because give you the opportunity. Thanks. Thanks. Michael Heist with EEOC. Well, I just wanted to kind of make a couple points with Stephanie said so. First off, at least where I sit at the EOC and also before that I was a contractor at the Department of Energy. I, you know, oftentimes when I was speaking to a requester now as a FOIA public liaison or processor or whatever. They would tell me how appreciative they are of hearing from me of hearing from the agency. Now that's anecdotal, but I read in the negative then you know if it's if that was if it's such a big deal of them then what were they lacking right. So there's that, but the other thing I will say real quick, because I know that there is, you know, folks on the requester community side here. You know, having their perspective, I'll tell you from where I said there's another part of this which I think needs to be maybe reflected in the comments is that or not, but listen, I have had a lot of requesters that are all in communication. It's 100% awesome, but I, I have a non insignificant amount of requesters who, if we try to reach out to them to understand what they're looking for crickets. Okay, if, if I've even had one say, I never want to talk to your agency or you about my FOIA request, it's, it's, it is clear the way it's written. That's not helpful. And, you know, I just want folks to know that that there are, there are good and bad on both sides. So just just something to, you know, to understand the one thing I think that to I think Luke you're talking about holding up the process being worried about that. I mean, you know, as we all know under the statute there is agencies can and vote it can hold for a substantive reason. If there is a clarifying, I don't think that's what this recommendation is intending that it would be like a formal toll letter, but you know it could result in that and the last thing I'll say to this to Stephanie's point is this to the extent that this is a lift for agencies. I think it would be a lift for something that's like, totally no brain or clear like I want my a file want my charge file something like that. But I'll tell you from where I sit, because almost every request that we get, not at the fault of the requester is in some way needs narrowing or clarification. It makes our job easier to have that conversation, because now we're not. What flying blind. So if the requesters willing to have a good faith, reasonable minds, you know, sort of conversation with us, and get to the heart of what they want. Oh my gosh, and have that be an actual written amendment. Okay, a written amendment. So that's going to make the agents our agency's ability to process efficiently far, far easier. Not only for that requester, but the next one that's waiting in the queue. Thanks. Thanks, Michael. Alina can I do a time check is how much time I was actually just getting ready to say I would love to take a break I think we're all a little screen weary at this point. We could just break at this point and take a 10 minute break. We were set for 15, but let's do 10. Is that okay? And then we can return to your next slide. Okay. Thanks. All right, so everyone, please come back at 1150am. Thank you so much. Thanks, Michelle. I should actually on you that would be helpful. This meeting is being recorded. All right, well, welcome back everyone. Thanks for keeping mostly to our 10 minute break. Jason, I'm going to have things back over to you. So you can continue with the modernization subcommittee. Okay, we'll go to the next slide. No, one back. There should be a slide which is second recommendation. I don't know. Did it, did it make a cut? It's there Michelle go back please. Two slides. Nope. You know, going forward, it's not there. It's there. I just saw it. No, it's 23. There's a second recommendation. Good. Okay, great. So now that we've moved on from the relatively uncontroversial recommendation, we can go on to something else. So we've, this has been engendered the most conversation in the committee. I, let me just read it. We recommend that are the issues guidance to federal agencies encouraging the option of providing requesters at their request. A really interim response consisting of a small sample of documents found as the result of searches conducted and subsequently reviewed for partial or full withholding. I will say that I did propose this to the committee and what I should have said in the wording and we will amend it is that this really does only pertain to complex request. The issue here, and it could well flow from my conversation that in the prior recommendations had with the agency. The irony of this is that if you do a small sample, in many cases, you reduce the burden on agencies by ensuring that requesters get an early look at a small number of reviewed documents. And that helps clarify their request for going forward purposes for any further effort at processing. I will say that everyone who knows me, I've been an evangelist for the point that we have huge volumes of email records because of the capstone archiving policy put into place by 250 plus agencies. There are hundreds of thousands of hits from keywords that are routinely found when complex requests are made in the future of the millions. And we don't want to process where months or years go by without any kind of response by an agency. And so this proposal where the agency accepts doing this and the guidance will make clear that it's in the discretion of agency is to step through a process, a protocol, which would go something like this. The agency and requester agree on a search in a complex case that goes out and finds potentially responsive documents. The agency agrees to review a very small number of those responsive documents to mark them up for exemptions and to give over what they can and to withhold either in full or in part. The agency is providing that as an interim response with a time limit for the requester to get back if the requester doesn't get back on a response. Well, then the agency has the right to close it out as a request and they don't have to process huge amounts of documents that they otherwise would believe they're under an obligation to review if they didn't have that conversation. If the requester is dissatisfied wishes to discuss further an agency may wish to do so and continue this but this process is not intended to be iterative and to cause the agency to have this burden of endlessly doing sampling. The agency is not obligated in this process to change its search parameters or its legal view that the request is currently stated would be to burdensome, but it's a way of increasing at least some degree of transparency early on. No appeal rights would be triggered by the interim process itself. And the agency, as I said, can continue to conduct what it considers a reasonable search or to close out the response with a determination letter saying the request is unduly burdensome after the sampling and after a conversation. So I have been successful in inviting agencies to participate in this protocol. A few have taken me up on it. I may be an unusual requester because after getting the response, I've had a conversation with agencies about why they're redacting under B5 for foreseeable harm. But in the end, I have decided in those few cases that I'm satisfied with the response and that I know what I'm going to get and that I've gotten good documents and that I'm not going to appeal or to force an agency to do 100,000 more documents for me. But that may not be the case for every case. And the agency still has its sort of