 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome and thank you for joining today's Chief Foyer Officers Council meeting. Before we begin, please ensure that you have opened the WebEx participant and chat panels by using the associated icons at the bottom of your screen. Please note all audio connections are muted and this conference is being recorded. You are welcome to submit written comments or questions throughout the meeting which will be addressed at the Q&A session of the meeting. To submit a written question or comment, select all panelists from the drop-down menu in the chat panel, then enter your question in the box provided and sent. To ask a question via WebEx Audio, please click the raise hand icon on the WebEx screen which is located on the bottom toolbar of your screen. If you are connected to today's meeting via phone audio, please dial pound two on your telephone keypad to enter the question queue. If you require technical assistance, please send a chat to the event producer. With that, I will turn the meeting over to Bobby Toledian, Co-Chair. Bobby, please go ahead. Thank you and good morning everyone and welcome to our fall public Chief Foyer Officer Council meeting. I'm very, very pleased to be joined today by the Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta and the Deputy Archivist Deborah Wall for opening remarks. So I'll hand it over to Vanita. Thank you Bobby and thank you for your terrific leadership. We are all much better off for it. Good morning everyone and thank you all for joining us for today's virtual meeting of the Chief Foya Officers Council. I'm glad for the chance to speak with this group once again. On behalf of the Department of Justice, I'd like to thank my fellow Chief Foya Officers across the government for your leadership at your respective agencies. As the Attorney General's 2022 Foya Guidelines recognized, Chief Foya Officers play a crucial role in ensuring efficient and effective FOIA administration. And you also provide important support to the FOIA professionals within your agencies. On that note, I also want to welcome the many FOIA professionals here with us today. Without your tireless work and dedication, it would be impossible to complete the feat of handling the hundreds of thousands of FOIA requests processed each year. And welcome also to the members of the public who are here. Throughout my career outside government, I relied on FOIA's disclosure mandates and have seen firsthand the role that FOIA plays in ensuring the public's access to government records. And your continued feedback is very important as we strive to improve the government's administration of FOIA and the broader transparency principles and embodies. I understand that at today's meeting you will hear about a number of new technology initiatives among other things. The use of technology to increase automation in record processing is an emergent and promising area. At the same time, it is critical that as we use new tools, we also ensure that there's sufficient human monitoring and that appropriate safeguards are established so that the government is operating consistent with our obligations under FOIA. And I know that we are all intently focused on that issue. During our fall meeting, we always mark the conclusion of another fiscal year of FOIA and many of you like us here at the Justice Department strive to end each year in a better place than the previous year. We look forward to reviewing and learning from the insights in your agency's annual and chief FOIA officer reports. Thank you for working with OIP to meet your reporting obligations. I know that these reports can be time consuming and compile, but they are necessary not only to ensure accountability and compliance with FOIA, but also for identifying areas of success that can be replicated across the government. Based on our quarterly estimates for fiscal year 2023, DOJ is projecting a significant reduction in our FOIA backlog. And while I'm very encouraged by this progress, we know there's still much work to be done at the Justice Department and elsewhere across government. And I look forward to trading ideas ensuring best practices on reducing FOIA backlogs. We're also excited to have reached a new milestone in our efforts to improve FOIA.gov, which is the federal government central website for FOIA. Just a few weeks ago, the department rolled out a new web design and search tool on FOIA.gov to help the public find information that they're looking for more easily. And the new tool, which Bobby will discuss in greater detail, allows individuals to enter their own search terms and using a combination of logic and machine learning provides publicly available documents and suggestions for how to get the information they're seeking. Importantly, this is the first phase of a multi-phase project. As individuals continue to interact with the search tool, we're going to be using data analytics to better understand how the tool is being used and over time, the logic and machine learning elements of the tool will enhance the quality of results. The tool has already been used over 2,000 times, and we look forward to hearing your feedback on a user experience. So I want to thank everyone again for joining us today and for your commitment to FOIA. The department is here to help you and we look forward to working together and furthering our government transparency mission and the work of the council. Thank you. Thank you so much for those kind words. And now we can, Debra, we'll give them back to you. Okay, well, thank you very much. Good morning, everybody. I am Debra Wall, the deputy archivist here at the National Archives. On behalf of the Archivist United States, Colleen Shogan, who's unable to be here today, I'm happy to welcome you all to the fall 2023 public meeting of the Chief FOIA Officers Council. I'm retiring at the end of this month after 32 years at NARA and it feels fitting that one of my last events or maybe my last event is this meeting. The National Archives is devoted to preserving the records and history of our nation and promoting the fundamental principles of transparency and accountability and FOIA is an incredibly crucial part of that mission. I'd like to express my gratitude to this council for its unwavering commitment to the cause of open government and access to public information. The work that you do is just vital in ensuring that the government remains accountable to the people it serves. Your collective efforts in promoting transparency and accountability have far reaching implications for democracy and good government. And it's easy to forget that in the crush of daily work, but it truly is one of the most important missions of our government. Over the years, I've witnessed this council grown evolve, making significant strides in advancing FOIA best practices and principles. The council and its two committees have navigated the complexities of FOIA addressing challenges, streamlining processes, and ultimately leading to government records being made more accessible to the public. And now we're at a very exciting point as artificial intelligence has the potential to dramatically transform our ability to carry out that mission. So thank you for your partnership and your commitment to the cause of freedom of information. I'm confident that the dedication and passion that I've witnessed in this council will continue to drive progress and maintain the vital work of the Freedom of Information Act. And I'll hand the program over to Alina Simo with a really special and sincere thanks to the work that you do, Alina, and your entire OGIS staff to make our government more transparent and accessible. Thank you. Thank you, Deborah. I'm really very, very much going to miss you and miss your leadership. But I know you'll be tuning in to our meetings in the future. So, I'm going on a guest appearance sometime. Good morning and welcome everyone as the director of the Office of Government Information Services, OGIS, and co-chair of the Chief White Officers Council. It is my pleasure to welcome all of you to our second public meeting of the CFO council in 2023. We just met on April 25, 2023, which seems a very, very long time ago. Again, I want to ask Bobby to leave you and my co-chair to say hello. Thank you, Alina. Hi everybody and welcome back to our meeting. And we're looking for a really, we have a really great agenda packed agenda. So, I'm excited to get started. We are really pleased that all of you can join us today. We are simultaneously live streaming this meeting on the National Archives YouTube channel. So anyone who misses this meeting or wishes to go back and listen to portions of it, they do so at any time. Thank you, Alina. Alina and I will each provide updates on the work that each of our offices has been doing since we last met in April. And we're very happy to welcome Eric Stein from the State Department, who will be discussing the efforts his agency has undertaken to employ artificial intelligence for several disclosure projects, including classification, FOIA and FOIA customer service. After our updates, you'll hear from, after Eric and then our updates, you'll hear from the council's two committees, the Technology Committee and the Committee on Cross-Agency Collaboration Innovation. For them to provide updates on the great work that they've been doing since our last meeting. And we want to continue to plug that this is a great opportunity for those who are not on the committees to volunteer and participate. It's a wonderful networking opportunity in our FOIA community. And I know every meeting that the teams meet, they learn from each other and it benefits all of us. Yeah, my really good body. So don't be shy and volunteer for one of our two committees. There's definitely a place for you on either or both of them. We have reserved time at the end of today's session for public comments. We will open telephone lines at the end of our meeting for any oral questions or comments from those members of the public who have registered to participate via our WebEx platform. Please limit your public comments to 3 minutes. Once your 3 minutes expire, we will meet your line and move on to the next commenter or other questions or comments pending in chat. During the meeting, we will pause and check to see if there are any questions from our agency FOIA colleagues that come in via chat and we'll share them as appropriate. A very important reminder, please be sure to chat to all panelists to ensure your comments are seen by our moderators. And for those of you watching on the NARA YouTube channel, we also want to hear from you. If you have questions or comments related to the agenda of today's meeting, please send them to the CFO council at NARA.gov. That's capital C, capital F, capital O dash capital C council at NARA.gov. We will be monitoring that email box or any incoming mail emails during