 Before we begin, excuse me, please ensure that you have opened the WebEx participant and chat panel by using the associated icons located at the bottom right side of your screen. Please note all audio connections are currently muted and this conference is being recorded. To present a comment via WebEx Audio, please click the WebEx Raise Hand icon. The Raise Hand icon, which is now located in the lower toolbar of your screen. You will hear a beep when you are unmuted. At that time, please state your name and comment. If you are connected to today's webinar via phone audio, please dial Pound 2 on your telephone keypad to enter the comment queue. If you require technical assistance, please send a chat to the event producer. With that, I will turn the meeting over to Elena Sima, Director, Office of Government Information Services. Elena, please go ahead. Thanks, Michelle. Good morning and welcome, everyone, as the Director of the Office of Government Information Services, OGIS, and Co-Chair of the Cheap Boy Officers Council, it is my pleasure to welcome all of you to our first 2023 public meeting of the Council. I would like to introduce my Co-Chair, Bobby Tolivian, Director of the Office of Information Policy at the Department of Justice. Bobby. Thank you so much, Elena, and thank you all for joining us virtually for our April CFO Council meeting. We have a very nice agenda that we're looking forward to dive into. We are pleased. So many people are able to join us today. Anyone who misses the meeting or wishes to go back and listen to any portion of it may do so at any time. We are simultaneously live streaming this meeting on the National Archives YouTube channel, and it will be available later for anyone who wishes to watch. Bobby. Thank you, Elena. As I said, we have a nice agenda for today, and Elena and I will start by providing some updates of the work that our offices have been doing since our last meeting on November 3, 2022. And then we look forward to hearing from the Council's two committees, the Technology Committee and the Committee on Cross-Agency Collaboration and Innovation, KOKAKI. We're excited not only to have the two co-chairs of the committees here today, but also members of the subcommittee and the working group chairs. As you're listening to the great work that the two committees are doing, I encourage you if you're not part of the committees to consider joining, it is a great opportunity for us to learn from each other, as well as a great networking opportunity for us in the FOIA community, especially with some of the limitations that we had on networking during the years from the pandemic. Next then I'm excited for my colleague here at the Office of Information Policy, OIP, Lindsey Steele, Chief of our Compliance Team, to provide an update on the work of the FOIA Business Standards Working Group. Elena. Great. Thanks, Bobby. We have reserved time at the end of today's session for public comments. We will open the telephone lines at the end of our meeting for any oral questions or comments from the public. Please look at your public comments to three minutes. Once your three minutes expire, we will mute your line and move on to the next commenter or other questions or comments pending in the chat. During the course of the meeting, we will pause and check in to see if there are any questions from our agency FOIA colleagues that come in via chat and we'll share them as appropriate. An important reminder to everyone, please be sure to chat to all panelists to ensure your comments are seen by our moderators. For those of you who are watching on the NARA YouTube channel, the chat is not on, but we do want to hear from you. If you have questions and comments related to the agenda of today's meeting, please send them to cfo-council at nara.gov. We will be monitoring that email box for any incoming emails during the meeting. If you have questions on another topic for the National Archives, you may direct them to public.affairs at nara.gov. Next slide, please, and Bobby, over to you. All right. Thank you, Alina. So we'd like to start off the meeting with some updates from some of the work that we've been doing at OIP and then some reminders of some of the resources that are available to your agencies. Next slide. So as I'm sure everyone here is aware, all agencies did finalize on time their 2022 fiscal year annual FOIA report, and all of that data is available on foia.gov. Agencies are also posting their 2023 chief FOIA officer reports. I want to thank all of the agencies for the work that goes into producing these reports. I know it's not an easy task, but it's an important one. Just as FOIA is essential to shedding light on government activities, these reports are critical to showing, to shedding light on the government's administration of the FOIA. And I want to encourage everyone, I personally enjoy, and I know my team does reviewing these reports, but I want to encourage everyone to take a look at these reports, particularly reports of your colleague agencies where you may have a similar size FOIA operation, similar types of records to gain insights of amongst your colleagues, agencies of what's going on, efforts that you may also be able to leverage. And later on, you'll hear from the technology committee of their review of the CFR reports to inform their work. Of course, we review those reports as well and are going to continue to issue summaries and assessments of both reports. I'm excited that this week we'll issue our OIP summary of the annual FOIA reports, so it'll give you a government-wide snapshot of each section of the annual FOIA report. And then, of course, later this summer, we'll issue our summary of the chief FOIA officer reports and our assessment and guidance on that work. And, of course, we'll continue to facilitate quarterly FOIA reports on FOIA.gov, so for more even recent data on the key statistics of requests received, processed, backlog and the ten homeless requests. We will continue to track that publicly on FOIA.gov. Next slide. So as I said, we'll be issuing our summary and assessment of agencies' annual FOIA reports. But as I previewed during Sunshine Week, we can tell at a very high level that you can see that the request, the demand for FOIA has increased again. We're over 900,000 requests received for the first time, and so I think we're getting closer and closer to that one million mark. And agencies last year, in trying to respond to that demand, processed a record high number of requests of over 850,000. You'll see in the summary of the annual FOIA reports that some of the other key statistics like the most exemptions used were exemption 6 and 7C, the privacy exemptions, as well as exemption 7E for law enforcement techniques. And we also saw in the annual FOIA reporting a significant increase of subsection A2, proactive disclosures for fiscal year 2022. But again, as I said this week, we'll have a complete break-around government breakdown of each section of the annual FOIA report to provide all of this information to both agencies and the public. Next slide. As I mentioned, the next report, the CFO report, we're excited that agencies are finalizing those and we will issue our own summary. But there's a wealth of information here that I think would be useful not only if you're interested in your agencies' reports, but the comparing your agencies or your agencies' FOIA administration to other agencies' reports. New questions for this year. Every year we ask agencies new questions, both to keep ourselves accountable, but also to inform initiatives, such as the initiative the CFO council is working on and we'll be talking about today, and OIP's own guidance to agencies. And so new information you'll see in this year's chief FOIA reports are questions regarding incorporating FOIA into the agency's core mission, confirming in agency response letters the application of the foreseeable harm standard, information regarding the use of GLOMAR or neither confirm or deny responses, using data to manage workloads and make workflow decisions, the use of technology to automate record processing, interoperably with FOIA.gov. This is the first time we're also asked specifically about the impact of litigation on agencies' FOIA programs and the use of unusual circumstances. So a wealth of new data and information in the chief FOIA officer reports. Next slide. Of course, as many all remember last, well, two sunshine weeks ago, the Attorney General issued new FOIA guidelines to agencies, and the guidelines provided detailed direction and four key areas of FOIA administration. First being applying the FOIA with the presumption of openness, then the importance of proactive disclosures, removing barriers to access and reducing FOIA backlogs, and ensuring a fair and effective FOIA administration. So this past Sunshine Week on March 13th, OIP issued new guidance on the first area addressed in the Attorney General's FOIA guidelines, which is applying FOIA with the presumption of openness. And so I want to encourage agency CFOs and the agencies to make sure that both the FOIA guidelines and the new guidance has been distributed to your agency's FOIA offices. The guidance specifically addresses, as I said, applying the presumption of openness. First, it addresses it in general terms where we should be reviewing records with an eye towards disclosure, essentially asking ourselves when reviewing records what can we release, not what can we withhold. And when we can't make full disclosures of records, seeing how and if we can make partial releases of records. In addition, going beyond that, the guidelines, the guidance and the Attorney General's guidelines encourage agencies, even when the requirements of an element or the requirements of the foreseeable harm requirements are met, that they consider discretionary releases of information. And the guidance provides some practical considerations for agencies to factor when considering whether there should be a discretionary disclosure, such as whether the harm is fairly low and the public interest might be in disclosure might be high. And of course, key to the applying the presumption of openness is properly applying the foreseeable harm standard that was codified into the FOIA in 2016. And the guidance does address applying the foreseeable harm standard, specifically on a case-by-case basis. The guidance lays out the legal framework for applying the foreseeable harm standard and citing to some recent case law that provides good direction to agencies on how it should be applied, including the importance of tying harms directly to the records or categories of records that agencies are reviewing in response to FOIA requests. It also provides agencies practical considerations to consider when they're factoring whether there's reasonable likelihood of foreseeable harm, such as the age of the record, whether there's been prior official disclosures that might weaken the foreseeable harm for disclosure of the record or the overall sensitivity of the record in its own context and purpose. As