defenses against that happening if they really think that there's a burdensome complex request. But I understand how there's a range of what will happen here, but I do think that in many cases this will just increase the, in the spirit of FOIA, the transparency of what's going on in the process. Agencies can, in giving a small sample out, will bring clarity to that process and hopefully will narrow their obligations going forward in otherwise complex and voluminous requests. So with that, I invite comments. I don't see any hands up, not all at once, folks. Oh, hands. It was first Luke, Michael, where Patricia. Luke, go ahead please. Thank you, Luke Nickter, Chapman University. I wonder in some ways whether there are some agencies already doing this. I'm thinking of in particular the FBI, which sometimes on a large request will initially. And I don't always know the motivation for why they do this, but they will, if I have a large request or a complex request, they will send what they call pre-processed records. That might have been previously released or available online or sent to another requester, I suppose. And it has the same effect as this is sort of, you know, unless you respond and ask for more or states you're still interested in the full scope of what you originally requested that we consider this request satisfied. So I do wonder whether to some degree this is being done. And as a requester, I guess it goes back to my earlier comment, you know, there are sometimes where I know what I want and sometimes an agency, at least in the example I gave now will send me something it's not really responsive to what I wanted. And then we'll close the request if I'm not careful. Other times I can see where this might be helpful, but I just wanted to pass along based on my experience. I think the perspective of a requester. Thanks. In my experience, some agencies do, of course, provide interim responses as sort of a first thing, a low hanging fruit. I have run into some degree of resistance in suggesting this as a protocol. I understand some of the reasons for that, but I, this guidance would be suggesting that agencies offer it as an option where they think that it's appropriate in complex cases. All right, I don't know who was next. I know that. So, Alina, I defer to you defer to you, but let's hear from Patricia and then Michael. And Patricia left from EPA. I am surprised that this recommendation is considered controversial because it seems like a no rainer to me. To Luke's point that I have at my agencies, I have done this in the past and it's been quite helpful to go. In my experience to the requester as well as to myself and in helping me get the request or what they really need. Thanks. Thanks, Patricia for the thumbs up. Michael. Oh, did I skip anybody? All right, go Michael. Okay. I know people want to keep hearing from me. So this is Michael at EEOC. I mean, I don't think it's controversial, but it's not without controversy, at least in some ways. So I think, Jason, it'd be good for maybe to look at the minutes as they're reflected ultimately by Alina's team to capture all the stuff that you were saying at the outset. I think this recommendation needs to be, has to be longer and has to kind of have a lot of the things you said not in the comments because listen. When you're on the FOIA side of the shop, as many halos as people have, there are folks that, you know, maybe doing, there could be some abuse to the FOIA system. And I just want to make sure that, you know, this kind of recommendation doesn't invite that sort of thing because anytime a recommendation hurts the efficacy of a FOIA shop from processing documents for Jason. That means Alex has got to wait longer, right? So what I'm saying here is there ought to be language, Jason, in here that really, not in the comments, that really gets into the things you said that this isn't, and I've said this before, right? This isn't a okay, okay processor. Go get, you know, let's look for, you know, dog within five a cat. Okay, now let's go look for force within five a dragon and okay, now let's go do this. That's not cool. And not great. I see, I think there's actually DOJ guidance, same sampling is a good way to do things. So I think sampling is not new. But, you know, the thing I'm seeing here is, you know, the thing you said about not appealing, all that stuff should be in this recommendation, so that it's clear that the purpose of this recommendation is to narrow the request so that the requester gets what he or she wants, and the agency can, and this is important to agencies because we have to report to DOJ, right? That the agency gets to be able to get a formal amendment, narrowing it to the extent that the sample of documents has provided color about what exactly the requester wants, and then that can get reflected in a formal amendment. So that the agency can close the request, so that now Alex who is next in queue can get the documents that he is entitled to. And if this is an odd infinitum wild goose chase, which I know Jason you didn't say it was, but if I'm reading this, and nothing else, I don't know. So I think there's got to be a lot more in here, or at least me to be on board. Thanks for the comment. Patricia. Hi, Patricia went from EPA. So, we as foreign professionals in the federal government. When we, when we work with requesters release, when I work with requesters of my team does we communicate. And memorialize our conversations in writing. And my experience when I've done this in the past. I've communicated with the requester pops over the phone memorialized our agreement in an email. I've been asked, you know, for confirmation from the requester, you know, do you agree upon this and and when I have used this type of interim response or sampling. The requesters always been in the driver's seat. You know, they're in control. They tell me, hey, yeah, I do want it. I do want to keep. I do want my entire request as written or hey, after getting the sampling, I think I'm going to narrow it to X, Y, and Z. So it's documented every step of the way. So there's nothing. There's no surprises on either end. I just have, in my experience, have found this very successful. Anyone else? This is my view again. I just, I just want to make sure that I respond to that. So Patricia, I'm not, I don't know if this was directed to me specifically or not, but. It's not that we don't. That's an agency or DOC. Find this to be a helpful thing. I have folks on my team right now. I'm not doing this for folks. And it does work. But I promise you when I tell you that. I have a lot of my time is spent dealing with certain kinds of requesters. Okay. And I don't know if I'm alone on that. So all I'm saying is. That we have, if this becomes, I know, I know. I know that Jason didn't say this, but it should be in the in here that it is not. I actually think these samples should kind of be like, you get a sample and you should be able to know from the sample. If you want to keep going with your 100,000 records or if you want to kind of like just take that sample and close your request. Or maybe something in between, but it shouldn't be and I promise you there will be some requesters that will do this. If they can say, I want you to hunt and pack forever and ever all these different things. I promise you that will happen unless we have some kind of guidance here that anticipates that I promise you. Yeah, I think we can put that guidance in anyone else. Oh, commanding. Yes, I just had a quick clarification question. So you mentioned that with the response, the