the meeting. If you have questions on any other topics for the National Archives, you may direct them to public.affairs at NARA.gov. Next slide, please, Michelle. Bobby, back to you. Thank you, Alina. And so I think we're ready to get started. So let's get started. We are very happy to be joined today by Eric Stein, the State Department's Deputy Assistant Secretary, who oversees among several programs in his portfolio, the agency's FOIA program. State has recently used machine learning and AI to declassify records and release them in September as proactive disclosures on their public website. State has monthly FOIA postings on its website to implement a release to one release to all approach to making records proactively available online. I've had the pleasure of working with Eric for a number of years now, and especially in his capacity as co-chair of the technology committee of the Chief FOIA Officer Council. And I'm very, very happy to share a well-deserved honor that Eric received just recently. Every year, a select group of civil servants are honored with the Presidential Rank Award for exceptional achievement, and Eric was one of those recipients. Congratulations, Eric, and thank you for your presentation today. Well, Bobby, thank you for the kind introduction. Bobby and Alina, thank you for the opportunity to speak here. And by way of introduction, my name is Eric Stein, and I'm from the State Department. I'm here to talk today about some of the work we've done, as Bobby noted, with machine learning and artificial intelligence in three specific areas. By way of background, in 2021, I took a course through the Partnership for Public Service for Federal Executives on Artificial Intelligence. And it was meant to socialize and introduce concepts of AI and policy considerations, operations, thinking about ethics, bias, what guardrails could look like, what is the technology, and how does it generally work. And the course was very helpful in thinking about and coming up with the concepts that we operationalized in these pilot programs. So these three efforts, one involves the declassification of records that are 25 years old, and then there are two related to FOIA, one involving FOIA customer experience improvements through our public website, and another one looking at FOIA case processing and how we could possibly leverage this technology to better conduct FOIA searches, reviews, and respond to the public as quickly as possible, including identifying information we've already released and find ways to respond more quickly with information that's already available that's been reviewed. So let's start with the first pilot program. In October of 2022, we started a four month pilot on declassification. So federal agencies every year review the deal with classified information have the opportunity to review records that are 25 years old to determine if they can be declassified, meaning they're no longer classified and have to be subject to Executive Order 13526 requirements, or should they continue to be classified. And at state over several years, the trend was 99% of the records of 25 years that we have were being declassified. And this seemed like a good potential use case for machine learning and artificial intelligence, and that is this, here's the question. Could we take previous reviewed decisions made by human beings in cables that were reviewed or cable traffic is how we communicate to our embassies and consulates overseas? Could we take baseline decisions on 50, 80, 100,000 cables for the previous few years each year and train a machine learning model to make a decision for us? So what we did was we looked at our cable traffic from 1997 at the time that I was looking 25 years back at that time. And then we looked at decisions made for 1995, 96, and 97 records because we already started the human review. And we took the decisions made by humans to declassify information or to release it, or sorry, to declassify it or to keep it classified. And we trained a model. And I have to say, in my office, we oversee the FOIA program, but we didn't do this alone. We partnered with our CIO, our Chief Information Officer's office as a Bureau here called Information Resource Management. And we partnered with our Chief Data Officer and his Center for Analytics. So it was the FOIA program, it was the declass FOIA program. It was our CIO shop and our Chief Data Officer. And what we learned was that we were successful in training a model to make decisions. It's very similar to how human beings make decisions. And that is, this should be declassified, this should stay classified, or I don't know. In all of these steps, there was a human component in terms of there was quality control checks done. This is what we think could be declassified. This is what should stay classified. And the I don't know all went through human review. And in the end, we found that after using a few different types of machine learning models and algorithms, that we were able to get to results that were 97% as accurate with technology as human beings were. And keep in mind, our whole baseline here was human knowledge. We took three years of human decisions on tens of, really hundreds of thousands of records, and then trained a machine to do the same thing. We also learned a lot about our process and declassification in doing this. For example, we realized that sometimes the issues in those 3% that I mentioned that were 97% accurate. So what about that 3%? Some of those were data issues. It wasn't even the content that was declassified or keep classified. It was actually the data of the record being used. That was an issue. Another thing we learned is that there are a lot of paper records, because this was all done electronically. We learned that there's a lot of time and energy spent doing a review of paper records that are duplicative of electronic records. So there are efficiencies to be gained process-wise in looking at some of our paper holdings here as well, because we've managed both electronic and paper records. So the bottom line is we were able to do about a year's worth of work with an algorithm now that took minutes to run in terms of dividing up these buckets, declassify, I don't know, or keep classified. And within that year, the pilot went from October through January. It cost about $400,000 to run. And we spent the rest of the time from February to where we are now deploying this technology for our 25-year review this year. And as was mentioned previously, while this is a declassification program, classification for those agencies that work with classified information is part of FOIA, B1 exemption, and review of classified records. We were also able to take the results from this declass pilot and tie it into FOIA. And in September, we did our first proactive disclosure of some of the cable records that went through this process. And then at the end of October, we released additional cables that also went through that process as part of our monthly release to one release to all postings. So to date, we've released about 200 cables, which is a start. We're talking hundreds of thousands of cables that are going through this process. But it's the start, and within one year or two, come up with an idea to pilot it, to test it out, and to implement it. And have it also tie into another program area. So that's the declassification pilot that's now operationalized in our declassification program. Shifting to the two FOIA pilots that are currently underway, in June, we started two pilots. I mentioned one already, deals with improving customer experience at our FOIA.state.gov website. So to look at how can we better take the 250,000 records that are published on our other available on our website and make them more user-friendly to the public, and also improve the experience of the public seeking records from us. What type of records do we have? What's been released already? Where are their pending requests? And try to find ways to either get information to the public as the requests are being made, or at least try to point out that there are similar requests out there, or here's maybe how to ask for information using more of the phrases and terms we use here at the department. The other pilot looks at the experience of once a request is made, given world events or just whatever is a topic in the news or of interest to different communities, historical communities and so forth, we get a lot of the requests that are similar, if not identical. And while we have a process now to look at these different requests and to do our best to make sure that we do what we can with the resources, we have to respond to them as quickly as we can, technology could potentially lead to the request comes in, a human says yes, this is a valid request, and then we can use technology potentially, machine learning and AI to search through large volumes of records that are centralized to come up with these are potential results that are responsive, and also here are the results of what's already been released to the public, so we can get faster and term responses out, especially if information's already been released. So we're still working on these two FOIA pilots right now that go through February 2024. We've had some pretty interesting results that we're very excited to share at the end of the pilot, so come February 2024, just in time for Sunshine Week, March 2024, we'd like to share those results with federal agencies, the public, and also get input and ideas on how maybe else we could use this technology in other ways. So I guess just some quick lessons learned across all three of the pilots in the program areas so far. We heard earlier you have to consider the safeguards, the roles of humans and technology working together. None of this was just technology coming up with results, but rather a lot of reviewing process, thinking about what information is needed to achieve better results, and how do we get that information, thinking about bias, thinking about privacy considerations, thinking about just like training a human being, you have to keep an algorithm or a machine learning model up to date as well. And just like you can train a person to make decisions, events unfold, and you have to update the guidance to people, you have to do the same thing with technology. So it's not like we came up with a solution that's just going to work one time and then we just kind of let it run and don't have to look at it again. It's iterative. You have to constantly, I'm going to say constantly, at least a few times a year if not more, look at what are we using to train the model, what data is being used, and for us here we had data sets that were standardized and pristine to use, and what I mean is they were all, the cable traffics were all formatted the same way, and we look at the FOIA data and the requests that come in, making sure that the data is received in