 Good morning. I'm Debra Wall and the Deputy Archivist of the United States. Welcome to the National Archives and Records Administration and this sixth meeting of the 2018-2020 term of the Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee. Whether you're here in McGowan either on the stage or in the audience or joining us on our YouTube channel, we're pleased that you're able to join us. Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero, who usually welcomes the committee and the public to these meetings, sends his regards. He is at the christening of the new aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy in Norfolk, Virginia today. And that's particularly special for him because he served as a Navy hospital corpsman during the Vietnam War. President Kennedy's tenure in office occurred before Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act in 1966. But he recognized the importance of government openness. In a speech to the American Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961, President Kennedy said, the very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society. And we are, as a people, inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. Nearly 60 years later, President Kennedy's words are manifested in the important and transparent work of this committee. Earlier this fall, the committee began its first discussions of proposed recommendations. And I understand today's meeting will focus on continued discussion and deliberations about the possible recommendations. Committee members, thank you for your important work. It's gratifying to see collaboration among professionals from both sides of the FOIA process, agencies and requesters, and your shared vision of making the FOIA process work better for all. I'll turn the meeting over to committee chairperson, Aleema Simo, now. Thank you. Thank you, Dub. Good morning, everyone. As the director of the Office of Government Information Services, OGIS, and this committee's chairperson, it is also my pleasure to welcome you all to the William G. McGowan Theater and the National Archives and Records Administration for the sixth meeting of the 2018-2020 term of the FOIA Advisory Committee, whether you're here in person, via telephone, or via livestream. Shortly, I will go through some basic housekeeping rules, review our general agenda, and set some expectations for today's meeting. First, we haven't done this in a while, so I decided to switch things up, keep everyone on their toes. I would like to just give the committee members an opportunity to introduce themselves. Those of you who are here on the phone with us or here at the table, let's start with the folks on the phone, and that way we can check in and make sure you're all there. Suzanne Pietrowski. Hi, this is Suzanne. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Can you introduce yourself and your affiliation? Sure, very good. Suzanne Pietrowski, I'm at Rutgers University in Newark. I am an associate professor and the director of the Transparency and Governance Center here, and I do a lot of research on transparency, open government, and FOIA issues. Great. Thanks, Suzanne. Patricia, are you with us? Yes, good morning. Hi, this is Patricia Wath. I'm the deputy assistant general counsel for the FOIA branch at the National Labor Relations Board. Okay, anyone else on the phone? By chance, do we have Chris Knox? I believe Chris is going to be joining us later by phone, so hopefully he'll chime in when he's there. Let's hear from all of those of you here in person. I'll start with the folks on my right. I'm looking at Ryan Law, so if you could introduce yourself, that would be great. Good morning, everyone. My name is Ryan Law. I'm the deputy assistant secretary for Privacy, Transparency, Records at the United States Department of Treasury. Jason Barron. I work at Drinker Biddle, and I'm former director of litigation at the National Archives. James Jacobs. I'm a government information librarian at Stanford University. Thank you. Joan Kaminer, attorney advisor in the general law office information law practice group at the Environmental Protection Agency. Michael Morrissey, chief executive and co-founder of Muck Rock. Tom Sussman, half of my time at the governor affairs office of the American Bar Association, and the other half working on freedom of information issues pro bono, like this. Bobby Tulebian, acting director of the Office of Information Policy at the Department of Justice. Kirsten Mitchell. I'm not a member of the committee, but the committee's designated federal officer. Shaw Moulton, senior policy analyst, project on government oversight. Sarah Kotler. I'm the director of the FOIA program at the Food and Drug Administration. James Stoker. I'm associate professor at Trinity Washington University, and I'm the representative of historians and historical organizations. Lee Steven. I work with Cause of Action Institute. Abhi Mosheim. I'm assistant general counsel for FOIA records and privacy at Consumer Product Safety Commission. Emily Creighton, directing attorney transparency at the American Immigration Council. And I'm Bradley White, senior director of FOIA litigation, appeals and policy at the Department of Homeland Security. All right. Great job, everyone. We didn't even practice that, so good job. I want to note that committee members Kevin Goldberg and Lisette Cotilius are not able to make today's meeting. Chris Knox hopefully will be joining us later, so hopefully he'll chime in. I will work to check in frequently with Suzanne and Patricia on the phone. If I forget, please remind me. Don't be shy and speak up any time you have any concerns or questions. Now I'd like to have a brief break to pass on a few messages from our sponsors, the NARA AV team. An important reminder, make sure to identify yourself by name and affiliation whenever you speak during the meeting. This helps tremendously with both the transcript and the minutes, both of which are required by the Federal Advisory Committee Act, as Kirsten is always reminding. Also please keep in mind that there will be slight delays between the time members on the telephone speak, and when the microphones in the room are turned back on. This ensures that the livestream captures all audio. I am guilty, very guilty of this, I always forget, but try to remember. And I would like to recognize the contributions of NARA's AV team, who are the behind-the-scenes people who do a lot of work to make these meetings come together and work so smoothly. Jamie Atkinson, Julie Reed, Jason Winston, Alexis Van Dyke, Brian Clipperly, and Sipper Lee. I apologize for mispronouncing. So thank you, Kirsten. A big thank you to all of you for ensuring that the meetings run smoothly and that the NARA YouTube channel captures all of the committee's activities. So we really appreciate it. At this time, I would like to welcome two new members to the committee and bid farewell to another. And you've already heard the introductions. I would like to welcome Bobby Talabian to my right, who is currently the acting director of the Office of Information Policy at the US Department of Justice. Prior to being named Acting OIP Director, Bobby was OIP's acting chief of staff. There was a lot of acting. Chief of staff and head of compliance efforts at OIP. Bobby spent three years adjudicating administrative appeals for DOJ's components. Welcome, Bobby. Thank you. We're really glad that you're here. And as Kirsten noted, her email to the committee members earlier this week, we had to bid a farewell to Ginger McCall. Ginger, if you're watching, hello, we miss you. Ginger most recently served as the public records advocate for the state of Oregon. She has returned to the DC area and recently joined the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but unfortunately she was unable to secure the necessary approval from FEMA to continue serving on the committee this term. We will definitely miss Ginger a lot. As many of you know, Ginger has served on the FOIA Advisory Committee, both as a non-government and a government member. And she was a key player in shepherding the report of the 2016-2018 committee to its completion. So we appreciate all of her work. Thank you again, Ginger. I would like to welcome Sean Moulton to my left, Senior Policy Analyst at the Project on Government Oversight or POGO. Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero, appointed Sean on Wednesday to serve out Ginger's remaining term through June 2020. Sean has many years of experience working on transparency and government efforts, accountability issues rather. He led open government efforts at the center for effective government for 13 years before joining POGO. He has spoken on open government issues and has appeared on C-SPAN, NPR, ABC and NBC and has been quoted in the New York Times. Is this all true? Okay. Oh, and the Washington Post. And other major news publications. But most importantly, Sean is a prior committee member and has already hit the ground running with what has transpired thus far in the third term of the committee. So welcome, Sean. And many, many thanks again for agreeing to step in. And he has already volunteered to serve on all three subcommittees. I'm kidding. He's thinking about what to do. So a few additional reminders, as most of you know, the FOIA Advisory Committee, which reports to the Archivist of the United States, provides a forum for public discussion of FOIA issues, and offers members of the public the opportunity to provide their feedback and ideas for improving the FOIA process. We encourage public comments, suggestions and feedback that you may submit at any time by emailing foia-advisory-committee at narra.gov. At the end of today's meeting, we will have time for public comments, and we look forward to hearing from any noncommittee members who have thoughts or comments to share. We are also monitoring the live stream. So if you have any comments, you may submit them and we will read them out loud during the public comment period. To promote openness, transparency and public engagement, we post the committee updates and information to our website, our blog and on Twitter at foia-underscore-umbuds. The URLs to these sites are usually posted on the slide behind me. It doesn't appear that they are today. Stay up to date on the latest OGIS and FOIA Advisory Committee news, activities and events. A reminder that we will make the video, transcript and meeting materials available on the committee's webpage as soon as possible. Information about the committee, including members' biographies and documents are available on the FOIA Advisory Committee webpage on the OGIS website. I also would like to ask you to join me in welcoming our narra colleague, Jesse Crats, who will be monitoring the live stream on the National Archives YouTube channel. She will also read out loud questions or comments during the public comment period. Jesse is the National Archives Historian and established and manages the National Archives History Office, which is dedicated to preserving the history of our agency. Jesse is joining us on a part-time basis to assist Kirsten with her duties as designated federal officer. Did I say that correctly? As part of her day job, preserving narra's history, Jesse is very much interested in learning about OGIS and its activities. At least that's what she told us. We expect she will learn a lot and we are very grateful for her willingness to help out and she's already helped us out a great deal. So thank you again, Jesse. Next, some more housekeeping. We need to approve the minutes from the last meeting, which Kirsten sent around by email Wednesday. We have gotten a few comments, which we haven't incorporated. Are there any other comments that members need to bring up at this time? Okay, I'm seeing a lot of no nods. Okay, and Suzanne and Patricia, you guys are good on the phone? Yeah. Okay. So since there are no objections, Kirsten and I will certify the minutes later today to be true and complete and accurate, which were required to do under the Federal Advisory Committee Act within 90 days of our last meeting. So I think we're right at that juncture. So I need a motion to approve the minutes. So moved. Thank you. I never need a second, but I'm always happy to take one and Tom is always my second. All right, all president, all president, person in favor? Aye. Okay, those on the telephone in favor? Aye. Any opposed, either in person or on the phone? I hear no nays. Therefore, the minutes from the September 5th meeting are approved. Okay, so we have a pretty packed agenda today and maybe we'll end early. I can't promise that, but we have a lot of work. I know we need to get done today, but I would like to start by inviting the OGIS Deputy Director Martha Murphy to provide us an update on the FOIA Advisory Committee recommendations and last practices from the last two committee terms. And as you all know, Martha's been doing a great job of tracking those recommendations and reporting to us every time. So thank you, Martha. Sure. This will be very quick. We have all of the recommendations in the slides that you have. I'm only going to comment on ones where there's been some sort of update. Pleased to say that the CFO Technology Subcommittee has been meeting throughout 2018 and 19 and is currently finalizing its report. So we're waiting anxiously waiting for the finalization of that report. We really appreciate the hard work that they've put into doing some research. And so it should be very interesting. This, I think, believe we reported on last time. OGIS published an issue assessment on the leveraging technology to improve FOIA services. So that closes out that recommendation. I wanted to let you know that OGIS's draft business case for a presentation to the FAR is basically done from our perspective. We're waiting for NARA's representative to the FAR to complete the final revisions and submit to the FAR Council. There's no change in recommendation number four. Happily, I can tell you that OGIS's compliance team is now fully staffed at two. Kirsten has a person working for her, Crystal Lemelin. You all may know Kirsten, which used to be in our mediation team. So she is well prepared, very knowledgeable about agencies, practices, and anxiously moving ahead on some assessments that we're working on. So our goal is to complete this assessment in fiscal year 2020. No change on this one. And again, this assessment should also be completed in 2020 now that we are fully staffed. And I believe that's it. No change on this one aside either. Thank you. Thanks, Martha. That was really quick. Could have had a lot more time. Okay, as you all know, members who were pointed to this committee by the archivist were tasked to collaboratively develop consensus solutions and recommendations that will be sent to the archivist and which address some of the greatest challenges related to the FOIA process. Earlier this year, I know we all agreed, or at least I sprung upon you, a very ambitious schedule of target dates in order to ensure that the committee has enough time to fully consider all the recommendations resulting from all the hard work that the subcommittees have been doing. I really appreciate the fact that everyone has embraced that challenge. I want to thank all of you for your enthusiasm and the effort you have devoted to this very important work to date. So thank you. I want to extend a special thank you to our six subcommittee co-chairs who have been instrumental in guiding their subcommittees work and keeping the momentum moving forward. So thank you. Thank you. Walking backwards from our final meeting on June 6, 2020, which sounds like a really long way away, but it'll be here before you know it. We are asking subcommittees to finalize all draft recommendations by early calendar year 2020 with an eye toward presenting relatively final recommendations by our March 5, 2020 meeting. I'm seeing not. So that's good. Everyone's still on that schedule. We have also scheduled an additional meeting on Friday, May 1, 2020 to allow time for additional discussions and deliberations. And as I've discussed in prior meetings, I am still interested in coalescing a small working group of the committee to collect and compile all the subcommittee reports and recommendations into a final report between our March meeting and our May meeting. So thank you to the following members who have volunteered and who, am I supposed to formally appoint them? I'm now formally appointing to be on the final report and recommendations working group. Jason Barron, Abby Mosheim, and Patricia Weth. I would appreciate one or two more volunteers. Unfortunately, we have lost Ginger who had earlier agreed to serve on the working group. So please either express your interest loudly now, not all at once, or see me during one of our breaks. So at this time, any questions before I move on? I think we're now getting ready to roll up our sleeves and get started. Okay. So today we're going to hear from each of our committee's three subcommittees, time volume, vision, and records management. We have Kirsten and I have not allocated specific time slots for each subcommittee. We wanted to just let the conversation go where it may. So there might be some overlap in the work of the subcommittees. We're aware of that as well. So we just want there to be collaboration. You may have also noticed that there is no break noted on the agenda, but we promise that we will take a break at a logical stopping point during our discussions. So to begin our discussions, I'm going to ask the subcommittee co-chairs to briefly discuss and I can take out the word briefly. You can discuss at length the substance of your recommendation so far. We will then open up the floor to the committee for a period of general comments, feedback, questions. And I don't believe, I'm just going to confirm, I don't believe any of the subcommittees are bringing up their recommendations for a vote today. Is that correct? Okay. All right. Just wanted to triple check that because we're ready with voting procedures in case we needed them. Kirsten included them in your folder. So hang on to them for our next time. Okay. First, we're going to hear from the time volume subcommittee and co-chairpersons Emily Creighton and Bradley White. And I'll let you decide who wants to present. Thank you, Alina. I'll kick it off and then turn