 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. You are welcome to submit written comments throughout the meeting which will be addressed at the Q&A session of the meeting. To submit a written comment, please select all panelists from the drop-down menu in the chat panel then enter your comment in the question box provided and send. To ask a question via WebEx audio, please click the raise hand icon on your WebEx screen which is located above the chat panel on the right. This will place you in the question queue. If you are connected to today's meeting via regular phone audio, please dial pound two on your telephone keypad to enter the question queue. If you require technical assistance, please send the chat to the event producer. I will turn the meeting over to Deborah Wall, Acting Archivist of the United States. Deborah, please go ahead. Thank you so much. So good morning, everybody. I'm Deborah Wall, the Acting Archivist. It's good to be with you again. Welcome to the committee members and members of the public to the final meeting of the 2020 to 2022 term of the Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee. To members of the public, since September 2020, the committee's four subcommittees have looked at FOIA through the lenses of classification, process, technology and legislation. Committee members have approached FOIA's challenges with curiosity and open minds, deliberated possible solutions and found common ground. The result is a package of 21 far-reaching recommendations all previously passed by the committee, 20 at the last three meetings in March, April and May, and one in June 2021. To committee members, I look forward to your final deliberations today and to receiving the final report later this month. I'll give each of your recommendations very close consideration. Were we meeting in person? As was the norm pre-pandemic, I'd present each of you with an OGIS NARA challenge coin, a certificate of thanks and a handshake on stage in the McGowan Theater. Instead, we'll mail the challenge coins and email the certificates and until they arrive, please accept my gratitude and a virtual handshake for all of your hard work. You've all exemplified that working together, FOIA requesters and agency FOIA professionals results in robust ideas for making the FOIA process work for all. To OGIS staff, thank you for your exceptional work supporting the FOIA committee and for all that you do. Small but mighty. Before turning the meeting over to chairperson Alina Simo, I wanted to let everyone know, if you don't already, that we're soliciting nominations for from both the federal requester community and from agencies for the 2022 to 2024 term of the committee. So that's the committee's fifth term. I look forward to appointing members the summer before the term's first meeting on September 8th. So with that, I'll turn the meeting over to Alina Simo and thank you all again for your hard work and for your dedication to the cause. Alina? Thank you so much, Deborah. I really appreciate it and hopefully you can stay for a little bit and listen to our deliberations. If you can't, we'll fill you in later. As the director of the office of government information services, OGIS and this committee's chairperson, it is my pleasure to welcome all of you to the final meeting at the fourth term of the FOIA advisory committee. We have made it. I hope everyone who's joining us today has been staying safe, healthy, and well. I want to welcome all of our committee members who are able to join us today and extend my immense gratitude for all of your hard work and commitment to studying the FOIA landscape in order to develop recommendations for improving the FOIA process government-wide. I know how much work has gone into the astounding 21 recommendations and the final report is a reflection of all of that hard work. I am looking forward to discussing and finalizing the final report graph today. I also want to welcome our colleagues and friends in the FOIA community and elsewhere who are watching us today either via Webex or with a slight delay on NARA's YouTube channel. I have a few housekeeping issues to go through, so bear with me, and then we'll get to the matters at hand. First, I am advised that committee members Alexandra Perlop-Giles and Tuan Samohon are unable to join us today. I also am advised that Linda Fry is with us today on the telephone, unable to join us by video. Linda, I just want to check in. Can you say hello? Hello. I'm here. Okay, great. Also, Kristen Ellis is also joining us by telephone. Kristen, can you hear us? Yes, I can. Great. Good morning, Kristen. We have Kirsten Mitchell. Have you taken a visual roll call? Can you please confirm we have a quorum? We do indeed have a quorum. Okay, terrific. Meeting materials for this term, along with members' names, affiliations, and biographies are available on the committee's webpage. Click on the link for the 2020-2022 FOIA Advisory Committee on the OGIS website. Please also visit our website for today's agenda, PowerPoint presentation, and related meeting materials. We will upload a transcript and video of this meeting as soon as they become available. During today's meeting, I want to encourage committee members to use the All Panelists option from the drop-down menu in the chat function. When you would like to speak or ask a question, you can also chat me or Kirsten directly. However, 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 comment should be made in the chat function as they will not be recorded in the transcript of this meeting. If a committee member needs to take a break at any time, please do not disconnect from either the audio or video of the web event. Instead, mute your microphone by using the microphone icon and turn off your camera by clicking on the camera icon. Please send us a quick chat to me and Kirsten to let us know if you'll be gone for more than a few minutes, and join us again as soon as you can. I have not planned on taking a break today as the plan is to wrap up early as per our post-adagenta. A reminder to all of our committee members, please identify yourself by name and affiliation each time you speak today. This will help us down the road with both the transcript and the minutes, both of which are required by the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Transcripts and minutes from the March 10th and April 7th committee meetings are in the works. Transcripts from the March 10th and April 7th meetings have now been posted on our website. We will post transcripts from our May 5th meeting and today's meeting as soon as they are ready. You may access all of our prior meetings this term on the NARA YouTube channel and we provide links to each meeting on our website under meetings for the 2020 to 2022 terms. In compliance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, Kirsten and I have reviewed and certified minutes from our March 10th meeting. We have posted those on our website. If any committee member has any edits or changes to suggest, please let us know at this time. Okay, no one has spoken. Silence is