agency give the requester a period of time to respond and if they don't, the agency can close out the request. And did you say that would not trigger appeal rights? I'm just wondering if that. If the agency did close out the request, it would trigger appeal rights. Okay. It's just that, you know, if I, what I've done is I've asked for 100 documents being reviewed when I'm told that there are 80,000 documents that are potentially responsive. So I get the hundred and we have a conversation and, you know, whether the request goes on or not. As long as it hasn't taken an unduly amount of time to just do this sample. Then I think it's helpful. And that sample would not trigger an appeal right at least under this recommendation as it's now. Thank you. Anyone else. Any other hands. So let's keep moving. Okay. Thanks everybody. We will continue to discuss this and refine it. I turn it over to Alex. Thank you, Jason. So, I would say in noting that this is a very early discussion of a recommendation around improving one of the core parts of the, not just. Committee's remit under the charter to improve the relationship between the administration and their request to community around the use of the Freedom Information Act. And to increase public proactive disclosures. But to look at the broader context of federal agencies. And that that part is, I think, very important. And I want to say at the outset that I am incredibly indebted to the last eight years of recommendations and the knowledge that has been created in the past because it's enabled me to think about this more productively. When I came to thinking about FOIA for the first time as a journalist well over a decade ago, I had a misperception about how FOIA was being used in the federal government. I thought it was being used by journalists and by watchdogs and independent citizens. But I learned from Margaret Cuoka, who was part of this committee that, in fact, going back for decades, the FOIA has been used heavily by businesses. And this is this is well documented in her paper FOIA Inc, which has turned into an excellent book, which is now has discussed where you had commercial businesses law firms were more than half of requesters. The first study back in 2013 that found it's a lot of the regulatory agencies that 69% of SEC request for commercial, I think, at something like 85% of the FDA EPA had something like 79% and that she recommended that the way to approach this is not to limit commercial business, or indeed to charge them a lot more money since they're effectively buying public records under the FOIA and then leveraging them for business intelligence, sometimes repackaging and then reselling them in different ways. But to actually focused on affirmative disclosure of all these frequently requested records, in a way that would free up the resources being used to meet all these commercial requests and move forward with addressing all the other more components which go towards, I think, the aspirational nature of the statute for transparency and accountability and used by watchdogs in the press, etc. People who know the history of the FOIA know that it's actually a member of Congress, Mr. Moss, who created it because Congress wanted access to records and were concerned about the secrecy of the executive branch in the midst of the 20th century. Our discussion of this in terms of improving the FOIA process around public engagement with requesters therefore has to grapple with the fact that in some of these places commercial requesters are the bulk of that. How do agencies improve engagement with them? Well, in this case, I think the answer is to go back to the future and implement the Open Government Data Act by proactively disclosing in open formats these records so that everybody can benefit from them. This, of course, will be opposed by various intermediaries that might do that, but it's important. The second is to look at the requester community that looks for first party records and engage them proactively. We talked earlier about USCIS and creating those kinds of access. This is also important for veterans, I think, something that is often a unanimous bipartisan support for. So thinking about how to engage that community as well, and then finally getting to the different watchdogs, people, media, et cetera, who put out those kinds of requests and creating opportunities around that. We've had some preliminary discussions about approaches to do that. The current administration has shown support as a matter of policy for increasing the capacity for public engagement by agencies around different mission protocols, particularly ones that do, say, scientific research or exploration. Looking at you, NASA, do quite a bit of that. And there's a lot of disclosure agencies which do that as well. There are some useful recommendations the public can look at from the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which made recommendations to advance public engagement with the sciences, but those, in fact, would be applicable to every single agency's function. The big idea here is that agencies are effectively communicating with the public so that people don't have to make requests. There's also some very useful guidance from the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, part of the White House Office of Management and Budget, that focus on broadening public participation in the regulatory process in terms of thinking through and grappling with some of the real challenges there. And again, this is all, this is just a preliminary discussion, this is nothing set, but there could be way forward in 2024 to recommend that the administration and Congress show support for open government as a matter of practice by not just implementing that guidance and the public participation playbook that was created and as part of a past open government commitment at the General Services Administration. But to build on the past and present commitments the U.S. has made in open government plans and engage the public in improving the administration of the FOIA and co-creating the reform of the statute next year. That could look at like kicking off a national and international conversations on the importance of public records and sunshine and government laws, something that has been stimulated by various efforts at the state or local level to change those laws for various reasons. There'll be a summit for democracy in the spring, Sunshine Week as well, which are ideal moments, converting public attention and participation and collaboration around improving these laws. And there's a lot of different ways that agencies could approach public engagement, which we've discussed. I don't need to go through them all, but I would say that the opportunity to be thinking about where and how to celebrate FOIA as an important national value. And centralizing attention on the need to fund the capacity to do so I think is a core part of any national strategy to restore trust in government. And that goes towards responsiveness, towards openness, towards collaboration, towards using offline and online methods to engage people, encouraging libraries and schools and universities to teach young people how to use the FOIA. And to think about connecting them with their governments in ways that don't require them to sue to get information to which they have a right. And we've had some productive conversations, like says about strategies and tactics and hopefully we can ground those in some more granular directions and offer not just playbooks and recs but pilot some of these approaches