it over to Bradley who's been really instrumental in drafting our recommendations. I want to start by thanking the subcommittee for a tremendous amount of work since our last committee meeting. Folks have been meeting regularly as a full committee and in smaller working groups and have really done a tremendous amount of work. Just to provide a little bit of context and background for those. I think folks know that we worked as a subcommittee and with other committee members on other committees like the vision subcommittee to think through ways to really do some of the evidence gathering and research we needed to produce recommendations and arrive at recommendations that we felt really reflected the needs of the request or community and the agencies. And so what we decided to do, and I know this has been something that past subcommittees have explored and done, is to draft a survey. And so that was I think a really important process in terms of thinking through creative ways of asking for information that we needed with some of our hypotheses maybe in place about what some of the issues might be. And so as a committee we came, we drafted questions that we thought would help us get to our recommendations. And so really instrumental in that process. I'd like to recognize Susan Petrowski who with her background was able to help us complete the survey and get it into a format where we were able to share it digitally and have people submit responses. Also instrumental in the process was Claire Shanley at the Executive Director of the American Society of Access Professionals and folks at ASAP helped us reach out to the agency community and to their membership to receive responses to the survey questions. And this all happened over the summer. So we had the responses this fall and began to think about what they meant and how they could inform our recommendations. We had a FOIA officer survey we called it and 111 responses to that survey. We received 111 responses to that survey and you'll find a summary of that survey and the materials here and posted on the OGIS website. And summaries of the responses are there. We received 81 responses to the FOIA requester survey and there are also summaries of the responses here and that's thanks again to Suzanne and her colleagues who helped pull that together. So I think I'll just leave it there in that we feel that we're at a place where we have a solid start and we have as I mentioned some smaller working groups who have been working on these recommendations. So we began to think through in the last month or so which recommendations we really wanted to assign to certain smaller working groups and so folks have really been taking them and running with them. So we feel like the work has been nicely spread across the sub committee and I think I'll if there are any questions about the process and sort of how we arrived here happy to answer those now. Okay so I think I'll turn it over to Bradley to get us started with the recommendations in their current form. Thank you Emily this is Bradley White and I'm just going to kind of run through and I'll pause after each recommendation to allow or propose recommendation to allow some debate or discussion if there is any. Maybe just one point is that I think we're we did assign people for each recommendation so the first two are you and then we'll turn it over to the other folks. Okay so the first proposed recommendation we have is to recommend that agencies conduct a comprehensive review of their technological and staffing capabilities and requirements to ensure that they have the resources necessary to respond to changing FOIA needs and this review should include planning to address future increases in the number of FOIA requests received as well as high volume e-discovery style document reviews. So some of the reasoning behind that is for especially folks like me at DHS you know we've seen a need to address both our staffing and our technology technological capabilities dealing with the number of email and high volume requests we get and seriously just the high volume of records that we get in response to the majority of our FOIA requests and internally at DHS we've been looking at ways to address this address these issues and move forward built to help us and to help the requestor community so this one we thought would be something good to get out there and that that I'll pause for any comments or questions. Hi this is Sean Moulton project and government oversight I think it's a great overview recommendation I think one of my frustrations has been that in some of the FOIA reports chief officer reports things like that they have occasionally addressed this kind of a question and I think the frustrating point from from outside the government has been regardless of how big the backlog is or how long they've had a backlog the answer always seems to be staffing is fine technology's fine we're doing great and I get it that FOIA doesn't necessarily garner the attention and resources that we on the stage probably wanted to but I'm just I guess I'm raising that I don't have a solution to how to get them to make a more honest assessment which is what I think we really want out of them because I worry that the agencies you know even if they did this will just say we've looked at everything and we think we're on on track and so I just raised that point Bradley again I also share that concern to an extent and I think one of the things about this is we want it to be forward-looking because it's really easy to address what your current problems are and to address what your current workload is the problem is when you address those current issues five years down the line something changes you we generally know that there's when there's a change in administration there's an increase in FOIA requests for actions related to that administration we need to be able to look ahead and predict those types of surges that may come and then also there's the simple fact that technology technology excuse me changes incredibly fast and if we're only looking to for technological solutions based on our current needs by the time we go through the procurement process and get the things we need currently we're already going to be out and behind the curve so I really you're right but it is important to look ahead and to see what could be coming down the line and try to prepare for that and I'll just I'll just add one thing is that when we were discussing this I'm not sure whether it was Alina or Kirsten but someone said this sounds like a strategic plan I mean you're asking an agency to come up with a strategic plan for for their you know bettering their FOIA process how to put teeth into that I think is a question I have as I also am from the requester community so maybe that could be something that we could explore here if folks have ideas I think that is sort of the key question right and I'm sure that people at the table are thinking or maybe it's true that there might be something like a strategic plan at an agency and I'm finding I'm very eye-opening to hear from different agencies about how different they do think about their FOIA processes and planning and preparing so I just more of a comment so this would be a separate document that they would just to make sure that this would be a separate document outside of the FOIA annual report not something incorporated in the annual report correct yes that is correct just what I think this is I'm sorry I'm Michael Morrissey apologies one thing I think this was really great and one thing is out of other light and I saw this was in this is included in some of the other recommendations but I think one thing that would love to find better ways to highlight sort of how often agencies invest in programs that kind of avoid the need for a FOIA in the first place and if there's a way that they could talk get a chance to kind of show off like hey we launched this new portal that does X we launched this new public database that we think is going to reduce these type of request I just love for more ways for agencies to kind of surface and kind of highlight that work that they're doing that I think often goes unacknowledged I think within recommendation one there's some potential for them to talk through that and look at recommendation four yeah right so I think that that's certainly something that yeah we're interested in exploring and Bradley here again not to jump ahead but one of the recommendations that will be discussed later go not in our subcommittee kind of goes to that as well any other comments on the first one no just to just to kind of read that you know in the chief of course we have like really focused on technology and it's something that's that's a standard core section of the chief for officer report and it provided agencies to show their successes and so obviously there's a range of agencies that also face challenges and so I think there's a lot of value there in the chief for officer reports to continue to assess the successes that agencies have had in using technology and this is Bobby from thank you I actually well if they're other oh sorry Patricia West from NLRB I just want to say I could see this recommendation is being kind of a best practice I mean this is what we should all be doing you know just to do our job correctly and I will say something that I use a DOJ I guess yeah almost two years ago came out with some FOIA self-assessment toolkit that I think can help FOIA offices a bit but anyway I do think that this is the best practice and something that we should all be doing it for not right thank you hi Ryan from Treasury I was going to make the comment you may want to consider you the recommendation says recommend that agencies conduct a comprehensive review would it may be helpful to be more specific should agency chief FOIA officers or another another specific individual be in charge of doing that and then also I'd encourage to consider how I mean if this is a best practice that I think that the language here is fine but if we're recommending that the archivist request that DOJ or recommend that OJS just keep in mind that we'll be recommending that action and what is the specific task that we'd like them to accomplish do you have a recommendation well as a best practice I think it stands on its own it could be that we as the committee recommend that the archivist incur requests that OJS encourage agencies to conduct our agency chief FOIA officers conduct reviews of their program comprehensive use of their technological and staffing capabilities and highlight best practices or something like that or encourage request that DOJ encourage agencies to do the same just that that that call to action I think is important but if it were to stand as a best practice I think it would be sufficient. This is Alina, Alina Sima I'm sorry just want to add just a follow on to Ryan's idea that it might also be helpful to include the CIO working together with the chief FOIA officer to examine these issues and maybe the chief dad officer while we're at it Ryan you're all three right yes Alina I wear all seven hats there may be well this is like a ten thousand foot view but there are some new requirements in A11 which is a document that OMB produces every year and I also wear these senior agency official for privacy as well and there was a new requirement that senior agency officials for privacy participate in the review of agency systems to ensure that privacy controls and funding are available to ensure protection of privacy information that was a lot but it seems to me there you know you're looking forward in this and doing reviews there's some space there I think though to include chief FOIA officers chief records officers chief privacy officers chief date officers you know all the chiefs get them together and and do something similar so that may be an avenue and if you if the committee if the subcommittee were interested in that I'm happy to meet and talk about that a little more but OMB produces A11 every year provides guidance to agencies on preparation of their annual budgets and that's where that language is now that's awesome thank you Emily I just I know there's a lot to discuss here but from there I think the requester community does have a lot of questions about personnel and when you look at annual reports for and that I'm focused on the immigration agencies in my work but you see a lot of reactive hiring to to address backlogs which is pretty clear I think when you sort of look at the agency history and I think that's part of what we're attempting to resolve here but maybe and maybe I don't think we can answer this question now but since we're all here I'm too tempted to ask just for some thinking and discussion around what would what would be steps that would be taken if you could if we just imagine a strategic plan right now and no you don't know what's going to happen within a presidential election necessarily but but you could anticipate that as Bradley mentioned there will be a large number of boy requests or I mean how how would that how would you do that I mean would you really would it be sort of a historical analysis that you would just have to look back at the last ten years the last 20 years and see fluctuations I mean has work like that been done I mean I'm just curious to hear thoughts I'll pause to see if there are any of the feds that want to answer that first oh hi I'm Elise Ryan again so I think some agencies do that at Treasury and I think many other agencies sometimes it can be reactive and so I in my experience working at DHS you know large increases in volume of FOIA requests every year and really you know staffing was important to meet that challenge and where in the time I was there between 2005 and 2012 I believe we doubled our FOIA requests every year and the only way we met that challenge was through staff and so doing an analysis looking historically wouldn't have been successful there so a lot of agencies are reactive my experience at Treasury we do have a stable request volume a request have been going down in large part to the increasing availability of certain information outside of FOIA request for example tax return information you no longer need to file a FOIA request to get a copy of your tax return there's a process for that outside of it so we've we've done some analysis and so things that we've done to meet those challenges are you know looking at technology we've been reactive there and so we've had new mandates to ensure interoperability with the government-wide FOIA portal and so one of our our solution to that is to implement new technology and new databases to do that so we're working toward those goals that was a reactive and on staffing where what we've been able to do is implement contract vehicles so when we get a surgeon requests on a particular topic if funding is available we're able to bring in staff to meet that need as opposed to you know having a large set of FTEs that you know so it gives us more flexibility so those are some of the things I think AGCs might think and consider there are obviously many other solutions to those problems but thinking strategically in that way there are challenges there are risks and there's no one way to do it this is Emily just really quickly on the staffing model not my area of expertise but I do see how there are there are influxes of part-time contract staff and then they disappear and the backlog goes back up so I just think that kind of like what model white might work better I think could be part of that conversation to myself Joan Kaminer and to add something that's we're going to touch on in the vision draft ideas it's the idea of utilizing metrics across the federal government which is something I personally feel very strongly about and I think that ties into this full discussion because you can't really assess the the FTE the contractor need with just the number of FOIA requests that you're dealing with you also have to understand the the capacity of an individual within a certain time frame to process a certain number of pages and so I think that adding all of those data points together would allow the federal government to be better be able to approach and plan for surges as well as you know maintaining a steady decrease in their backlog this is Bradley I completely agree with that you need to either design a system where you track it or or have whatever technological solution you're using be able to track that information because if you don't know how many pages GS7 FOIA analysts can process for and how many pages GS14 supervisor reviewer can can review and quality control before it goes out you won't know what whether you have the right people or not to get the job done okay any other questions on or comments on this one before I move on to the second one but I love that we're discussing this stuff actually this is Sean Moulton up with Pogo one last thing that when we were talking about the best practices involving the other chiefs that occurred to me that if we really were talking about a best practices strategic plan going forward maybe it would be good to encourage these agencies also to involve their FOIA stakeholders their requester community it might be a way to provide a little little teeth in the process you know for requesters who are frustrated with that particular agency to push them to be more specific or more honest in any kind of assessment and forward-looking plan Bradley that is definitely something to consider I do not know how many agencies would be willing to open up that level of detail although I definitely think whatever information comes up in this plan and whatever metrics are developed it should be a transparent process okay moving on to the second recommendation the second recommendation is to raise and again when we finalize this we'll put the action as to who needs to make this recommendation recommend that agencies periodically review their FOIA SOP to or create one if necessary to ensure that the process for receiving and logging in FOIA requests and the process for searching for processing and reviewing records processes excuse me are efficient the SOP should accurately reflect the current agency practices and technology used should it be updated at least every two years to continually reflect the current technology and the process is used and should be publicly available on the agency's