golden. Therefore, no one has any minutes. The minutes stand. Kirsten and I will continue to review, certify, and post minutes from today's meeting, April 10th meeting, and May 5th meeting within the FACA-required 90-day period from the meeting date. A few words about public comments. We have received several written comments in advance of today's meeting as we have in the past. We believe we are up to date and have posted all of them in advance of today's meeting. We have also alerted committee members and have invited them to view the public comments on our website. If anyone wishes to submit any additional written public comments regarding the committee's work, you may do so by emailing FOIA-advisory-committee at NARA.gov and we will consider posting them to the OGIS website. Since this is our last meeting this term, I want to pause here and ask if any committee member has any comments, responses, or feedback to any of the public comments that have been received so far. Cal, is that your raising your hand? Yes, I'm blurred out so you can't see my hand. Hi, this is Cal McClellan-Hann and I just wanted to reiterate one of the comments and I don't have it right in front of me right now, but it made a very technical suggestion for clarification that the recommendation that handles FOIA logs and says that the agencies should post their FOIA logs should also include appeals. I think that's a great idea. I think that if nothing else it should have a field for if it's under appeal and if there is an appeal number as most agencies have a separate tracking number for their appeals, that would be very useful to it on there. Okay, can I ask Jason and Allison from the subcommittee for technology co-chairs to comment on that or is that something we've already talked about in the past? I feel like we've discussed this before. Yeah, this is a Jason guard history associates. I also think that's a good idea. Allison? Yeah, I don't recall if we discussed it in our subcommittee meetings or why or why not, but it is something that's an interesting idea and makes sense and I don't know why we didn't think about it. Yeah, and I'm not sure. I'm not sure we did discuss it. Yeah, I think, yeah, I don't think we did either and I don't know why. Okay, anyone else on the subcommittee want to comment? Anyone else on the committee want to comment? I would just simply, this is Kellyan, I'll just simply suggest that when we get to approving the report and making any last-minute changes to the report, we stick something in to that effect into that recommendation and we get to it. So I'd like to stick a pin in that right now. Okay, that's good. Hi, Alina, this is Patricia Western, EPA. I'm not sure about the procedure, but haven't we already approved all the recommendations as is and perhaps, and there's lots of great ideas out there, but perhaps this is something for the next committee to explore. It's just that at our last meeting, we had approved all the recommendations that were on the table at that time and that's my suggestion. Okay, so this is Jason. Yeah, so I actually, and point taken, Patricia and Kell, I think if you look at our recommendation on G, we say status of request, pending, closed, etc. I think that would cover appeal. Okay, it sounds like that's a good way to move forward, we'll leave it as is. And it can be revisited in the next term. I understand, Patricia's point, we have voted on the recommendations already. It's the 13th hour that we're in now, so it's a little difficult to move the machinery back. Okay, anyone else have any other comments or concerns or questions? Dave Collier. Thank you, Alina. I'm Dave Collier. I'm from the University of Arizona and I just want to thank the folks who have submitted public comment and I mean, I read all of them and I think a lot of them informed what we did, at least what I wrote up on the OJIS recommendations, what we all came up with, it's a working group and subcommittee. So thank you for everyone who did that. And I think it's kind of a long-term process. We talk about things, people comment on it, we cogitate, maybe we come up with some recommendations. Maybe we're focused on some other things, but I think a lot of these ideas will indeed probably come up here in the next term. I hope so. I hope the next committee looks at these as well and continues the conversation. So I want to thank people for doing that and encourage people to submit even more on the next term. I think they're extremely helpful. Thank you. Thank you, David. This is James Stoker. Yeah, James, go ahead, please. I'm Lady Washington University. I just had a question. Are we going to go through the recommendations one by one or will we just vote on the report as a whole? My hope was to just vote on the report as a whole, unless anyone has an objection. Well, this is James again. I certainly understand that. So I wanted to make a suggestion and I don't see it necessarily as a substantive change. It's more as just a change in kind of the way that we are presenting what we've done. It's not a big change, but this is in regards to the recommendation number seven, written by the Technology Committee, which has a list of 16 pieces of information that they are suggesting that agencies post on their website. In recommendation number three, which was written by the classification subcommittee, we suggest that agencies post information about circumstances that will likely result in a Gromar response or neither confirm nor deny response. And we also recommend that they post advice when possible on how to avoid such a response. This is the type of information that also would fit very neatly into recommendation number seven. So I was wondering if we could somehow incorporate that text into recommendation number seven, just because it seems like something that would make it easier to follow up on. So instead of future versions of this committee having to go back and look at two different recommendations, they could look at one. I mean, they could effectively be combined together, but that may also be something that takes more time to discuss than we have right now. So I'll leave it up to others. Does that make sense? What I'm suggesting? I'm a little fuzzy on what you're suggesting. Are you suggesting that you incorporate into 2022-07, one of the classification subcommittee recommendations? Yes, the recommendation itself, number three by the classification subcommittee, says that it recommends that agencies post information on circumstances that will likely result in a neither confirm nor deny response. It doesn't talk about logs in particular. It includes suggestions on how to avoid such a response. We suggest that this should be posted on agency websites. And ultimately, what recommendation number seven is doing is providing a list of things that should be added, a list of information that should also be included on agency websites. So it's only now at the final report that we see that these things are very similar, right, that they could be effectively combined. Now, this takes away, you know, a recommendation that we've created, but it