the guidance also provides that when it's unclear whether there is a reasonable foreseeable harm and disclosure, that agencies may consult with their subject-subject matter experts within their agencies, but also make calls, you may also always call OIP. We have our FOIA counselor service line, as you know, 202-514 FOIA. And then finally, the guidance addresses the importance of regular communication as a key part of administering the FOIA in a spirit of cooperation and with the presumption of openness. The guidance references several prior OIP guidance articles on communication, which are linked into the guidance to EZD access, but really emphasizes the importance of using efficient means to communicate with requesters and effective means, the importance of timely responding to estimate dates of completion when requesters are asking for EDCs, and also that our final determinations, our determination letter clearly explains the basis for our decisions to requesters, and if the agency is denying the request in any way, explain why it's, explain the denial and the fact that the agency considered and applied the foreseeable harm standard. The guidance also emphasizes that if requesters have questions regarding the application of exemption or even the foreseeable harm standard that they can, and they should reach out to the Requestor Service Center FOIA Public Liaison or FOIA Republic Liaison, and agencies should promptly respond and provide as much explanation as possible without undermining the interest that is trying to be protected. Also, agencies can ask about this in filing their administrator FOIA appeal. And again, requesters can ask about it when filing the administrative FOIA appeal, and agencies should promptly respond to those requests as much information and context as possible. Next slide. We recently also issued and previewed our new updated FOIA self-assessment toolkit. So this has been a great resource for agencies to assess their FOIA programs from top to bottom, from it has separate modules starting from the initial request intake process to acknowledging requests, searching for records, reviewing records, responding to requests, providing training to the agency FOIA professionals, and so on. And it provides agencies with milestones that they can assess their FOIA programs against and then readily access any guidance or resources that are available to help improve their scores and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their FOIA programs. So in the updated version, we've added new modules to address proactive disclosures. We did not have that before, as well as administrative appeals. But we took a really, we took a fresh look at all of the modules and updated them in light of current emerging issues in FOIA, as well as adding additional milestones for technology, which of course is very important, and also the requirements that were laid out in the Attorney General's 2022 FOIA guidelines. We're also excited to provide agencies with a fillable spreadsheet to facilitate easier use of the self-assessment toolkit. And so I encourage agencies to use that tool when considering any of the modules that they want to self-assess against. Next slide. One of the final initiatives that I wanted to talk about today is we're really excited to be progressing on our project on FOIA.gov which we've temporarily, for now, we're calling our FOIA Wizard Project. But the idea here is that we're developing a tool and revamping FOIA.gov to help requesters be able to find the information they're looking for more easily or be able to identify the agency at which they may want to make a request to more easily. The tool right now, what we did to begin this project was we engaged in a very robust discovery process and plan and sought user experience feedback from public users and agencies and are now beginning to use that feedback to develop prototypes that we're going to refine and begin actually getting to a tool that we're going to launch. The tool that we're going to launch is going to utilize machine learning, which is very exciting, using public FOIA logs and as well as information that agencies have on their websites on FOIA.gov and frequently requested records in their FOIA libraries to be able to help the requester find the information they're looking for. Or again, as I said, to be able to identify the agency most likely to have the information where they should make the request. Once we launched the tool later this year, we'll continue to work to improve it and as more data is available and as people, the public use it more and provide more feedback. It will improve and become more powerful. So I think we're really setting the foundation for a really great user experience on FOIA.gov and searchability. Before I don't have this on a slide, but I just want to also remind agencies of the resources that are available at OIP and encourage you to use them. We're here to help you in all aspects of your FOIA administration. Of course, on our website, there's a wealth of resources, including updated versions of the guide to the FOIA, which is comprehensive treatise on the law that provides all the case law statutory and policy requirements. Our summaries of new decisions, which even more regularly provide you summaries of significant court decisions that impact your application of the FOIA. Of course, training. We have our new training dates available on FOIA. I mean, on our OIP FOIA website. In this virtual environment, we're glad to be able to have several hundred participants for each session from across the country. So I encourage you to have your folks sign up to the extent those are helpful. We also continue to provide tailored training. So if your agency needs tailored for your training, please reach out to our training coordinator, Keith Gilbert at OIP. And then also remind agencies that we have e-learning training modules that are available to put up on your e-learning platforms. They are also available on our website for those agencies that don't have e-learning platforms, but they are they address all levels of the workforce. So these can be used. There's a module for senior executives, another module for FOIA professionals, specifically, and then a module for all all federal FOIA workforce staff. And then finally, as I said, we have our FOIA Council service, so feel free to call us if you need any guidance or have any questions specifically regarding a specific issue. Two oh two five one four FOIA. And with that, I think I can I can pause to see if there's any questions. And then if not, we can go over to you, Elena. Great. I don't think I see any questions in the chat. Well, I think we can just I'll give you a four four minutes time. OK, yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. So I just want to say, Bobby, OIP is doing a really terrific job with everything we've been producing and generating. And a big thank you to your entire staff, who I think is, you know, behind the scenes doing all the really hard work. So some really great great folks over there. And thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. And I am very fortunate to have an incredible staff at OIP and all of our teams or compliance team, appeals team and our initial request teams. I appreciate it. And it's been great working with OJIS and your team. So thank you. Right. Thank you. OK, Michelle, next slide, please. And the next slide as well, please. I'm going to go through some quick updates. We don't have quite as many to go through as Bobby did, but a few updates from us, the boy on Buttsman, beginning with the first quarter of fiscal year 2023. We rolled out a new at a glance, quarterly look at all of OJIS's activities. We hope you like it. We worked really hard on it and I particularly want to thank Kimberly Reed, our compliance team member who has been working very hard on this, along with team lead Kirsten Mitchell and compliance team member Dan Levinson. Everyone's been pinching in to use this product. So I appreciate it. I would like to highlight just one area of our pretty busy second quarter, as you can see, we continue to receive and respond to many requests for assistance. In the first three months of the calendar year, we received 1,381 requests for assistance and we responded to enclosed 1,370 requests. We continue to receive more than 4,000 requests for assistance each fiscal year. The majority of those seeking our assistance are simply confused about the FOIA process. As I have discussed in the past, there are many opportunities to start a conversation on narrowing the scope of a request, but that conversation will never happen if the requester cannot contact the right person at the correct agency. So this is a plea to our agency colleagues here today. Please take a careful look at your letters. If you are contacting a requester asking them to narrow the scope, please provide a name, a telephone number and email address so they can contact you to start that conversation. If a requester needs to provide a privacy waiver, proof of death or obituary for a third part of subject, tell them how to do that. This will help the FOIA process run much more smoothly. I want to also thank all the agency FOIA professionals who respond to all of our inquiries at OGIS, both large and small. We thank all of you for your help over the years and as we continue to recover from the effects of the pandemic. And thank you to all the FOIA requesters to come to seek our help. Your experiences with the FOIA process are invaluable to us as the FOIA ombudsman. Next slide, please. So a few updates on our FOIA advisory committee. I won't go into much detail other than to remind everyone, we are into our fifth term currently, almost one year into the fifth term and everyone is extremely busy. But I want to highlight the fact that we have recently updated the FOIA advisory committee recommendations dashboard. Here's a snapshot of what it looks like on our website. It reflects the work done by OGIS, the National Archives, OIPD and the Department of Homeland Security. As a reminder in the prior four terms of the committee, the committee has made a total of 51 recommendations to the archivist of the United States for improving the administration of FOIA along with approximately 35 best practices. Of the 50 recommendations that have been accepted for action, in our view, 27 are completed and nine are in progress. There are two recommendations that I specifically would like to discuss today that I would like to update you on. The first is recommendation 2020-18 from the third term of the FOIA advisory committee. That recommendation was that the archivist of the United States ask the Council of the Inspector General on Integrity and Efficiency, known as CIGI, to consider a cross-cutting project examining how successful agency programs are and providing access to agency records in electronic and digital form. Acting archivist of the United States, Deborah Steidel-Wall sent a letter to the chairpersons of the two CIGI committees, the audit committee and the inspections