website and I'll open that and I'll just say this is Emily here here and I think that there was some pushback from agency folks but I am in favor of this recommendation okay any comments here this is Bobby from OIP and I'm in favor of almost pretty much all these recommendations in the you know two three four five a lot of these we've broken down in the sort of the DOJ's self-assessment toolkit so encouraging the reviews using the toolkit is something that we can that agencies can readily use to make these assessments the toolkit breaks down specifically for standards of procedure or for intake what agencies should be looking at as a model of success and provides a way to grade their system so that that resources out there that agencies have been using and can continue to use Tom Susman why two years with all the resource issues and all the other things we're imposing on agencies I mean it is I think periodic is pretty good and I just mean I'm not in an agency but I kind of like you know we say two years they won't do it in two years and then we'll come back and say yeah yeah yeah you know and that's the wrong message I also work on our agency's directive system and prior to the overhaul that we did this year on it directives SOP is everything they weren't getting updated 10 20 years like we had some that hadn't been touched since the 70s so I think you have to put a time frame for people to do the review either assess it and say you don't have additional changes or make tweaks to it and but if you don't put some kind of time limitation on it it'll never get done so and this is Bradley I I recognize that two years might be a little bit ambitious on these but I also know that the the environment within an agency and how they handle for a request can often change relatively quickly and what what you don't want is an SOP that references one system that is not even being used or an SOP that references review procedures with personnel when the entire structure of the office happens to have changed and then when you you know if you need to hold an employee accountable for not following the SOP or if you're trying to train a new employee and you say well here take a look at the SOP while we're waiting on your laptop to start working and then he's like oh but by the way ignore page one we don't do that anymore and item 17 through 30 it's totally different and we'll explain that to you once you get access that's not helpful and the document is utterly useless in that but we can be flexible on the amount of time so this is Tom again follow up I mean you've convinced me so why not put a time frame on recommendation one as well that with the changes in technology you do it once and it's that seemed to me that at least three or four years later you're going to need another one and Bradley again we actually had discussed that and I think the time frame we talked about for strategic planning was five years looking for make sense I thought yeah I thought we actually included that we should have yeah we did talk about five years okay and I now just say on on recommendation two I thought it was really interesting back and forth with with Bradley discussing this one because obviously the request for him you'd love to have a better sense of how the whole process works at a particular agency but doesn't want to have outdated material I mean it's not useful I shared an anecdote where you know what the request for community had the USCIS SOP for processing foyers and it was shared by everyone yet we weren't sure if it was really current and I think there's this concern in the agency community about being held accountable by the request or community for every you know every tiny little you know sort of section of the SOP and I just would I just would like to say I think the real need is just an understanding and less of you know I'm not sure what that accountability might look like but I think what was interesting to hear is that the agency needs it for its internal efficiencies and that that would be actually very beneficial to the agency as well James Jacobs Stanford University I'm just wondering if if there would be a process to to have OGIS mentioned in this so that the agencies could tell OGIS that their SOPs have been updated or or worked on or something like that maybe instead of just saying posting to their websites I don't know so this is Bradley so for example it would be we could say recommend that OGIS recommend to the agencies or request of the agencies that they update and report and alert to OGIS or something like that the chief officer is also really I mean that that's something that we typically will be included in the chief officer report and chief officer report something that yearly DOJ checks in all with the agencies on so certainly that's in there's a designated section of the chief officer for technology perfect Ryan from Treasury so our the subcommittee for records first recommendation there's some alignment there our recommendation which we brought up in the last meeting and we don't plan to discuss today since we brought it up in a previous meeting but the recommendation was that the archivist requested DOJ and OGIS issue guidance to agencies to include records management related materials as part of agency websites and FOIA handbooks and one of the main thrusts of our recommendation is to better educate the public about not only about the FOIA process at the specific agency how do I file a FOIA request but what specific records are available to me now and what records do I need to submit of what records exist at the agency and then what records do I need to submit a FOIA request for I think there's some alignment there and our goal here is to better educate the requester community on agency records and processes for FOIA and so there may be some way we can connect on that Bradley yeah that was definitely intentional and I agree we should definitely work together when we finalize these because I think they could be if not combined they definitely could reference one another I think Michael this is Michael do you think any age I mean it seems like agencies have gotten a lot better about posting this sort of material on their reading rooms do you think that there's any agencies that are already kind of hitting the standard that you envision Bradley Patricia are you still on the line because I remember I believe you commented on this before yeah I am I've been wanting to chime in thank you Bradley Patricia West with NLRB Michael to answer your question I think my agency hits the mark we just actually revamped our FOIA homepage so we have have an E FOIA library we list a lot of the records that we have on our agency website just to make it easier for requesters to see what's out there so that they don't have to file FOIA requests and I do like this recommendation again I would say I think of this as a best practice I mean this again is what we should be doing you know in order to do the best that we can in our in our jobs but I think Bradley if I remember correctly you and I were we were talking about SOPs and handbooks and FOIA home pages and what we tried what we've tried to do at my agency is put a lot of our information on that FOIA home page so it's easier for requesters we do have our FOIA handbook on there it's it's dated it's probably about 10 years old I don't think that that contains the information that most requesters want it talks about how we apply different exemptions etc so when we created the FOIA home page we used DOJ's guidance that that they had out there for you know revamping your FOIA home page and actually had them review it as well so I mean maybe we could put something in here along those lines you know about keeping your your FOIA home page current and maybe the folks who are in the requester community can can speak to that better than I can I mean I think for me I like to go to a website see what's out there versus having to dig around in an SOP or a handbook I mean I'm happy to post them but I think my take would be that you all would want to know really what the process is and anyway I will be quiet and let the requester community speak to that Patricia thank you this is Alina I just want to ask I heard a beep did someone join us or did Suzanne were you dropped off and you came back this is Suzanne no I've been here the whole time okay did anyone else join us on the phone okay I must be hearing things sorry continue I heard it too I'm not sure what it was I have to close captioner and I dropped my audio oh sorry about that oh okay thank you a white while EPA might not be meeting the time frame that's outlined here we're one of the agencies does have our standard operating procedures publicly available but I think something I took away from Patricia's comment and I'm going to go take a look at your website is the distinction between the manuals handbooks or procedures so the further in detail a document gets the more likely it is to be out of date and need change and down to the level of you know as a an agency where the FOIA processing happens in ten different regions multiple you know facilities as well as every different headquarters office we're looking at you know very detailed procedures essentially and that might be distinguishable from the higher level agency FOIA procedure so I want to make sure that the recommendation is very clearly lays out what level of detail we're looking at because I don't think it's helpful for anybody to have as we've mentioned the out of date details that might be contained in an office manual that is a great way and I don't know if this is helpful at my agency we have multiple SOPs for FOIA we have a directive with the overall agency FOIA processing but one of the SOPs that I think would be most of most interest to requesters is the one for processing FOIA requests and it's about four pages in length and it just states how we process them who we have to send them to because we have section six in our statute notification that's similar to exemption four where we have to go out and get comment from manufacturers so they know how long it takes for us to do that and then we have to incorporate those comments but that's just four pages so maybe if the instead of a manual you broke down SOPs into different parts that would be more helpful thank you okay if there's nothing else on item number two we'll move over to Joan for number three is to recommend that agencies provide regular training for all staff including FOIA professionals subject matter experts technology professionals and management or supervisors responsible for implementing FOIA as a part of the agency's FOIA procedures in order to enable staff to properly and efficiently process FOIA request so a bit of the background on this proposed recommendation and while I believe all agencies have some level of required FOIA trading this typically is either a higher level for all agency staff or an awareness of FOIA or specific to the FOIA professionals that may spend the entirety of their position in the processing of FOIA request and related work what we're trying to get to is one the regular training so putting some type of yearly requirement or recommendation on the training as well as requiring that the specifically some fields that are often overlooked and some positions often overlooked with FOIA training are targeted as subject matter experts for example are frequently brought in to provide input on document review and context but they may not have an understanding of the FOIA exemptions the timeframe or the potential repercussions of certain actions that an agency may take they may be working on a FOIA review once a year or maybe every you know once every five years and so while this is sporadic potentially it's very important that subject matter experts have a better understanding and then as tied into where I see across the board with all three groups the emphasis on technology we think is very important that the technology professionals have a better understanding of the process and responsibilities of an agency so that they can better understand their customers when they're either developing you know software or looking for you know new additions to the agency's tools but also in providing support to professionals and then lastly my favorite management and supervisors with most agencies management and supervisors have a responsibility for approval of FOIA releases as well as providing the performance evaluations for their staff that are conducting the FOIA work giving the supervisors and management who may spend very little time actually working on FOIA request a better understanding of the process and the obligations just like the other positions and is really essential not only to ensure that they're evaluating it appropriately but they're also providing enough resources and management support to their team it's really coming down to understanding the importance of FOIA and it goes to the resources issue as well so with that I'm going to open that up for any comments. Thanks John. Jason. Jason Barron. This recommendation which is something we all I'm sure support is tied and probably we should merge the recommendation number two from the records management committee that looked at the other side we recommended that either Darra or DOJ, OIP, do targeted training in selected topics and federal records management to FOIA officers so in addition to broadening the community that you're talking to John about who is would be benefiting from FOIA the knowledge of FOIA I think there's also the FOIA professionals would benefit from a broader array of records issues and so I I see this as a natural as some kind of merger not if this survives as a recommendation. I also would say it's just a very nitpicking point I recommend that agencies provide regular training for all staff including FOIA professionals if you just read that alone I would say most agencies do that and so I think what we should say is recommend that agencies provide regular training for all staff including not only FOIA professionals but a wider array dot dot dot so so that somebody doesn't question that you know whether the baseline is no training. Ryan Locke just to add to Jason perhaps it may be good to say role-based training for agencies so each every individual in an agency has a role in the FOIA process it's important that they understand that. I think to knock it out of the park a recommendation may be that we recommend to Congress that in the future update to the FOIA they make this training required of agency professionals. I know in my federal career it's been I've I've seen some agencies do it great they do annual training very well some agencies are resistant to require training of their employees for various reasons if it's not specifically required by statute. So having it in the FOIA would be I think a home run and would improve as you said you know people's individuals knowledge of their role in the FOIA process. I think those are both great suggestions and particularly with the role-based training I definitely really support including that in the recommendation. We've had a lot of success with rolling out supervisor training at EPA and it's we created specific role-based training but it's being geared to that larger picture that supervisors are reflecting on and I think that it's had much you know a better impact than some of the canned training that's rolled out to all staff because supervisors they're looking at it sometimes from a fiscal resources perspective but also you know how does this impact my office specifically. So I'm going to definitely include that. James Jacobs, Stanford University. I'd like to also give a shout out I guess to agency librarians because they are one of the first people that I always go to. I don't necessarily go to the FOIA officer when I when I need agency information because if it's already in the library then I don't need to bother the FOIA person so if you could include agency librarians or agency libraries in that recommendation. This is Bobby OIP. I just wanted to just note that in the chief FOIA officer reports that we ask agencies every year we are asking agencies not just for their FOIA professionals but how they're providing training for their non FOIA professionals. So it's certainly something that we've been encouraging agencies and agencies have been reporting on. So I think the records management part brings a new perspective to it but as far as FOIA professionals and in particular with FOIA professionals we even ask what percentage of the FOIA professionals to get kind of an idea of how much of the workforce is getting substantive FOIA training because I do think that training is one of the fundamental important parts of a successful FOIA administration but we've really focused also on the non FOIA professionals. Also there's a lot of resources that are out there for them to use so that it makes it easier. We have e-learning training modules for specifically non FOIA professionals the other agencies. We also have executive video for executives in addition to e-learning modules for FOIA professionals so all of the workforce regardless of you know not being in the DC area can can use that. A lot of agencies use those resources to target those audiences. Well Jason Barrett so Bobby are you saying that this is already accounted for and should be a best practice or is there a gap? Are there types of groups, subgroups of subject matter experts or technology professionals that are not routinely joining FOIA training that is already out there because if there's you know either there's a gap or there isn't Yeah I mean I would I would say that this exists already as a best practice and something that's being encouraged and a lot of agencies are doing well and so that's the reason I bring up the resources and the reporting and it already being done. Can somebody just do better? We can always do better but it's not something that's not been untouched. This is Bradley I'll jump in here. I've got to say that there definitely gaps here. When I came on board my last job as the FOIA officer for DHS's Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties one of the things I did was implement FOIA training for all of the managers and then open it up to all of the staff and it was something they hadn't had before and this was 2016 and 2017. So I think there you know some agencies do it really