 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. And thank you for joining today's Chief Foyer Officers' Council Annual Meeting. Before we begin, please ensure you have opened the chat panel by using the associated icon located at the bottom of your screen. Please note all audio lines have been muted until the Q&A portion of the meeting. You are welcome to submit written questions throughout the meeting, which will be addressed at the Q&A session of the meeting. To submit a written question, select all panelists from the drop-down menu in the chat panel, then enter your message in the message box provided and sent. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. If you require technical assistance, please send the chat to the event producer. With that, I will turn the meeting over to Alina Simo, Director Office of Government and Information Services. Alina, please go ahead. All right. Thanks, Michelle. Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining us today for our very first ever virtual Chief Foyer Officers' Council Meeting, and possibly not our last. I hope everyone has been staying healthy, safe, and well. I am Alina Simo, Director of the Office of Government Information Services and Co-Chair of the Council. Let me introduce my Co-Chair, Bobby Tolivian, Director of the Office of Information Policy at the Department of Justice. Thank you, Alina. It's a pleasure to be here with everyone today. Welcome, and thank you for joining us. We will be hearing again from Bobby shortly with some opening remarks on behalf of the Principal and Deputy Associate Attorney General, who, unfortunately, could not join us today. We have a full agenda today. In a minute, you will hear welcoming remarks from Archivists of the United States, David Ferriero. Bobby will provide a brief introduction on behalf of the Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General, Claire Murray, and he will provide a few updates followed by a presentation from me about some updates on the Foyer Advisory Committee. And we will be soliciting volunteers among our federal audience for the formation of a new committee, so please stay tuned for that. We will also be inviting questions and discussion at the midpoint of our presentation today. And you will definitely want to stay tuned in for a lively presentation from the co-chairs of the Technology Committee, Eric Stein and Michael Sarage. We have reserved time at the end of today's session to receive public comments. We will be opening the telephone lines at the end of our meeting for any oral questions and comments from our non-government friends and colleagues. We are monitoring the chat on WebEx, and we will read out loud any substantive questions or comments. And we are also simultaneously live streaming today's meeting on the NARA YouTube channel, and we will also read out loud any substantive questions or comments. So with that, I would like to introduce Archivists of the United States, David Ferriero. First, some welcome remarks. David, over to you. Thanks, Elaine. Good morning and welcome from 700 Pennsylvania Avenue, where we would ordinarily be meeting, and I look forward to the time when we do actually welcome you to this building again. I'm proud of the role that the National Archives plays in this important government-wide council of senior official tasks with ensuring FOIA compliance. As many of you in attendance know, the Federal FOIA Ombudsman's office is housed right here in the National Archives, where everyday OGIS staff works to make access happen and connect with customers. The timing and agenda for today's meeting form a nice confluence. Fifty-five years ago this week, the U.S. Senate passed a bill to amend the Administrative Procedure Act by clarifying and protecting the right of the public to information. As Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana noted on the Senate floor on October 13, 1965, the balance between disclosing and withholding government information is not easy. Success, he said, lies in providing a workable formula which encompasses balances and protects all interests, yet places emphasis on the fullest responsible disclosure. The bill would go on to pass the House in June 1966, and the next month FOIA was signed into law. Fifty-five years after the Senate passed the original FOIA, the challenge of balancing openness and secrecy continues. Added to the mix are the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19 and the telework environment in which many of you and your agency's FOIA processing staff members have been operating. No doubt many of you have not been to your government offices since early March. Later this morning we will hear an interagency discussion about success and challenges to FOIA processing during the COVID pandemic. Challenges that certainly weren't foreseen when the council last met in 2019. I look forward to a discussion by the chief FOIA officers council regarding one of the 22 recommendations that the FOIA advisory committee sent to me earlier this year. The advisory committee now in its fourth term is composed of government professionals and members of the requester community whom I appoint to study the federal FOIA landscape and advise me on improvements to FOIA administration. Recommendation 16, which I support, is for the chief FOIA officers council to create a committee of cross-agency collaboration and innovation. I look forward to the committee's creation today and collaborative and innovative work in the coming months. Collaboration and innovation are key to giving senior leaders and their staff the tools they need to meet Senator Mansfield's definition of success balancing all interests while emphasizing responsible disclosure. Please take care and stay safe and then I turn the meeting back to Bobby Tlaibian. Thank you, Ms. Ferriero. Very much appreciate that. Thank you all again for joining and congratulations to all the agencies on closing out fiscal year 20. I wanted to pass along the regards of the principal deputy attorney general principal deputy associate attorney general of the United States, Ms. Clara Murray who very much wanted to be here to kick off our first meeting in the new fiscal year. The Department of Justice, as you know, we seriously are role in encouraging government-wide compliance with the FOIA and as the chief FOIA officer of the department, the principal deputy associate attorney general appreciates the challenges chief FOIA officers face managing high volumes of requests that have become increasingly complex while also managing new workplace precautions and realities. The department's FOIA guidelines stress and experience has proven the important leadership role chief FOIA officers play in the success of FOIA administration. That is why the work of this council is so important to help us ensure that agencies are making use of all available resources to improve FOIA administration and that we together find new ways to enhance our ability to provide this vital service to our democracy. Ms. Murray would like to thank all agencies that were joining us for today and for your continued efforts in advancing government-wide FOIA administration. And I just want to thank Ms. Murray for her message and her continued support. With that I had some updates that I wanted to provide from OIP on some of the work that we're doing and the resources available to agencies. So we start with the next slide. I thought I'd just highlight some reporting updates. Mission is at FOIA.gov and make sure to highlight the resources available to your agencies from OIP to help in your FOIA administration. Next slide. Starting off the FOIA reporting. Next slide. Just this by summer we issued as we concluded the 2020 reporting season by issuing our summary and