within the committee space. I just finally note that the committee itself is a really important example of this approach as a federal advisory committee. There's expectations for openness for public meetings for record keeping for public comment that every agency could be pursuing around its public records activities under rebooted open government plans. And that certainly from my perspective as a longtime advocate in the space that that's something that the National Archives has done exceptionally well at times, including some very difficult circumstances. And that one of the things that we have to think about as a country is how to enable these discussions to happen online so that Americans can participate wherever we are not just here in Washington. And create structured opportunities for participation and collaboration that drive towards consensus. As opposed to using many of the modern technologies tools and platforms today, which often are oriented around engagement, which create perverse incentives for people around participation. I'm very happy that had opportunity to talk with committee members about this. And I'm very hopeful that we'll be able to offer some substantive recommendations to people on the new year. Thank you Alex. All right, I should mention Gorka Garcia here again. Thank you Jason thank you Alex for your remarks and thank you all for your insightful comments. Let's please go to the next slide. Wonderful. So the modernization subcommittee is also working on recommendations that encourage agencies to use email, rather than us mail for correspondence with requesters, and then encourage agencies to develop RFIs in connection with the purchase of new discovery tools and services. I know we're running a little low on time here. But before we conclude, I just wanted to provide another opportunity for panel members to ask questions. So I'm going to go to the modernization subcommittee and please note that my system is not showing raised hands. So just please speak up. Adam why didn't you give a brief summary of your point here. Yeah, I don't see any raised hands but I also just want to say we're really running pretty low on time it's already almost 1220. That leaves 20 minutes for the other subcommittee presentation so Adam two minutes please. I'll just be very, very brief, which is to say that we are we're looking into why some agencies are still kind of using snail mail as a default response method and seeing if we can come through recommendation to use email or further electronic messaging to respond to forward requests. Thank you, Alex. Right. And on the RFI point we heard Eric Stein, the State Department in September give us a wonderful briefing on his use of AI machine learning for D class and maybe in the future for FOIA. I don't think agencies need to wait for the State Department. I think that every agency can have an RFI to explore using discovery tools and services in all sorts of ways. Everyone on the committee knows that I am an evangelist for AI and machine learning, and there's a wealth of knowledge out there in the greater private sector that I think is informative for doing expedited searches, and maybe even filtering for exemptions and so I would. We will develop a recommendation along those lines that just encourages agencies to to understand the vendor space, do RFIs and and be informed so that they can go forward with possible procurements. Thank you, Adam. Thank you, Jason. I hope our report out conveys our subcommittees hard work and dedication to government transparency. We're really excited to continue to develop these ideas and look forward to bringing them to the full committee in the near future. Thank you all and Alina, the floor is yours. Great. Thank you. So I just want to quickly shift over to the resources subcommittee last, but definitely not least, subcommittee co-chairs Paul Chalmers and Vendee Johnson and Michelle. Next slide, please. Paul, Vendee, floor is yours. Thank you, Vendee Johnson University of Georgia, because we are short on time, I'll have to move through the slides a bit quickly. So next slide. The resources subcommittee and developing or attempting to develop our recommendations. We wanted to get feedback from those who work directly with FOIA. So through that, we have conducted a number of interviews. We conduct a survey and we're going to briefly talk about some of the proposed recommendations. Next slide. So for our interviews, which focus on technology, training and staff resources, so far we've interviewed 12 high level FOIA officials, 10 from cabinet agencies with eight cabinet agencies represented to from independent agencies. And some of the agencies, their jurisdiction was definitely intelligent oriented, which would indicate special considerations for their FOIA processing. Today, we're going to focus on just some of the responses from some of the interviewees on staff resources and training. Next slide. So also, we, with the survey, similarly, we focused on staff training technology resources. It was filled with the 2023 ASAP conference, the American Society of Access Professionals. The survey was distributed to the ASAP email list and also posted on their website. Approximately 200, 220 surveys were started, but we have about 150 completed responses. And our discussions today will also focus on responses on staff resources and training. Next slide. So some of the concerns that came from the interviews should not be shocking. What some of the interview we've noted, FOIA work is very difficult and their staff is currently overworked. And because of this, they don't have a lot of time to do other activities outside of processing requests. So that can be rethinking FOIA regulations. We've heard from earlier committees, you know, greater public outreach, which there's definitely a willingness to do. But there's concern about, you know, when will they be able to do that if they're overwhelmed with processing requests? In terms of greater hiring, what was stressed is not just more people, but you need the staff of proper skills, the ability to think critically with FOIA. And FOIA is complex. It's not just black and white. The interviewees also noted that their staff will have had concerns about the ability to advance in their careers. There's also concern about turnover. And some of the interviewees, they noted that they have a good FOIA staff. But, you know, there are maybe they're approaching retirement and there's a concern about loss of institutional memory. We asked whether technology or staff was greater need was the greater need. Many of them said this is hard to answer, but if they had to pick, they would say the staff was the greater need. And they also noted that there are still vacancies remaining from the pandemic, which have caused complications. Next slide. So I'm going to briefly or quickly go over some of the responses from the survey, which correspond to some of the things that we saw from the interview interviews. So we asked the, on the survey, did folks feel that they have the, did they need additional resources to properly implement FOIA and 78% said, yes, they needed more resources. Next slide. In terms of the resources that the agencies have attempted to acquire, to acquire. Most said it was staff. So about 64, 64% of respondents said that the offices attempted to require more staff. Next slide. And staff once again came up as the greater need, according to 53% of respondents. Next slide. And in terms of the issues with retention, a slight majority didn't know that they considered leaving their