such a way that it's usable, and then finding ways for different systems to be interoperable. So other key findings, learn about AI. I know there's a lot of interest in the topic. We'll talk about it a little bit later with the technology committee. But learning about AI for everyone here, you who are chief FOIA officers, or if you're a FOIA practitioner or just someone watching from the public or anywhere else, learn about it. Try to understand the concepts. There's a bunch of information out there now, and whether you take a formal course or just become familiar with it, there's books, there's articles, there's a lot about AI, so becoming familiar with what AI is and is not is important. Also, for those of you looking to operationalize this in your own work, identify issues in your process, and think about the process and the issue you're looking to resolve, and then the data you have too is your data or information structured in a way that they could be used. And if not, all those things together, process, the challenges you're working through and your data are key factors in how to proceed and if you're going to be able to proceed with these types of solutions. And then here at the State Department, we have a publicly available policy on data and AI. It's in our Foreign Affairs Manual, which is publicly available. That's managed by our Chief Data Officer. And again, the credit for these results in declassification of the two FOIA pilots underway are shared among the FOIA program, of course, but the partnership with our CIO shop and our Chief Data Officer as well. And we're finding that, I guess, starting with a simple project that's focused on a result, can it do this, can it do that, a machine learning model or a project. There are other uses and applications that could benefit other program areas that need different fields because a lot of different work involves reviewing large volumes of information, trying to sort for relevancy, trying to find connections among data sets and distinguishing this type of information as this or this type of information as that or this type of information as I don't know. Excuse me. And if it's I don't know, I'm trying to figure out what do we need to do to train a model, an algorithm to understand better what we're trying to get it to do in the same way if we encounter a problem or issue in working as human beings, what information do we need to make better decisions with the information we have. So those were the three different pilot areas and I would say it's been very exciting and I think there are some great fears and concerns about how AI is going to result in changes to workforce and it's going to take jobs and I think from what I'm seeing is there's so much information and data that we have to work through that without embracing technology we're already struggling and it's only going to be that much harder. So I don't see so much technology taking jobs in these areas as much as looking at how do we use technology to better respond to the public to sort through unprecedented volumes of data and information that were unimaginable 10, 20, going all the way back 50 years ago when the FOIA was established and how do we make sure our employees are trained to understand technology in general to understand how this technology can assist with the work we do and then leverage the innovation and analytical skills of our workforces to leverage this technology to achieve those results and to meet ongoing demands that not just keep growing in terms of demands for information but also more information that we have to sort through to try to really find what people are looking for ultimately. So I see a lot of more potential. I think the department will have more to share come 2024 when we finish these two FOIA pilots. And I'd also say if anyone's interested, federal agencies are looking at how to get started and think about either how to apply technology or machine learning or AI. I would welcome you're reaching out to the Technology Committee, which we'll be presenting later today at this meeting. You're reaching out to us at state and we can share what we can share. There have been several articles about the work we've done. We've been making presentations about it and so we're very excited about this as a moment in time we've been able to produce some results and hope that we can continue producing results in using this technology to process requests and get information out and not just get information out to the public but to get it out in ways that are usable and reusable possibly even with AI and other technology so that we can make sure that we're doing our part to fulfill transparency obligations for the U.S. government. So with that, Bobby and Alina, those are the comments I had on the three pilots today. Appreciate the time and I know we'll be talking later again today at the Technology Committee. Great Eric, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Bobby, over to you for the next part of our agenda. Yes. Yes, thank you, Alina. And yes, echo thanks to Eric. That's really truly inspiring work that we're all excited to benefit from. So next slide. Actually, we can go two slides over. One other slide. So today I was just going to provide some updates on some of the work that we've done at OIP and some reminders and then excited to go over our way of search tool that the associate mentioned this morning. So first and foremost, every fall when we get together, of course, congratulations to everyone on concluding the fiscal year. And we are looking forward to continue to work with you on the agency's annual reports and chief board officer reports as well as our quarterly reports. As the associate general mentioned the importance of these. And I can tell you firsthand how we review them in depth to inform our work, recognize where there are practices that we can share, where areas may be benefit from guidance. And I know that the chief forester council committees both have relying review them as well as the federal advisory committee at at NARA. So we appreciate everyone's work here as far as deadlines. Just keep in mind that any reports are due next week, November 13th for OIP to review. And we must clear and post all agency annual reports on your websites and employee dot gov by March 1 2024. Your CFO reports are due if you have more than 50 requests that you're required to provide a CFO report and those are due on January 16 2024 and must posted after cleared by OIP by March 11 2024. And then of course the quarterly reports, which gives us a more regular accounting of a request received process of backlog in the government. We ask that you post those through your for your account. The last Friday of the month following each quarter. Next slide. For 2024 it's I just want to remind the every year we do issue new guidelines so they're new questions. So we want to make sure that you are responding to the latest guidelines that are on our OIP guidance page. And the guidelines continue to reflect the ages 2022 for guidelines or memo. So the categories of different types of information we're asking for line up with the attorney general 2022 memo and new or modified questions that we've asked so that we can get some more targeted information are on topics such as tracking the blow more responses by agencies or the neither conformity response. The timing of your proactive disclosures FOIA logs and posting and posting FOIA logs and the formats that they're posted in and other steps taken to remove various of access to information. Next slide. So they say we rely heavily on the CFO reports to inform our work and we issued guidance new guidance on topical areas related to agency responses to the CFO guidelines as well as to your annual FOIA reports. In this past year earlier this year we issued new guidance that focuses on simple track processing times interoperability with FOIA.gov and communication regarding the foreseeable harm standard. Simple track processing times processing times in general we really have been focusing for a while now on simple track processing as that's a little bit more in control of the agency and we know that complex requests can vary widely with regard to their complexity as far as volume consultation or if there's very novel issues. But we have always aimed at processing our simple track requests within an average of 20 working days. And not only to you know keep us accountable for those requests and keep them moving but also to show and illustrate that the more targeted and simple requests can be responded to more quickly. So the guidance provides and not only encourages but provides practical advice on how to handle track processing times such as continuously modeling workflows and assessing tracks making sure that you have throughout their life cycle of the request making sure that you're analyzing your data to ensure both if there's areas where you can improve but also proper tracking among other things that are detailing the guidance. The guidance also addresses interoperability with FOIA.gov now that we've gone to a new chapter where agencies are directly linked up to FOIA.gov and we're very excited about that. Remind agencies that the interoperability efforts don't stop there. Your agency FOIA.gov contact will need to regularly update and regular review your information on FOIA.gov to make sure things like your agency mission, your description of your agency mission, your FOIA regulations, FOIA reference book, handbook, link to the FOIA library all up to date, especially your contact information. And we will continue to check in with you during the interoperability and report report process on this effort. But we know that throughout the year that changes could have happened we want to make sure that the information on FOIA.gov is complete up to date. And then agencies as they're looking to new systems or if you're procuring a new system to keep in mind the interoperability requirement and of course we are happy to work with you. Please reach out to us and our compliance team on any issues regarding interoperability. And lastly the guidance addresses the foreseeable harm standard and specifically communication to requesters regarding the application of the foreseeable harm and that in addition to that we should be prompt and responding to any questions the requester has that we can respond to with as much detail as possible without undermining of course the protection that we're providing under the state exemption. I encourage agencies to review our summary of the you know this to chief FOIA officer reports where we summarize all the responses and our findings and as well as the assessment of agencies progress in FOIA. Next slide. We also earlier this year issued guidance on standard operating procedures for FOIA offices. It's and we asked about this in the chief FOIA officer report we find that having good quality up to date