assessment of the 2020 FOIA officer reports. The summer year assessment reflects a number of key milestones that agencies should and have been focusing on in their FOIA administration. And I encourage agencies to review the summary and references to many of the agencies work in that summary as well as the agency's individual reports. Next slide. Accompanied the summary, we issued guidance based off our review of the reports on areas for agencies to continue to focus on for improvement. We emphasized timeliness, reducing backlogs and responding to your questions. Especially in light of challenges that you need challenges that agencies have faced in 2020 and now are facing in 2020 and 2021. Going into 2021. In particular during this 2020 CFR reporting process, agencies have faced a long government shutdown which impacted processing times. So we did the counts for that and agencies explained some of the challenges or even how they were able to overcome some of those challenges in 2021 and now obviously with the recent pandemic a lot of the new workplace precautions agencies have had to adjust and reemphasizing the guidance that we issued in May regarding agencies and administrations in light of COVID-19 many different ways agencies can mitigate some of the challenges that they face working in a telework environment and so encourage you to continuously to take a look at that guidance and reach out to us if you have any questions or if we can give any assistance and any challenges that your agency might face as you all work through the new realities of the workplace. Next slide. That reporting season has concluded. We have now issued the chief report for the 2020 CFO report. We wanted to highlight a number of key dates as in prior years or just similar to last year we have divided the reporting requirements between large volume agencies namely those agencies that receive more than 50 requests will begin to large volume agencies and agencies that received 50 requests are less. Those agencies that receive more than 50 requests are required in January 11th and those agencies receiving less than 50 are not required to report but are encouraged to report if there are efforts that they have undertaken that they would like to discuss or challenges they're not reflected in their annual FOIA report. All agencies and we will work with your agency to review review and finalize the report and all agency CFO reports are to be posted by March 15, 2021 Next slide. So we continue that from the beginning of the CFO report to continue to focus on five key areas of FOIA administration. The new guidelines do the same and so we're focusing on FOIA administration and applying the presumption of openness in FOIA administration ensuring that your agency has effective systems in place to respond to FOIA requests improving and increasing proactive disclosures, increasing the utilization and reducing backlogs. Next slide. While the main areas of focus remain the same we have, as you have throughout the years, adjusted the questions to reflect maturation of agencies FOIA programs our interactions with the public as well as with agencies and obviously new challenges in the reality that have occurred since the last reporting or new issues that have occurred since the last reporting period. So for the 2020 FOIA guidelines just to highlight some of the new questions that we're asking agencies to include in their report a little bit more focus on FOIA training and its chief FOIA officer's role in providing that training to their agency FOIA professionals and agency personnel. Questions focusing on having standard operating procedures and reviewing those standard operating procedures a survey question on agencies that have a large volume of party requests and whether some of those requests can be handled or have explored handling them through alternative means or access. Updates on agencies review and updates of their FOIA regulations and of course this year we're very much interested in continuing to hear from you the impact of COVID how you've adjusted challenges and success stories that we can leverage across agencies. Next slide. The chief FOIA officer report is obviously the annual FOIA report that has all the detail statistics of your agency's FOIA administration during the fiscal year. The deadline for agency annual FOIA reports to the Department of Justice is November 16th and then as we receive your reports we will work with you to do data validation and finalize them. All agency reports are required to be completed posted on your website and on FOIA.gov by March 1, 2021. We have updated the Department of Justice annual FOIA report handbook that was posted just earlier last week with addressing some elements of new questions as well as streamlining it so it's more accessible and covering the new Department of Justice tool on FOIA.gov that agencies are going to be using this year to submit their annual FOIA report which will hopefully provide which is designed to provide more efficient way of producing the report as well as additional data validation. In fact, tomorrow morning we are having a training on the annual FOIA report so if your agency point of contact with the annual FOIA report has not registered or needs to have that training please let us know. It is at capacity but we will add on the agency POCs that need this training in order to complete your agency's annual FOIA report and of course if needed we can schedule another session as well. Next slide. Just update on FOIA.gov as many of you know FOIA.gov launched in 2010 as the central website for agency FOIA administration for the public to know how the FOIA works and access all the report data. Next slide. In 2018 we launched the national FOIA portal which allows requesters to make requests to any of the agencies from FOIA.gov but in addition to that provides a wealth of knowledge particular to each agency and on how the FOIA works including your agency's FOIA regulations, a standardized template as providing requests and links to your FOIA libraries and so on. Since that launch we were excited to continue to get user feedback both from the public and agencies and have been enhancing the site based off that feedback. There are some examples of those enhancements here I will go through all of them but would like to highlight some of the new things that we've been doing. Next slide. This is an example of the inno-for-report data pages of the FOIA.gov. We are combining the basic and advanced reporting functions in just a very much more streamlined way where you can more easily access and compare and search the inno-for-report data that each of your agencies report each year by against your agency or against other agencies. The results can be viewed in FOIA.gov and CSV. It will also be mobile friendly. Next slide. Here is just a preview. You can see the old format on the left and the new format on the right. Hopefully we will have this deployed soon for both agencies and the public to be able to use. Next slide. We are also excited to implement and start using new tools that are going to permit us to gather more information more detailed information about agencies and the public use of FOIA.gov. As you know, the site's dynamic in that the public use side has a lot of information about the FOIA, how to make a request and then the ability to submit the request on the agency side. Agencies are able to update their information directly and now provide their inno-for-report data through there as well. So we are interested to see how the public agencies are using the system and using that information to be able to further improve the site. Next slide. So one thing we are really excited about is the big project that we are going to be working on this year is