positions for various reasons. You know, retirement, but some noted morale issues or, you know, lack of ability to advance. Next slide. Next slide. So that's the focus on staff resources and Paul is going to talk about the recommendations reflecting some of those concerns, but I also briefly want to talk about training before we get there. So we also discussed the issue of training with the interviewees and that was also in the survey. Of course, there was the respondents in the interviews noted that training is of course very important. There was variation in regards to whether all employees required to receive FOIA. So some agencies noted it will new executives may receive FOIA training. But in regards to employees who are not working with FOIA directly, as I mentioned before, there's some variation in whether they are required to receive it. There was talk of, in addition to internal training, agencies have worked to provide access to DOG training, sorry, DOJ training, OGIS and ASAP conferences. This seemed to be particularly for full-time FOIA employees. It also came up that there's a relationship of course between budget and training that I remember some of the interviews noted that we try to give as much training that the budget will allow. And the differences in handling of classified and non-classified material, which will require some differences in training, but something that was stressed is trying to get personnel to recognize that FOIA is everyone's responsibility. Next slide. So in the survey, there was also a question about training and interestingly, and I think this is a positive response, a majority about 78% either somewhat agreed or strongly agreed that they have received adequate training for their position. So there might be some questions about why, you know, why is this something that we may want to revisit for a proposed recommendation, and we'll talk about that as well. So next slide. Proposed recommendations in progress, and I believe this is where I've handed it off to you, Paul, right? Certainly. I'll take it from here. Thank you. Based on the interviews, we've actually done more than 12 interviews. We're still memorializing and gathering data from the interviews we've conducted. But based on the data we've collected through the interviews and through the survey that we conducted, we've put together several clusters of recommendations or we're at least deliberating several clusters of recommendations. The first cluster of recommendations has to do with availability of personnel. And a lot of this is going to sound arcane to people who are not in the federal government or have not worked in the federal government before. Those of you who are in the federal government worked as federal managers. Hopefully it's music to your ears. I don't know. But one of the key issues we ran into everywhere, and I can tell you it's an issue at my own agency as well, is the ability to hire and retain qualified personnel. It's a challenging job that we've talked about. It's one that it doesn't necessarily receive the credit that it's due across the federal government. It doesn't max out at a pay scale, commensurate with other job categories necessarily, and it can be difficult to hire people into the position. So there's a cluster of recommendations that we've come up with to try to help managers in filling these slots. And I also want to, one of the point I wanted to make there is that we heard repeatedly it's not so much that, you know, a flat money issue. It's that they've got these slots and they're not able to fill the slots. And as long as you don't have the slot filled, you know, you're not, you're not able to get the work done as fast as you'd like. So one of the recommendations that we are likely to push forward to the committee is the idea of making FOIA professionals a direct hire position rather than a competitive hire position. The federal government does that from time to time with job categories that are difficult to fill. It did it last year. Actually it was, I guess the year before they did it with IT professionals. It's very difficult to compete to get those types of people, given the salary pressures that are out there. And so they made it a direct hire rather than competitive hire. I would say that FOIA professionals are easily as important to the federal government as IT professionals. And it should also receive similar status. The federal government has the authority to do this. OPM can do it. We can issue regulations and or they can issue regulations. And it's something that we think should be done. A second approach that we'd like to explore doing and we're still gathering data on this one is adjusting the career ladder for FOIA professionals. And that's the term that no one outside the federal government is going to understand. But a career ladder basically means you have a GS scale. You're a GS 9, you're a GS 10, 11, whatever. The GS level dictates your seniority and your pay. And if you have a career ladder, you can move up through the career ladder over time. It's a key way that the federal government and federal agencies use to retain people over time as they grow more senior, they get better at their job, they move up their ladder, their pay goes up, you're able to hang on to them. We're considering several recommendations to improve that and possibly increase the highest level on that ladder from where it now resides at a lot of agencies, which is a GS 13 and try to push it up another level or two. Another recommendation that we're considering that goes to staffing is making it easier for federal agencies to bring in contractors in crunch times to help out in processing FOIA requests. That doesn't mean that they're going to be the ones issuing the FOIA response. It's that they can do some of the support work that's necessary to allow the feds to do their job. The specific idea that we have in mind is, is putting the category of FOIA professionals on to what's called the GSA scale or a schedule. The GSA schedule is a device that GSA uses to help agencies cut back on the paperwork that's required when they need to enter into a contract for goods or services. And we've had discussions with GSA about how that would happen and what we could do to make that happen. So those are the, those are the cluster of activities that we have in mind for staffing. We've touched on training and B'mende pointed out that there are, and I think one of the comments pointed out that there is DOJ training that's been drafted and some agencies have made it mandatory. What we're considering is a recommendation that it become mandatory across federal agencies. There's another slide, Paul. Oh, I'm sorry. There it is. So here you go. So what we're talking about doing is making training mandatory across the government. It would come in in several ways when, when a Fed is on boarded, there's a series of trainings that they receive on a variety of subjects. FOIA, if it's not one already should be one. It also should be part of the annual training that federal employees receive. And we've discussed, as we've discussed within the subcommittee, there's a number of existing slots where you could put it. For instance, feds. On an annual basis are supposed to receive records retention training. It could be, you know, the one key reason why we have records retention is so that we have the data that we need to respond to FOIA requests. And it would seem like that would be a natural that the two topics work in tandem. So anyway, those are the types of things that we're looking into one other area where