really well. Some people when I did the training were incredibly shocked that their emails could go out in the FOIA request and we're incredibly shocked so that so there is a need to one you know explain look your emails are probably going out and and then two also let everyone know what their role is because when we when I created our SOP for my old office I included a special part on what everyone's role is in the process including you know if we task you for records you are really required to search you can't just stick that in the back and explain what happens from then on out because they need to know not just here's your role but then they need to know what happens with the thing after they hand it over. So while yes there are certainly best practices and all of the FOIA professionals are clearly aware of what what OIP resources there are and and many of us even you know have said hey we recommend you take this course like senior executives but when it gets down to the you know individual employees on a granular level who are doing the programmatic work in the agency that is the subject of the FOIA request those people do need to know what their role is and I think there's a gap we can fill here in explaining that role better to everyone involved because as we all know FOIA isn't just the responsibility of the FOIA office and agencies need to do a much better job of making that clear to everyone within the agency. Can I make one quick point Emily I just want to say that I know everyone's going to take the time to go through the survey results but I would point out I was interested to see in the responses from agency personnel that custodian responsiveness was a major problem and it was highlighted by agency personnel so I think it goes directly to the gap that we're talking about. I think I will take your point definitely into consideration when we're drafting out and I think we're able to to distinguish and also explain the resources that are available the requirements that are available but also go to how this recommendation might go beyond what we currently ask agencies to illustrate that gap but also make it very clear what agencies could utilize in order to better improve what training that they offer. Okay moving on to our proposed recommendation number four James. Good morning everyone James Stoker. So I'm going to give an overview of what the international sub-subcommittee of the time volume subcommittee has been been working on and sort of explain a bit of a shift in our focus that is manifested in these these two recommendations that are coming out of our sub-subcommittee and then I'll address the recommendations themselves and preview the work that we plan on doing in the future. Other subcommittee or excuse me sub-subcommittee members are very welcome to chime in to correct any any misleading impressions I may give because I joined the sub-subcommittee a little bit later in the in the beginning of the term. So the original goal of the international sub-subcommittee was to look into examples of how other countries have addressed issues related to time and volume. Our assumption was that this must be an issue that all countries with freedom of information statutes deal with and so we identified a number of country cases to look into along with a set of seven questions to ask about them and the questions were designed to get a sense of what these time volume issues might be as well as what had been done or had been attempted to to relieve these issues. Unfortunately the group members found that it was often very difficult to identify answers to these questions while it was easy to find statistical information about at least relatively easy to find information about how many freedom of information requests had been filed during particular years. It was often difficult to find information about what had been done to address the time volume of responses. And part of the reason for this seemed to be that many other countries do not identify time and volume as an issue. Now why might this be? Well one reason seems to be that these countries actually receive many fewer freedom of information requests per capita than the United States. Here are just a couple of examples. So in 2018 the US federal government received 863,729 FOIA requests. With a population of 327 million in change this amounts to about 2.63 requests for each thousand citizens. So thousand citizens 2.63 requests. In Switzerland in 2018 636 FOIA requests were received which divided by a population of a little over 8 million meant about .075 requests per 1,000 citizens. What does that mean? Basically the US is getting 35 times the number of FOIA requests per capita. In Germany the exact number is not easy to find but a federal report indicated that in 2017 almost 13,000 freedom of information acts were received. With an overall population of just over 82 million. So this basically works out and I won't go and maybe giving a little too many statistics here but the US gets about 17 times as many requests per capita as Germany. Now we didn't look at all countries around the world but the ones that we did look at suggested that this is a pretty common ratio of more than 10 fold the number of requests per capita. What explains this gap? Well determining the exact causes are a bit beyond the ability of our group to do because just because of the time and resources available to us but one likely major contributor to this is something that the committee has heard about previously. It's a so-called first-person FOIA requests which we heard about from Professor Margaret Cuaca a few weeks or sorry a few months ago in her presentation to the subcommittee. In other words people are having to make Freedom of Information Act requests to get basic information related to themselves whereas in other countries there seem to be other processes in place to access this information. So this led us to two recommendations one relatively general and one fairly specific. The first is proposed recommendation number four which recommends that agencies identify common types of documents requested as part of FOIA and to establish alternative processes for providing these documents to requesters on terms equal to or better than the Freedom of Information Act. The idea behind this recommendation is that requests for certain types of documentations should not have to be FOIA requests. One example that often comes up is that of immigration files which are often needed by individuals during deportation hearings. In some cases subjects of the hearings are unable to obtain their immigration files in time for their hearings. So there's this the question that should maybe be asked is not just is FOIA acting fast enough but should there be some other process in place for getting access to these types of files? And I think that there are many other types of documents that could fall under this category. Commonly requested documents particularly related to first person requests that could be alternative procedures that could maybe do a better job of addressing that demand and keeping FOIA for more complicated requests that fall outside of the norm. So I guess one other thing to just comment on is that we've included in this recommendation terms equal to or better than the Freedom of Information Act request. The purpose of that language is to ensure that whatever other process is provided is not actually more burdensome or slower than the Freedom of Information Act request. So we don't want this to result in a slowing down of access to information even as it's moved outside of the Freedom of Information Act process. So I think maybe we could open up now for comments or questions, thoughts. I have a comment because I think Sarah Kotler, FDA, sorry. I like the sound of this. And we at my agency have some types of records that not so much individuals but companies can get outside of the FOIA process, which is great. But the same people who process FOIA requests actually have to do that. So it's a very simple request to do and it doesn't get counted as a FOIA request. I guess the question is for the example of first-party immigration records, what is the holdup? If these are largely, and I don't mean that I mean that rhetorically, where is the slowdown? Is it just a volume issue? Or does it take a long time to find them? Or does someone actually need to just make sure there's not something non-public in them? Because if it's any or all of those, calling them something besides a FOIA request might not actually make it any faster, especially if the people who have to do the finding and the looking are the same people. Or maybe there are other people, but those people have other work that they do. Or the theory is you would hire other people and we know that can take a long time. So while I like the idea, I just think it's sort of like the idea that, well, if we just post everything online, then no one will ever need to make FOIA requests again. And that hasn't really been a reality. This idea that if we put these records out there, then you don't have to call it a FOIA request might not actually make it better for the end user. But I think in some situations it would. One just has to look at why is this particular set of records that people are requesting taking a long time and where is the burden really falling and can moving it outside of FOIA fix that? So I think Bradley and I could go on and on about this particular type of file. And we did discuss this as an example of wouldn't it be wonderful if called alien files, A files for individual immigration records were available to the immigrants in deportation proceedings or outside of deportation proceedings. They're their files. But I have a follow-up question before answering your questions, which is when you, the process has not been successful. So you're saying there is a process now where that are the same FOIA professionals that are processing records that are not going through the FOIA process. So what is that process? So we like just for example if a company that's inspected by the Food and Drug Administration wants a copy of their own inspection record, they often make a FOIA request for it. We tell them, oh actually there's this other mechanism where the office of compliance, once they're done with the report, they actually just send it to you through this field management directive and it's a relatively small portion of our FOIA. So I gave that as an example. It's not a problem for us or an issue, but... But some FOIA exemptions are applied. There's no... Generally speaking, no, because it's their own inspection report. But in theory, someone does need to look at it and make sure that it doesn't have something in there. So there's still a disclosure aspect to it, even if it's not a FOIA request. This is actually an example of one that I think actually works quite well. But my question was for the ones that maybe are really causing certain types of records, if they're causing that much of a backlog in the FOIA world, how do you solve that backlog just by taking them out? Now if you take away fees, that's good, to the extent people might have had to pay FOIA fees. Seems kind of unfair when they want their own file. But what about taking it out of FOIA is going to actually help, isn't it? That's the key question. Do you want to go? Sure. Bradley, so I have some experience with immigration records. And what I'll say is it's all three issues. It's the content of the record. It's finding the records, especially when they're paper-based and in a cave. And it's the people needed to process them, because there are so many requests for these records. And while I certainly think there are definitely avenues to explore other ways to make those records available to people, and it's absolutely something to look into. For this one, what I would say is knowing the kind of stir that this may cause with a couple agencies I can think of, the way to phrase this would be, look into and evaluate the possibility of making these documents available through a process outside of the FOIA. If that's more efficient. If it's more efficient, yes. Especially because just within the context of immigration records, I mean, that's been an ongoing debate even within DHS for as long as I've been employed by the agency. And I'm sure way before that. This is Abbey. And I was on the sub-sub committee. And this probably goes more to recommendation number five. But I think you also have to look at when you talk about having to search in a cave or something for the records, looking at the requirements for agencies to digitize records. And from the start, when you're creating those records, thinking about how you're going to make it available to the public. So I think about my former agency, the Copyright Office, is required to have a public catalog of registrations, which is the most sought after information from that agency. And from the start, when they get a paper application or a digital application, they're entering that information into a database that is going to be published online. And people can go there and read it. If it's got personal information in it, sensitive information, you could make it a secure database so that someone has to have a username and password to access their own information. But I would say you would have to start by looking at how you're currently providing it and modernizing that to make it better. This is Sean Moulton from Pogo. I was going to say something very similar. So I'll just add onto that. I think, especially around the immigration records, which I've looked at, I think it is not just about providing access to alternative access. It's about stepping back for some of these records and thinking about record creation to allow for access easier and to solve this problem of making it so that some portion of the record can be made available without review and therefore save time and segmenting for immigration records to law enforcement, sensitive information for customs and such off to a different record or a different segment of the document or the database. Until you do that, you're going to be stuck in this. It doesn't matter if we provide it here or there. It's going to take a lot of time and effort. But the other thing I would say about this is I think we should call it what it is, which is, for the most part, first person requests. I mean, tell agencies what it is. I mean, there may be some other records. But even the agricultural example is sort of first person. It's first person for a corporation of their records. But it seems to be that if that's the big piece of the certain records we're talking about, we should just say they should look at those first person requests for these opportunities. And I agree that's a good way to phrase it so that agencies don't feel like this is a requirement that they come up with an alternative process. For a logistical purpose, this is Joan, to the extent that this recommendation moves forward. Vision subcommittee was also considering the idea of streamlining the process for certain types of records such as first person requests, immigration, EEO, veterans affairs, that kind of thing. So I say we continue communication because somebody from our group who might want to participate if you guys move forward with us would like to. That's it. If I could just start to respond. I'm not entirely sure I'm the best person to respond to every single aspect of all of these comments. But I think that while this recommendation is partly intended to improve efficiency, I don't think that anyone's under the illusion that this will solve the issue of access to information. I think for me, the fundamental point of this recommendation is that the Freedom of Information Act has been stretched way beyond the intent of its original legislative intent. Originally it was not I don't believe at least and I could be totally wrong about this because I'm not an expert on it. But I do not believe that it was intended to cover every interaction between individuals and their government, every single instance in which people request information from the government. Instead it was intended to to fill in gaps, you might say. And what seems to have happened over the years is that every time there has been a need for citizens to have access to information and there was no process in place. Agencies have resorted to it as a Freedom of Information issue. And because of that, the statistics about this are inflated and it becomes really difficult to track what's going on in government. I mean we say right now that we have 863,000 FOIA requests per year. But that doesn't really tell us anything about what is happening in terms of Freedom of Information. I mean it just means that people are having to file all of these requests for things that they otherwise might not need to file. And so the fact that this number is sort of expanding exponentially over the years and creating more and more work doesn't tell us that our government is becoming more transparent or more open. It just tells us that agencies are relying on this law more. And so by getting rid of some of the types of requests or at least moving them out of FOIA, it will tell us a little bit more about what's actually happening in terms of Freedom of Information. So I think that that's a purpose of this recommendation that goes beyond efficiency. Right? So I just wanted to kind of add that. I just want to say I'm going to can't leave the issue of immigration records without just one comment, which is this is the time volume subcommittee. And we really are looking at volume issues. And around, I know that when you talk about the 800,000 requests, a huge portion of those requests are requests for immigration records to an agency within the Department of Homeland Security. I mean, I wish I had this statistic a quarter. So if we're really talking about revolutionizing the system in some way and fixing it in a way that is extraordinary, I think that we should be thinking in creative ways like this. I don't think sort of it's we can tweak it and fix it. I think that and that's why I think this is very, very innovative recommendation. And I wholeheartedly support exploring what this might look like, because I think it would make a tremendous difference in the volume of FOIA requests coming to Department of Homeland Security. I just want to under Sean wants to say something. I just want