improving the searchability on FOIA.gov of the FOIA libraries and the idea being here we want the public to be able to find, access and locate records that they are interested without a FOIA request wherever they are on the FOIA website but particularly in FOIA libraries so that it's very simple just to search across all into FOIA libraries for any type of records that may already be publicly available. This is very popular both on the public and agency side initiative and we're excited that we recently were awarded Phase 1 funding from GS's 10X project to start working on this idea in the first two quarters of this fiscal year. As we're working on this we welcome suggestions from all the chief board officers here today and the public on ways that may, best ways to do this best user experience as well as any other enhancements we'd like to see the FOIA.gov. Next slide. We are continuing to work with you your agencies on interoperability so I want to thank agencies for their interoperability plans. As you know, agencies with automated case management systems are required to implement the API by fiscal year 21. Agencies with non-automated solutions have already achieved their interoperability but if your agency is not working with us directly please do contact us and connect with us on implementing the API and we'll continue to reach out as well. Next slide. I just wanted to highlight given our first meeting of the year resources available to your agencies making sure that your agencies are taking advantage of them. Next slide. First of course is the department justice guide to the FOIA. It's a comprehensive legal treatise on all aspects of the FOIA detailed discussions of the case law on FOIA's procedural requirements exemptions and litigation considerations. Next slide. We did complete a full update of the slide of the guide, every chapter of it in 2019 and we've continued that momentum in updating and rolling fashion the chapters to make sure that they're continuously being updated and having a full update happen every two years. Recently we've already published new chapters for proactive disclosure exemption to fees and fee waivers and we'll continue to be doing that so please keep an eye out for that but in addition to the department of justice guide to the FOIA, next slide to have the most up-to-date on the most up-to-date on the case law encourage agencies to use the guide as well as their coalition summaries which are regularly being updated on the newest FOIA decisions in the state of case law. Next slide. FOIA self-assessing toolkit I think we stressed that in order for us to be able to improve our FOIA administration continuously it's important that we continuously assess each aspect of the FOIA administration and this can be integral in creating short and long-term improvement plans. We issued a FOIA assessment toolkit a number of years ago that breaks down each part of the FOIA process from intake to search to responding to requesters and provides a format that can make an objective assessment of where they are and how they can improve and compiling guidance and resources related to those areas. We're excited to hopefully soon have new modules in a revamped FOIA self-assessment toolkit that includes embeds in it the use of technology and have new modules on appeals, the use of appeal process and proactive disclosures. That'll be something to keep an eye out this year. Next slide. These are just some of the many areas the toolkit already covers. Next slide. In addition, we are continuing to do best practices of workshop focusing on various topics in FOIA administration such as backward reduction, technology, customer service, FOIA training, proactive disclosures where we would like to hear from agencies that have particular success in this area so that other agencies can benefit from their strategies and the way they've been able to achieve their accomplishments. We are hoping to have a proactive best practices workshop on another perspective on technology soon, particularly with the use of e-discovery tools. I wanted to take a moment here to ask agencies, chief board officers to let us know what best practices workshops they would find beneficial for us and if their agency would like to participate in such workshops. And then finally, of course, if you continue this training program we've switched over to virtual training in providing more regular training on discreet topics. FOIA training I think is essential to agencies for FOIA professional agencies success in FOIA administration. And so we encourage you to let your encourage you to encourage your agency FOIA professionals to attend training, our training, and if there are topics that we have not covered in our regular schedule training, please let us know. And also we continue to and look forward to providing tailored training to programs to agencies that would find that beneficial as well. So with that, just want to thank again everyone for joining and I'd be happy to take any questions from agencies on the WebEx or online about any of these initiatives or resources. Sure, we have a couple of questions on the WebEx. This is Lindsay. Before I get to those, one reminder to all of our attendees, we do ask that members of the public please hold your question until our public comment session towards the end of the presentation. I did receive one public comment which I have noted and will read out at the end. So if you have if you're a member of the public, we do kindly ask that you hold your input until the end. We do have a couple of questions from agencies. The first one is, are FOIA libraries the same as FOIA reading rooms? Yes. So that was a name change that we made a while ago. As you know, the idea of the FOIA reading room goes back way back in the statute and years ago or decades ago, if you wanted to view the record in an agency that the agency is required to provide actively, you would physically go to a reading room in their building to view those in light of the reality and the fact that now all of these are online, we call them FOIA libraries. So you can see the term used interchangeably, but they are the same thing. And we had one other question which is asking about the chief FOIA officer report guidelines from Mr. Lover. I would like to clarify that the link that you provided actually is linking to our 2020 guidelines which would have been last year's guidelines. So we're now onto the 2021 guidelines which are based on FY19 data. So I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you, Wendy. No other questions from the WebEx at this time? Thank you. With that, I'll turn it over to Alina. Great. Thanks so much, Bobby. We appreciate that. A lot of information. That's great. And we're planning to post the PowerPoint slide deck that you presented on our Web site. I believe you guys are going to do the same thing on the OIP Web site. So anyone who missed all of that great content you will see it soon. So I could ask our event producer to turn it over to the next slide deck. So we're back to the theme and next slide, please. So one of several ways that our office tries to improve the administration of FOIA is through our work on the FOIA advisory committee, which I chair. The OIP director, Bobby most recently, has been a continuous member of that committee. The committee brings together members of the FOIA community from inside and outside of government to collaboratively identify the greatest challenges in the administration of FOIA and develop recommendations for the most of the United States. As of today, the committee has made a total of 30 recommendations. If you can believe that, that's incredible to the archivist and has advanced over 35 best practices. They cover a broad range of topics all designed to