SOPs is very important to ensuring consistency. They were consistently applying FOIA to responding to requests in accordance with the statutory requirements of the law FOIA regulations policy guidance as well as recognize best practices. And so you know first and foremost the guidance defines what an SOP is differentiating from your example your regulations or your FOIA reference handbook. And then you tell us some of the benefits like I just mentioned and additionally for example of preserving institutional knowledge particularly for smaller FOIA offices where when people move on that it might have a more significant impact. And then also provides a discussion on what the content and format of SOPs could be and considerations of how to effectively implement the SOPs and maintain them. So I encourage everyone to check that guidance out on our OIP guidance page. Next slide. Of course another initiative that we've been working on and especially with work with the working group on the CFO council is our efforts to establish business standards for FOIA. We've been doing this in collaboration with OGIS and working with GSA and the business standard council to develop the business standards in line with the federal integrated business framework. We're excited to have the from the working group draft standards that are now going to be published very soon on the federal register and regulations.gov for public comment. So we look forward to those in the public or anyone who has feedback that will help us further refine the business standards. Next slide. And then finally I'm very excited to talk about the rollout we recently had a few weeks ago as the associate attorney general mentioned of our new FOIA search tool on FOIA.gov. So we recently rolled out the first iteration of this and importance note that this is the very first iteration. It's a multi-phase project and it's the tool is meant to help the public more easily find information that's available online on the request on the types of record they seek. So hopefully that could be the need for a FOIA search request but if not also helping them identify the best agency or way to get the information they're looking for. So we embarked on this initiative or a journey to create this tool after a robust discovery phase where we worked with both agencies in the public to define with exactly the issue that we want to solve is and develop the best opportunity to solve that issue. And so we then launched into a development phase and relied very heavily or relied heavily on user feedback from both public and agencies on developing this first iteration of the tool. The exciting part of it is that this is the first iteration so it means that the tool only be improved going forward and where a number of things to improve the tool. Using data analytics from the use of the tool by the public now as the associate mentioned we've had over 2000 uses so far and seeing how it's being used and the results that it's providing to further refine the tool and I'll explain how the tool works in just a little bit. And then also the tool relies on a lot of data that we put together and so we're using those analytics to also develop our data acquisition strategy. I'll get into the little bit more as I talk about the tool. Next slide. All right. So as you can see from this snapshot this is the new 4A.gov and so not only did we develop a new tool we took this opportunity to really improve the user interface and so it's much more streamlined and it's I think a lot easier for use by the public and understanding how to use it. As you can see there's three there's a large number of menu up at the top that provides all the features of 4A.gov so learning the request how to make a request but also our annual 4A reports and quarterly reports as well as the CFO council page but very prominent displayed at the bottom is the key things for what the average requester might come to 4A.gov to learn about so learning about the 4A process our new search tool which I'll get into if you need help finding the information you're looking for or where to make a request and then you're still able to if you know which agency you're wanting to make your request to click on that third button which takes you to the agency's landing page gives you all that great information about the agency and the ability to submit a request directly from the 4A request form. Next slide. So if you click on the search tool it brings you to this page and you can see there is two features that we've developed here and how to help you find either the information you're looking for or the agency. One is that we you know through our own experiences and discussions with agencies identified six categories of types of records that are frequently requested at high volumes at certain agencies. And so we wanted to help with those right off the back because of the volume and here what we did is working with agencies were able to define a logic based question and answer pathway journey to help the requester get to the right information. So I'll go over I'll show you how it works in just a minute but basically it asks the requester a number of questions based off which category topic you click on to help they get to the exact type of record that you're looking for and either in points you to the right direction of how to get that. And then the other part of the tool is if it's one of those categories is not what you're looking for you can enter in search terms in the bottom box here and then it will provide you with a list of either publicly available information or ways that you can get that information outside of FOIA and or the agency where you would suggest maybe you may want to make a FOIA request and this part of the tool is powered by a great amount of data that we collected from agencies FOIA websites using their frequently requested records posted online and FOIA logs that were available online and then using machine learning it helps provide your accurate responses of where you may want to look for information. Next slide. So if we do one of the journeys here we're asking we've gone to 4.gov and we're asking for immigration immigration and travel records and once you click that it'll ask you if you're asking for yourself or someone else to give you an idea of what you might need to be able to make the request but then brings you to this page where it details a number of different immigration and travel types of records that you may be looking for. And so here in this example we'll click on visa records. Next slide. So when we do that it brings us to this next page where it identifies that state department is the proper place to make a FOIA request for visa records. But if that's not what you're looking for it also asks how else we can help. Whether you would like to do another search go back to a full list of the agencies or just go back to 4.gov's homepage. But we are looking for visa records and we do believe they're at state so if we click that you can see the next slide. It takes you to the Department of State's landing page where we have all that great information. I'm sorry, previous slide. Yes, thank you. And then after that before making a request and throughout this the tool we provide tips to the requester on how to navigate the tool and but also what you should keep in mind for making a request for example here being clear and specific providing as much detail as possible with things like dates and so forth. And then you can make your request using the request form goes directly from 4.gov to the agencies to the agencies to provide a response to the requester. Next slide. So here is another example of how the tool works using now you're interested in military records. So you click on the military records and then ask you are you looking for current or active reserve and current active duty or reserve military members or are you looking for retired or former military. So based off the response to that question it takes you to a next series of types of things that you might be looking for that are military records. And here for example we've clicked on the office of military personnel file. The official military personnel file and once you click on that it takes you to all the different types or places that you would go. So not necessarily just straight to the FOIA request page or making a FOIA request at a certain agency but all the different ways that you should request that information outside of FOIA to get access. So I think it's just really an incredibly great upgrade to not just you know identify specifically an agency that you may want to consider to look to see how their if they provided the records online or if there's a different way to make a request but to directly point to what's publicly available what other websites with other avenues of accessing the record outside of FOIA you may want to consider and then of course suggesting an agency if FOIA is the route. Next slide. So this display illustrates the other type of experience that you would have using the keyword function or you can put a keyword in there or sentence in there describing what you're looking for. Here we do the example of JFK assassination records and as you can see when you click on that in it finds results of what's already public out there on JFK assassination. We have a couple of postings in the FBI's website as well as posting in NARA's website and then if that information is not what you're looking for it then provides suggestions of where you may want to make a request. As you can see here obviously NARA would be a place that would make sense but the other results may not make as much sense at this point and that's where we're now improving and refining the tool. So as I said this is powered by a, what was a painstaking process of collecting a tremendous amount of data from agencies websites and then using machine learning training the model to provide what we believe are accurate responses to the request being made on 40.gov. But now using the data analytics on the on the back end where we're seeing how agencies or how requesters are using the tool we're able to find ways to look for improvements in how to refine the and train potentially the model to give better results but also even more importantly it's informing on how our decisions are how the next steps should be for actually continually getting the data and putting it in the tool and right now it's a manual process which is not a sustainable but we're envisioning the analytics and what our research right now is informing hopefully guidance in the future where the way agencies we all post our records in the formats and other things might make it so that we can more automate automatically have this information for the tool to have more robust functionality. Next slide. And so we also want to make sure everyone knows how the system works and how it's set up. We do have a how it's