to check in with the folks on the phone, give them an opportunity to make sure they're heard. Suzanne or Patricia? Hi, I don't have anything to add. OK, Patricia. This is Patricia from NLRB. And I was on this sub-subcommittee and I think it's really it's a really excellent recommendation. And I think it can help us out a lot with our time volume issue. All right, thanks, Sean. Sean Malt with Pogo. So I just wanted to follow up on I'm sorry, I don't know your name, actually, still learning names. Emily's comment. I agree entirely about the immigration records and I'm just wondering aloud and I'm happy to do this in the subcommittee a little bit. But maybe there needs to be even more pointed recommendation directly at the immigration record, something around a specific task for us or a specific effort that should be launched to try and solve one quarter of the nation's FOIA requests. And it's not going to be easy. It's certainly a very complicated issue. But even if they can come up with an innovative solution for moving forward, the older records are probably always going to be difficult. But it seems like a worthwhile recommendation to me. I agree. And it does, I mean, it's an involved and interesting conversation, which I think people have begun. It has been litigated to a certain extent. You know, there are questions about does it look like civil discovery? If you're in removal proceedings, what does it look like? Who is processing the records? Is it the DOJ attorney who's litigating the case in immigration court or is it a FOIA officer specially designated to do this? So yes, I think it's a very interesting, important conversation and I'd be happy to go more in that direction. And maybe we can explore that. Bradley's very excited about that prospect. So, Tom, I'm sorry, go ahead. Tom Sussman. I'm surprised Jason didn't raise this. But this is also a records management issue because how you take the records in and you make this point, how they're dealt with at the beginning facilitates the ease of making them public. And I guess the IRS and places like that. You know, if you have certain fields, or SEC, if you have certain fields that can be protected at input, then you don't need to have a case-by-case record-by-record review for output. So I wonder if there's something there on the management side or input side. So I'm trying to manage our time a little bit and I would love to be able to get through the end of the time volume subcommittee. So for in that spirit, James, you have the next one too. Thank you. Yes, thank you everyone for all those thoughts and suggestions and concerns too. I think we're going to continue to work on this obviously before we put it forward for a vote. So I'm happy to follow up with anyone who wants to talk about that offline as well. The next recommendation, proposed recommendation number five is a, can be seen as a specific application of recommendation number four, or specific example of how it could be carried out. So proposed recommendation number five reads as follows. Recommend that agencies utilize existing statutory provisions that allow for dissemination of information outside of the FOIA and ensure that the programs that provide such information dissemination are robust. Consistent with the National Archive and Records Administrations in 1921 memorandum, which requires all federal agencies to digitize their records by December 31st, 2022, agencies should provide this information electronically, developing online databases where members of the public may access commonly requested via the FOIA or alternative statutory provisions, types of documents that go to the heart of the agency's mission, and providing secure online databases where that information contains personally identifiable information or other sensitive information. And I'll just open that up to comment. Michael. So this is Michael from Mock Rock. So one of the things, and this kind of goes with the prior recommendation as well is sort of, is there a way that we could recommend incentives for agencies and resources for agencies to do this? I think one thing I'm always trying to think through is what can we do to kind of give agencies some relief or encourage agencies to be proactive, whether that's through some sort of grant pool that agencies can put a proposal for and sort of say, hey, maybe not digitizing all A-files in automated release, but something that's, you know, could structurally improve a FOIA program with an agency, find a way to kind of give them, you know, I think FOIA agencies often say, or FOIA officers I speak with often say, oh, we have this new unfunded mandate of we have to do X, we have to do Y. And I think finding a way to sort of fund infrastructural improvements that are gonna pay off for years to go would be great to kind of explicitly pair with, with some of these recommendations. Very interesting idea. Anyone else? This is Emily, a follow-up question to that. So on the resources, I know this has been batted around a little bit in previous discussions, but how specific can we get about how to recommend that things be resourced? I think that's a question I have because I'd be happy to explore that. Again, not something I have a great deal of expertise around, but I'm not sure what kind of language would be acceptable. In terms of having the archivist recommend how an agency resources change within the agency. Yeah, and I think we can talk about specific language. At this point in the process, I wanna say everything is still on the table. So we should continue to think creatively. Great, okay. Okay, anyone else? Oh, Emily, you're last for number six. I'm last. Okay, thanks James. Thank you so much. So I have, I've brought my recommendation which is sort of maybe a wish list for the requester community to the committee. And we didn't have a lot of time to discuss this. And I think that this might go to some of the records management, some of the principles behind some of the records management recommendations around explaining the types of records that are maintained by the agency, better on the website, but essentially to recommend enhancing agency transparency by providing on the agency website contact information for a FOIA point of contact who may or may not be the FOIA public liaison. Commonly asked questions that include an explanation of the types of records maintained by the agency and the estimated processing time frames for simple and complex requests. So I was told things are impossible, but I'm putting in a proposed draft recommendation anyway. I think that what I'm trying to get at here is just really this idea that a member of the requesting community can go to an agency and get information prior to drafting and filing a request that would help them file a better drafted, more efficient sort of request that really will have them obtain the information that they want from the agency. And I've been told that that is something that the agencies would like that they would like to have some of these first line conversations with the request or community. And instead we go straight to a FOIA badly drafted FOIA using agency words to a lawsuit. So let's avoid that. Let's avoid the administrative appeal and the litigation. So how can a person sort of communicate with the agency in a way that is effective to achieve that? So that's one. And then the commonly asked questions, yes, certainly agencies do this and it would just be, I think maybe this is all a best practice. How can this be sort of more consistent across agencies? And the estimated processing time frames, I can understand that an agency might not want to say we are absolutely outside of the statutory timeframe and here's how much outside of the statutory timeframe we are. But at the same time, I think USCIS does provide an estimate for the time in which they adjudicate complex and simple requests. And I'm curious to hear more from folks around the table about this recommendation. Bobby from OIP. And so the ambition be the impossible which be what agencies are doing and it's in our guidance, our website guidance actually asks agencies to consider the Q and A, put it in the Q and A, the processing time, the average processing time. And we actually built this into the national FOIA portal so that each agency's landing page would have this information. Point of information, I have seen that information. That is not, I'm talking about current processing time. So not as of the last, is that annual report. Okay, well we can certainly, it's a bit of on that, but there's no fear of showing our average processing time. In fact, we wanted to put that up front and I think agencies want to put that up front to manage expectations. So you can see what the processing time for a simple request is as opposed to a complex request and have all that contact information front and center. The FOIA public liaison, the FOIA officer, on the portal we put multiple different ways that you can contact the agency. Have their handbook, which we've encouraged, has the Q and A and all this information because we certainly want the requester to contact the agency and work in the spirit of cooperation that's certainly within our, all of our guidance with regarding communicating with requesters. So I think that this is all good but this is definitely something that we've embraced and I think agencies should embrace if they're not that they are, a lot of them are embracing. Okay. Joan Kaminer. I'm a little dubious of the use of estimated processing times for simple versus complex and it's just going back to the metrics conversation earlier. A complex request can vary from a few hundred documents to upwards of hundreds of thousands of documents. And so I think that I also agree the average processing time is something that an agency wouldn't have issue with providing and within a certain timeframe of the request that they're evaluating, they can provide that but I'm not sure how much use that specific information would be. So I would encourage it to go beyond to having a defined processing rate that agencies across the board can try to target and I'm going to talk about that later as well. So the one thing I would just add is that obviously the average processing time even in whatever frame that we give it kind of gives you a place marker and idea but I think the most value that a requester and they just have is that conversation they have specific to their request so that you can explain to a requester this is the amount of pages we have this is the search that's involved and now this is really why it's going to take this amount of time, you know, provide an estimate come back if that you can't meet that estimate later on explain why so you can't get that really from anything you're going to put on your website that conversation. So I think that's really where the biggest value there is there and that's having that contact information front and center and agencies and requesters working together through their points of context. It's really helpful. Thank you. I do think it could be helpful though and this is making me think I need to look at our FAQs and just make sure that they're totally up to date. To give just certain examples because there are certain specific examples where you can say with general certainty like this type will be considered simple to be answered within 20 days. I know at our agency we have certain categories that unless something's gone horribly wrong it's going to be answered in 20 days and then we actually maybe in the last year put a note up about a certain kind of record that unfortunately is taking much longer and we actually wanted people to be aware of that and I put it in like big red bold underlying on the website that nobody seems to care and in fact sometimes when people request these I have someone in my office call them like if they look like someone who hasn't previously made request I'd say listen we just want to let you know you're requesting this type of record and this is what the wait time is going to be and they're not happy about it but I don't think a single person said never mind. That's really helpful. This is Alina I just want to add putting on my OGIS hat one of the sets of feedback that we get a lot from requesters and customers that call us is their inability to reach a human being at an agency and so I know we talk a great game about communication between agencies and requesters but oftentimes requesters are calling us and it's the first human being they get to talk to and they're very excited about that but it also shows maybe there's a little bit of a breakdown further down in the process and so I know we had a little bit of dialogue in our second term about points of contact. Tom may remember Tom's nodding, Sean remembers so we could certainly discuss that a little further in terms of what that would really look like but I think there's so much value to just being able to provide other alternatives other than the FOIA public liaison and the FOIA officer. I think that would really go a long way. Hi, this is Patricia Webb and I agree with what you just said, Alina and Emily too. I've followed FOIA requests myself in the past and it's very frustrating to not be able to speak to somebody and I know when I have called requesters they fell off their chair when they actually spoke to somebody from a FOIA branch. I'm just wondering, I look at it, on our websites we're required to post the FOIA public liaison's number. We have our FOIA officer's number as well so it's the direct line so that folks can get a hold of a live person and I know OGIS did an advisory regarding our final response letters and you had a really detailed, put in all the contact information in our final response letters. We put in the attorney's name is there who did the work so there's two different people that they can contact either me as a public liaison or the attorney who did the request. I'm wondering if it may be at the front end of FOIA that I mean as a practice in my agency when my folks get a request they do send out an email directly to the requester with their contact information so that the person can get a hold of them if they have any questions and I'm wondering if that should be a best practice or if we could put something in there at the front end where they know they have a live person that they can talk to. Anyway, just a thought. So your acknowledgement letter actually has an actual person's name on it depending on where in the agency you're especially someone in my office but it's depending on where your request was assigned so they have a name and a telephone number. And I think that's a really good point and we did discuss that. I think I am talking about even prior to this submission at the FOIA. I understood that you're talking about. Just to have that initial conversation. Yeah, absolutely. And I am wondering Alina also if the issue people are saying is like I literally couldn't figure out who to call or are they saying I called and left a message and they didn't call me back because customer service is certainly an issue but a slightly different issue. Certainly given the number of times a day my phone rings and I get email. My information is out there. No one's having any trouble finding me. And I do pride myself on being a very responsive person and sometimes people are somewhat shocked. Like oh, you actually called me back and so I wonder if it's more like they can figure out who to call and they're just not getting a call back. I wanted to say it's a multiple. It's all those things. One of the reasons we actually were really advocating and we did this in conjunction with OIP so thank you OIP. Really advocating that agencies make much more clear the contact information that they do put in their letters because I called this the mushing factor but basically the agency information was kind of getting mushed together and then the OGIS language was very clear so OGIS was getting a lot of calls that we needed to send back to agencies but the other feedback we've also gotten is that folks are calling especially agencies that have a lot of way requests. Agencies are, they have a voicemail box for example and requesters have told us we keep calling and now the voicemail box is full. Can't even leave a message. Much less talk to a human being so there are a lot of those kinds of things that are going on that I think frustrate requesters so I'm just giving you some examples of feedback that we've experienced. Hi, hi this is, this is Michael. A few months ago we did some user testing survey where we just gave people various agency response like knowledgement letters and I think people looked for having a name they could call and I think actually most agencies after some recent recommendations and also recent updates to the FOIA have gotten put together much, much better letters. One of the things we've also been seeing just as kind of a note of caution is also like if you have like five places to contact like such as discussion like OGIS like people saw those letters and we were kind of like just asking them so what would you do next or how confident are you that this is being handled and it was too many different places to contact was really confusing. I loved having a phone number but like some agencies had like a general phone number and then the FOIA office phone number and the FOIA liaison and then the FOIA appeal and there's like okay I've got six different places to call and I think most people are just like where, what can we do to provide that access? Well not overwhelming people with choices but I think it is worth noting I think most agencies have gotten really good about providing points of contact and creating sort of like here's who you reach out and I've really liked that FOIA.gov how it's putting that front and center so I think this is continued improvement but I think there's been huge strides in that area. Okay any other comments? Anyone else on the phone wanna add anything? I think we're all sort of eager for a break. So let's take a break 15 minutes so it's 11.45 let's be back by noon and I hope I'm not short thrifting the records management and vision subcommittees but you guys should have enough time. I'll be my next. I know you will. All right thanks everyone 15 minutes. Reminder, Charter's Cafe is available for snacks, food or drink for purchase, no food or drink back in the theater. There are restrooms directly outside the theater and another set near the cafe. So enjoy the break and we'll see you at 15 minutes. Thank you. You've never done it before? Oh no no I've been here often but as I said it's like it's kind of like you know it's like of course the other trials. Yeah I mean it was good you know. Yeah and you got to see how that went. I have a cool doctor who's done my L.I.C.E. who's in the hospital and I'll be right back. I'm going to be embarrassed to be presented to the crowd. I don't think I'm going to accept any other ads. Oh we've got the Coyer Premium Grayscage. It's 19 cases because there's 74 privacy acts. The Sunshine Act. It's great. You missed the big one. I like the work. Wow. It's very good. Being, being, being able to provide a good answer now. It will be. It will be. Yeah. Well that's right. There have been petitions. Yeah I know. Yes of course. I know. I understand it. I know. I know that. But I'm just. No you're asking because I guess I like you. I don't know if she does it on time. She did. Yeah so I mean we over the summer we had time and a lot of work. So I'm not sure if we're doing this right now. I know we're just, we're actually working on a major asset here. And I'm thinking about so what about our weekly. Yeah I'm right. So. So. I'm to be watching for the savings. I'm to see. And to have. But. She's got. Well I can afford to do that. I think that. These things like that are so frustrating. I was sort of like, I was really glad you mentioned it. You can call, they have to answer in order for it to work. I mean, I'd often tell the story to the government people that are not careful, my experience with it is a lot of work. Yeah. I'm kidding. You're right. She made the announced work, he said. Microwave. I gave them their hand, all the energy. They're all about beauty, the way the Access People came up to me after we presented it. It's more about the way that we're doing it. And they always had transition, had problem with our telephones. There was, like, 14 diseases, and they would do, you know, send us a new comment, which I know I did at that point. It was just there for a contract. I was singing your praises. Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was great, too. So there's been a lot of normal amount of comments that are not relevant to discussion. So at one point, one of the comments was like, no one's actually paying attention to my comments. I was wondering if they're not really that relevant, the more conspiracy theories. But I wonder if this one's just saying, do you have any questions on chat? Are you going to be just at the end of the meeting? Yes. Because one of the women is like, who wants to see my comments? We're just off her show. Like, we're not. So her none of her comments, I said, we've been looking at them. Nothing's worth actually talking about. OK, good. But there's, like, you know. But people are not feeling hurt. Yeah. Or that one woman is a lot of crazy, because yeah. But they did mention, like, if no one was paying attention to their comments, this was a spurt. So they had a war where they had a woman dialogue with each other. Yeah, they are. They're talking to each other. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it. I'm also hoping that doesn't make things worse. No, no, no, no. All right, folks. Let's start gathering. I'm trying to keep it on the schedule. I have to run. I sort of feel like with my youngest was apologizing. Yes. Chris, did you get the email from Chris? No. Chris can not get the email. I might want to call him. OK. He's not able to call in. Oh, did you tell John? Chris is not able to call in. His plane was delayed. So you're on your own. Um, it's all opportunity that I have. I'm going to use him as an excuse for one of them. Yeah. OK, good. Now, are you going to talk to him? I was going to go to vision second. Yeah. I was going to go to Joan and then to Jason. Jason, I'm saving the best for last. OK, so I'm going to go to you last. Are you going to let James present? OK, training. He came all this way. I would never deprive him. James, I'm going to have you go last. Joan's going to go next. OK. But we're saving the best for last. We're so polite. I have no service in here. I didn't have a chance to do anything. I just turned off my person. All right. I think we're waiting for Emily. All right. Thanks, everyone, for coming back. The most people came back. That's a good sign. Thank you, committee members, for coming back. So we are now going to move on to the vision subcommittee. Unfortunately, Chris Knox is co-chair, is not going to be able to call in. So Joan Kamener is on her own, don't throw anything at her, OK? She's going to present now where the vision subcommittee is right now, what they've done and where they plan to move forward to. Great. Thank you. So this is Joan. At first, I just want to start with more of a logistical update to give you an idea of where we are now and our plan going forward over the next few weeks. If you have taken a look at the material for vision, you are slightly behind the other groups, but we have a plan to catch up. So basically over the next two weeks, we are having two meetings next Wednesday in the following meeting. Our plan for those two very intensive meetings will be to have a report out from each of our subgroups to discuss the evaluation, the summaries of the survey results and how they speak to our current brainstorming or ideas. Next will be to finalize the selection of our recommendations from those that are on the table now and may develop from the report out from the remaining subgroups. And last, assign responsibility for drafting those recommendations. Our plan is to have our drafts of the recommendations completed by mid to late January, which should put us on track to meet overall timeframe that the committee is looking for. So with that, I just want to frame up what you are looking at here. Please keep in mind that if there is a word for a draft of a draft that is what you are looking at. It's really a documentation of ideas that we have had brainstorming clearly not a lot of wordsmithing going on here. So give us a little break with maybe if some of the terminology is not what you would prefer and it definitely would not be what you are going to be seeing in the final product. Is it simple or complex? That's my introduction. So with that though I think we can have some lively discussion from what we have here. One of which has already been covered so I'll note that as we move forward. And I guess that's it. So you guys should have a sheet with 11 ideas. So the first I don't think we need to go into in any detail. This is a recommendation that's going to be done in conjunction with the time volume subcommittee that Bradley already went through and that we had a discussion related to it. But I just want to note the vision subcommittees involvement. The same is with number two which is relating to proactive data management. A few months ago we had a joint conversation with the records committee on our involvement moving forward in that. But as they are further along in their drafting I'm also going to put that to them. So on to number three and as was mentioned Chris who's from Deloitte is unable to join us today. So when it comes to some of the more technical side of things we're going to be missing a bit of his perspective. And I'm going to try to frame it up the best that I understand it from conversations with him. So with regard to 508 compliance the idea of bringing an industry perspective to 508 compliance potentially recommending to have industry day industry involvement as well as further work towards the production of a flat PDF which as I understand it would have certain benefits to being able to be more accessible with that. If I can't answer any questions I will definitely take the notes back to our meeting next week so we can work towards addressing any questions you guys have. And if you have additions that you know like ways to that you think might ideas that might add to some of these please feel free to bring those up as well. Do we want to pause for a second and just ask for feedback on one, two and three so far? Thoughts, ideas Ryan. Oh, thank you. Hi, Ryan Law. So one idea and maybe this might fall outside of your guys current focus on 508 and so it looks like you're looking at how do we encourage industry and developing tools to ensure that products that we produce are 508 compliant. One additional thing that might be helpful for the agency community is to encourage GSA to the extent this doesn't already exist to have a government wide vehicle to leverage in remediating documents. I think each agency that I know currently does their own thing here in this area and there could be cost savings if we have a standard vehicle that we could leverage to accomplish 508 compliance because access is incredibly important ensuring that everyone has access to the materials we release is very important. Did I hear someone on the phone that wanted to chime in? Hi, Elena. Patricia West at NLRB. I thought that agency-wide there was a requirement that all agencies are to be 508 compliant. So I don't know if this is a bit repetitive of that requirement and I can't point to the question. This is Sean from Pogo. I'll jump in. We talked about this 508 compliance quite a bit in last term of the FOIA advisory committee and the problem is a rather an odd one where records are 508 compliant in the agency but when they're processed for disclosure often that that compliance is stripped out especially when redactions need to be made and it's the only way for the agency to feel secure in that those redactions won't be, you know, retrievable any of that information and so the process of processing it for public release turns it into a document that no longer meets 508 compliance which they're required to do if they release it to everyone but they're only releasing it to one person because it's a FOIA request and so they can do that and a problem up until more recently when we've tried to pursue release to one, release to all and then we realized we had kind of painted ourselves into a corner so one of the things I did want to raise as I know this is an ongoing problem was the idea that if there's a large volume of records that are not 508 compliant that have been released to someone one of the solutions may be a listing a 508 compliant listing or index of those records that are available upon request again without new FOIA review so we don't have the same problem we were talking about with volume because they can just be released but since they would only be sent upon request they don't actually they wouldn't be violating the law to keep them non 508 compliant and so as long as the index and the searchable index was 508 compliant the agency would remain in complete compliance it's a less than ideal solution but it could be a stop gap until we have the right technology so this is Alina Pat on the back to OGIS in our legislative recommendation in our annual report this past year we actually suggested that very thing so you might want to look at that and we tried to give a few different ideas to Congress so it's something that we're still very interested in trying to move forward so I'm very excited about continuing this dialogue this is probably one additional thing to that however this recommendation winds up being fully framed we had some mention earlier about unfunded mandates this is something that's definitely going to be expensive so if the recommendation is to OGIS to seek some kind of information I would suggest throwing in a recommendation that I'll just ask Congress to fund this so with that Joan again moving on to number four which we discussed briefly and I think might be an opportunity to work potentially in conjunction with time and volume is the concept of streamlining the process for certain types of records it does stop short of your recommendation of taking these first party request records outside of the FOIA process we were envisioning something more like a streamlining process a specific track for certain type of records which would require defining both those categories as well as the owning agencies potentially a portal for those specific type of records something to help speed up the process for what accounts for a large volume of FOIA request and I don't know if there's any additional discussion we need to have on that but just throwing our hat in the ring on that one maybe I'll just say that I know in the immigration context they already have certain processes that are supposed to facilitate or streamline certain types of FOIA requests for certain records for example there are processing times on USCIS's website will they talk about a file simple, non-a file complex non-a file they're tracking it that way and there are forms that are very straightforward and not just not sure that that really solves the problem in that context anyway James Stoker I think this does seem to be an interesting recommendation I think we'd have to think about whether or not this is something that is an alternative to the idea of separating them from FOIA or it could be done alongside it too so if these are going to be separated we could also urge that they be streamlined as well because one of the ideas behind our recommendation was that maybe it's possible that some records are actually taking longer to get out to the public because of the FOIA it's easier to give access to people particularly if this is combined with the electronic databases a recommendation that we had also so I don't think anyone would oppose the idea of streamlined access to these types of records but it doesn't necessarily have to be seen as an alternative yeah thank you and just to add from my perspective I was envisioning something potentially like the My Property system that we utilize which of course would not be enough to address some of the privacy concerns but more as like a conceptual starting point where individuals who are looking for records about their personal property like literally their house you know their Superfund sites or different things like that have a portal that they can go to to directly access certain records and they're pulled from all across the agency into one repository and they're tagged based on certain identifying information for that property but I agree I think that not an or situation and just throwing a couple of ideas there that might be able to if you're looking at maybe like a 10 year out goal there's something that could be done along the way and number 5 further defining or redefining search such as standards for reasonably described request I know that something that troubles both the request or community as well as the agency community is having a more solid foundation for knowing how to frame up their request and an agency and how to respond to certain requests we're receiving more and more of these certain requests for all documents all communications in particular and you know given the I like to call it that tsunami of electronically stored information that escalates at you know such an exponential rate every year for the federal government when you take what you know a request that's asking for all communications for an individual for even a month period it can result in such a high volume of records now I'm in no way saying that that is not a reasonably described request you can look at the record and all of that but I think that having some type of base level it could be opportunities to include subject matter search term but I think it's going to require communication from both request or community as well as the agencies this is Alina I just want to say this sounds a lot like it would pair up very nicely with number six from time volume so maybe Emily and Joan you guys need to talk at least even just wouldn't want it on that one to get lost on the request side which is having some way to understand and challenge as a result the reasonableness of the search from our perspective we often suspect that the search was was inadequate based upon our other knowledge of the subject matter and it's often difficult to know and we do have that communication and some agencies are quite some FOIA officers are quite happy to go back and respond to those requests others are we suspect are using the opaqueness to avoid having to do a further search let's put it that way so I don't know exactly how that would come out in terms of terminology and wording of this but you did mention that it was in the DOJ guide so further guidance on what is a reasonable search and communication of that to the requester I think it would be very helpful I actually just did a little bit of research into this very issue for something I was working on and there's actually some fairly good a lengthy discussion in case law in the DOJ guide about this very issue that specifically talks about any and all type FOIA request that I found and helpful so it's something you just may want to look at in understanding it's not entirely clear there's some cases that I've gone some way and some the other but we do you know are on alert for those kinds of requests because I think often they don't work well for requesters it's really hard to do a search for any and all records and sometimes I find that requesters aren't really doing themselves a service by being they think oh if I'm just really broad and all that will actually get me the best result but sometimes that's actually not not the case and one part of that recommendation could be since we are one of the recommendations from the last advisory committee was to post our logs that directing requesters of such types of requests to the logs can actually be quite helpful as a starting point this is Joan again so that's where I think that the the interplay between a reasonably described request and reasonably constructed search really play together because I agree I'm familiar with the DOJ guidance particularly on all records related to a particular subject but given that there's the vast majority of FOIA requests that agencies are processing are an electronic system you're also looking at whether or not an agency their capability of conducting a particular search so it may be reasonable that an agency search for like I said all communications without a subject matter qualifier if you have a custodian if you have a date range that is really all a lot of