and evaluations committee, earlier this month asking that such a cross-cutting project be initiated. I am happy to report that the letter was well received and that we have already met with both committees. More importantly, current FOIA advisory committee member Jason R. Barron, whose brainchild was this actual recommendation in the third term, joined us in these meetings and presented to the CIGI committees with ideas for cross-cutting projects that the committees might consider in the space of electronic and digital records management. So a big thank you to Jason for stepping in and preparing a very thorough PowerPoint presentation. We are pleased at this progress and have marked the recommendation complete on our end, even though much work lies ahead for CIGI. The second recommendation I would like to update you on is recommendation 2022-14, which asked for a comprehensive assessment of the Department of Homeland Security, DHS processes, workforce and technology as it relates to A-files for responsive FOIA requests. A-files are files that contain all records of any active case of a non-citizen, not yet naturalized as they pass through the U.S. immigration and inspection process. In a nutshell, non-citizens must use the FOIA process to obtain their A-files. And the fourth term of the FOIA advisory committee believed that removing that process from FOIA would make both the A-file request process and the FOIA process work faster and more efficiently. I'm happy to report that DHS has recently made progress on this. As noted on our recommendations dashboard, a subcommittee of the Homeland Security Advisory Council formed to independently advise the DHS secretary recommended in a March 2023 report that DHS engage in an internal component or a contractor to assess the agency's first person requests. And after engaging with either the internal component or contractor, make recommendations for the design and implementation of an alternative system. The recommendation goes on to say that any assessment should be completed within 12 months of initiation and that DHS should seek funding from Congress for such a study. We understand that work continues on this at DHS. I just want to remind everyone the FOIA advisory committee 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 all of you, those hardworking professionals out there who are facing FOIA realities on a daily basis. Please keep up all the fantastic work that you're doing. A reminder, the next meeting of the full FOIA advisory committee is Thursday, June 8th, beginning at 10 a.m. And it will be virtual. Please mark your calendars and remember to visit our website for instructions on how to register via Eventbrite. We anticipate having guest speakers from MITRE who will be discussing their work in the FOIA space. MITRE is a not-for-profit organization that was established to advance national security in new ways and serve the public interest as an independent advisor. MITRE's work includes managing federally funded research and development centers, FFRDCs, supporting various government agencies. And MITRE also conducts independent research. So we look forward to hearing from their great accomplishments in the last year. Next slide, please. So a quick preview of what MITRE is expected to talk about in more detail at our June 8th FOIA advisory committee meeting. The FOIA reference model. So what is a FOIA reference model, you may ask? A business specification that provides a standardized vocabulary for business and technical stakeholders to describe FOIA needs that can be used both to analyze FOIA programs and FOIA technology. In support of the Chief FOIA Officers Council work, OGIS's deputy director, Martha Murphy, has worked on several working groups and efforts to improve technology across the federal FOIA landscape. And in particular, Martha has recently successfully chaired an effort to review and validate MITRE's FOIA reference model. I just wanna thank Martha for all her outstanding work in this area as well as to her working group. Representatives from MITRE reached out to the Chief FOIA Officers Council in early 2022 to discuss their effort to create such a reference model for the US federal government. They solicited volunteers from the FOIA Officers Council who would be willing to validate the model they were creating. MITRE drafted the FRM, the FOIA reference model based on their experience working with agency FOIA programs and analyzing the FOIA statute and FOIA regulations, OIP guidance, OGIS findings and recommendations of the FOIA advisory committee. In May, 2022, six volunteers formed the FOIA reference model working group. They provided feedback to draft process diagrams, use case diagrams and user stories. The feedback was incorporated into the FRM. This effort, which was begun in fiscal year 2022 was completed in the first half of this fiscal year 2023. The team drafted a white paper describing the project and how the reference model could be utilized by federal FOIA programs. Both the reference model and the white paper are now available online. The reference model, and we provide a link on this slide is available on MITRE's website and the white paper is available on the CFO council webpage at FOIA.gov. As a follow-up, we were very pleased that the model was used by OIP in their efforts to create the FOIA business standards under the federal integrated business framework. OIP is the business lead and OGIS is lighting support, including participating in business standards working group meetings. We will hear more about the business standards working group from OIP a little later in today's meeting from Lindsay Steele. Next slide, please. Finally, I want to announce a new resource for agency FOIA professionals that we just recently rolled out. Though our requesters are certainly also welcome to use it as well. We have put together a new webpage that catalogs all of the recommendations and best practices that we have made in assessing agency FOIA programs. Since 2014, we have made approximately 130 recommendations and suggested best practices to individual agencies as part of our individual agency assessment program. Agency FOIA professionals sometimes come to OGIS asking what we have recommended regarding a particular issue and this resource grew from those requests. The webpage has three sortable tables with the recommendations divided by which bucket they fall into. Management, technology or communication. Keep in mind that these recommendations were made regarding specific FOIA programs and may or may not apply to your particular FOIA program. We hope you find this page useful. We are working on a similar page for recommendations and best practices that OGIS has made in various issue assessments on such topics as our favorite topic that we've talked about lots of times, estimated dates of completion and of course still interested letters. Please stay tuned to the FOIA ombudsman blog and to our website for additional updates. I just wanna pause for a minute because I would be remiss if I didn't take a minute to recognize my extraordinary OGIS staff, not only our compliance team that has put together these particular resources that I've just talked about but everyone on our staff, they work extremely hard behind the scenes to make public events like today go as smoothly as possible. I am always very grateful for the terrific OGIS team that I have whose work facilitating greater access, transparency to federal records and assisting anyone with the FOIA process has continued to further two of NARA's very important strategic goals, making access happen and connecting with customers. So thank you again to my OGIS team. Next slide, please. I hope you take advantage of the many resources available on our website and that you tune in to our past public meetings available on the National Archives YouTube channel. They are all available and probably live on for a very long time. OGIS often solicits input from the FOIA community and we always want to hear from both requesters and agency FOIA professionals such as yourselves. We invite all of you to subscribe to our blog, the FOIA ombudsman and to our Twitter feed and to participate when we put out a call for input. Ultimately, 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 for all that you do to fulfill the requirements of the FOIA in your agency. Next slide, please. So I think I'm running a little bit early but in four minutes ahead of Seattle, I hope that our co-chairs of the Technology Committee, Mike Sarich and Eric Stein are going to be coming on camera. I see Eric, hopefully Mike is also coming on. Hello. And I'm going to turn it over to you for updates on the great work the Technology Committee has been doing. Mike and Eric, over to you. Thank you, Alina. Good morning, everyone. My name is Eric Stein. I'm one of the co-chairs of the Technology Committee, joined by Michael Sarich who will be co-presenting with me today. Next slide, please. So what is the Technology Committee? Well, we have a public website. It's on FOIA.gov. If you go to FOIA.gov and look under the CFO Council tab, you'll see the Technology Committee. And we're a group of about 50 representatives from 25 agencies dedicated to working on FOIA technology challenges and issues. We created collaborative opportunities for FOIA professionals to discuss the issues they're facing at the individual agencies and develop recommendations and solutions to address those problems. With the recent advances in technology, changing records and data platforms and different types of content being generated at every federal agency, it requires FOIA professionals to also be agile in their approach to the technology and tools they use to search for records requested, review them, make appropriate redactions and releases. This committee's been around since September 2018. And we've grown from a really small group of about a dozen or so FOIA professionals into the over 50 representatives we have now. And what we're going to do today is provide an update about the working groups we have. Technology is so integral to every part of FOIA that it's hard to say, we're responsible for all technology. I think we'd fail if that was our approach. Or rather, we've scoped out our mandate across seven specific working groups, which we'll be talking about in a few moments. Next slide, please. So I'm going to turn it over to Michael Sarich to provide a couple other updates. So Michael, over to you. Thank you so much, Eric. It real pleasure to be here. Warm welcome to everyone who's taken their time out today to learn a little bit more about what's going on in the FOIA community. So a huge thanks to everyone who's taken time today to share information about what's going on in FOIA and what's going on here at the Chief FOIA committee. So first off, a quick plug, that the FOIA Technology Committee is probably one of the strongest working groups I've ever been involved with. And that's because of the diversity of the group that we have. We have a hugely diverse group from agencies small and