also is going to make it easier down the road for it to be followed up on. This is Alison Dietrich from Commerce. Could we just maybe, would it be easier just to add a footnote for each recommendation from the classification recommendation and from the technology and just say this overlaps or similar to and then cross-reference the other one. So we're not substantively changing our recommendations. We're just adding a little bit more context. And then it would at least put people on notice to check the other recommendation without having to redo them completely. We put that in the comments section. So it's not actually part of the recommendation. And then just maybe like this overlaps with or similar to a recommendation from the other subcommittee. This is James Decker. I don't have a, I'm not opposed to that. I was just thinking that it might be worth taking a couple of minutes to do this right now to save trouble down the road. But if the committee doesn't want to touch the language of the recommendations as they are, I think that would make a lot of sense. What you've suggested, Alison. This is Patricia Webb with EPA. So a couple of things. The recommendations were approved by the full committee. I know sometimes there's going to be overlap between recommendations, but that's why the report was put together in the way that it was. I mean, if you look at it up front, you have the out of glance. And then as you get further into the report, there's more of the meat and potato. And the report working group worked really hard to make sure that we properly captured the recommendations as they were approved. So, you know, I think, I don't think that there's going to be any confusion. And I would recommend that the report stands as it is. And I'm somebody who always goes to this report and pulls out information for my leadership, you know, to make recommendations at my agency. So I don't see there being any confusion here. I know Kelly's waving at me, but I really would like to, and I don't mean to put Bobby on the spot, but I would like to ask Bobby if you could just share your thoughts, because recommendation 07 is directed to OIP. Do you have any reaction to what we're talking about? Yeah. So obviously, I'm very familiar with all the recommendations. So there won't be any confusion on our end for considering the recommendations. And I understand both points of views, but I also understand it's kind of hard to change things last last minute. All right, Tal, go ahead. Thank you, Bobby. So this is more of a point of order question for Alina or Kirsten. If we're not talking about the language in the reports and the report singular and better ways to make it easy to read and accomplishing its goal, then what exactly are we voting on today, grammar? Is this something that we're supposed to discuss, whether or not we like the way the report is written? Or are we just going to do an up or down vote for the record without being allowed to offer any amendments? The whole idea of circulating a draft week in advance was to give all the committee members an opportunity to comment, to raise issues that have just been raised today. I'm a little, I'm just going to be very candid and to have a little frustrated that this is coming up now. I understand Patricia's point of view on both counts. We've already voted on all of these recommendations and the working group did work very hard to try to pull all these together and pull a report together. So as a point of order, I'm going to say today is a vote on the final report as it has been presented and as the committee has had a chance to consider for the past week. We have incorporated all the comments that we have received. Grammar, yes, substance, absolutely. And what I was going to do was just quickly walk through some of the substantive comments that have been made just to flag that for the committee members, although they have already been flagged in previous drafts that I've circulated. So I think with that, I'm just going to move on, unless anyone else has anything they would like to add. Okay, just a few comments about our public comments section of our meeting today. We are switching up the order a little bit. In addition to the written comments we have received, we are also going to allow for oral comments before we take a final vote on the report and after the committee finishes discussing any other comments on the report. We posted in our March 21st, 2022 Federal Register notice that public comments will be limited to three minutes per individual and they must relate to the recommendations the committee is considering today. So I want to remind our public commenters about that and there will be opportunity in due course. So at this point, I do want to thank all of the working groups and subcommittees for the hard work and I definitely want to recognize the committee members who volunteered to be on the working group to bring this final report together. Alan Blutstein, David Cullier, Dionne Stearns and Patricia Wett. So before I open up the floor to any other specific comments, I do want to point out that I certainly didn't flag for anyone missing commas, extra spaces. The working group decided that was hopefully you trust us that we put in the Oxford commas and that we deleted the extra spaces. But I do want to flag a couple of things. One is that for the table of contents and if I could ask Michelle, our event producer to please just go back up to the table of contents, we will insert the page numbers for the table of contents once the report is finalized. I think you can all see that. There we go. There is a specific comment that the working group decided not to accept and that was to add the definition of metadata and glossary. We decided against it because footnotes 25 and 26, both reference documents that defined that term already. So I just wanted to make that clear. And the other changes were highlighted in particular in recommendation number 09. Alison, thank you so much for pointing out that we changed the word conflict to challenges. And that was her body suggestion. I appreciate that change. And we also added a paragraph and I'm just cursing down and I'm hoping I could ask Michelle to also get to that. So Michelle, if you could please work your way down to page 16. We're on page 16, Alina. You are on page 16? Okay, because it's not displaying it. You're not able to see it? I'm still seeing recommendation 07. It's on page 16. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Yes, absolutely. You're absolutely on the right page. If you could go down a little bit further on that page. This big yellow part. I wanted to alert everyone to that. Again, thanks to Alison for keeping us on the straight and narrow and reminding us that there were some additional elements to this recommendation that were added as a result of the committee discussion and vote. So that is reflected there. And Alina, this is Alison. I just wanted to clarify that the main addition was breaking up 11 into 11 and 12 and then 13, 14, 15 and 16 were pre-existing, but we just remembered them. So that's why they're highlighted. Thank you. And then Michelle, if I could ask you to please go to page 24. That's recommendation 14. Does everyone see that? Okay, here we go. So what I wanted to note here is that in the first draft that we circulated, we, the working group, we did not stick to the actual language or the recommendation that was passed. And so what we did was we went back, double checked, and the language you see here is the language that was actually passed by the committee. So therefore, that's reflected in the strikeout. And then the redlining. And Michelle, if you could go to the next page, please. We added a paragraph that we received courtesy of Alexis. Thank you, Alexis. Clarifying what this assessment would look like. And we found that explanation very helpful. So thank you for that, Alexis. So I just wanted to flag that for everyone. Alina, can I make a comment? Yes, please. Who is this? Tom Sussman. Thank you, Tom. I think there was discussion during the course on this issue about the need for specifically providing funding. So I'm my concern that the first draft just said that DHS should commission a study and clearly we wanted outside independent of you and not something that was initiated by our control by DHS. But, you know, it sort of comes forward like this is just going to come out of the, you know, ahead of Zeus, full blown. There's a there's a group doing the study. And I think in the explanation, we might might be worth a sentence. I don't believe this is a substantive change that says that to the extent that the agency is unable to provide funding for such a study, Congress should provide specific appropriations or something that contemplates that they're going to need this could be it's not in the government world of appropriations. It's going to be fairly trivial, but an agency that has a lot to do and is already stretched in this area. I'm concerned that we should acknowledge the needs for additional resources. This is Cal. I can check in that concern. I actually talked to a DHS official about this after the recommendation when we were trying to put together specific proposals last time and said, you know, how much would this cost if you were to do it? And they said this a good estimate would be about $4 million for doing this project. So while in the DHS for allotment of cash that seems like a drop in the bucket for the FOI office that is kind of a lot of money. And so I think it would definitely be worth calling out this is not just a problem for DHS to figure out a way for we're recommending that Congress to get behind this the way Tom said. Yeah. And this is Tom again, if I can be so bold. Our discussions with DHS early on suggest that they think things are under control. They're not particularly. I mean, they understand there's a problem, but they didn't share our concern that it should be addressed quickly and substantially. And so that also makes me believe that they're going to be unwilling as Kel said to allocate, you know, scarce funds to something that they're really not terribly committed to. Okay, Tom, thanks for that concern. I appreciate it. I have a couple of thoughts. One is I want to just ask Alexis and Michael as the subcommittee co-chairs, if you're in agreement with this in terms of adding a few sentences in the body of the explanation. This is Alexis USDA. I would be happy to add just a few sentences here. I think you know, that's something that we can tweak relatively quickly. Okay, Tom, if you have ideas for like one or two sentences that we could insert, perhaps you could share that via the chat, but we'll read it out loud since it doesn't get captured in the chat. Would you be willing to do that? Okay, I think I got a thumbs up from Tom. Okay, I believe that is it. I'm going to ask my working group members to make sure that I didn't miss anything else. But those were the highlights, literally and figuratively, of what we wanted to bring to your attention. So I'm going to open up the floor at this point to any other comments or thoughts or concerns. Yeah. So this is Cal from National Security Councilors. Now that I have a graph of how we're sort of making edits here and making suggestions, I think that the idea of including appeals in the FOIA log would fit nicely into the explanation of recommendation seven. And so I think that we should revisit that even if we can't change the recommendation itself, we can change apparently the comment and the comment near the bottom of page seven. Sorry, not seven. Twelve, right? I looked at the wrong one. So recommendation ten. I'll find it eventually. When you have the comment on page 21 of about recommendation ten, where it says, our recommendation differs from the earlier one in the following ways. And then you get to the release of the information subject to the assertion of exemptions and exclusions. I think that we could stick another short line in there before the committee approves and say, we also, our recommendation also envisions that the, et cetera, and item G, or et cetera, request would include a pellet status, if applicable, which we do not believe was envisioned by the previous occasion. So I would suggest making that change there, since everybody seems to be on board with the need for making it, for appeals being included. But we're now unclear on how to go about doing it. I'll put it here. Thanks, Hal. Alison and Jason, do you want to react to that? Hal, can I just invite you, as I invited Tom, please put in the chat one or two sentences he would like inserted. Tell us exactly where it needs to be inserted in your view. And I'll read it out loud as soon as you've sent it to me. Okay? That's the easiest way to go. Hey, Jay, were you waving to say something or? No, sorry. I'm trying to look at everyone making sure that I, Jason, do you have any reaction to what Kelly's saying or are you? Jason Carter, history associates. I would just, on page 20 of the working draft, item G, status of request, parentheses, pending close, et cetera, we could just add a pellet status. This is Alison. I'm inclined to leave everything as it is, because then my other thought was, well, for dealing with administrative appeals, should we also indicate if it request is in litigation? I feel like that just is getting a little bit further away from what we had originally discussed, and we can leave it to a future term to reassess as if they desire. So, Alison, you're not in favor of adding even any explanatory language in the comment. At this point, correct. Any other thoughts? This is Jason. I would just ask the other members of our subcommittee, you know, their thoughts. That's how we've done it over the last two years. Roger, Kristen, AJ, David. All right. Otherwise, we can just take a vote on a motion that someone could present about whether we're going to add a couple of sentences in the comment. That's another way I could think of handling it at this point. If you can give me about 15 seconds, I'm typing that thing for you that you wanted. Although I'm hearing Alison opposed to even adding something in the comment section, right? I am, but if the