improve the FOIA process and access to government documents. Some of these recommendations are already complete. Some are in progress and some are just starting to roll our sleeves up to get started on. We will soon be adding a dashboard feature on our OJIS website that will track the status of each of the committee's recommendations. So please look for that. Next slide, please. Earlier this year on June 4, 2020, the 2018-2020 term of the FOIA advisory committee held its final meeting and concluded its work on the final report and recommendations. I am incredibly grateful to the 2018-2020 committee members who continue to work through to the finish line despite the challenges of the global pandemic, telework and remote meetings. The committee's final report and recommendations dated July 9, 2020 was transmitted to the archivist of the United States and contains an unprecedented 22 separate recommendations. The final report is available on the OJIS website. The link is there on the slide. Since I only have a short time with you today, I will give you a preview of the report and where we go from here. Next slide, please. Some of you may recall my presentation a couple of years ago in which I used colorful buckets to illustrate recommendations and best practices advanced by the 2016-2018 FOIA advisory committee. I decided to continue with that bucket theme today, but I'm relying on some pictures from the National Archives catalog. Next slide, please. The first bucket is the largest one. That has recommendations that total 15 to the National Archives, to OJIS, to OIP and to federal agencies. The categories are broken down into the five areas you see listed there. I'm not going to repeat them. Several recommendations will require collaboration between OJIS and OIP and we have already started our discussions and best ways to move forward. Some of the recommendations looked at OIP should further guidance to agencies on such topics as improving online descriptions of the FOIA process, inclusion of records management-related materials in FOIA handbooks on the agency website, and the use of the discovery tools to assist agencies in searches of electronic records. Other recommendations rely on OJIS to conduct assessments and work with its NARA colleagues to advance the idea of public access to federal records as part of NARA's Federal Electronic Records Modernization Initiative, and liaison with NARA colleagues in OIP to develop records management training for FOIA professionals as well as briefings for incoming senior leaders following changes in administration or leadership. Select, describe, and give access to records in one or more central repository and on agency websites. Release FOIA documents on websites in open, legible, machine-readable, machine-actionable formats. Make commonly requested documents available outside the FOIA process. For more details, please look at the report. Next slide, please. Bucket 3. You'll notice I skipped Bucket 2. I was out of the end. Bucket 3 has the smallest amount of recommendations, only one, but it's a good one for the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, or CIGI. We will be asking the CIGI chair to initiate a cross-cutting project that will examine how successful agency FOIA programs are in providing access to agency records in electronic and digital form. So please stay tuned for that. Bucket 4 has two recommendations for Congress to engage in regular and robust oversight of FOIA, and I know a lot of agency professionals will be pleased to hear. The second one is to address funding for agency FOIA programs. Always very important topics for all of us FOIA professionals. Next slide, please. Bucket 5. Looking to the future. That set of recommendations actually asks the archivist to guide ongoing and future federal data strategies to include FOIA and promote research into the use of AI, artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve FOIA searches and processing of requests, and the archivist is excited to pursue both of those, and so we will be working with him to continue that work. And this is a good opportunity for me to address where the current term of committee is headed. You've heard the archivist mention that the 2020-2022 term kicked off already. We had our first virtual meeting on September 10th, 2020. We have some returning and some new members. Following a robust discussion, the fourth term of the committee has decided to form four subcommittees. Classification, legislation, process and technology. We're asking each of the subcommittees to help out with certain of the 2018-20-20 recommendations. For example, the legislation subcommittee can help with more specific details we can provide to Congress regarding those two recommendations. The subcommittees are currently working on their mission statement or objective which we will post as soon as they are complete. The committee's next meeting will take place virtually on Thursday, December 10th, and we will be able to join us on this same WebEx channel and different hollers online. Next slide, please. You may have figured out by now that I saved the best for last bucket number two. That contains two recommendations specifically directed to our meeting today, the CFO Council. One recommendation asks the Council to work with agency leadership to issue an annual memorandum on the importance of FOIA. It's a responsibility theme that we have all known for years. So, agency leadership, if you're hearing this, please stay tuned. We'll be in touch. You'll be hearing from Ian Bobby. The second recommendation asks the Council to create a new committee. That new committee will research and propose cross-agency grant programs and other FOIA funding sources, create career paths for FOIA professionals, and promote models to align with agency transparency. Next slide, please. So, let's form the Council's second committee. The first one is the Technology Committee. We'll be hearing from those co-chairs shortly. I would like to suggest the name of the committee for cross-agency collaboration innovation would be a great starting point. Bobby and I are actively seeking volunteer government FOIA professionals to help us stand up and share this committee. So, our email addresses are up on the website right now, on the slide right now. So, please email us both if you are interested in volunteering and the more the merrier. So, we welcome any and all folks who are interested in this effort. The good news is that the FOIA Advisory Committee has given the Committee a roadmap for how to proceed that will help guide the members as they move forward so you're not starting completely from scratch. Also, if anyone is monitoring, we're monitoring the chat, sorry, and if anyone is interested in volunteering even as of right now on the chat, please don't be shy. Throw your name out and we'll be happy to follow up. Next slide, please. So, Bobby and I have both covered a lot of information up until now. We wanted to take this opportunity to see if there are any questions from our agency colleagues. A bit more challenging to do in this virtual environment as opposed to when we're in the Gallant Theatre and asking folks to come up to the mic. But we'll definitely try our best. If any questions have come in via chat, we will cover those. Or if you have any questions right now, chat them to us right now. We will also ask our event producer to open up telephone lines to our federal colleagues who want to raise any issues from agency folks who have been facing challenges and the challenges they've been encountering in their FOIA programs during this very difficult pandemic period. So, we'd be happy to hear from folks on that. I'm going to ask Lindsay if she sees anything on the chat from our agency