agencies need to do a search that said you're getting more into the unduly burdensome aspect of it so and that's going back to Lee's point why I think it is so important for it to be a conversation between the requester community and the agency community because I think it really benefits both to have an understanding of how requests can be framed that will not only result in a lower burden on agencies but also on a quicker response to requesters to really target what they're looking for but it does have to be you know a balanced discussion anyone on the phone have any questions or comments keep moving number six new pending FOIA legislation particularly on making private prison subject to the FOIA this I will say this is one that since Chris is not on the call I don't actually have a lot of familiarity with this one but just in reading that right there I don't know if anybody is familiar with it and wants to chime in but it sounds like a great thing I'm not sure Hi James Takeup Stanford University I would just note that South Africa does something similar to this in their FOIA law they cover NGOs and nonprofits or organizations that do government work and I know that the US government doesn't do that but I think this points to the to that you know covering private prisons under FOIA it would be really interesting to you know cover contract research organizations and defense contractors and places like that this is Michael from Muck Rock in a number of states do as well whereas I think we probably don't want to be endorsing specific legislation but I don't know I'm happy to endorse lots of legislation or even propose legislation but I think if we could endorse you know kind of come together with a sort of suggestion about as more government business is privatized we do need to sort of make sure that it still encapsulates the spirit of openness and transparency as prior and I think that would be a really good thing to include as a recommendation and some mechanism of tracking that Tom This is Tom Sussman Congress did take sort of the many step in this direction when it said outside governmental entities that hold records for the government are going to be subject so you can't outsource your archiving in order to get the information outside of FOIA and I think Michael's point there are some very good and broad state laws that say if you're spending government funds to perform traditionally government functions then the entity should be subject to and the question is then the procedure and that is beyond our issue here but you know there's also the open data act I think is also another precedent for this where if you an agency relies on private research and promulgates a rule then that data has to be available for public disclosure Anyone else Okay so moving on to number seven release to one release to all this you know as you can see from the notes it's been around for a while but the potential recommendation that it is finalized and rolled out formally open to comment I guess I should probably comment on that and so I think it goes hand in hand with what Sean had talked about before with 508 when during the pilot we had identified challenges this committee examined some of those challenges those challenges still exist very much in favor of the policy of practice disclosures but just being mindful of that but it's still something that's under consideration This is Bradley this relates really closely with one of the recommendations that we're going to talk about later and I've got to say I representing DHS with our huge volume of FOIA requests have some issues with making this policy standard for everything first and foremost there's the issue of individual requesters and I know that we've discussed making a carve out for that and other things that are set in those outside of the FOIA but those are things that cannot be released to all the other thing is it depends on what you mean by this by this kind of policy if you mean that every single FOIA release gets posted on the website who pays for that storage where is it going to go, how are they going to get to it those are all things that are that can be incredibly expensive and can be also incredibly burdensome on an agency so wherever this goes it needs to take those things into consideration so now moving on to number 8 agencies paying for litigation for losses in FOIA litigation some of you might be familiar but just to make sure everybody understands agencies when they pay out attorneys fees for losses in FOIA litigation that money does come from the agencies funding including, I don't know how it works with other agencies but down to a program level so just imagine whatever program in whichever agency was the lead on a particular FOIA request be it a failure to respond or withholdings that were later found to be improper any settlement either through negotiation with the plaintiff or at a court order will come from that programs personal funding and that has I would hope unintended consequences but very clear consequences on that agency specifically for the resources available to process other FOIA requests it compounds the problem they have fewer financial resources and staff focus needing to shift to litigation because of that financial impact on the agency then potentially results in less staff focused on processing incoming FOIA request there are a number of what I consider creative options out there to address this problem there are potential just ideas please remember potential limits on fees based on sizes of organizations of course there is the recommendation which I don't know if we'd actually get to shifting the financial obligation to a general fund and this is going beyond some of my expertise there but I don't know if that's on the table additionally the pre-2007 approach to FOIA attorneys fees was that if the issues were resolved prior to a summary judgment decision from the court the plaintiff was found not typically not eligible for attorneys fees that would likely have to be a result of a statutory revision I imagine so we like I said we're looking vision here big picture ten years out but you may or may not be surprised at what a dramatic impact this does have on agencies this is Lee Steven so I guess my question is what would your recommendation be here you're trying to limit fees either so I presented there's a few options and because we are still we have not finalized what recommendations we're moving forward with that's why I'm presenting some possible ideas that we'd reflect on and to get your take since we have the benefit of giving everybody's assessment of these ideas before we select what recommendations we'll move forward with but yes there's the potential to limit attorneys fees putting caps on the amount that can be paid out or the shifting of the obligation is also I think an opportunity the third one what did you mention the pre-2007 approach to attorneys fees I understand would also have a potentially negative impact on the requester community so but I do want to present that as you know a potential option for recommendation so when you say what am I suggesting could be any of the above you know we have to decide but I would like to get everybody's take on those possible options but the perspective is that you're coming from on this just for my own clarity is that you think that the fee issue the fees being paid out right now are a problem for the agency and that's the problem you're trying to address with this recommendation is that correct yes and you said it is it has been a burden just can you describe for me what level are we talking about what level of burden what dollar figures what actually is the problem I'm going to jump in thank you because I feel at one point in my career I felt very strongly about this so as you may or may not know I ran the FOIA litigation unit at the FBI and so we experienced lots of litigation and there was definitely as far as I know a lot of intent behind this legislative change that was made my understanding was the requester community really pushed for it because they were finding that things weren't working the way they should and you know one way we can pitch it in a negative fashion to say that it was a way to punish agencies right but the way to look at it from an impact perspective I agree with Joan for example at the FBI we actually the general counsel's office was the one that took the hit and it was actually my particular section and so I used to say for the $100,000 in attorney's fees I just had to pay to explain to them those are seven copiers or four printers that we can't buy for our section I mean it really hit down to that my understanding was that's what congress wanted for agencies to really feel the pinch but I'm just telling you practical perspectives that's what's going on and as Sarah as an agency that doesn't have a lot of FOIA litigation while I understand the incentive idea that you know if a program office in particular gets dinged they're certainly learning a lesson but if the reason why the FOIA request weren't being processed as quickly as they could be in the first place that resulted in litigation was a lack of resources now we have exacerbated the problem by reducing the resources that have been more thereby making a subject to even more litigation and more attorney's fees Tom. Yeah, Tom Sussman I think punishment was not the goal I think the goal I mean this is vision subcommittee looking 10 years the future these recommendations would look 10 years and beyond in the past because congress made the change of and paying out of the agency pocket specifically and and not allowing agencies to delay delay delay and then hand out the information in court and avoid having to pay out anything these were didn't come easy and they came because the the public media requested community all felt that it would help change agency performance now the question that I would have and I was an advocate for these changes is if it didn't impact incentives then I would certainly be open to adjustments but we don't know that it's easy to say well this takes resources away from how much to what extent six copiers is that is that's sort of just academic mathematics or you know do you have examples of agencies that have been directly impacted and could it have been avoided if the other side of this is agencies that play games and get dinged I mean I've been on the collecting fees side of things where the agency should have never contested these okay and you will recall at one point even the justice department took a position that they wouldn't defend agencies in certain cases because so much so many the defense some of the defenses were frivolous so in those cases agencies should get punished dinged because the incentive didn't work but maybe it would after a while so I'd like to have a more a stronger empirical base to know what the result has been and whether we can more surgically draw a line to help provide some incentive and maybe even in some cases punishment without abandoning the whole notion that you know it's these are expensive lawsuits for requesters and they shouldn't have to sue every time you know the agency decides to be well where I this is where I think there's an opportunity there and I appreciate you know the need for there to be a little more precision here and you know from the you know the stipulation of dismissals whatever we can pull together numbers and associate that particularly with failure to respond litigations which is where I think that this I'm going to call it a vicious cycle it has the strongest impact so for example if we're able to pull together the data on in you know a fiscal year the amount of attorney's fees one particular agency paid out for failure to respond litigations which I know that we won't be able to say definitively is only due to resource issues but I do think that there is a is a connection there I think that maybe that's type of information that might be a little more persuasive and if you think about it in the full circle if an agency is unable to respond to a foyer request the 20 days or 30 days statutory timeframe depending on the situation and a requester then litigate soon after I know that there's a lot more to that detail but if it's due to resource issue due to a high volume of foyer request you know trying to work through a very voluminous request you know any number of things but then simply because they fail to respond and they're in litigation and they make a production in the course of litigation very frequently there's no further briefing on withholdings in those situations it's purely a litigation that results in a agreed to production schedule the agency produces records there's no contested withholdings and the parties then you know move on their way but typically with settling with these fees that's the type of situation where I think is best suitable for this type of recommendation because then you have that cyclical fashion where the agency has less resources and is unable and also has sistered resources to the litigation and is therefore not able to fully tackle the incoming request which then they fail to respond to and may result in additional litigation so this is going to make a point of order I feel very bad for James Jacobs who's traveled from California to do to talk about two very fleshed out recommendations that are more mature than the discussion here and so we really do need to have time for him. No that's fair. I think James wanted to say something I'm just going to give him that opportunity. I think this is an area where we can learn from the examples of other countries in Switzerland they created they did a trial run of what they called an accelerated summary procedure with oral arbitration hearings to avoid litigation so I guess this would be some sort of binding arbitration process which at least my understanding is not a possibility in FOIA cases here and there's some people sort of smiling a little bit so maybe there's some obvious objections to this that I would miss but if we can be innovative in ways like that and maybe ways of thinking to decide the box to avoid going to court in the first place. Can we continue this part of the discussion maybe in the next meeting or another time because a lot of us have a lot to say about this but we really do need to get to the other two things. Sorry for that. Then with that with number nine I we're going to put a pen in that one there is also a lot to say in that one clearly is not fleshed out at all and I think can be taken just on the face of it in many different ways so with that I'd like to very just quickly address number 10 and 11 which do have a bit more context to them. With number 10 it's establishing the briefing for senior leaders during a transition to a new administration. The idea would be either through OGIS or potentially DOJ either having a basic template with standardized information across the agency or alternatively I mean I really think that DOJ provides excellent training on FOIA there's the potential for their data training specifically for senior leaders during transition. Okay great. Excellent thank you. I endorse this message. Number 11 the recommendation to revise the statutory timeframe permitted for responding to complex FOIA request this could be an alternative idea the second part or in conjunction with the first which is basing this timeframe on metrics provided by agencies on processing times for complex request. I do want to point out FBI and DEHS having successfully been able to defend metrics and a defined processing rate of pages per month in numerous litigations which you guys are my heroes and I believe that there's an opportunity for a both requester community involvement as well as agency involvement in a potential work group that could help establish and I mean they're getting into a lot of math is beyond my abilities but you know making sure it's well supported but I think looking towards that that you know 10 years in the future idea I understand that we may not be successful in the idea of modifying the statutory timeframe but with that expectation idea this came from managing expectations in our group of having that underlying metrics to support our estimated completion dates it really supports requesters and knowing how long it's going to take to have things as well as agencies and able to defend request for funding I feel particularly strongly that we're going to be able to utilize those through the FOIA process. Okay Joan thank you for all of that anyone else want to discuss anything please join the vision subcommittee and we can continue the dialogue I just want to quickly intercede I understand by the way I was told at break and I forgot to address this earlier that we've had a lot of lively chatter on live stream we're addressing any questions or comments at the end so we don't want the folks out there and YouTube land to feel like we're ignoring them but this is for committee deliberation so with that James or Ryan let me do a quick hi I'm Ryan and on behalf of the record subcommittee I want to briefly talk about our efforts today we've had several meetings since our September meeting if you recall during our September full committee meeting we introduced seven recommendations invited your feedback and comments and we've gotten some of those those recommendations have not significantly changed since that meeting so we don't plan to go over them today we will introduce those back to the full committee for consideration discussion at the next session today we'd like to introduce two additional recommendations that we put together and discussed since our last meeting and I want to recognize Mr. Jacobs to talk about this in a minute. I'm going to go back to our university so we did have originally it was one recommendation that we've split into two the first proposed recommendation that I'd like to hear your feedback and comments has to do with we recommend the archivist of the United States request that NARA OGIS and DOJ OIP work together to encourage agencies to work toward a goal of collecting increased records in one or more central repositories in standardized ways in addition to providing access on agency websites and this was something that I believe Bobby gave us some feedback on that and so we did fold your input into the new recommendation I'd love to hear your comments on it comments questions folks on the