works page on 4a.gov that is linked that explains how the system works you know through the first looking at the pathway logic the first buttons I explained and then it has a component where it looks to your agency name and also mission to see if that helps match to the right agency or what and then if those works relying on the machine learning model that uses the data from your frequently requested records posted on your website and also your FOIA logs. And so we like I said are really looking forward. This is just the beginning of this project and really looking forward to now having out there continuing to improve it both as far as how the machine learning works and then also if there's other pathway logic kind of things like the immigration records and military records that we might want to add to the tool. And that is all I had other than that I just want to encourage you all as the associate attorney mentioned we're here to help so we have a tremendous amount of resources on our website and you can always reach us at 202-51 for FOIA for FOIA counselor service or anything or anything else on that OIP can do to help. Over to you, Elena. Thanks Bobby. We're actually running a little ahead of schedule. Good job. All right, next slide please Michelle. Next slide. Okay, I have a few updates from OGIS. We're the FOIA ombudsman's office for those of you who don't know that. First I just wanted to talk about our statistics for this past fiscal year. We actually experienced a pretty significant 28% increase in the mediation cases that we logged in. We logged in 4,350 in the previous fiscal year. We're up to 5,536 this past year. We also experienced a marked increase of 21% in the number of cases that we closed. So while we're getting a huge uptick in cases that are coming in, we're still doing the best that we can to close out cases. So in fiscal year 2022 we closed out 4,509 and this year we closed out 5470. The efficiencies that we've gained in using our Salesforce case management system that we implemented last year to track, manage, and process our cases has definitely helped us to keep up with an increase in our mediation cases and maintain our level of productivity but it's definitely a challenge with our very small mediation team. We rolled out two new FOIA ombuds observers that I encourage everyone to check out on our website. One covers the decommissioning of FOIA online and another that updates and replaces a 2018 FOIA ombuds observer for the duration records. We hope that that will be very helpful to both agencies and requesters. Last this past year we presented at 13 different venues both agency sponsored and civil society sponsored and we held training sessions of our popular dispute resolution for FOIA professionals for five different agencies. We were also very busy on social media and please be sure to sign up for our blog the FOIA ombudsman and follow us on X. Next slide please. I also wanted to share a few updates from our National Archives colleagues in the Office of the Cheap Records Officer Crow. In June of this year the Crow's Office released version 3 of the Universal Electronic Records Management ERM requirements as part of our Federal Electronic Records Modernization Initiative. So that's a mouthful but the acronym is Fermi and some of you might be familiar with that. Through this initiative NARA has been working to improve the way agencies acquire ERM services and solutions. The Crow's Office is currently working with GSA to incorporate version 3 of the universal ERM requirements into GSA's multiple award schedule. I want to invite everyone to visit the landing page that we're displaying to provide to get additional information as to all the updates included in version 3. Next slide please. On September 29, 2023 NARA published NARA Bulletin 2024-04 that addresses managing records on collaboration platforms. Based on feedback NARA received the following were the three most important questions that agencies were asking. First, do agencies need to record all video conferences? Second, what are my responsibilities if I provide a collaboration platform for other agencies? And third, what are my responsibilities if I use someone else's collaboration platform? The Bulletin addresses all of those questions and many others so I invite everyone to go take a look at it. And yes, agency employees do create federal records when they conduct agency business using collaborative platforms. Next slide please. In May of 2023 NARA published updated regulations governing digitization standards for permanent records. These regulations cover standards and procedures agencies must apply when digitizing permanent paper records using reflective digitization techniques and that includes paper based documents, maps, posters, manuscripts, graphic arts prints and photographic prints. Next slide please. And as we know federal agencies are moving toward an electronic government. Joint OMB NARA Memorandum M23-07 which updates M1921 calls on all federal agencies to manage all permanent records in electronic format by June of 2024 that's June 30th 2024. To transfer all permanent records to NARA in an electronic format and with appropriate metadata by that date and to manage all temporary records in an electronic format or store them in commercial record storage facilities by June 30th 2024. A digitization program will be part of many agencies efforts to transition towards a fully electronic government. This slide is a screenshot of a webpage that is a great resource for other agencies that provides quick access to digitization efforts. So I invite you to check that out. Next slide please. It's hard to believe but we are mere seven months away from the end of the fifth term of the FOIA advisory committee. The three subcommittees implementation, modernization and resources have all been hard at work. In fact the committee has already passed one recommendation recommendation number 1. The committee recommends that OIP issue guidance stating that whenever an agency withholds information pursuant to exemption 5, the agency should identify the corresponding privilege or privileges invoked. If the withholding takes the form of a redaction, the identification of a privilege should be made part of that redaction label. And if a record is withheld in full the agency should identify privileges in its determination letter. The recommendation will be sent up to the Archivist of the United States and will be considered accordingly. And we anticipate some additional recommendations being made as the term finishes up in June of 2024. The next meeting of the FOIA advisory committee is Thursday December 7th beginning at 10 a.m. It will be virtual. Please mark your calendars and remember to visit our website for instructions to register on a rent plate. Since the three subcommittees have been hard at work, we will use this next meeting for discussion of each of the subcommittees work and anticipated future recommendations. I also want to flag an important survey that OIP distributed to all CFOs a couple of weeks ago. And we want to encourage greater participation. The implementation subcommittee is collecting information from CFOs or their delegates about their perceptions and application of previous committee recommendations in improving the FOIA process. The survey takes about 20 minutes to complete. Aggregated results of the survey will be provided to agencies with the hope that they will be helpful in agencies administration of FOIA. To encourage candor, no individuals or agencies will be named in the report results. We are asking that you complete the online survey by November 14th. That's coming up pretty quickly. Please contact me or Bobby and we will be happy to provide you the link to the online survey if you have not already responded. And the implementation subcommittee is very interested in speaking with agency representatives to get further context and detail associated with the survey. Please let me or Bobby know if you are interested and we will put you in direct contact with implementation subcommittee co-chair David Collier. I also just want to mention the FOIA advisory committee always welcomes and encourages your ideas and suggestions at any time. Please send an email to FOIA-advisory-committee at narra.gov and let us know your ideas for improving the FOIA process. We definitely want to hear from you, the hard working FOIA professionals who are facing FOIA realities on a regular basis. And please keep up all the great work that you are doing. Next slide please. I hope that you take advantage of the many resources available on our website and that you turn in to past public meetings available on the NARA YouTube channel. OGIS often solicits input from the FOIA community and we want to hear from both requesters and agency FOIA professionals. We invite all of you to subscribe to our blog the FOIA ombudsman and our X feed. Our goal is to help improve the FOIA process for both requesters and agency FOIA professionals. FOIA programs are only as good as their FOIA professionals so thank you to all of you that are out there watching us today to all of those FOIA professionals who are helping fulfill the requirements of the FOIA in your agency. Next slide please. I am done with my updates and I think we are a little bit ahead of schedule. I am going to turn things back over to Bobby at this point. Thank you Alina and I did actually forget one thing I wanted to mention at the end of our updates which is of course very proud of the FOIA tool that we just rolled out but it could not have been done without the great work of a large team I want to thank and recognize Lindsay Steelhead of our compliance team and Karen Hopkins from OIP who have been working tirelessly over the year on this project as well as our OCIO team and our partners at 4-1 in Poly Delta so I just wanted to recognize the great work they put into this. With that I think it's great we're ahead of time and we'll keep on schedule and excited to turn to report outs from our two committees both of which have been hard at work since the last time we met so we're excited to hear from them. We will first hear from our co-chairs of the Committee on Cross-Agency Collaboration Innovation Co-CACI Abhi Awali and Michael Bell along with their Co-CACI colleagues Nicole Remutter and Regina Stabil will be presenting and then they will hand it off to the co-chairs of the Technology Committee Michael Sarage and Eric Stein. Thank you guys. Thank you Bobby and thank you Alina. Good morning everyone. Thank you all for joining us today. My name is Mike Bell I am the FOIA Officer for the Department of Transportation Officer of the Secretary and one of the co-chairs of the Co-CACI Committee. My co-chair Abhi Awali she will be presenting in just a few minutes and you'll get to hear from her. I'm just doing a quick introduction. As you can see our Committee name is a mouthful and that's