friends. Yes. So, we have one more logistical question on the chat from Mr. Usumi about the annual report training tomorrow. You're correct that the Eventbrite registration has ended, but please, you can email OIP directly and ask to be added to that registration. Please email us at doj.oip.foia at usdoj.gov and we'll get you signed up. But no other questions from the chat at this time. Okay. Don't be shy. Please continue to chat. And I'm going to turn to my colleague, Martha Murphy. Martha, should we have any chat questions on from the YouTube side? No, nothing yet. Okay. While people are yeah, while people maybe are taking some time to think if there's something they may want to talk about. I do, but we did want to mention that we do plan to have these meetings more regularly. And so, we really would welcome not just, you know, either now or anytime she gets an email some of the topics that agencies would like us to address or cover in these meetings. I think as I said echoing the message from the Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General the leadership of the CFOs and the work of this council is very important and our success depends on each other. Yeah, thanks, Avi. And we haven't set any dates yet, so please check both of our websites for additional information on that. And as Bobby mentioned earlier, we are very open to any topics for the next council meeting agenda if there are particular issues that agencies would like to discuss. We're very open to that as well. So, I see Lindsay, are there any other chat questions? I just want to make sure we haven't missed anything before we move on. No other questions, although we did have our first volunteer for the new committee. So, putting that out there as a way to encourage any other participation in volunteers. Feel free to put your name in the chat and I'll make note of those. Okay, terrific. All right, so Bobby and I are very happy to end this meeting early and we are a little bit ahead of our agenda schedule, which is just fine. Either that or our next presenters are going to take up the entire time they've been allotted, which is also perfectly fine with us as well. Next, I'm very excited to turn the floor over to the co-chairs of the CFO Council's first formed committee, the Technology Committee. They are joining us today to tell us about the exciting work the committee has already accomplished and the work they are taking on in the upcoming year. The Technology Committee was formed in September 2018 as a result of the advisory committee recommendation and although they were originally stood up as a subcommittee, we have elevated their status to a full committee and up until today they were the only one. Now they always be the first one as well. So I'm very pleased to welcome the co-chairs of the Technology Committee, Eric Stein and Michael Sarich. A brief introduction of both. Eric is the director of the Office of Institution Programs and Services at the State Department. The Office is responsible for the department's records management, FOIA, Privacy Act, classification, declassification, library and other records and information access programs. Mike is the Veterans Health Administration's FOIA director and leads the program with over 300 FOIA and Privacy Act officers who handle over 25,000 requests across 151 facilities worldwide. So lots of great experience from both. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for joining us. It's a pleasure to be here. And we are the co-chairs of the Chief FOIA Officer Council Technology Committee. Next slide, please. We've spent a lot of time talking to you today. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for joining us. Next slide, please. Mike and I have worked throughout the year with our committee to make really good progress from where we were about a year ago when we were just starting to figure out our charter, our mission, and our mandate. Next slide, please. We were created by the FOIA Advisory Committee as mentioned previously. And we've spent the past almost two years developing a governance structure that's really trying to understand the technology issues the FOIA community faces. And one of the biggest changes we've had over the past year is that this year, right in the throes of the pandemic, we had an increase in our membership by about 25 people. So despite the challenges of remote work from any agencies, it was the first time they were working remotely, we were able to create a new group and body that was now. And we've created a governance structure with eight different groups working on focused technology issues with the intention of working and to improve FOIA, whether it be FOIA case processing at agencies, sharing best practices, and increasing confidence and awareness and technology in general. It's just a couple of things to walk through where we've been in the past year. We've released our report and it's on the OGIS website best practices and recommendations and Michael will be talking about those recommendations in a moment. In April, Michael and I co-chair a best practices workshop, a co-led a best OIP best practices workshop on FOIA and technology with about 500 participants. And April's significance to the pandemic was just underway at that time and we did it virtually. Also, as in April, when we added those 25 members and in June and July we started these working groups I mentioned, we'll go into detail on those today. And we've been spending the past few months working on charters which we'll also be talking about. So with that said, I'd like to turn it over to Mike to talk about the best practices of report and recommendations and also we're going to go into detail about the working group. So Mike, over to you. Thank you so much. The real strength of the committee as Eric mentioned is the diversity of the panelists that we have. We have members from a really huge, a hugely diverse group of federal agencies some very big, some very small and kind of everyone in between. February 14th we issued what we call kind of our Valentine's with FOIA community in this report with a number of best practices, again drawn from the strength of the different subcommittee working on very large agencies very small agencies. We really want to make sure that the recommendations are scalable and appropriate for the different size FOIA operations. But specifically talking about the recommendations that we made the first one and the number of these are largely implemented or underway join up and the first one was to maintain the technology committee and we were upgraded to a full committee. We're very appreciative of that and maintain the momentum there. The second and third recommendations that we made were to put on the GSA schedule records and then FOIA case management and what this enables the smaller agencies the agencies that don't have that ability to scale up and get these larger contracts the same access that the big players have in the FOIA space. So one second. And then in addition the fourth and fifth recommendations we're having rolling events opportunities for engagement and we'll talk more about these in just a second when we move to the working groups and their charters and the jobs that they're going to be doing. And finally the FOIA committee serves as a body that can assist a group to go to sorry for FOIA programs or some technology assistance where they have questions about how can they implement these best practices in their agencies. So we're as a standing body a group that agencies, chief officers can come to and ask questions in a very safe environment as they look to add technology to the programs and move forward there. And as I mentioned, so many of these recommendations are completed or actively moving forward. We're