phone we're not ignoring you I have a question so if it's not on the agency website where would it be are you thinking FOIA.gov or there's FOIA online.gov FOIA.gov maybe an agency has its own repository those kind of places we don't want to prescribe where the agency is required to post it but we want to recommend that that they work to maybe centralize those those documents this is Ryan so just to give an example the State Department has a fantastic centralized portal now where their FOIA records are posted they're searchable they're accessible and I think that that's a good example other agencies that use FOIA online requesters are able to go to FOIA online and do searches of records in those locations other agencies have centralized locations on their websites where you can search across FOIA so again not prescribing a specific solution or standard portal but giving flexibility and I need to give a hat tip out to document cloud and muck rock because document cloud has all of the organizations that use document cloud they have a database a central database where you can search for the FOIA information that those organizations news agencies etc etc have posted to a central repository and it makes discovery of FOIA information much more easy for the requester community this is Sean Malton with Pogo I was just wondering if you guys while drafting this thought about I like the idea I just wonder if there's something more specific rather than just encourage agencies I mean maybe this is something for the chief FOIA officers council to do a best practices under the guidance of OGIS and OIP so that there will be something substantive at the end that other agencies could use as a touchstone as they start to try and accomplish this thanks that's a good idea we're taking notes we are too alright anyone else on number 8 anyone on the phone on number 8 going once going twice alright so the 9th recommendation we have reads the following we recommend the archivist in the United States request NARA OGIS and DOJ OIP to together encourage agencies to release FOIA documents to the public on their FOIA websites and FOIA portals in both human readable and machine actionable formats to the extent feasible and that sort of comes out of the idea of open data and machine actionable machine readable documents has been around since well at least 2013 with Obama's executive order 13642 it's also been in proposed legislation from congressman quickly and others that has not passed but has been submitted to congress every congress for the last 10 years or so at least Bradley White here so for this one I'll kind of raise the same objection I raised before this kind of thing is going to cost a ton of money for agencies to do it's going to be so but finding a way to put everything out there I mean the release to one release to all as we said in the last portion raises a ton of additional issues that there's just a lot to go into with format where it's going to be stored who's going to get it if this were linking to reading rooms with the information that the agencies decided was publicly released I'd have no objection to it but it just raises a lot of red flags of me well that could certainly be a first step I think that's a really good idea to add something about information that is already released under FOIA on agency websites that's a good idea this is James Stoker it's kind of a follow up and actually maybe a question to Bradley about the costs I mean I understand that it's expensive but to store documents online but that seems to be something where you get real basically you end up saving money with scale the requirement to cooperate between agencies for instance to have a common portal or to use FOIA online would that go some way towards addressing the cost concerns I don't necessarily think it would I think it would I don't necessarily think it would because if you look at the way say the cost for FOIA online as it currently exists are spread around the agency there's an agency that barely uses it that pays a large share of the cost for that it depends on the usage and what can go out so if it's based on say that agency share of all government FOIAs if the majority of those records are requests for individuals records then that proportion wouldn't be fair to the agency paying the bulk of the cost and just data storage in and of itself it's got to go somewhere and it has to pay for it and unless there's something where Congress is setting aside this is the fund for storing FOIA records on this portal which is unlikely it's going to be apportioned among the agencies in some form and it just again it raises a lot of reflects Tom did you have a comment Tom's assessment it sort of brought to mind when Ryan was describing the State Department is that prohibitively expensive do we know? because these are the sort of things that say wow what a great sort of model best practices and then you turn around and say this approach is prohibitively well it wasn't prohibitively expensive for the State Department but I guess I'd like to know more about where the line is between model best practice and prohibitively expensive Emily I just have one quick comment I wonder if this lends itself to a pilot or and then my other question was the human readable and machine actionable piece of it is that something that we hold out I actually you're channeling my thoughts Jason so I did we had discussions about this and noting Bradley's concern but it may well be that this is something that is properly considered a pilot or part of the vision part of whatever the final report is alright anyone else have any thoughts about number nine anyone on the phone for number nine okay hopefully we still have folks on the phone alright any other comments overall or should we move into the public feedback that we are needing anyone have anything else they want to okay so we are now at the juncture where we would entertain comments from those of you who are in attendance either via live stream or here in person please approach the microphones that are on each side of the room for the record please state your name and your affiliation if that's appropriate and fire away okay thank you my name is Alex Howard it's good to see you all here talking about these issues because I think it is fair to say that public trust and government has never been lower and that secrecy is at an all time high you mentioned the volume of FOIA requests well one other metric that would be useful to talk about is the volume of FOIA lawsuits and the number one reason to hear from the public is that the agencies did not respond so your recommendations here are important and I celebrate the service of the FOIA officers here and your colleagues under that caseload but I have some concerns that you're not addressing some of the direct problems with FOIA in these recommendations or acknowledging some of the laws here now we just heard about the open government data act which Trump President Trump signed into law in January that actually mandates already that you all post information as open government data in a machine readable format already so instead of recommending that there be another system on another portal why are you not recommending that agencies disclose responsive records on their open data websites and federate them and make them searchable through FOIA.gov or data.gov which was just codified by the law why is the committee coming up with duplicative redundant recommendations to build a brand new system is this an idea for congress there is a specific question that I've raised many times before that has come up with respect to the release to one release to all pilot which I commented on the sunlight foundation which we supported which I since petitioned government formally with the cause of action institute so you're responding today as acting director that specifically it's still something that's under consideration it's been under consideration for these years is that an official response to the petition that it is still under consideration yes I mean this is something that you brought up at the last meeting bringing it up since 2017 and I don't have anything more that I can share about that is the committee aware that there was a cross agency priority goal for the FOIA established at the beginning of 2017 anyone this is Sean Moulton I was unaware of the CAP goal and saw it in the previous minutes that it was raised at a previous meeting I was unaware until reading those minutes that the CAP goal had been removed has there ever been any official acknowledgement for why OMB removed the CAP goal from its website and refuses to acknowledge that it ever has existed not to my knowledge and it's certainly something I'm happy to look into outside of government but it is disappointing from a requester perspective that we had a CAP goal and at some point was unceremoniously removed as you all are considering recommendations to the United States Government to improve FOIA compliance may I suggest that you recommend to OMB that it takes a leadership position restores a CAP goal and reminds agencies that FOIA is not something to punish senior ambassadors have been recalled from their posts abroad to make them do but actually something that is an honorable function of public service that provides the public with our records under the law and to encourage them to recognize your work and to coordinate your work and to support the United States Government's FOIA portal which congress mandated that OMB work with DOJ to create that it exists because I would suggest that one of the reasons we're seeing a raise in costs and that we're seeing public frustration with this is that the very top of our United States Government is not reminding the public that these records exist either proactively disclosed form or that there are better tools for getting them or that there are existing obligations that are under there now we all know that your recommendations are not being taken up across government and I'm not convinced following up on our last conversation that congress is adopting them into statute but if you do make recommendations in this area I would encourage you to highlight the role that OMB has in getting people to follow the law and on that particular count these are wonderful technical recommendations has anyone in the committee talked about culture or politics are you going to because political interference in FOIA request is something that was a problem in the last administration and is certainly one now are you going to recommend that FOIA officers are able to be responsive without having appointees step in I'm used to knowing responding but I want to always give you an opportunity I do want to say Alex not directly under the jurisdiction of any of the three subcommittees I will say that we did brainstorm at the beginning of this term as to how we were going to divide up subcommittees I don't recall that topic necessarily falling neatly into one of the three so we appreciate the feedback I think we're all listening and we will discuss further this is Emily I just had one comment I think I wasn't entirely certain that I would recommend by culture I hear you on political interference we have with the time volume subcommittee really looked closely at and through the survey I mentioned before what is happening inside of these agencies that FOIA requests are not being responded to and I think we truly I know the word training is sort of bad around and what does that mean and how will that be implemented but I do think that that goes to that culture question to a certain extent the inside of an agency work better and more efficiently together to respond to FOIA requests I'll just make one comment going back to the portal and OMB and the CAP goals a significant part of the CAP goal was the establishment of the national FOIA portal OMB has been incredibly supportive in our effort there not only in launching it but designating a line of business funding for it and making sure that it will continue to build in the future and we look forward to working with everyone here and you to find new ways to expand on that and I also open invitation Alex anytime you want to talk to OIP come on over I'd love to hear your recommendations and I'm an open invitation for everyone Thank you I just start off with the bad say do a search for how many U.S. government accounts that have shared FOIA.gov since 2017 you can search a URL Twitter you can search across websites see how many times the U.S. government has engaged the public about the thing that you built beautifully I would say with 18F full disclosure I was involved in that I gave feedback I was a beta tester I was the person, the only person who came to your launch at DOJ so I showed up but the government is not engaging the public about the resource it has built that would understandably lead us to wonder about its commitment to making sure that people know that these things exist so that we can save money on the front end and save your time on the back and it gets the more complex request that we know do require the lawyers and other people to be get involved I'd say this last issue one of the previous meetings we talked about technology and technology comes up a lot here and that's important I've spent my career in Washington covering government technology and open government the American people is getting a really poor investment for the money that we are paying I hear about the cost it would spend do you know how much expensive it is to put a spreadsheet or a PDF and Amazon web services now it's pennies fractions of pennies cost is no longer a driving factor there you know how much we pay for a small number of companies to provide software for handling FOIA requests I would say that number and those companies and getting agency feedback on the quality of the software they have to process these requests should be right at the top of your list of things to figure out get the GAO to do a study, get congress to look into it go back and audit and see how many of these very same companies were lobbying congress to prevent agency from building something better themselves or from opening up the process we are getting a terrible return on our nation's investment in technology and this is one area that is actively hindering public knowledge now I am sensitive to the fact that you are hobbled by procurement regulations that were created to buy stuff and not software but you have resources to help you with this at 18F go find some of the brilliant people at USDS look at your presidential innovation fellows find someone to help you do this better and I hope that as you look at this you talk to the federal web council look at project open data because I am seeing recommendations here that look like they were from five years ago to me and I can say that because I was covering recommendations to congress in 2014 when FOIA went up and got undermined by the Department of Justice lobbying against it including released to all kinds of ideas with the presumption of openness I watched a youtube stream full of people who are upset with government there is not a lot of them they left after the recess and I spend my day seeing people angry at government I would encourage all of you to be as frank and open and tough on government's performance here as possible and to continue to ask people outside of government what their experience is with your systems with your staff with your websites with access to data because it cannot stay here in this room archives is being amazing by broadcasting this online posting this information online it is a model of open government in the United States in a number of very important ways here by this more open to the public but if the public doesn't see you grappling with the reality of FOIA because it is experienced by requesters and making recommendations that are both recognize the laws that have been recently enacted and I think gets to the core point of why people are so upset and why the requesters keep suing I'm not sure your time is being well used I appreciate the opportunity to come back to you I believe we have some live stream comments that Jesse is going to bring up there's just one question it's from a representative from reclaim the records and the question is what powers or ability does NARA have to compel USCIS to comply with record schedules to alleviate the public use of FOIA to obtain records or can NARA suggest that USCIS compel record schedules to speed up the surrender of records great question not necessarily within my jurisdiction it's something we would need to talk about with our colleagues in the corporate records office so we'll put a pin in that and continue the dialogue anything else on the chat okay anyone else in the audience okay so I think we're just about out of time so thank you everyone for being so patient I think we got a lot of work done today we still have a lot of work to do we invite everyone to visit our website and social media for more information about how you can participate and give us further comments a reminder that our next meeting is Thursday, March 5th 2020 10 a.m. right here on the McGowan Theater does anyone have any other comments or thoughts or questions looking around at the committee members Jason we talked about process and what you might say to the committee in terms of the next work product that's expected in the form of it sure so I think it would actually be extremely helpful I know some of these ideas are still very nascent and we're still working on them and I really respect that and kudos to Joan for being brave enough to bring all of them to the table and we definitely will revisit some of them next time but one thing I think I would like the subcommittee co-chairs to focus on and the interim is giving some more full body experience if you will to the recommendations and perhaps developing a written explanation of why these recommendations came about and what the rationale is behind them and what the goal is that you're trying to accomplish with each one I think that would really be helpful thank you again for your time and participation I know Kirsten is going to ask you again please leave your folders behind they are highly coveted value for NARA and have become quite expensive for us to procure so we would like to reuse them if there are no other questions or concerns we stand adjourned thank you