rest of the subcommittee is okay with entertaining Kells proposal. Okay. Roger, without you waving. Oh, not here you. Yeah, and this is Jason. I think Roger does want to say something, or maybe he doesn't, but again, I agree with Alison that, you know, it's up to the group. It's, you know, I think, consensus. Can you hear me now? Alina, this is Patricia Weth from EPA. You know, I think we've heard from both the co-chairs of the Technology Committee and they spent two years, you know, working on these recommendations as well as their comments. And, you know, you did a great job. So I think you should go with their original recommendations. I mean, we can make changes to every committee's comments. Right. And, you know, really the time for us as members to share comments with our fellow members was during the deliberation process and not here where we're working with final recommendations that have been accepted and voted on by the whole group. So that's my two cents. Okay. Roger. Thanks, Patricia. Roger. Michelle, anything we can do to help Roger be heard? This is Alexis Grace with the USDA. Roger, we can hear you now. You can hear me now. Okay. Yes, I, you can hear me. Okay. I think we should leave that piece out and I'm going to have a couple of reasons why. For example, HHS, for example, the operating divisions for HHS don't handle their appeal. Number two, appeals can be on one case, can be appealed on a variety of issues. They can appeal, for example, a denial of appeal. They can appeal a denial of experience. They can appeal. So you can have, you can have a lot with more to put in the same case with multiple appeals found by a request of because they're disputing multiple issues. So I think it's not as simple as you can just get decided on appeal. It's not as simple as that because they can appeal multiple issues at different times. So I think we should, if the next committee wants to take that issue on and figure out how best to do it before them, they can do that. But I think at this point, I think that tweaking though, I didn't agree. Okay. Thank you, Roger. I appreciate it. Alexis. Yes. Well, Roger, he so eloquently said I agree with his comments there. And I would just say that I would distinguish, you know, revisions, you know, to the first party working group from this one in that the first party, right, is agency specific. And we want to do those things that are going to further assist and facilitate, you know, the required revisions within the agency. And so if we can add some language, right, to make it a little bit more helpful to the agency, I think that we should again, I think we can distinguish this one from this type of recommendation because it is agency specific. Okay. All right. So what I'm hearing. This is scale. Yes. Go ahead, Cal. I'm just going to give for the closing remark on this. I think that the debate has ended. This is also agency specific. It's actually all agency specific. In fact, I think it's exactly the same. I think that we're setting a danger of precedent, not in the legal sense, but sort of in the way the committee works since if we start arbitrarily drawing lines between whether or not some amendments are allowed, not because they're a good idea, but because they're not, you know, meeting with the procedural whatever of how it's going. If nobody agrees with it because they think it's a bad idea and they shouldn't lift appeals on FOIA logs, then vote it down. That's a perfectly valid reason not to accept the amendment. But if we're going to consider one amendment to on the merits and another minute, not on the merits, that is a double standard. And that's all I'll say on that. Okay. I just want to clarify that what I've heard from everyone so far is that we are not amending any of the language of the recommendations themselves. Okay. I just want to be clear about that. We're not adding or subtracting from any of the recommendations. What we are discussing is whether we add any language in the comment section following the recommendation. I have heard with respect to appeals, there are at least two people on the technology subcommittee who are against it, against even adding any additional language. Does the technology subcommittee wish to take a vote on this issue about whether to add any additional language? I'm happy to take a vote. I'll, for the motion to put it on the table for, or I motioned for a vote. Okay. On whether to add any additional language in the comment section regarding appeals. Correct. Okay. Do I have a second on that motion? We don't need it. AJ is waiting. I'll second it. Okay. Thank you for the second. So let's get the committee to vote on whether we're going to add any additional language regarding appeals in the comment section following this recommendation. All those in favor, please say aye. Do you not want to read those recommendations? You said you were going to read that from the chat. Have you sent it to me? Yes. I think it's all attendees. No, I thought the question first was whether or not we're even going to consider language and then if that motion passes, then we would address language. This is curious, and that was my understanding too. And I just wanted a point of order. Alina, you were calling for a vote just from the technology subcommittee. Yes. The whole committee. The whole committee. Certainly. Okay. Alison, if it was our committee's recommendations, shouldn't it just be a technology subcommittee vote to put it towards the full committee? Sure. We could certainly proceed that way as well. Do we have the rest of the members of the technology subcommittee vote then on this motion as to whether to add any additional language in the comment section? Can I hear those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Okay. Who said aye? Me. Are you on the technology subcommittee? Oh, I'm sorry. That's okay. I was fixing the chat. I didn't realize it was under them. Sorry. It's okay. We're just taking a technology subcommittee vote. I've heard no ayes. AJ said aye. Any other ayes? All those opposed, please say nay. Nay. I think the nays have it for the technology subcommittee. Kirsten, can you note that, please? Yes, I will note that it the a's have it. I mean nays have it with AJ voting yes. Okay. So Allison, how would you like to proceed at this point now that the technology subcommittee has voted against this recommendation? Then I would not put a vote to the larger committee. Okay. Because it didn't clear the subcommittee. Okay. All right. I think that completes our discussion. Anyone else have any other comments? Dave Poolear. Hi, Kailina. Dave Poolear from the University of Arizona. I personally support putting that in here, but I oppose doing that now. And maybe the committee will want the next term committee might want to talk about procedure for the next term because this has been kind of something that's popped up a few times. And it might be something that they really want to kind of all agree to early. You know, like any city council put something on first reading, put it out there, let people cogitate, discuss, seek input, answer questions, and then come back and do second reading where they or they approve it. And sometimes we've had during this term things sprung on the committee, either the day before or night before meeting or during a meeting. And personally, that's reason why I abstained on a vote last meeting because I just, I just didn't have enough information. I wanted more, I wanted to ask more questions and certainly we didn't have time. So, you know, that might be something that the committee talks about because that might avoid confusion and consternation. Just an idea. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that comment. Okay. I'm going to circle back now to the first person issue and to the process subcommittee. I'm going to ask Alexis and Michael let's follow the same procedure. Let's take a vote on whether we add any additional language to clarify who is going to be funding the study or DHS. Michael, Alexis. Sorry about that. Couldn't get myself off mute. Yeah, are we going to take a vote in the same way, Alina? I think to be fair, and affordable, I think we should do the same thing. Have not seen any language from Tom, but let's at least tackle the issue first as to whether we would be adding any language. So the technology, the process subcommittee is, are you guys ready to vote on whether to add any language, clarifying the DHS specific recommendation? Yes. All right. So let's please take a vote at the process of committee. All those in favor of adding additional language to clarify the DHS specific recommendation, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. I heard three ayes. Did anyone, did I miss anything? I just sent a paragraph out in the chat. Okay, not received at the first. Tom, we're just voting on whether we're going to add it. Are you an aye? And Alina is also a part of the group, but I think he's away today. He is not here, correct. So unfortunately, we cannot have his vote count. Tom, are you an aye? We're including language. Yes, okay. Kirsten, are you taking account of that vote so far? Yes, I am. And it sounds like it is unanimous. I did not hear any nays. I did not ask for any nays yet. Oh, okay. All those opposed, please say nay. And I'm going to say nay, because I feel like we should be handling things in the same manner. If we're not, if we're, if we're going to make changes to one thing, I don't think we should be able to just deny that we're not going to make changes on anything else. Okay. And that was Linda Fry. Yes, sorry. Yes. Okay. Tom, if you send it to all panelists, all attendees, the panelists won't see it. Oh, yeah, Alina, Dave Cooley are here. I think the difference here is this was distributed ahead of the meeting. And right, Alina? Correct. And so to me, I'm, I'm fine with making decisions on things where we had a chance to see it ahead of time and talk and that sort of thing. Well, it was still a little short notice. So right, I mean, this is the kind of thing that probably we should distribute at least a week before the meeting in the future. So that's how I see this different from our previous discussion in vote. If that makes sense. Yeah, David, it does seem to me that there may be a difference between adding new thoughts and clarifying what the was discussed in the subcommittee, but not ultimately incorporated in report language, which I mean, the subject of this independent study, as I said, has been evolving from, you know, I think we're fairly clear it needed to be, you know, there need to be some outside force. And in fact, I think we specifically discussed that Congress should direct such a study, but that didn't, you know, come into the final language. So it's a nuance. And I suppose that's what votes are for is, you know, the committee, the full committee to establish its will, as does it want to change or add something or not. So, Tom, since you have the floor, would you please go ahead and read your suggested additional language? Yeah, the subcommittee acknowledges that given the challenges CIS is currently facing, that include complying with stringent court orders transitioning to a new access platform, and what appears to be another record breaking year of new FOIA requests, the commissioning of an independent assessment by an outside entity will require supplemental funding. We therefore recommend that DHS seek and Congress provide specific funding to CIS to support this assessment. And CIS refers to USCIS, right? Yeah, subject to editorial clarification is necessary. I mean, it's hard to wordsmith while I'm trying to listen and write it, and bring my coffee at the same time. So can I ask the process subcommittee members to comment on that language? Anyone have any concerns or questions about it? Otherwise, we should take a vote. Is that in the chat, Alina? It's in the chat. Okay. Alina point of clarification. This language that Tom just read would come immediately after the two reduced delays that is up on the screen right now, correct? Correct. The end of the yellow paragraph. Yep, just wanted to clarify that. That was the same thing, but yes, thank you. The subcommittee right now? Correct. Michael, I haven't heard from you. I've been very quiet today. Any thoughts? Oh, Michael's audio is off. Okay. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can hear you. Oh, I thought everybody was just talking over me this whole time. This is Michael Morrissey from Muck Rock, and I apologize. Yeah, I just, I think this language just codifies what we intended along. We do know that there's a lot of unfunded mandates that we put on our FOIA offices, and I think that's the challenge of dealing with Congress, etc. But I do think that this, you know, this kind of isn't adding something to new, but kind of, I think along with the intent that we had throughout this process, and I think it would help actually make sure that this happens, because otherwise, I think that this is going to be really tough to pull off because it will require dedicated funding that's going to be hard to find. I think it'll also give Congress a chance to provide oversight if they're your marketing specific funding for this as well. So I heartily endorse this addition and recommend that. Okay. Thank you. Michael and Alexis, should we go ahead and take a subcommittee vote first on this language, and then we can put it to the whole committee? Yes. Yeah, we just, can we go ahead and just say changing CIS to USCIS just for clarification so we don't have to do as much word smithing later? Yes. And thank you. Thank you, Tom, for that. I also noticed the subcommittee isn't capitalized in my, I mean, I say subject to Congress. The working group can fix that. Both of those are fixed and added. This is Kirsten. Thank you, Kirsten. All right. So the process subcommittee members, please vote on this language that Tom is advancing that has already been read out loud. I would like to propose a minor change. I would just take out DHS Seek and that sort of implied and I don't want, I would like Congress to do this even if DHS doesn't ask for it. And if we put in DHS Seek and we miss this year's appropriations