large, from people from all walks of life. And so one of the most inclusive groups that I've ever had the privilege to serve with. And one of the things about the tech committee is that you don't really have to have a lot of expertise to get into it. People come to FOIA from all walks of life and all different series. I know when I was in law school, I didn't anticipate that someday my journey would take me here, but boy, am I glad it did. And the curiosity that you have to have to come into this field and to learn about the agency that you're working in and sharing the story of the good work that the folks in your agency are doing on behalf of the American public and indeed the world in many cases like my colleague, Eric, it's just fantastic not to mention the opportunity to grow in your career not just on a career ladder wise, but in terms of the widening your aperture of understanding what's going on across the federal family by interacting with folks from all walks of life and all different types of agencies. So a great group of folks to be with, a great group of folks to learn from, to grow with and to contribute to a really cool group. So I really encourage you if you have an interest in kind of widening your own aperture of what's going on in the FOIA community, what's going on at different agencies, I would really encourage you to consider joining us. So really just kind of want to throw that plug out there. I think it's always good to invigorate groups with new people. So really happy to share those quick comments in. I'm gonna share a little bit now about one of the projects that we're working on right now. And that's a review of the 2023 Chief FOIA officer reports. And what we're doing here is we're focusing on things on the steps that different agencies are taking to greater utilize technology. As Bobby pointed out in the beginning, OIP is constantly refreshing and reimagining the CFO reports to really put the finger on the pulse of what's going on in the larger FOIA community. What we do is we look at the agency input, we use this as a data pool of sorts without it being invasive and saying, tell us all this information, you've already told us this. So we look at what different agencies are doing across the federal family. And I want to share just a few quick highlights just to put some awareness and some spotlight on some great work that's going on across the federal family in the tech space. So one of the key issues is new case management systems FOIA online and sunset. And we'll discuss that a bit more. Agencies are discussing how they're going to go about adding a different tool, a different cost product perhaps or depending on which direction the agency goes. And this FOIA, and Chief FOIA officer technology committee is a great place to talk about that and share lessons, share what's going on. So whatever you're doing, you're not alone here in this case, if you're struggling with something, someone's already struggled with it probably and they can help you. And if you're crushing something, if you really figured something out, then you'll be able to help other people and together we'll all be able to grow. So turning our focus specifically on what agencies are reporting. Agencies are reporting some significant advances in dashboarding. And what's really interesting about the dashboarding initiatives across the federal family is that some agencies are reporting using robotic process automation to create the dashboards and gather data about FOIA program without the FOIA folks having to go in and pool data, build charts, build Excel charts and the rest of it to present these dashboards. They're using these robotic process automation tools just here at this start for up-chain communication so leadership can be apprised of what's going on in their FOIA program. But then also for general staff awareness, where are we at on these cases? Where are we at as a team? Where do we need to focus, focus energies on? Agencies are reporting specialized tiger teams that can attack specific areas. So perhaps they have an email pools for litigation that are just really large putting specialized folks that are trained specifically and what to look for for these types of cases has been successful for agencies. Agencies increasing inter-agency communication. So bringing their FOIA officers together either through weekly or monthly round tables to talk about shared challenges to kind of calibrate operations to make sure whatever the voice the agency is speaking with it's one voice, to make sure that there's coordinated responses to inquiries from the public. Their AI initiatives are all over the place in these reports, which is awesome. And we'll talk about that I guess in a bit. They hold promise in some agencies and one agency even reported that they're saving one hour per case. Now if you extrapolate that out on the number of cases that really has the opportunity to be a force multiplier and that's why this is such an exciting era. As Alina mentioned earlier, we'll have MITRE in later future meetings to talk about some of those initiatives and other initiatives in that space. You see a lot of FOIA modernization initiatives occurring, these are multi-year initiatives designed to meet the mandates of five USC 552 that we all work with. Cloud-based electronic record management system seemed to be a real underlying base feature of a lot of these. And just finally, something that we really love to see is FOIA websites with exemplary ratings for the Center for Plain English. So when requesters come to the website, they'll be able to read and understand where they need to go. FOIA websites that are mobile-friendly, that for folks that are accessing our information or seeking access to federal information to be able to navigate websites just even on a mobile basis. And then finally, one focus is first-party access. And I want to highlight one agency in particular. They've established an entire system for internal candidates to go pull HR docs related to their applications in order to better prepare them for future vacancies. This not only helps the agency retain talented folks as they improve their abilities, but it also enables a bit of an off-ramp from the normal FOIA process, which can bog down FOIA officers as they continue to struggle with, as Bobby mentioned, 900,000 plus cases government-wide. This enables us to get people the information that they need, improve the agency, and meet the mandate. So, over to you, Eric, for discussions about data AI and machine learning. Well, thank you, Michael. And to build off of some of your themes, innovation is a key part of solving the problems we're facing now. And it's not technology alone, it's technology plus people. And a big part of that will be covered, I think, by our colleagues in the Koch Hackey Committee who we've actually set up a regular meeting with to make sure that we are coordinating with one another and that we understand what each group is doing, and that has been helpful just to raise awareness. Going to the topic of data, AI, and machine learning, there's been a lot of press coverage and discussions, I guess, both in the private and public sectors, about data and AI, specifically generative AI, but there's all types of machine learning and artificial intelligence. So, we're talking to you today the chief FOIA officer community, the public, FOIA practitioners, anyone else listening. We have started in the Technology Committee to look at data, and as Michael mentioned, there are already practices out there for agencies using data to make informed decisions about their FOIA programs. But the use of data, it could be used to apply to several different ways. How is data helping to drive decision making? How is data being managed and reviewed, redacted, considered from the requester angle? How do we search for records data information? And in addition, there are so many other ways to consider data, and it's such a key part of using machine learning, AI, and other advanced technology in the FOIA process. So, some of the things we've recently talked about is how could machine learning be used to assist with the FOIA process, whether it be search, review, redaction? There are some groups out there that have developed tools and technology to look at how machine learning and AI could help with FOIA. We're interested in feedback thoughts and ideas on how maybe AI machine learning could assist, and I want to make a plug here. We often hear, whether from other agencies or the public, we have ideas, we want your feedback. Send it to OIP and OGIS, I send an email, and they will share it with us, and Michael and I will be happy to discuss that input and feedback with the technology committee, and in fact, we have before as feedback has come in. Unfortunately, we don't get a lot of feedback about ways that technology could assist or how can we improve the user experience, and those are interesting and important parts of using technology to improve FOIA processing, but also get requests moving faster. As we look at a lot of the different mandates and push out there for customer experience or CX as you've seen it, customer experience is a key part of making sure that we're responding to the public in a timely manner, and agencies face different challenges based on their mission, the records they have, and the technology and tools available. We have raised awareness of the Technology Modernization Fund at tmf.cio.gov. It's a resource available for agencies to request funding for different projects and including services we provide to the public and FOIA is one such service. We've encouraged agencies to look at tmf for as a means to place proposals for funding FOIA records challenges so that we could better respond to requests moving forward. As you saw on OIP's chart earlier, the amount of requests keep going up, so does the amount of electronic data and records, let alone paper records. We still have to review our other media, the Require Review, so we're gonna have to think differently about how we process requests moving forward. And as Michael said, this group is absolutely wonderful. They're diverse, they're inclusive. We have all types of new ideas coming up and we're finding that there's a lot of motivation and innovation with regard to how do we approach FOIA problems right now and moving forward. We're also discussing the future NextGen showcase. So for those of you new, last year we had an event called NextGen FOIA showcase where we sought to create a virtual trade show, if you will, we brought the private sector and federal FOIA practitioners together to showcase different technology available to assist with search case processing or other components of FOIA case processing. We had hundreds of participants and you can go again to the FOIA.gov site and see the different videos, papers and presentations from that session. The event was successful because at the time several agencies were also looking for new platforms. I think we're always looking for new platforms as technology evolves. And we've recently