why people just started calling it Co-CACI which really caught on because it does flow off the tongue a little bit. However sometimes we do forget you know right in that middle line there cross-agency collaboration. Just thinking about all we've done in the last two and a half years we've been active and it really has been a lot of collaboration across federal agencies which is sometimes hard to get but when you get it it really can produce some great results and we're represented by federal employees from all spectrum and as you'll see we've also worked with people in our events that we're about to talk about. Our committee has been dividing into three subcommittees which we'll receive updates on. The first one is the Government Information Specialist Subcommittee. That subcommittee is working on ways to recruit, hire, develop and retain FOIA professionals and they've completed a lot of research this year and they're going to talk about an upcoming white paper and an upcoming listing session to try to work with issues affecting the career field. We're also here from our resources subcommittee they just held a best practices event that brought in speakers and panelists from all across the government and they're going to talk about some of the topics that came up there and some of the ways that what was discussed helped people access and utilize the resources that are out there. We also will hear from the pandemic and virtual FOIA office subcommittee. Basically that subcommittee has been taking some of the lessons learned from going all virtual during the pandemic and implementing them into the current hybrid FOIA offices which many of us are working from today. They'll talk about some of the papers and ideas they've been coming up with. And finally we also have a new collaboration with the FOIA toolkit working group that Abhi is going to discuss that she's been the impetus behind that's really looking to get tools out there to help agencies solve their FOIA issues. So that's it for our introduction so we're going to go straight to our government information specialist subcommittee. So next side please. Thank you Mike. Good morning. My name is Nicole Rementer. I am an attorney advisor in the national FOIA department and I serve as a co-chair with Madeleine Van Nostrand of DOJ for the government information specialist or GIS professionalization subcommittee. Next slide please. As you may know our subcommittee supports the 2020 FOIA advisory committee's recommendation 16 by advocating for the advancement of the GIS 0306 job series specifically and supporting the development of FOIA professionals generally government-wide. Next slide please. To this end the subcommittee has surveyed FOIA professionals in the government about their background professional needs and input on how FOIA professionals can be better supported in their FOIA career progression. The subcommittee then interviewed FOIA executives across several agencies to discuss the results of the survey and gather input perspectives on recruitment, hiring, training, and cross agency support ideas for FOIA professionals. We also compiled data from other sources to inform our research. Currently we are close to finalizing our white paper to summarize and discuss our findings and provide recommendations for agencies to improve professionalization and standardization of qualifications for FOIA professionals across the region. We then plan on holding listening sessions with FOIA professionals and agency hiring managers to discuss our recommendations and findings with the hope that such cross agency discussions will affect positive changes and stimulate ideas that improve recruitment and retention of dedicated FOIA professionals as well as enhance allocation of personnel resources in support of FOIA processing. On behalf of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to share the hard work that the members of the subcommittee have done so far. And we hope this work will continue positively to attract hire, develop, and inspire FOIA professionals who are essential to agencies' achievements in openness and transparency. With that I turn it back to hear about the great work in our other co-cackey subcommittees. Mike and Avi. I thought it was going to be automatic so I apologize. Next slide please. Next up we have our resources subcommittee. We've got Regina Stabil here who will talk about their recent event. Hi. Good morning. On behalf of our chair Brandon Gaylord and fellow team members on the resources working group it's my pleasure to provide a recap of the committee on cross agency collaboration and innovations resources workshop that occurred on October 25th. A quick acknowledgement and shout out first to other co-cackey resources working group members Cindy Caferro from the Department of the Interior Nicholas Cormier from the Department of Commerce Nicole Reminter who we just heard from Environmental Protection Agency Elizabeth Walden from the Department of Interior Lisa Bellows Weiss Food and Drug Administration. Brandon Gaylord is with the Department of State and I'm with the Department of Human Health and Services. And I wanted to highlight our different agencies because our collaborations are strengthened experiences and the diversity of members coming from different agencies which is true not only of our working group but co-cackey committee as a whole. So if anybody is listening and wants to join us I put in the chat the link to co-cackey and we hope to hear from you. Next slide please. So the co-cackey resources working group was established to identify opportunities for standardization of a variety of resources including procurement vehicles and technology that should be made available to FOIA offices to increase efficiency and ease of use across government agencies especially smaller FOIA requester service centers we've been working towards the workshop well over a year it started with our survey of FOIA professionals during the summer of 2022 a survey that had questions representative of the different focuses from all three of the co-cackey working groups the other two working groups being the pandemic virtual FOIA offices working group and the government information specialist job series working group that Nicole just gave an update about in particular the resources working group questions focused on technology and staffing considering the survey responses our working group began to develop the workshop the overall theme of the resources workshop was innovative methods for using and sharing resources and we organized it into three separate panels how to build or rebuild the successful agency information program FOIA technology where can it help where does it fall short and innovative FOIA staffing opportunities we wanted to provide an opportunity throughout the federal FOIA community to attend this virtual workshop FOIA leaders and representatives as they discussed these areas and shared their expertise and experiences with an overall feel more like a fireside chat and all it was just about three hours each panel lasting about 50 minutes with short breaks in between the workshop was hosted by the office of information policy at the department of justice many many thanks to Bobby and others who helped us with this workshop together to make it possible virtually including Lindsay Steele Karen Hopkins and Nikita Gilbert we had over 400 attendees next slide please the first panel how to build or rebuild a successful agency information program was moderated by our co-chair Mike Bell who by the way is from department of transportation our panelists Brent Evitt is from Department of Defense Defense Intelligence Agency Jennifer Wood is from Department of Commerce Michael Seidel is from Department of Justice the discussion that they had included how to build a resourcing plan for your operation estimating number of team members needed levels of seniority and basing it on programs metrics like data reported to DOJ or other measures of the program's scope and complexity how to decide personnel versus tax investment breakdown what's the realistic ideal state what do you need to get there what's the most valuable resource a FOIA office can add that does not require money how to get senior leadership buy-in to make changes to your program and what single piece of advice give to other agency FOIA leaders who are contemplated or in the process of approaching their leadership to improve their FOIA program some key takeaways included to be successful you have to be able to do an honest assessment of where your program is only then can you map out the resources you need so come up with a good plan focus on why you need those resources and what the impact would be next slide please the second panel FOIA technology where can it help where does it fall short was moderated by me and our panelists included Eric Stein from department of defense global information services Michael Sarich department of veterans affairs compliance risk and remediation and Gorka Garcia Malin department of health and human services national institutes of health technology as we hear often is a friend in our foe making some processing easier gone other days of those tedious preparations of redactions using correction tape and fluid or at least I hope that's the case across the board but it also makes it more challenging just one example is that technology makes it makes it able to quickly retrieve massive volumes of records based on search criteria that can then be extremely time consuming to sort through and review Eric Mike and Gorka have contributed significantly to discussions and decisions regarding technology used for FOIA in particular through the chief way officers councils technology committee and we already heard from Eric about some of those updates and Eric and Mike as co-chairs of that committee and Gorka's co-chairing of the two working groups meant that they had a lot of expertise and advice to share so it was a really great opportunity to have them as our panelists the discussion included the biggest benefit the panelists have observed from using technology and FOIA processing how FOIA software has impacted the number of employees needed what factors should be considered when making a software determination and what features or feature in particular should we look for when shopping for a new FOIA software system some key takeaways included that there really isn't a one fits all solution with technology it depends on the needs and specifics of the individual FOIA office volume of requests and types of requests need to be considered as well as the budget what makes one office's process easier might actually make another's harder the other key takeaway was people are your most important asset critical to a program's success technology can help but it can't replace people review and assessment of some content to determine whether it's exempted from the FOIA cannot