markup, which is next week, whereas ideally some member of Congress reading this tomorrow could say, oh, that's a great idea and put it into the bill, but not if we only propose that they do it if DHS asks for it. I thought about that, Kel, when I was doing the drafting and I kind of went back and forth and I guess I suggested that out of courtesy because DHS ought to be invested in this ideally, but it leaves room for if they don't seek, we're still recommending that Congress provide it. It's not a conditioned precedent to congressional appropriations. This is Michael Morsi from McRock. I agree with Tom. I think giving DHS and USCIS kind of a mechanism and kind of a mandate to ask for something is helpful in this case, because I think a lot of times it's challenging to kind of put a request in. And so if we give them a mechanism to sort of say what they need and provide some clarification, it will be helpful. I think that'll make this recommendation work better. Okay. I don't think we need to vote on this change. I just want to just throw that out there. I think that they're going to read this as the appropriators are going to read this as what would be this, that DHS is not on board with the need for this. But I'm not going to force this right. I mean, Kel, they're going to ask DHS's views anyway. They're not going to come up with money and put it down their throat. So we're not giving DHS a chance to exercise a veto by adding this language. Okay. Well, thank you for that discussion. Can I have the process subcommittee first vote on this proposed language that Tom has read out loud? Please. And actually, can I have a motion first? I usually get a move, right? Motion, thank you. Second, thank you. So all in favor in the process subcommittee on this language of Thomas proposing, please say aye. I heard a lot of eyes. Kirsten, you got that. Okay. Anyone opposed? Please say nay. Anyone abstaining? Okay. Kirsten, looks like it's got a positive thumbs up from the subcommittee. Indeed it has. So let's go ahead and bring it to the full committee now. Can I have a motion from anyone on the committee to take a full vote on this in front of the full committee? So moved. Thank you, Tom. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Alexis. Okay. So now we're going to vote as a full committee. So everyone else, please pay attention. All those in favor of this proposed language, please say aye. Aye. Kirsten, do we need to do a roll call? Call for the nays and then I can tell you. Okay. And abstentions, please. Sure. All those opposed, please say nay. Any abstentions? I'm going to go on the record. Alina Simo from OGIS abstains. Bobby? Yes, I'm abstaining as well. I abstained. And did we hear from those folks on the phone? Did we hear from Linda and Kristen? I'm in a high, Alina. I don't know if you all heard me. I'm sorry. I was a yay. Okay. Who was a yay? That was Kristen. Kristen else was an aye. Okay. And Linda is? I went ahead and voted aye since everyone pointed in that direction. Gotcha. Okay. Just want to make sure we counted for you guys. All right. So it sounds to me like we have all the votes in, right, Kristen? Yes. By my accounting, the vote is 16 to 0 with you and Bobby abstaining. Okay. So we will add that language in the comment section. And as we consider voting on the final report, please remember that language will be incorporated. Okay. Any other areas that we need to deal with in the final report? But we haven't already discussed. And we're taking the public comment before we do the final vote. Correct. There's no other committee comments. I was about to open up the floor to public comments waiting for everyone to gather their thoughts. I don't see anyone waving at me or sending me a chat. So if everyone's okay, we'll proceed with the public comment section. And here from any members of the public who wish to comment. I just want to remind those of you who would like to comment, this is not the appropriate venue to voice concerns about individual FOIA requests. If you need OGIS assistance, please email us at ogisatnara.gov. Any oral comments are captured in the transcript of the meeting, which we will post as soon as it is available. And the comments are also captured in the YouTube recording and are available on the NARA YouTube channel. We've been monitoring both the WebEx chat and the NARA YouTube channel chat. I'm going to ask Jesse Hartman from our OGIS staff first if there are any questions or comments that have come in via either one of those chats. Pardon the interruption, Alina. Can we get to the phones first and then go to Jesse for the chat comments please? Sure. We can certainly do it that way too. I will pivot. Michelle, let's give instructions for anyone who wants to comment and make a comment. Can I make a suggestion, Alina? Yes. And I know there are a lot of people who would like to chime in. And I like David, I thought the comments that we had in writing that were posted were terrific, but many of them really provided a roadmap blueprint for the next study, what we should do further. And I guess given the fact that most of us have other things to do in life today, if the comments can hopefully be focused on this report rather than what hasn't been done, and I include a suggestion to you that perhaps the next advisory committee starts with public crowdsourcing for ideas, not just the committee as we've done in the past few coming up amongst ourselves, but getting outside input on what we should do and then come together and plot the agenda. So, and that'll make it a little easier today not to say, you know, you guys missed the vote on these issues that you should have dealt with. So, Alina, thank you, Tom. I appreciate that. Okay, Michelle, could you please go ahead and give instructions for anyone who wants to call in on the phone? Absolutely. So, ladies and gentlemen, as we enter the public comment session, please limit your comments to three minutes. Once your three minutes expires, we will mute your line and move on to the next commenter. So, Michelle, do we have any callers in queue? Yes, we do have someone in queue. Ryan, your line is on YouTube. You may go ahead. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to speak. I just recently became aware of the advisory committee and its role. And I spent the last week looking through past recommendations as well as the recommendations in this report. And I have to give you some honesty. As I am a requester, I've put in approximately 160 FOIA requests, 120 of those are at the federal level, I would say. 40 of those were at state level entities. And those 40 have all been processed. But of the 120 FOIAs I've put in through the federal government through all various assortment of agencies, not a single one has been processed. And I appreciate the opportunity to speak. I will respect your wishes that the comments are directed towards these recommendations. And with that, let me just say, I think none of these recommendations address any of the challenges or issues that I have come across as a FOIA requester. So, I think you noted potentially a future meeting where we might have more of a dialogue or I have an opportunity to submit my suggestions through email requests. But I would make this point. As you water down your recommendations, you're watering down your own influence. And I see some recommendations here, I think, as it relates to the Glomar terminology. Is that really the influence you're going for with the committee? I don't think so. And we all recognize that there's a lot of issues with FOIAs and processing. And I would just urge you all, as you continue in your work, to think more about us and think more about the holistic nature of the government and the issues that are present throughout multiple entities. So, I will limit my comments to that. And I really appreciate the opportunity to speak. Thank you. And, Ryan, may I please ask for you to identify yourself by first and last name and your association with any organization? Yes, my name is Ryan Miller. I'm just a regular citizen out there. No affiliations. Okay. Thank you so much for your comments. We appreciate it. Thank you. Michelle, anyone else on the queue waiting? I do not see anyone else with the hand raised. I know that Mr. Hammond is trying to get through, but I do not see your hand raised. If you wouldn't mind letting me know your phone number so that I can unmute your line if you are filed in on regular audio, that would be good, because I do not see your hand raised. Okay. While we're working through that issue, let me pivot back to Jesse to ask if there are any chat comments that we need to read out loud or any questions that need to be posed. Alina, can I respond to Ryan's really quickly before we move to the next comment? Sure. So, I think that this is the reason that we have a very committee. And that was a very eloquent presentation. Applying. Everybody on this committee has always been someone who worked for a nonprofit, who worked for an agency, who worked for the media. There are slots for people to represent the interests of all other requesters, which is none of these things. To everyone, I'm going to add to Alina's caseload here. But if this is something that you're passionate about, apply it beyond it, because we need different viewpoints, as you can tell. And if you think this committee didn't do something right, then put your name into fix the next one. All right, thanks, Cal. All right, Jesse. I was going to ask Michelle if she was able to, if there was any other callers, but if not... Yeah, I don't see anybody at the moment. Okay. Thank you. So, yes, we, in the spirit of that, we did have a comment that says, if you have a passion for improving FOIA and want to join with extraordinary leaders in the field, please consider nominating yourself for the next term of the FOIA Advisory Committee. Okay. And I think that is all that we have for right now. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. I believe we are, we have finished our public comments period, and thank you for that exchange. I appreciate it. And I believe we're now ready to vote on the final report. I'm going to pause for a second, make sure that none of the committee members have any other questions or issues that they want to raise at this time. Okay. I'm hearing crickets. So, let's go ahead and take a final vote on our final report and recommendations with the additional paragraph added under the recommendation that we discussed previously that has been voted on unanimously. So, may I please have a motion? This is Patricia. And I move. Okay. I'm sorry. That was Kristen or Patricia? Who's moving for a vote on the final report? This is Kristen. I'm moving for a vote. Thank you. Do I have a second? This is Patricia Watt. I second. Okay. All right. So, let's get ready to vote. Kirsten, listen up. We'll take a voice vote first. All those in favor of the final report and recommendations with the additional language that we just finished discussing, please say aye. Aye. Aye, aye, aye. Okay. Anyone opposed? Please say aye. Any abstentions? Aye. It's Bobby. And I continue abstaining. This is Alina. I will also abstain. Okay. This is Kirsten. Motion carries on the final report and recommendations as amended with the paragraph. The vote is 16 to 0 with Alina and Bobby abstaining. Okay. All right. Well, we will finalize the report. We plan to coast it as soon as possible. I want to thank all the committee members again for all your hard work this term. And I particularly want to thank my hard-working OJA staff and our NARA detailees and our other NARA staff who assisted the committee behind the scenes during the past two years. It really does take a village. And I'm very grateful for all the support that we've received. I know we've already spoken about it a couple of times, but I just want to remind everyone again there is a call out for nominations for the next term. The federal register notice was published yesterday. The deadline to either self-nominate or nominate another individual is June 30th. Please review the federal register notice for additional details and instructions. The acting archivist of the United States will review the nominations and make final appointments prior to the first committee meeting of the next term, which is Thursday, September 8th, which will be here before you know it. OGIS will notify appointees in writing. Okay, I'm going to pause again. Ask anyone if anyone else has any comments or parting thoughts. It's a little sad. Yes. Alina, this is Kirsten. I think the folks are on our team are asking if we can read out one comment. Oh, sure. So is that Jesse who's asking? Yes. So the one comment we have is I asked DOJ, OIP, and OGIS to identify in this meeting the dollar funding level needed for fiscal Y 2023 to effectively perform in all their statutory missions. OGIS is likely underfunded 10 to 20-fold. That is the comment. Okay. Thank you for the comment. Tom, please go ahead. Good. You graciously thanked your staff with appreciation for assistance, but it seems to me that thanks also is due to you. This is obviously while part of your day job, it takes an awful lot of time. I've learned because it takes the rest of us a lot of time and you need to be in the middle of the hub for all of the various entities. So you've done a great job, I think, shepherding the recommendations and herding the butterflies. And so I want to express, I think, on behalf of all my colleagues, thanks to you for your leadership. I really appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you for the applause, James. I appreciate that. It's been a pleasure to work with all of you. It's been a really very active and very thoughtful committee term and the members have all been wonderful to work with. So it's been really great. I think we should all be proud of the report that we're putting out. Okay. Any other thoughts or questions? Parting remarks. Going once, going twice. Thanks again to all of you joining us today. I hope everyone and their families remain safe, healthy, and resilient. I hope everyone enjoys their summer and we stand adjourned. Have a great day. All right. Thank you. Thank you.