started discussing what will the 2024 NextGen FOIA showcase look like? Should it be focused on best practices or ideas for using generative AI or other types of machine learning or advanced technology and tools? Should it be focused on search? What other aspects of technology could be included? So we are, again, listening feedback and ideas, especially with a public audience here today would love to have recommendations on what you think could help agencies as well as for the federal family here. If you have ideas or recommendations, we are thinking through what a future NextGen FOIA showcase could look like. One of the things that was nice about the event was it was held virtually, kind of like this session here today. That kept the cost down, whereas it's nice to have in-person sessions. Those come with costs overhead. We didn't have that and we were able to have a successful event with hundreds of participants and dozens, at least a couple dozen companies or just about present and show their capabilities and maybe inspire ideas and future connections and ways to assist in FOIA processing. So a lot going on with data AI and machine learning, and I think in the next meeting we'll have some of our working group chairs come and give updates, especially maybe on some of those topics. And before I turn it back over to Michael to talk a little bit about working groups, I wanna just talk about what are our working groups? And we have seven. They have charters, they're on the FOIA.gov website that the charters identify the scope of the work that we do. Also identifying, once we cross a milestone and complete an objective that we move on to the next one and they are evolving. They've changed over the past year to again to adapt to the changing FOIA technology environment we're facing. And a couple of things on that. In the fall, as I mentioned, we'll have some of our working group chairs give updates. If anyone's interested in hearing from specific groups and they're identified in the slide here from data, five-way compliance, FOIA and classified information, IT platforms, and so forth. Again, send that feedback into OIP and OGIS. So we'll be happy to have those chairs and those working groups give overviews of their work year to date at that time. Right now we're in the middle of a lot of the research and deliverables and the deliverables that the working groups come up with are also made publicly available on the technology committee site on FOIA.gov. So right now we are looking to provide, these working groups serve a lot of purposes, but as we've talked about, they're a collaborative platform for agencies to discuss the challenges and issues they have candidly so we can try to figure out the best possible solutions, ways to collaborate, innovative ways to request resources or leverage existing ones to find solutions. And they seek to provide practical tools and guidance to agencies and a key part of that is reminding ourselves, always we serve the public, getting that public input. So if you have recommendations, I highly, highly encourage you to send them in writing to OIP and OGIS. You can send them to me and Michael directly as well. We're gonna share them with the group, but we are very mindful of supporting OIP and OGIS in our efforts. And what Mike's gonna do right now is walk us through one of the value propositions, overview of one of our working groups to show you in a more practical, kind of drilling down sense of what we're doing in one specific area. So Michael, back over to you. Hey, thanks so much, Eric. I really appreciate that. A lot of the things that you touched on are challenges that we all face in the FOIA space. So I wanna talk a little bit about the FOIA IT platforms. I mentioned it a bit in the overview of the CFO reports, but as we all know in FOIA, and as Bobby has mentioned and Lena has alluded to as well, what we've seen in the FOIA space is an explosion of records, record types, record requests, and of course, requesters' expectations. And for me, from my perspective and for many folks on the committee as well, that's really invigorating, right? Like one of the greatest things about FOIA is working in the FOIA space is just that. It's a real growth industry. We're always growing in records. We're always growing in record types, requesters that want to know and continue this conversation of, what are you doing on behalf of the American people and indeed the world? How can you tell that story about what your agency is doing? So I wanna focus on the FOIA IT platforms, meaning how do agencies leverage information technology to respond to requesters in the 20-day timeframe to the extent they can as required by 5USC 552 to make sure that we're meeting that mandate to get there and understanding what those needs are. And so that for on the FOIA IT platforms really provides an outstanding opportunity for FOIA professionals to kind of unplug a little bit from the day-to-day challenges of their immediate agency and think globally and largely about what are the government-wide challenges that we have and then how can I take those challenges and those resources that are being used in different places and leverage them to deliver value at my agency for my requesters for what I'm trying to accomplish each and every year on behalf of the agency's goals around transparency and open government. It's a really invigorating place to be in an interesting spot, to be at the nexus of the open government initiatives and the obligations under the FOIA. So we work with the leaders in these fields to think about what system best fits your needs. One of the great things that we learn in the technology committee is that one size doesn't always fit all, right? It's not a situation where one product can plug and play or one approach to a series or suite of products can be plugged and play. So we're mindful of the diversity and needs here for different agencies. Some agencies are dealing with a small number of FOIA cases and they can't justify large expenditures. Other agencies are dealing with 25,000 FOIA requests like we do at VA. So other agencies are dealing with things in between but we all operate under the same obligations to provide requesters with information and 20 working days in the main and 30 if you haven't had the opportunity for an extension. The FOIA IT platforms is an evolving place and the FOIA Next Gen Showcase that Eric talked about was an opportunity to look at the survey of the field of what is out there for FOIA professionals and the FOIA IT platforms group really works to look at that information and additional inputs from agencies across the FOIA family to see what we need and what are the best practices, what should you be looking for as you maybe transition from a system that has sunsetted like FOIA line and sunsetted in the process of what best meets your needs at that time. So it's kind of just a quick kind of behind the scenes look at what these working groups do. And as we mentioned, we're looking forward to having different members of the leadership of the working groups which are just awesome folks and working diligently in these areas to provide working papers and other tools for FOIA professionals so they can read them and then contact and have points of contact to discuss different initiatives. Eric's mentioned and I can't underline enough the need for if you have questions, we're here for you. Had dozens and dozens of conversations with different FOIA officers over the years of being involved with this committee to provide them just with maybe a contact or a little piece of information that kind of gets them on that last mile. Because again, as I mentioned earlier whatever challenges you're having in your FOIA program and it's likely to share a challenge and whatever successes you have or having in your FOIA program, it's worth celebrating and it's worth sharing though so others can learn from you. And that's really what the working groups are all about. A commonality of challenges and then a commonality of work, just all those challenges. And Michael, it's a perfect segue for I think our sibling committee to step up here and do their presentation next. So we wanna thank OIP and OGIS and all of you for your time this morning and just make a plug again for the technology committee and all of you as chief FOIA officers to the entry level FOIA professionals you can all be leaders in your own area and come join the tech committee or co-cackey if you're interested. So thank you. Thank you so much. So over to Michael Bell and Avi Mosheim for the co-cackey updates. Next slide please, Michelle. Thank you, Alina and good morning everyone. Thank you for coming today. My name is Mike Bell. I'm the FOIA officer for the Department of Transportation. My co-chair on the co-cackey committee, Avi will be wrapping things up shortly. I'm just gonna do a brief introduction just about our committee if you haven't heard too much about it before. We've been meeting for just over two years so far. So we're a little younger than the technology committee but we coordinate with them as much as we can and the schedules allow attend each other's meetings because we really wanna make sure we're pulling in the same direction and not duplicating any efforts. And I think once all is said and done with both committees I think our missions are gonna mesh pretty well together and we're all gonna at the end come together and really improve FOIA for the federal government here. Today we're gonna hear from our three subcommittees of co-cackey. They've been meeting and they're gonna tell you about what they've been doing for the last six months and preview what's coming for the rest of this year. I'll just introduce three subcommittees really quickly before we get to them. We got the GIS government information specialist subcommittee. Their mission is to help FOIA offices recruit, train and retain the best FOIA professionals. They've been reviewing a lot of input and data collected from FOIA professionals around the government and they're preparing to publish ideas to help cultivate the GIS career field. Our second subcommittee is the virtual FOIA office subcommittee. They've taken lessons learned during the pandemic and they're gonna be publishing ways that we can use these lessons as we go for the resources that are out there. And a lot of that will coincide with the technology committee, but there's a lot of other resources other than technology that they're trying to help provide access maps to offices out there. You will see that we've learned that there's a lot of great ideas and solutions out there and our committee is just trying to bring them all together and hopefully you'll see that the hard work is paying off. So next slide please. We're gonna start with our GIS subcommittee. So I will turn it over to them. Again, thank you all for coming today. Thanks Mike. Next slide please. My name is Nicole Rementor. I'm from the Environmental Protection Agency and I am one of the co-chairs of the GIS professionalization subcommittee. A reminder as to kind