we've been potentially looking. We haven't reached a final decision on this one. And then there's one other that I'll touch on in just a second before I finish off the slide. But one other, it touches on some comments that came up in both of the other presentations today and that's the availability of a uniform platform for feds to federal agencies to use in responding to FOIA requests. We gathered a fair bit of data on that as Bimende said the staffing was the primary concern over technology. We asked a lot of feds a lot of agencies are you interested in having something that would approximate FOIA online. We got mixed results on that some did some didn't issues that we ran into or concerns that we heard was that FOIA online was not customizable so it's a once it was a one stop shop for everybody. And you couldn't you couldn't customize it you couldn't configure it depending on your specific agencies need that's going to carve out a lot of agencies from wanting to participate in something that would would be rolled out for the government. One issue in particular we heard a lot about and I think we heard about it in a prior meeting of this committee was that agencies who have confidential or top secret data that they're dealing with don't necessarily want to be on a cloud solution with agencies that don't and vice versa. So those are all issues that have to go into considering how we want to shape a uniform system. There are some upsides we heard about each agency if you have your own system you're responsible for doing your own cybersecurity and privacy control configurations and compliance and that's not cheap. And then you have to do your own procurements your own designing if you're going to build your own solution so there's a there's a there's a possible window there for consideration and we're working on that the final one is one that we've talked about in the past. Didn't run into a lot of interest on this one but it's one that we've touched on in prior meetings we've talked about the possibility of a line item for FOIA budgeting again we've not run into. Not a lot of interest was expressed in that it's not something I'm necessarily prepared to walk away from at this point but it's not if we do issue a recommendation it's not going to be as fulsome. Or as compelling I think is what we had in mind we first started this process what agencies are particularly interested in when it comes to resources are solving these practical issues that we've talked about here. And so I got just the four minutes left here in that time let me cover the rest of the slide and then if there's any questions I've got before I have to stop. I'll do that. But as the slide says it's important to revisit there's there's several things on training. You know the FOIA officer report shows that few agencies have made the training mandatory. That's that's a data point that I think supports where we're going. There are also post COVID realities regarding communication remote work and FOIA responsibilities that have to be accounted for and whatever we do. One particular one issue that we definitely ran into with with a number of agencies is that many of their employees are engaged in remote work and that's true at my agency in particular. And if you tell your employees they have to come into the office to work then they're going to start looking for someplace like my agency where they can remote work. The problem arises because you can't do work on sensitive or classified data from home and just not allowed to do it too much of a security breach. So if your employees if you can't hire people to come in and work five days a week in in a skiff. You're going to run into some delays and so that's something that we're trying to see if there's something we could recommend on that point. It's it's a challenging one. But it's it's it's an important one I think considering a lot of the concerns we've heard on this committee about getting FOIA request process with respect to that kind of data. So we're giving that one more thought if people have suggestions or thoughts or ideas on on that one in particular be sure to let us know. And then the last one the cost of making FOIA mandatory for all employees there is a cost associated with it. I think some of that has been mitigated by the fact that DOJ has drafted a lot of this already other agencies that are offering. I think somebody mentioned DOD a lot of that can be leveraged in drafting the FOIA as Alex talked about their 508 compliance concerns anytime you do a training. So that has to be addressed there is a cost associated with that. But we're not talking a large dollar value here. But it is something that we'll consider as we're as we're putting together our recommendation on that point. And with that I don't think there's another slide. I think there's another slide. Is there a mandate? That's it. That should be the last slide. All right. And it's 1238. And I finished two minutes ahead of the deadline you gave me. Great. Next time the resources subcommittee will get to go first. I promise both of you that I see Alex's hand up. Alex go ahead please. I just want to thank both of you for sharing this work and for all the knowledge you've created around it. And there's it's one thing to say that there isn't enough to go around. It's another to actually really ground it in the experiences of people within the government. And to let the public know that more resources resources are needed. I can tell you that looking at another component of government the State Department. There were something like four months five months wait times that they were advising people after this pandemic crunch that it was going to take six months to turn around a passport. And I don't plan to go soon. That was the beginning of the year. The last financial year. They processed 24 million passport applications and is starting in November. They said actually it's it's gotten better now we're down to seven to 10 weeks and expedited applications are in three to five weeks it's still not back to where it was before the pandemic. It's gotten better and the way they did it was aggressively recruiting and hiring for passport agencies and centers. Tens of thousands of hours of overtime and opening a satellite office to help with this. They the US government put in more resources and you all have created this context for where the resources could be applied. And I know that if our government made it a priority that your work would inform where and how to do that. And I'm very grateful to you for sharing that today. Thank you Alex is very kind. Thanks Alex. Anyone else. We have a couple minutes left. Okay, lots to chew on and I know the survey results are going to be published at some point down the road. I'm going to give a little touch to the subcommittees report. So you'll be able to see that. And if you have any questions, I'm sure both co chairs will be happy to answer any questions you might have. Or you can attend the next resources subcommittee meeting and bring your thoughts. Okay, I'm just going to give one more second if anyone has had any last thoughts before we shift over into the last part of our meeting. Yes. Okay. Thanks Paul and Monday again. And I appreciate your presentation and thank you to the other co chairs as well. We are at 1241 PM. We are one minute off of our agenda time so that is just awesome. We are reaching the public comments part of our committee meeting. And as always, we look forward to hearing from non committee participants who have ideas or comments that they would like to share particularly about the topics that we have discussed today. All oral comments are captured in the transcript of the meeting, which we will post as soon as it is available. Oral comments are also captured in the NARA YouTube recording and are available on the NARA YouTube channel. And we are at 1241 PM today. As we noted our federal register notice. Public comments are limited to 3 minutes per person. Dan, your hand is up but I was going to call on you anyway. I'm going to check in with you first. Let us know if you've received any relevant questions. Or comments via WebEx chat during the course of our meeting. Dan, go ahead, please. I mean, thank you. Yes. Well, before the meeting, we received a comment that we should pose to committee members in case they have any answers to these questions. It came from academia. So, the 2 questions are, are there plans to deposit data sets in many formats from FOIA libraries to data dot gov via apis? Are there any mandates to ask agencies to share their data with data dot gov? And the 2nd question. 