looking forward to not to have these reports but actually taking the actions indicated in the report and moving the field forward. Mike, if I may, I just want to add here. We've heard a lot about working groups and committees so far at this meeting and there's a lot of committees a lot of working groups. We're very sensitive to the fact that we don't want to duplicate efforts. So under Bobby and Alina's leadership we carefully coordinate with these other bodies and I want to be very clear the FOIA Advisory Committee for example has a public-private partnership and membership is wonderful because we get perspectives we wouldn't just necessarily get from having a government-only group. So we take those recommendations and find the best forum in which to take action. But our committee here the Technology Committee we're talking about today our primary focus is improving awareness, training, development for FOIA professionals including understanding the resources that are already out there in the government so we're not asking for things if they don't if they already exist and we may be able to get them providing means of discussing how to get access to those tools to get focused on technology and how to share best practices through the various communities. And so as you heard there are other working groups looking at technology in different areas we actually are in touch with them we're working with them and I'm remiss because I didn't mention last month we did brief the FOIA advisory committee and got some really good feedback and perspective that they were ideas that that have been discussed in one way or another possibly in the past but coming from the public members of the public and others helps to really improve our thinking about how do we resolve these issues. So Mike back over to you. Thank you, yeah absolutely. And one of the keys kind of piggybacking on what Eric kind of expressing here is that we want to make sure that the lessons that we're learning from this diverse group of people that we're able to share them as widely as possible in the FOIA community. So as Eric mentioned being able to do the best practice workshop being able to present here today and to be able to work with the FOIA advisory committee who's also you know has a technology piece we were able to talk with them just last week on some kind of initiatives that they're working on and making sure that we're working you know collaboratively in this space which is so critical to moving the FOIA practice forward kind of government-wide. The eight working groups again this is a working committee this is a committee that is all about putting actions forward it's all about moving the FOIA field forward and we've organized kind of around eight pillars and those pillars we're working on working on finalizing charters and we've got some exciting news coming up so let's move to the next slide and we'll share with you guys what the eight working groups are and Eric and I kind of divided these up so I'll talk about a couple then Eric will talk about a couple and you'll have a full briefing and a full kind of overview of where we're at right now and more importantly where we're going together. So first off is collaborative tools which I'm very fortunate to be able to work with and what collaborative tools is all about in many ways is as agencies continue to embrace new technology so for example at the Veterans Health Administration where we've moved from Skype to Microsoft Teams what are the implications from a FOIA perspective on using new collaborative tools so for example where a Skype message may or may not have been retained just depending on an agency depending on what the sworn says now in Microsoft Teams all of that information is being captured so for an agency perspective from a FOIA perspective we've kind of trained our personnel the people that work at the Veterans Health Administration and the Veterans Administration that hey if you have a Skype message maybe it's not going to be captured so you can talk in this way but now it's not now it's going to be captured so what is our role there as FOIA professionals to make sure that we are providing all of this information to the employees and our teammates across the administration because the last thing that you want to know the last thing you want to hear is well I thought that wasn't going to you know kind of figure out so you want to make sure that there's a wide understanding of what FOIA roles and responsibilities are as these new collaborative tools come into being everyone's seeing the incredible pivot that we've made government-wide to remote work you know in light of the COVID-19 pandemic with that pivot has come a large increase in collaborative tools and understanding that implication in the FOIA space is critical as we move forward so I'm very happy to work with that group and they're doing great work the next group I'm also able to work with is 508 compliance kind of piggybacking on what Bobby was talking about to even open this this session there's many areas of the FOIA where we're looking to make sure that we get information out to the public as much as we can whether it be in FOIA reading rooms or whether it be on programmatic websites whatever it may be to get the information to the people that need it and maybe that obvious FOIA request because the information is there where you can direct a FOIA request to this information that's already publicly available well making sure that that information is readable by the entire community is critical we all have this 508 compliance mandate and it's a good mandate because it enables every citizen and every requester to be able to access this information you don't place people on favored tiers of ability so understanding this understanding this responsibility understanding how you can achieve full 508 compliance of the FOIA program is important it's an issue that comes up every year at ASAP it comes up over and over again in informal conversations that you have with peers in the FOIA community and one of the things that the technology committee has certainly discovered but certainly highlighted is that agencies are at different locations they're very large and they have robust tools and some agencies are kind of they're not as large and they don't have those same tools so being able to provide kind of guideposting guidelines for folks at agencies of all sizes is going to be critical I think moving forward to ensure that we're posting as much as we can online that we're providing the people with as much information as possible and now Eric we'll toss it over to you for FOIA searches Great thanks Mike Before I go into FOIA searches I know we have the chief FOIA officers here with us today as well as or their representatives in each of these areas we found throughout the year that the practitioners at your agencies have really worked hard to identify the issues and propose solutions or find ways to move forward in some cases they really had to make some changes and pivot to their programs so all the support that you provide to them is much appreciated it's one of the best things especially one of the best things I think that can be done and I just want to say thank you because we do hear positive stories about your employees feeling supported and that does matter and it does help with morale and especially in this remote environment and balancing everything else anything we can do to help improve FOIA processing matters so just a brief thank you there and now going into FOIA searches which is a very hot topic especially in the electronic in the electronic age so searches each of these groups I hear that my camera has gone fuzzy so hold on one second and may this resolve the issue moving on FOIA searches this is