of what we are focused on, we were assigned to take on FOIA Advisory Committee recommendation number 2020-16. And our mission is to advocate for the advancement of the government information specialist profession through transparency and standardization across the federal government. Thank you. We look to review and promote initiatives for clear career trajectories for FOIA professionals as well as build on the GIS job series and identify areas to coordinate with existing agency efforts. Our work will examine and develop data fact recommendations that target recruitment strategies, hiring and retention strategies, uniform pay scale assignments, key competencies for FOIA professionals and FOIA professional certification testing. Now I'll turn it over to my co-chair Madeleine who will talk about the work that we have been doing and the work that we have coming up in the short term. Madeleine? Hi, thank you, Nicole. I'm gonna provide an update on our subcommittees recent progress and next steps. Last year, co-cackey surveyed government employees targeting FOIA professionals on a variety of topics. By means of an electronic questionnaire, we aim to better understand the perspectives of federal FOIA professionals and help further refine research in the GIS subcommittees focus areas. We surveyed several areas, including demographics, FOIA experience, workplace environment and career plans. At the end of the surveying period, the GIS subcommittee analyzed the survey results, particularly as they could relate to professional development opportunities, availability and quality of agencies training and FOIA knowledge management, job series classification and grading and resources allocation. We were pleased to have over 200 FOIA professionals responding to the survey with the majority of those responding in the GIS job series and the legal field reporting FOIA as their full-time job. Here are a few takeaways from our surveying. The survey results identified a strong connection between records management and FOIA and also connection between FOIA and eDiscovery. Respondents identified efficient and effective document collection and retrieval methods as the most beneficial to their FOIA job duties. Respondents also commented on a need for training and leadership support. Regarding training and mentorship, nearly a third of respondents reported that their agency does not provide formal FOIA training or they didn't know or were unsure if their agency provides formal FOIA training. The survey identified that mentorships are used but not with great frequency. Nearly a third of respondents did not have a mentor or were open to mentorships. Regarding career paths, while the majority of respondents reported that they plan to continue with the position that primarily relates to FOIA, nearly a quarter stated that they were considering a career change. The most common factors for maintaining a career at FOIA were reported as a need for more agency resources devoted to FOIA requests, a better career ladder to reach desired GS level or equivalent and the need for new technology to streamline work. With the surveying portion of our research now complete, our subcommittee plans to have conversations with agency executives overseeing FOIA programs or with substantial knowledge about the organization of their agency's FOIA program. We aim to have interviews and any additional research completed by the spring. We'll use our research and information gathering to develop a white paper that will provide recommendations aimed to improve the professionalization and standardization of qualifications for FOIA professionals. In conclusion, we aim to complete a white paper by October 1st of this year and we'll schedule an event for FOIA professionals and managers towards the end of the calendar year to discuss the recommendations. That's all I have to report for today. So now over to our virtual FOIA subcommittee, over to you, Shantae. Thank you. Good morning, my name is Shantae Stanley and I am the chair for the Pandemic Virtual Subcommittee. Next slide, please. Next slide. As Mike stated, our mission statement is that we are reviewing the procedures and the effective teleworking processes right now for FOIA cases and we would like to submit a list of best practices and lessons learned to FOIA professionals. Our objective is that the Pandemic Virtual FOIA office working group will analyze and review the capability of FOIA professionals to effectively work on a telework virtual location during a pandemic and continuing on past the pandemic. Next slide. So right now we have already reviewed the survey responses. We did survey quite a few over 200 FOIA professionals regarding the transition from the in-office work environment to a telework remote work environment and the availability and desires of those telework positions. Relocating files and best practices where what we focus on in that survey. Next, we have our target date for May 31st. We are ensuring that we will review the existing telework documents and reports and research the topic itself and compile information gathered from the research and the survey. By October 1st of this year, we would like to compile and make available lessons learned from teleworking and make recommendations to federal agencies pertaining to telework. And that is all I have. And next, we are going to Brandon Gaylord for the resource committee. Good morning, everyone. I am Brandon Gaylord. I'm a FOIA director with the Department of State and I am the co-cackey resources subcommittee chair. If I can have the next slide, please. We also sent out questions as part of our 2022 survey to solicit opinions from the FOIA community about the resources they could use, resources they would like to see standardized. The key part of our mission is to identify opportunities for standardization of resources that should be made available to FOIA offices with the goal of increasing efficiency and easing use of access across the government. So we took these responses, use our own experience to consolidate and analyze and come up with a set of topics for best practices or shop. Looking at putting on this best practices workshop as early as the fall of 2023. If I can have the next slide. And some of our plan topics are listed out. We've got a strategic thinking session where we're looking at really kind of the larger pieces of building a FOIA program, what kind of structure you want to build, how you want to staff it, maybe some of the business operations, maybe some of the staffing tech intersections. We want to discuss a little bit about some of the solutions and limitations with using FOIA technology. And the tech committee earlier gave a great outline of some of the things that they're working on. So we're looking at a much broader piece of as you're building a FOIA program, where can tech help you and where can maybe tech fall short. And so we're looking forward to putting on that session. And also looking at some of the specific staffing strategies where FOIA personnel are needed. The look looking at the types of staffing that you might use in a FOIA operation, maybe some of the staffing efficiencies you might find. And kind of again, with the purpose of building that whole FOIA program picture and where staffing is going to play a role. So that's what the resources subcommittee has been working on. Again, stay tuned for more information on our best practices, which we're hoping to get set up for the fall of 2023. And in that set, I will turn it over to Avi, who will wrap up the Kokaki presentation. Well, thank you, Brandon, Mike, Madeleine, Nicole Chante, OIP, OGIS, and all of our wonderful Kokaki committee members. And I also want to thank the FOIA community for your responses to our 2022 survey. As mentioned, our subcommittees are working hard to put your comments to use to develop a white paper with recommendations for agencies to improve professionalization and standardization of qualifications for FOIA professionals, to compile and make available lessons learned from teleworking and make recommendations to federal agencies pertaining to teleworking, and to develop FOIA community best practices that focus on strategic thinking when building a FOIA program, solutions and limitations to using FOIA technology and staffing strategies when FOIA personnel are needed. We're also developing a working group in our committee to create a FOIA toolkit similar to the privacy toolkit that's aimed at standardizing hiring practices in the FOIA community. Kokakis always welcomes new committee members to brainstorm and develop solutions that improve our FOIA community. And if you'd like to join us, please feel free to reach out to me or Mike Bell or any of our committee members. Thank you for joining us and we hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you. Thank you, Brandon, Abbey, Shantae, Nicole, Madeline, Brandon for that wonderful update of all the great work that you're doing. Next, we have Lindsey Steele, very excited for her to present on her leading the FOIA Business Standards Working Group Initiative. Lindsey, are you on? Yes, I am. Hi. Over to you. Thanks, Bobby. All right, good morning, everyone. So as we mentioned at our November meeting, we are, I'm sorry, can you go to the next slide, please? We are working in collaboration with OGIS and GSA to develop shared FOIA Business Standards in line with the Federal Integrated Business Framework or FIBIF. Essentially what the FIBIF is is it is a framework that outlines different elements that essentially build a common standard that can be used across agencies in different topical areas. So there are business standards created for records management, for grants, and a number of other standards that are in progress. And so we are working on business standards for FOIA. The idea is that with these common standards, agencies and the public and vendors would be able to use these standards to better develop tools to meet agencies FOIA needs. To start out, we are focused on the FOIA case management system needs. So we know that there's a lot out there in terms of technology that can be used as part of the FOIA process, but we are starting with FOIA case management. So after our November 2022 meeting, we formed a working group composed of members from several different agencies and we quickly began actively drafting the initial components of these business standards. As Alina mentioned earlier, it was wonderful that we had the FOIA reference model to use as a basis for this and MITRE was so gracious as to help us translate that reference model into some initial drafts of the business standards that we could use as a starting point. So we made really quick progress, thanks in large part to that effort, and are really excited to be kind of getting our sort of interim final version of these business standards before we can circulate them more broadly. Next slide, please. So here you can see just a snapshot of the different elements of the Federal Integrated Business Framework. If you want more details here, you can go to