3rd, actually, uh, will FOIA libraries be phased out over time as new centralized portals are developed and enhanced have any answers that know the answers to any of those questions. Great questions. Alex. Um, so I know a couple of things that might be relevant, but there's speculative. So, I'll share them on that count on the 2nd question. My understanding is that online for reading rooms, so to speak, are mandated by law. So, they're not going to go anywhere. So that's the 1st thing. The 2nd is with respect to FOIA logs and going to data dot gov. I think that's credible. It the question is really whether they're made in such a way that they're open data sets with metadata with agency staff that are assigned to putting them there. There is a future in which a modernized FOIA dot gov could automatically be crawling and ingesting those kinds of records and then making them available. Um, through third of machine readable format that is likely a future that will be predicated upon the office of management and budget issuing the guidance on the open government data act that was passed in 2018 and president Trump signed into law in 2019 that guidance is still not out, although it should have been some time ago. Look for what's happening with the chief data officer's counsel for any action there. You can look at data dot gov slash open government for any kind of evidence around that. It is possible that modernization of FOIA dot gov could expose that kind of data in an ongoing way through that their API if they built that out, which could then be regularly pushed over to data dot gov. That has not been something that has happened in no small part because of the lack of capacity allotted to harmonizing the FOIA with the open government data mandates. Maybe that will happen in 2024 if guidance is forthcoming. It's going to have to be something that the administration prioritizes and puts actual capacity behind. Okay. Thanks, Alex. I appreciate that. Alright, anyone else? Dan, back to you. Any other comments to read out loud before we turn over to Michelle to open up our telephone lines. Yes, our frequent commenter. Mr. Hammond has put several comments into the WebEx chat. He sees deficiencies in FOIA funding and processes and he has recommendations. Deficiencies are agency specific. He's concerned about 1 agency that changed its FOIA policy and the federal register. Any questions whether the public comment policy complies with the administrative procedures act. Mr. Hammond disagrees with that agency's determination that the public comment is unnecessary before finalizing the amendments because the amendments were administrative in nature and internal to the agency's management of its FOIA program. So therefore the agency did not request public comments on the rule and Mr. Hammond questions whether this is appropriate. He furthermore offers assistance to OIP and producing quality true templates with model languages that agencies can copy and paste into their policy manuals. And he asks, oh, just to develop a near term plan to audit every agency FOIA policy manual for the more he suggests that the agency. He was mentioning a minute ago with strides. Federal register policy or code of federal regulations policy change regarding FOIA participation and. Offer a public comment period again, the federal register. Mr. Hammond also commented on the subcommittee reports. He for the resources he requests agency top 1 budgets for FOIA. Citing that he the paraphrasing that he's never heard of anyone being rewarded for releasing records under FOIA. He observed that despite FOIA staff's desire to serve the public interest leadership works release of embarrassing or threatening records. FOIA budgets would not only solve the agency resource issues, but full agency leadership accountable for providing needed resources by requiring them to articulate previous performance in each fiscal year budget. He strongly believes FOIA personnel want to serve the public while having professional development and career opportunities in doing so. And he emphasized that they need more technical resources. In terms of implementation, he is strongly in favor of 1 central FOIA platform. And suggests surveying to identify the best platform available. He voices the belief that Department of Justice is not the best organization to develop such an application based on their skill set. He wants to strengthen OGIS or another alternate resolution entity by granting enforcement powers. He asks OGIS and OIP to transfer compliance oversight to the GAO because GAO is well positioned to oversee compliance of federal agencies. NARA could use existing resources then for mediation. Transferring these powers to GAO would put some teeth into compliance oversight. And he further comments that the OGIS director statement, we sometimes joke that we are not the FOIA police. He sees that as saying that OGIS does not have the resources to engage as much as we wish to. He asked OIP and DOJ to identify multiple times to identify the dollar funding level needed to effectively perform their statutory missions. And he believes that OGIS is likely underfunded 10 to 20 fold. OGIS is statutorily required to perform mediation with the intent of minimizing litigation. Yet OGIS needs 10 to 20 times more mediation staff to address the rising number of litigation cases and costs. He questions whether it's possible for OGIS to mediate over 4,000 cases in a year with only three people on the mediation team. And finally, he mentions that OGIS's last posted compliance review was of NRC where OGIS reviewed the policies interviewed employees and sampled up 217 FOIA requests. Whereas there are 1 million FOIA requests per year across the government. So he calls for my compliance reviews. And that was those were his comments in the chat. Dan, thanks very much. I appreciate that. Any other chat comments that you saw? I did not see any further comments. Okay, I did see 1 comment earlier from an attendee who asked about the PowerPoint slides. And I just want to remind everyone. The PowerPoint presentation from today is available on our website. So please take a look at that. Michelle, may I ask you to please give telephone instructions and then open up our telephone lines to anyone who's there to comment. We have lost our event producer. That's not a good. Yeah, go ahead. This is Michael or the EOC. I do see. I mean, you'll see something in the chat. That was sent at 1248. Right. But I think that's what that has. Yes, I do see that. All right, ladies and