be done all alone by technology so you need to recruit retain and recognize your team members next slide please our final panel FOIA staffing opportunities was moderated by our other co-caqui co-chair abby and abby is from consumer product safety commission the panelists included adrian blank department of justice office of information policy Johann Englund department of veterans affairs Brandon K. Lord our chair of our resources working group and department of homeland security during their conversation abby highlighted a 2021 poll for which low pay and too few growth opportunities were the top two reasons people quit their jobs the discussion included organizational structure how FOIA offices are staffed including all personnel regular staff contractors interns and detail ease and the different roles they play in their staffing plans recruiting hiring tools used to recruit FOIA talent in addition to monster connecting USA jobs to recruit the FOIA talent in any special hiring authorities retention the ladder scale in the different FOIA offices and how to retain that FOIA talent pathways and internship experiences adrian and Johann shared their experiences and perspectives what interested them in taking a FOIA internship why they stayed what opportunities were received as a result of their internship and what they received that they wouldn't have received otherwise some key takeaways included engage employees through cross training and leadership development allow for highly flexible work schedules for retention and remove the tedious parts of the FOIA job whenever possible use technology like bots to perform routine administrative tasks the workshop was a very rewarding experience and the resources working group would like to take this opportunity to thank the very many contributors that helped organize it and so with that in mind we want to emphasize and recognize the support and help from our co-caki co-chairs Abby and Mike as well as from the co-chairs Alima and Bobby and colleagues in OGIS and OIP and others who helped bring things together and insured the virtual workshop went smoothly we'd also like to thank the participation of our panelists for their time and energy and sharing their expertise and experiences and last but not least we want to thank everyone who attended we really appreciated the participation questions and the feedback in closing we welcome thoughts and suggestions of where the resources working group could focus on and future planning so please don't hesitate to reach out I'll add a comment in the chat to provide the link to the resources working group thank you and back to you Mike great thank you Regina and let's see if we can do this transition a little better than the last one our next subcommittee will be the pandemic and virtual FOIA office subcommittee co-chair who is filling in for the subcommittee chair and she will also cover the FOIA tool kit working group so thanks Mike and good morning to everyone in the FOIA community I am here on behalf of Shante Stanley who chairs the co-cackies pandemic subcommittee and also to tell you about co-cackies newest venture the FOIA tool kit working group the pandemic subcommittee is studying what the FOIA community is doing during COVID about virtual work and how it will use that knowledge going forward the subcommittee surveyed 219 FOIA professionals from nearly 40 agencies about the strategies techniques and procedures used to process FOIA requests before during and after the pandemic they will publish a best practices guide this fiscal year to improve the virtual work experience and to better support FOIA processing throughout the federal government I will leave my slide so next slide please and the next slide next slide thank you and then the next slide sorry I was behind on that and so co-cackie also has a new group the FOIA tool kit working group this group was established in FY23 with the goal to draft a guide for FOIA professionals to better recruit develop and retain FOIA talent the working group is currently reviewing 40 FOIA position descriptions from over 7 agencies and a year's worth of USA jobs data on FOIA recruitment we will publish the tool kit in May 2024 and hope that it is of great value to everyone in the FOIA community and with that I will hand it back over to Mike great thank you I'll be on the next slide please alright well today we've heard so far the results of two and a half years of hard work there's been a lot of surveys research full committee meetings subcommittee meetings interviews you name it that the committee members have done and all this has been in addition to their regular agency jobs so well it's been a lot of hard work and we're starting to see the results now there's still some more work we want to do I think we're really coming up with some good solutions so if anyone would like to join co-cackie one of our things is you can come and go as you like and be active because we're all busy in the FOIA community so if you're coming up on a really busy time and you can't make a meeting or you have to maybe be you know pause it for a month or so we're good with that and that's why we could use more members because we want to be able to do that and allow our people to work on their full-time jobs as well as co-cackie so if you're interested please email Abby or myself we'll be glad to have you again I think it's a fun group and thank you for listening Abby did you want to add something? I was just going to say it is a fun group and we'd love to have you and thank you Mike all right now turn it over to the technology committee Eric and Michael I believe you guys are up next next slide all right well thank you like and Abby good to see you again Mike Sarrich is my co-chair so I'm Eric Stein this morning and we're going to talk about the technology committee by way of background technology committee has about I want to say 40 members from about 25 different agencies and has divided up its work into six distinct active working groups at the moment including one looking at search in AI one working AI being artificial intelligence of course one working on data one working with platforms and best practices classified information and we have others as well so today we're going to give a couple updates about our recent efforts and also talk about what's coming in the months ahead so first one thing we've been working on and it's timely given the release of the executive order on artificial intelligence is a paper and artificial intelligence by way of background a few years ago we had a session where we tried to introduce concepts of artificial intelligence to the FOIA community and we did so through a presentation to FOIA professionals and have had a working group on artificial intelligence ever since in the past year or so we combined a previously existing search working group with artificial intelligence because we saw overlaps in their work and as you've heard today we've talked about AI quite a bit, we've talked about search you saw the presentation by Bobby and others that their search is a key part of the work that we do getting people to the right information so this paper that we will be putting forward will share kind of the background of what the committee has done on artificial intelligence to date socialize recent AI concepts and principles and then help to think about how does this apply to FOIA or how could it apply to FOIA moving forward in different aspects of FOIA case processing so we look forward to releasing that paper which will be publicly available when it's released and possibly briefing at a future session of either this body or another opportunity to speak to the public about that work if you're interested in the different work done by the working groups, by our working groups on the tech committee we have our charters all publicly available so you can go to the FOIA.gov site and see the technology committee page and look at the different charters for the groups with that I'm going to turn it over to Mike Sarich who co-chairs the tech committee to give an update an exciting update about something we're working and planning for 2024 so Mike good to see you again back over to you well thank you very much Eric it's a real pleasure to be here so thanks to everyone for taking time out of their day to learn a little bit more about what's going on in the tech committee and also the FOIA world kind of writ large so we're really excited to share that planning is underway for the next FOIA tech showcase our first one was held over a couple of days in February of 2022 that next gen FOIA showcase was kind of the first of its kind an opportunity to bring tech folks outside the traditional convention center trade show location and provide folks with an opportunity to come together to learn and share advancements in tech and FOIA space so to recap that a little bit and set the stage for our next event I'd like to give you some of the highlights of next gen 1.0 and set the stage for next next gen 2.0 if I can so here's what we accomplished last time out 18 vendors shared issues insights and explored potential solutions in a number of areas those included e-discovery electronic record search tools case processing tools including the collection of records to review for redaction and posting accessible 508 compliant releases that's a huge issue for so many agencies ensuring that we're meeting all of the mandates and transparency including an especially 508 redaction tools so those are tools that allow for the automatic redaction of similar forms and record types including paper digital videos data etc the multiplicity of records that we make in the FOIA and sorry in the federal family we talked a lot about AI which is as Eric mentioned has been a long-standing over the five years of this committee a topic that we that we've continued to talk about and discuss in the FOIA context we talked about the future of FOIA improved public FOIA reading rooms and websites and really improving the CX the customer experience in the FOIA process all of these kind of undergird our opportunities there so these were areas that the members of the tech community shared that were important to them in their own FOIA programs as they seek to iteratively improve them and where folks could also find the best possible tools to apply to their programs one of the things that was really important and impactful with next gen 1.0 was after the meeting we had a workshop for agencies as a follow along to the next gen FOIA tech showcase where we had agency representatives discuss their experiences using the different types of FOIA technologies maybe some of them that were presented there or close cousins to the technologies that were presented there discuss really their impact it was an open forum for attendees to participate and ask questions and then share some of their own experiences in that in that community and really that's