the Federal Integrated Business Framework website and you can actually see all the different business standards of all the different areas that have standards as part of this framework. What we're working on now are the first two items here, so the functional areas, functions and activities as well as the business capabilities. The functional areas identify overall categories of the standards and then the activities are sub elements of those categories. Finally, the business capabilities detail the very much more specific requirements in order for those activities to be accomplished. So for example, for FOIA, some of the functional areas that we are considering are request processing and response, request intake, administrative appeals, FOIA management and reporting, proactive disclosures. So those are the high level areas of the standards that we're looking at, among others. And then from there, we just break down kind of into more and more granular detail the different capabilities that an agency would need in order to fulfill that function. Over the next few weeks, we're very excited to be at a point where we can share our draft with a broader CFO council for feedback. So please do be on the lookout for that email. We will send it around likely with a template for you to provide any comments, should you have any. And from there, we will incorporate that feedback and continue to move on in the next step of the process, which would actually be to make them available for public comment. So we anticipate that happening hopefully early this summer, but before we get there in the interim, we really do value the feedback of all of the members of the CFO council because in the end, these standards are going to be out there, hopefully to help you and to help make your agency's jobs a little bit easier, at least in terms of defining requirements for case management systems. Now, longer term, there is the possibility that what we develop as the standards could help us down the road develop a marketplace of sorts where vendors that meet the standards would become part of that marketplace. And so we're ways away from that. We have a lot of steps to go before we would even get there, but just throwing that out there to put that in mind because we know that there has been kind of some interest in streamlining access to different FOIA technology tools. Additionally, down the line, we may continue to expand the standards to cover other types of FOIA technology. But again, here, we're just starting with FOIA case management systems, which is probably the most broadly applicable technology as we all need a way to track and report our FOIA cases. And that was all I had as to this. If anyone is interested in joining our working group, please, even though we are actively working on drafting, we are always welcoming new members because this working group will be around, I think for a while, as long as we continue to work on and update these standards. So if at any point you're interested in joining the working group, please reach out to me and we're happy to connect you and get you in the loop. All right. And that's it for me. There are no questions. Thank you so much, Lindsay. And thank you for your wonderful leadership on this initiative. And also thanks to GSA OGIS and the working group members. I think it's gonna be something that has a really positive long lasting impact for FOIA. So thank you. So before we go to the final item in our meeting for the public comment section, I am informed that we have one question in the chat, which is AIMBAT OIP. So I'm happy to address it. The question concerns the level of detail that agencies are providing in their response letter regarding applying the foreseeable harm standard. And so as you can see hopefully from the guidance, the guidance really balances effective and full communication with the requester against the practicalness of being able to provide details administratively efficiently. So as you can imagine, in the agencies having, of course, because it's not practically efficient in response letters to detail every application of every element of every exemption. We took a similar approach to the foreseeable harm standard explaining to the requester, initially, what exemptions apply in the foreseeable harm standard was also applied. However, as you can see in the guidance, the guidance does also encourage agencies to be extant practical and that you can provide additional context that you should include that in your response letters. And then in addition to that, if a requester does have a question regarding application of exemption, but also the application of the foreseeable harm standard that they should reach out to the Requestor Server Center, the FOIA Public Liaison, and agencies in response should promptly provide as much context in response to those questions as they can without undermining the exemptions that they are, or the interests that they're trying to protect. And similarly through the administrative appeals process, agencies should be providing as much detail as in this, I think provides a very nice balance of providing as much information to Requestors about a determination while considering the practical impacts of us being able to respond to every request. With that, I think there's no more questions in the chat to address. So we've now reached the public comment section of our meeting. We've promised, as we have in other prior meetings, to leave time for that. And we look forward to hearing from members of the public who have ideas or comments that they would like to share. I also want to remind everyone that you can submit written comments to the council using the comment submission form on OGIS's website. Before submitting public comments, please be sure to read our posting policy for public comments. Oral comments presented today during our Chief Forest or Council meeting will be available in the meeting transcript that will be posted on foyer.gov as will all the materials from today's meeting, including the slides. And videos of the council meeting will be posted on NARA's YouTube channel and also linked on foyer.gov as well. Aliyah? Thanks, Bobby. We would like to open up our telephone lines now to begin. So Michelle, if you could please provide instructions for our listeners again for how to ask a question or make a comment via telephone. Just a reminder, we're asking everyone to limit their comments to three minutes each. Once your three minutes expire, our event producer will mute your line and move on to the next commenter. Michelle, over to you. So ladies and gentlemen, as we enter the public comment section, please limit your comments to three minutes. Once your three minutes expires, we will mute your line and move on to the next commenter. Each individual will be limited to three minutes each. If you're on the telephone, I'm sorry, if you're on the telephone line, pressing pound two will enter you into the comment queue as well. Looks like we do have one comment from Gretchen. Your line is unmuted. You may go ahead. Hi, good morning. My name is Gretchen Gerke and I'm a founder of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, or EDGE. And I'm really glad to be here and learning about the work you all are doing, making the FOIA process better and better for organizations like mine. I'd like to address the plans to decommission FOIA online and launch different FOIA case management systems at different agencies and make some requests regarding the features that are available in whatever this next phase may be. I understand that this decision to decommission FOIA online was made some time ago and I want to note that it was done without opportunity for comment. But there are features of FOIA online that my organization wants to urge you all to continue and improve in this next phase of FOIA services for the public. FOIA online has substantially advanced the public's ability to access FOIA documents, particularly in two ways. The ability to search records previously obtained by any and every requester. And then also the ability to do this not just for one agency, but for multiple agencies and to be able to compare those records across agencies. And we want to urge you that these features be retained and improved in this next phase. For the information I've seen, it's not clear to me whether agencies will even be required to make their FOIA records available to the broader public anymore, not just the requester. And so this of course is foundational to the transparency advances made in the last decade with FOIA online. And we want to urge you to require this of every agency without exception. Obviously the better the public can research and review the documents that have already been collected and collated and disseminated by FOIA officers, the more the public will be able to file more specific and less duplicative requests, which is a win for agency efficiency and a win for informed citizenry. And so because of this, I'm heartened to learn of this new FOIA wizard project, which I wasn't aware of before. Although I am curious if FOIA wizard will be focused on only the most requested in search records, is what I thought I understood, but it could be wrong. And I really want to urge you all to improve the search functionality for all records. Currently on FOIA online, it appears as though multiple search criteria do not work. For example, critical ones for public research like the keyword search and the requester organization, based on tests that I've done, do not work or it's very unclear how things like keywords are being ascribed to different requests. And so I urge you to, we'd be very happy. My organization would be very happy to speak with you all about making those improvements. We also, you know, multi-institutional requests or requests that are kind of at the boundaries between organizations are also really challenging. And so these problems need to be remedied and we'd be happy to work with you all. Quickly, another key hurdle to overcome is that of actually viewing materials obtained through FOIA, requiring people to download large, obscurely named PDFs to be able to have any information about what is held within them, really poses a major accessibility hurdle and a disproportionate one for people who are working on older devices, lower income people or smaller organizations like mine. And so we really urge you to do that. Kola, thank you very much for your comment. Your time has expired. All right, we're moving on to the next Kola in queue. Kola, your line is unmuted. You may go ahead. Kola, be sure your line is unmuted. We're unable to hear you. We heard you for a second. Kola, going to move to the next person in queue. Perhaps you can go ahead and raise your hand a little bit after the next Kola in queue. Kola, your line is unmuted. You may go ahead. Do we have another caller? Yeah, I'm able to hear this Kola as well. Okay. If you, yeah. I was just gonna say, let's pause for a minute because I know we have one or two comments or questions that have come in. I was going