gentlemen, can you hear me now? This is Michelle. Yes. Okay. I'm not sure what happened there. Apologies. The joys of technology. Right. Ladies and gentlemen, as we enter the public comment session, please limit your comments to 3 minutes. Once your 3 minutes expires, we will meet your line and move on to the next comment to each individual will be limited to 3 minutes each. Okay, Michelle, did you give instructions for how to access the telephone line? And ladies and gentlemen, if you are dialed in via the regular phone line. Please press pound 2 on your telephone keypad that will enter you into the comment queue. Okay. Thank you, Michelle. Is there anyone waiting for comment? Let me see. I do not see anyone. At the moment, either on the phone only line. Or in queue in the WebEx audio line at this time, either. Okay. Thank you. Before we wrap up, I'll check in with you 1 more time. Dan, do you have your hand raised from earlier? Or do you need to add something? There have been a couple of recent comments in the WebEx chat. I don't want to go ahead please. The record. Sure. There was a question directed to all federal agencies. Asking how many employees are currently working on their FOIA teams and. How is it the processing times? How is it supposed to be the processing times are working out to 20 working days? And then also, Mr. Hammond asked, will. Well, the National Archives make the recording of this WebEx available to be later. I'd like to answer that. Yes, we will. It is being live streamed on YouTube, which. Will be available on the National Archives YouTube channel to be viewed at everyone's convenience later on. Okay. Thank you. All right, Michelle. Anyone else waiting on the comment line and Patricia, you have your hand up. I see too. Michelle, anyone waiting to comment on telephone? I do see 1 person in the WebEx audio queue. So I will unmute them. Thank you. All right, Matthew, go ahead. Yes, greetings. This is Matthew Scarla. Speaking, I am interested in what the FOIA regulation changes are going to be moving forward. I have a FOIA example that that that is is rather grave concerning information that that is 98% redacted. On an investigation and a criminal arrest that took place last year through the U. S. Department of Justice U. S. Marshall service. And I, I, I need to know what the circumstances are for appeals. I've appealed this request. I've made it urgent. I've appealed this request on at least three separate occasions, and they will not, they will not enforce it, nor will they, will they give me a response to my, my appeals, even though I've repeatedly gone to them and said, I need a, I need a response. It's an urgent matter concerning this jailed individual who's unlawfully being detained for now going on 15 months. And they said they would give me a deadline on November 15th. And November 15th obviously has passed. They refuse to help help in any way. So to those conditions, how do you, how do you see the credibility right now of FOIA in circumstances like that where, where 98% of a of a request is redacted that has critical information that includes a a bench warrant for arrest that has no chain of custody. It's just, it's just left blank. Mr. Scott, thank you for your comment. I'm just going to take off my chairperson hat put on my oldest director hat and tell you as a boy on Budsman. If you reach out to us at OGIS at nar.gov and send us an email with all the details you've provided along with documentation of your appeal and your initial request, we will be happy to try to help you. But if any committee members have any comments they'd like to make, I'm happy to open up the floor to that. Michael, I see your hand up. Not for that though. Okay. All right. And anyone else have any comments in regard to this caller's question? All right. Michael, before I call on you, Michelle, anyone else waiting on the telephone line? There are currently no additional double check before I said no additional hands raised in Webex or on the phone only line. Okay. Thank you. Patricia, did you have your hand raised earlier or was that an accident? Hi, Patricia with the EPA. Yes, Selena. I did. It was just to help answer one of the earlier questions that from the public comment, I think as someone asked about the number of way of professionals, different agencies had. And I was just going to going to suggest that that person, a turn to each agency website, every agency has a FOIA website and on there we post our FOIA annual reports. And in the FOIA annual report, it does have a breakdown of our way of professionals and the cost for each agency. So I just wanted to share that information. Okay. Thank you so much. Michael, over to you. Thank you, Michael with the Michael Heist with the EOC. I wanted to kind of address that issue too. I think it was from someone named Persia. Like Patricia said, you can find that kind of information on our on the EOC's annual report. But what I would like to say real quick is just a, you know, basically a kudos and a shout out to the EOC FOIA staff. And I would also like to say that we have an agency wide because like I said before, 13 to 16,000 FOIA requests a year, we have I want to say there's like maybe there's like maybe 40 full time FOIA professionals in the field that like that's all they do are charge files, which is 90% of 99% of our agency and they and they do an outstanding job with charge file processing. They, I can tell you they are almost always, almost always completed by within the statutory story time frame here at HQ, we're not so bad either. But what I'll say is our requests are a little bit more or perhaps a little bit more involved. They take a little bit more doing. But just so you know, in our particular, since I know it's supervisor, there's me as the supervisor, I've got three full time attorney advisors that do FOIA and request and process appeals from the field. And then I have three government information specialists. So they do FOIA all the time on HQ level. And then we have one coordinator person who kind of helps me do the intake. And I am also the agency's FOIA public liaison. So I have the good fortune and I really mean that of speaking to the requestor community pretty much on a daily basis. That's it. Okay. Thank you very much for that public service announcement. All right. So we're at 1259 p.m. I really want to be respectful of everyone's time. I don't see any other hands up. So unless you have something frantically that you were urgently trying to get on to the record. I would like to wrap up our meeting today. I want to thank all of the committee members for all their hard work. The subcommittees have definitely been very hard at work and I hope that we'll pick up again after the holidays. I want to remind everyone our next public meeting is going to be in virtual space in this space, but as a slight change in the day, it's going to be Tuesday rather than our typical Thursday. So Tuesday, March 5th, 2024, beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern time. And I want to thank everyone for joining us today. Hope that everyone and their families remain safe, healthy and resilient. I want to wish all of you a happy, very happy holidays and a happy 2024. And unless anyone has anything else that they would like to add. I will declare this meeting adjourned. I'm just looking to see if anyone wants to say anything. Everyone is waving era. Thank you for waiting. All right, everyone have a great day. Happy holidays and we will meet very soon. Take care. Thank you. Thank you for using event services. You may now disconnect.