part of what we're trying to accomplish we're trying to spread the word on technology and ensure that everyone in the FOIA community has awareness of the best tools to accomplish their FOIA mission the sharing really undergirds relationships that are built on the tech committee and the large part of you know why five years later we're still at this working diligently to make sure that we spread the word and level the playing field across the FOIA community so now what's next what are we going to how are we going to build on that success of FOIA next gen 1.0 and translate that and bridge that into FOIA next gen 2.0 so for the spring of 2024 we're planning on building on those conversations started and the relationships created in next gen 1.0 to further engage with the private sector to lean into things like generative AI for FOIA and really the incredible technological leaps that have occurred in the last 18 months building on the pilots that other agencies like Eric's at state have undertaken and seen the results and the lessons learned there we're looking forward to discussing really the root and branch level issues that every FOIA program works with on a daily basis so we're really excited for the potential future integration of the latest technology into our daily work of course we anticipate that we'll see guidance for agencies use acquisition and staffing of AI related activities in the coming year so that'll certainly play a part in next gen 2.0 and of course all of these efforts are grounded in the president's executive order on AI you know we're talking about AI we're mindful that we're executive branch operators and that we're part of that we want to ensure that AI systems are safe secure and trustworthy for our agency's most sensitive information so please stay tuned for updates and invitations to next gen 2.0 in the spring of 2024 and really grateful to the incredible members of the tech committee who are working hard to lay the foundation to building foundations of next gen 1.0 and make sure that next gen 2.0 isn't even bigger success so before we wrap anything else to add Eric? Yes Mike just a few points on next gen and a couple comments to wrap up on next gen a lot of AI talk and maybe that's a little intimidating or you're not quite sure about where to begin I encourage any of you interested especially from federal agencies and FOIA programs reach out to us let's start a conversation about AI and FOIA and maybe see where you can get started and see maybe you don't even need AI and that's the other point I wanted to one of the other points we've talked a lot about artificial intelligence machine learning there is a lot of different technological options available out that could help with FOIA programs so just to split off from AI for a moment there could be other ways to use technology to assist different parts of the FOIA process from intake to case processing records online, coordinating among federal agencies on records matters or on cases and I think it's a time for innovation so it's exciting because again a lot of the buzz is around AI but we're seeing now all types of new thoughts innovation approaches new employees in the FOIA field and so next gen showcase does a lot of different things including it's meant to spark and be a catalyst for creativity and innovation in FOIA and records management type work so we also want to build bridges with the private sector and the public in this as well so we're going to be transparent like we were in the next gen showcase the first time around you can still go to our site and see the videos made by companies all the documents we put together and then as Mike pointed out we had this after session with government employees making sure we have feedback and the public can see what we're working on as well so and part of this is even if you have ideas for what we should be looking at or considering as members of the public or whether you're paying attention here today for the first time ever or you've been to these meetings in the past send feedback I believe OIP and OGIS provided some information on how to reach out to the different committees whether it be us or Kokaki a lot of work we do is focused in the six areas of our working groups but technologies cuts across all of FOIA so I guess I just wanted to add those points to next gen and also thank our sibling our committee and Kokaki for the opportunity to speak at their event which was terrific a lot of great speakers a lot of great ideas and a lot of energy on how do we move forward and improve transparency at the agency and the federal government level so with that those were the additional thoughts Mike back over to you to wrap up and again thanks for the opportunity to be here today thanks so much for that really appreciate Alina Bobby and the rest of the folks for having us and just to put a code onto that Regina from Kokaki who moderated our session did a fabulous job and really appreciated the members really drive these committees the tech committee and the Kokaki really drive the great work from the white papers on and again reiterate the call if you have an interest in either these fields or great opportunities to come together with fellow FOIA professionals because many of the challenges that we face for example me at VA or you at state or anyone at transportation wherever you may be there are similar challenges and it's a great forum to help each other and feel like you're not alone so it's a great opportunity there so really grateful to Alina and Bobby and you know starting these committees as the CFO as G-POL officer council group grew from the 2016 act so thanks so much Alina and Bobby and back over to you guys right thank you so much Eric and Mike really appreciate it do I have Bobby oh he's here thank you before we go on to the next phase Bobby I just wanted to pause for a second and just make sure that we don't have any questions for our federal government colleagues I don't see any in the chat and I'm going to ask my colleague Dan Levenson if he has seen anything from anyone on the government side not on the government side okay I'll read into the record we have a lot of great content today I know it's a day before a holiday Veterans Day is tomorrow celebrated and folks maybe we're not able to join us today but Bobby and I are happy that this is going to live on on the NARA YouTube channel and we do hope folks will be tuning in when they have a chance so thanks Bobby back over to you alright thank you Alina and thank you to Avi, Mike, Michael and Eric and all the members of your committees it's been great work but I also will double down on both committees have a lot of fun in doing this and so I enjoy everyone I encourage everyone to join the party and reach out to us and of course if you have any questions please reach out to any of us as well so with that I believe we've now reached the public comment section of our meeting we promise to leave time for that and so we have plenty we have time now we look forward to hearing from any members of ideas or comments they would like to share about the topics that we discussed today I also want to remind everyone that you may also submit written comments to the council using the comment submission form on OGIS's website before submitting public comments please be sure to read the posting policy for public comments oral comments presented to the chief forester council are available in the meeting transcript that will be posted on 40.gov and in the videos of the council meetings posted on NARA's YouTube channel with that over to you Alina great thanks Bobby so first we're going to open up our telephone lines to get started so I'm going to ask our event producer Michelle if you could please provide instructions for our listeners for how to ask a question or make a comment via telephone also before Michelle goes on to give us instructions just want to remind everyone limit your comments to three minutes once your three minutes expire our event producer will mute your line and move on to the next commenter so Michelle over to you alright ladies and gentlemen as we enter the public comment session please be sure to limit your comments to three minutes per Alina's request once your three minutes expired we will mute your line and move on to the next commenter okay Michelle do we have anyone waiting on a phone line I do not see anybody yet and as a reminder if you are dialed in on our phone only line please press pound two to enter the question queue if you are joined via WebEx audio pressing the raise hand icon we'll put you into the question queue alright while we're waiting for anyone to think about whether they have a question to call in on Dan did we receive any comments during the meeting that you'd like to read out loud yes we received a couple questions during the meeting about the circulating the slides so I'd like to let everyone know that the slides will be posted on the chief void officers council web page as soon as they have been reviewed for Americans with disability act compliance or compliance with the ADA and we also had in the chat one attendee was asking about the enforcement mechanism to audit or provide visibility into whether or not agencies were properly posting commonly requested files to their reading rooms and and how the government ensures that gets done in a timely manner yeah I can I can respond to that question and so as I mentioned earlier we have a number of reporting requirements that we give to agencies and one section of the chief for officer report specifically focuses on proactive disclosures and in this year's guidelines we specifically ask with process and how the agencies are identifying frequently requested records that are subject to subsection A2 of the FOIA but also then asking how how much time it takes for them once they identified it to post it online and so we use the CFO report for that level of visibility and accountability of that requirement and anything else? that was it thank you Michelle I'm just going to check in with you one more time do we have anyone else waiting to make a comment I do not see any raised hands in the WebEx audio queue or in the phone only conference line at this time okay alright well thank you Bobby we're going to give everyone back the gift of time today and we are going to wrap up we hope to see everyone again in the spring for another CFO council meeting please stay tuned for further announcements on an exact date and time as well as registration information I want to thank all of you for joining us today I hope everyone in their families remain safe healthy and resilient and Bobby I'll turn it back over to you thank you and thanks again for joining us I think it was a great meeting and I hope everyone has a great weekend and upcoming holiday thank you again take care that concludes our conference thank you for using event services you may now disconnect