to turn to my colleague Kirsten Mitchell to address those. So Kirsten, in the meantime, could you just come on and report on those please? Sure, sure. Good morning and thanks everyone for joining this meeting. We have two comments that I'd like to read out. The first is from FOIA advisory committee member, Alex Howard. He notes that a recent OGIS report on agency FOIA websites published in November, 2022 found that 45% of 150 agencies did not have a link to FOIA.gov on their FOIA websites. Alex asks that all of the chief FOIA officers at this meeting commit to adding a link to FOIA.gov before the next public meeting. And I'd just like to briefly make a note on that. That report was a snapshot in time, although it was published in November of 2022. The survey itself, the look at these websites was done between January, 2021 and April, 2021. So things may have changed since then. But thank you for that, Alex. And then another comment comes from a gentleman, Eric Erdman. Is there a government-wide centralized location where an agency FOIA professional can download FOIA processing slash redaction tools? I answered this in the chat, but I'll go ahead and read it out. No, there is not, but there's a great resource on best practices for video redaction on the chief FOIA officers council website. Just go to FOIA.gov, look for the chief FOIA officers council, and it is under the technology committee. There's a paper that was done, I think, back in 2021. So all the work that's been done by the council is there on the website, so I encourage folks to go there. So that is all I had, Belina. Back to you. Okay, thanks, Kirsten. Michelle, I'm going to turn back to you with our telephone lines. I understand one of our callers was having trouble unmuting. Did you just give instructions? Yes, let's give that a try one more time. All right, caller, your line is unmuted. Please go ahead. Hello, this is Alex Howard. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can hear you. Fantastic, thank you so much for reading that question out, Kirsten. I'm glad I emailed it in as well. I'm glad you posed it. Would the officers present be willing to say whether they'll commit to going to their FOIA websites and ensuring that a link to FOIA.gov is on each one of them prior to the next meeting, particularly given the deprecation of FOIA online that the previous comments are talked about? I'd be grateful if we could see everyone, let the OIP know if they're in compliance with that before the next meeting. So that requesters who might be used to FOIA online know that now they have a different place to start. I'd also be grateful if OIP could provide an update on the interoperability of case management systems with FOIA.gov. And if the technology subcommittee would be willing to commit to publishing a deliverable readout for each one of their past working groups on FOIA.gov in that area, and if they'd be willing to do the same for their ongoing work and perhaps come and talk with the advisory committee at one of our public meetings about that work and to take questions about what they're learning. I'm very grateful to all of you for continuing to host these public meetings and for your commitment to transparency and open government. And I hope that you'll continue to do so. And perhaps if you're open to it, maybe miss the public comments a little longer or make it possible for us to submit multiple public comments so that the substantive ones like the previous one from edgy with respect to what's happening in FOIA online and the wishes of the requested community regarding the not just case management, but disclosure and information search that agencies are exploring to replace the capabilities of FOIA online are perhaps co-created with the requested community that has depended upon FOIA online for the last decade. As of yet, it's not clear what all of the different agencies are choosing when the public goes to FOIA online and looks at the excellent fact that's been posted there. You can see that the EPA is not providing that information. It would be valuable, I think, for everybody in the open government community across the United States to understand the decisions that agencies are making and to have the insight and expertise and wisdom of the Chief FOIA Officers Council presented in an ongoing open collaborative way because I'm certain that all of the experiences that they are having transitioning will be relevant to state and local FOIA shops and that the community of practice that you all have been establishing since the FOIA Improvement Act created this Council could be quite valuable to US civil society at large, not just within the federal space. So again, thank you all for your work in this area. I look forward to hearing more from you. Thank you very much for your comments. The three minutes have expired and thank you very much for your patience and your comments. We're moving to the next commenter in queue. Call your line is unmuted. You may go ahead. Yes, good morning. This is Bob Hamlin. Can you hear me okay? Hello? Yes, you can hear you, sir. Please, yes, please go ahead, sir. Okay. Well, first, see my posted public comments. The fundamentals of FOIA are broken, including massive longstanding and widely known false annual FOIA reports, quarterly FOIA reports and FOIA Goddard data, which is unusable for any purpose. Shortly, perhaps today, I will release over 900 examples of NARA FY2022 false reporting where NARA impermissibly removed requests and appeals. I had highlighted in posted public comments documenting NARA's ongoing malfeasance and stated that DOJ-OIP could not therefore accept NARA's FY2022 annual FOIA report. DOJ-OIP nevertheless reviewed and accepted NARA's materially false reports and FOIA Goddard data knowing them to be false. DOD may be worse. I personally have countless open FOIA requests and appeals dating back to fiscal year 2013 that have never been reported. DOD employees have also engaged in alleged serious impermissible activity actionable in a variety of venues. I may address these piecemeal as my time permits given the bottom. Alternatively, I've offered many times over many years to address globally, DOD's chief FOIA author, Ms. Du Chung, DOD matters that involve the distinct separate interests of DOD employees. Global resolution may obviate the need for further action in a variety of venues, for case-like-based limited resolution would not be a shield that DOD or its employees may cite or claim in those various venues. OGIS and others offer mediation as a non-exclusive alternative to litigation. A hallmark of mediation is the capacity to expand for additional settlement discussions and broaden resolution options, often exploring litigant needs and interests that may be independent of legal issues in controversy. However, neither NARA, DOD nor their employees may claim that matters were included in mediation that were not as a shield for alleged misconduct in a variety of venues. Doing so would be inaccurate and would void confidentiality. If you want something included, you must ask me. My top three issues in the last three years have been increased funding for OGIS, DOD, and agency FOIA perks now. I advocate before Congress and in other forms. I believe that together we can provide specific languages to congressional authorizations and appropriation committees, requiring that each agency budget have a top line line item budget request for FOIA and records management, documenting current shortfalls of the agency we do with the money to increase staffing levels, professional certifications, grade level, career ladders, digitized paper records and automations preserve relevant electronic records under the appropriate records schedules with metadata to retrieve them. All the while reducing FOIA requests and appeals backlog. As counselors embrace engaging with the cluster community, I will help you in any way I can, including in the technology where I have significant experience. Thank you very much. Thank you for your three minutes have expired. Thank you. All right, I do not see any other commenters in queue. Let me double check. What else? All right, I don't see any other comments in queue. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. Bobby, over to you. Yes. Thank you so much, Alina. I want to thank our public commenters. I just wanted to especially thank Gretchen for her comments and I wanted to say just a few things that might be helpful and hopefully we can be helpful to each other. But I also know that received written public comments from Gretchen that we will definitely post on our website. But of course, agencies are required to proactively slow certain records and FOIA online was not requiring that. So those agencies will that have those, especially frequently requested records are records that will have to be made available both backwards and going forwards on agency FOIA websites. But I think two initiatives we talked about today is really helpful to the space that Gretchen, you mentioned that FOIA online might be leaving and for improving case management system and searchability going forward. One is the business case initiative that Lindsay was discussing to make sure that there's functionalities in our common business standards that are both important to agencies and requesters. And the other is I'm just glad you are happy to see the initiative on the FOIA wizard project which is really aimed at helping searchability both in terms of finding requesters being able to find the information they're looking for and making the right agencies requests to the right agencies. And the structure of that right now is primarily to use FOIA logs in records that are posted agency FOIA websites. So I think that'll be a really great initiative and addresses some of what you were thinking as well. I say that and I wanted to mention that now is because in both initiatives we're gonna have some public engagement and so we would really welcome yours and any other members of the public's user feedback or feedback as we're progressing in this initiative. And then I just wanna address the interoperability requirement. Agencies were required to report on that in their chief FOIA officer reports and we are going to assess based off of the responses and regarding compliance with the DOJ on the interoperability guidance. So when we issue our self-assessment there will be a very easy to see list of agencies and where they are with their compliance. And again, thank you again. I'll hand it over to Elena. Great, thanks Bobby. We wanna thank everyone today for your attention and your time. We hope to see all of you again later this fall for another CFO council public meeting. Please stay tuned for further announcements on an exact date and time as well as registration information. Thanks again to everyone for joining us today. I hope everyone and their families remain safe, healthy and resilient. And with that, we're over and out. Thanks. Thank you everyone. That concludes our conference. Thank you for using Event Services. You may now disconnect.