a challenge in general it used to be agencies couldn't find records in the paper environment but then we moved to a situation where we have so much information at agencies we're getting overwhelmed and inundated by doing searches add on top of that the challenges of not all records are accessible remotely because of sensitivity or if they're classified and we can talk about that in the classified section in a few minutes this created real challenge for example some agencies have FOIA case processing software for the case processing piece that they could work on remotely but they did not have means of accessing some of the search tools for records they would need to get into said systems during the pandemic and so agencies are working real hard to look at these issues and find out the best way to do so in a way that also ensures their safety and the safety of their families and everyone's around them and who's coming to the office and how I know it may sound like a very simple issue but it's a real challenge right now in terms of how to get and how to do the best searches as possible. That's something out of the COVID-19 pandemic moving on to kind of the broader mandate of this FOIA search committee in general where as Mike and I mentioned finishing charters and why we talk about the charter so much, Mike and I firmly believe that each of these groups need to have a clearly scoped mission with deliverables so that when we finish that work either we sunset the respective committee and move on to a different topic and we shift our resources there or keep moving forward. I think searches will be one that we work on for a while and I'll just give you an example for the FOIA search group their charter right now we're looking at three primary proposed areas one being and we've already started outreach to agencies all of you on the line in our counterparts who aren't with us today looking at their best practices and challenges in just doing electronic record searches for FOIA in just a period. We're not really going to distinguish between COVID or not because we are where we are right now and so we want to know what challenges do you face right now which would be in this environment and how are you addressing them or what tools, resources or support do you need from a technology perspective to address them. Another one of our deliverables is taking all of these best practices and issues and similar what we did is a large committee in February issuing some sort of paper probably more succinct to a couple pages we're thinking on here are the issues we found and here are the proposals or best practices we've identified in these areas as well and then we're going to look for ways to do different outreach to the FOIA community to talk about what best practices are working out there and how to have practitioners who are champions of this college similar to Bob and Alina said for the other working groups and proposed to OIP and to OGIS here are some speakers you may want to consider who are willing to do that and we actually have one such that we'll talk about later but the FOIA searches are not searches are here to stay technology becomes important looking at areas like artificial intelligence technology and the people aspect of this work and it's exciting to see it's actually underway and if it's not underway there's an appetite for it so this group is really really interesting and it touches on several of the other groups that we're talking about here today but we keep the scope and mandate to each group focus and I'll just close by saying each of the charters we've talked about the intention is to post them publicly on the OGIS website and we do want feedback not just from government agencies but from the public as well whether it be to the FOIA advisory committee or those of you with us on the line here or in the presentations we make because you share great ideas including we've got ideas on how to go about searches from the FOIA advisory committee and real issues from the requestor community and hearing those issues really helps us decide how do we go about providing the best tools and recommendations I'm going to turn it back over to Mike in about one minute he's going to do FOIA express and FOIA online I'm sure he's about to say the same thing but I'm about to but we do not endorse any specific product as a committee or to the government just to be crystal clear what we found is that FOIA express and FOIA online are two of the more prominently used IT tools for FOIA case processing and so there are different ways being used in agencies and different tips and best practices so in part of our work to empower FOIA professionals and build confidence especially in these remote or hybrid remote and onsite times these are two really important groups and Mike's going to talk about them now so Mike over to you thank you neither of us nor anyone on the committee or spoke models for any particular product so for sure and what this kind of highlights is the FOIA technology committee rather is a people driven group we're looking for solutions that will help people every day in their work and one of the early areas that we kind of coalesced around the communities of interest were both FOIA express and FOIA online and so I'll just kind of highlight a few of the things that we're doing with these two groups in the coming month now again as Eric mentioned we don't endorse any one of them however these two a number of members of the committee use these products so it's a natural area to look at and as we look to build these communities of interest the reality hit and the feedback was from the incredible members of our committee FOIA express Virginia and Gorka great kind of contributions in terms of perspective along with other members of the committee that also use with these types of tools is sometimes you kind of feel alone when you're using this tool and the reality is that there's many other people in the community doing the same thing that you were doing and probably having the same challenges and if we work together collectively we can find solutions to them for example something that worked that maybe my team came up with at BHA as a way to move the ball forward using a product you can also use it at your agency so building those communities of interest is really important and the FOIA express group is going to be starting that process at the end of the month at the FOIA express users conference so kind of just as a preview have a bit of some work there and kind of an opportunity for people to come together and again this wouldn't happen without the kind of the people driven solutions the members of the committee and the request that we have we see the need out there for these things and then moving to FOIA online we have some incredible members to teach what it is to onboard the system so if you're an agency that doesn't have this type of process it doesn't have a cost product that you're looking to kind of fit into your FOIA program we can talk about the lessons of onboarding a process like a solution like this or any kind of cost product because there's going to be commonalities with whatever cost product that you use and so understanding kind of the solution enough to be able to do to go through that at another agency so there's members on the team as well who will help provide those lessons learned and those kind of the best practices as we look to build this community of interest because at the end of the day we're all doing FOIA and if you're using a similar product you're going to probably end up with many similar challenges kind of across the federal family and I think that's one of the real strengths of FOIA itself so those are just kind of I wanted to kind of highlight a couple of things that the FOIA Express and FOIA online groups are doing but again as we look to finalize our charters in the coming week we'll have that clear mandate in terms of what we want to accomplish and we're looking forward to moving forward in those areas of building that kind of community of interest for folks to be able to share best practices to be able to share lessons learned about their doing these things and that the technology is there to assist them and it's something not to be afraid of but something to be embraced that you can really drive positive change in your FOIA program and drive down back walls increase request or satisfaction of course mitigate litigation and all of these things that flow from having a more efficient FOIA program and we're hoping to leverage that success moving forward in the coming fiscal year so back to you Eric for your information. Great, thanks Mike. Exploiting classified information this one has been particularly challenging this year because of the pandemic and reviewing classified information of course happens in certain facilities and not everywhere it's a challenge but this group is looking at the challenges between spaces in general with classified information and whether it touches on this area that I mentioned before like search or the tools but also how do we think holistically across the government on other mandates that are out there such as those in executive order 13526 on the mandatory declassification review request the 25 year review mandates how does technology play a role in what gets declassified and requested how can we leverage technology better and what technology is on classified networks which of course we can't go into right now but looking into these discussions here we have representatives from three different agencies and we are looking for additional participation on this group who work with classified information given the pandemic there's concerns about our ability to move forward in certain areas of this work but we have been able to talk generally about the issues of declassification for this group we're currently kind of discussing issues that we face of the three participants on that working group right now and we're going to talk to key agencies and stakeholders that deal with declassification I know we've heard there's interest in the public there's the PIDDF group that's out there there are other groups that are talking about declassification issues overall declassification issues and then channel that and harness and focus that into FOIA as well so we're currently doing our kind of initial preliminary research of the issues that we not just we know about but we've also seen are out there and our next steps would be to hold some sort of meeting of the government officials who work with classified information ideally in a secure way of issues of security matters discussing these issues but we're going to go as far as we can remotely and I will say I'm very proud of this technology committee and the various members might mention and the ones on the committees that I oversee we they've been working really hard remotely in addition to their regular day jobs at FOIA taking on these additional responsibilities as well and it's really appreciated there's a lot of good work that goes on it doesn't often get recognized so I take this opportunity to say but also to all of you at the chief FOIA officer level who are have your members participating with our group for artificial intelligence we have a working group that's doing a great job getting a lay of the land of what's being used out in the government for AI in general understanding what's being done for artificial intelligence with regard to records management and then for FOIA as Mike has said we are group committed to action so here's things I'm very excited to talk about we have I think tentatively it's not actually scheduled for November 5 a session for FOIA practitioners for government officials an introduction to AI and it's with a focus on FOIA and this will be kind of a FOIA AI FOIA AI 101 and this group is going to it's chaired by Nick Wittenberg he's doing a great job wonderful group of participants in this committee the AI working group is going to leave this November 5th discussion kind of what is AI go through some key terms about what AI is and is not then look at the FOIA look at the FOIA community and how AI either is but more like the more of a lean toward how it could help with FOIA searches FOIA review FOIA case processing moving forward while a lot of this is internal to agencies and how we're processing of course if there are ways we could leverage it to improve the user experience on the other end that's also very important and something we'll have to build to over time but right now we're working just to get people familiar with the AI session it's on November 5 I believe is the date November 5 and there will be information about that as well the November 5th session like I said it will be for government officials and I wouldn't be surprised if this is FOIA AI 101 that we may have a 201 or a 301 series in this moving forward and even in the 101 session I encourage all of you whether you're at the chief FOIA officer level or your proxies or your employees to attend just to become familiar with the conversation that's out there because a lot of the work we do in technology in this group is just getting people comfortable with talking about these issues and topics and there's definitely an appetite and people are generally interested and you hear more and more about AI every day but to then understand what it is and isn't that's important and so our focus is to really provide a primer if here's where AI is here's how we think it could help FOIA and then the best part of these sessions is the dialogue that happens after the engagement so it's not just at these sessions like the AI session we're going to hold, it's also in the working group meetings so we are very excited about this work and I think AI is going to be one thing that's here and it'll be an enduring topic, working group discussion, whatever moving forward is here to stay so with that I turn it back over to Mike for video redactions. Thanks Eric and again I think we're all very excited about the AI presentation on the 5th and no one's backing up a truck filled with FTEs to help us process and everyone's records, regardless of the agency the volume of things that we're producing is increasing every day I was rereading Ramsey Clark's 1967 Memo for a training that I was doing for my folks at the end of the year and some of the same challenges that we had in 1967 are the same ones that we have today and hopefully AI is going to help us bridge finally and get to that next step so I'm very excited about that in that series of iterative trainings so we can all get up to speed on this important and critical technology that I think is really going to be the future of our field. Another burgeoning area is something that we produce more and more and we create these federal records these things that are used in our operation the requesters have a legitimate reason in rationale to request comes with video redaction you can't walk into a Veterans Health Administration Hospital facility without being under CCTV and I think that's kind of the norm in many areas the Social Security Administration Office the field office you walk in there and there's going to be a CCTV and if an incident happens there's going to be certainly a request for video given the video age that we live in and so again as Eric talked about we are a committee of action from the video redaction working group so if we can move to the next slide I want to share five of the early kind of findings that we found and give you some actionable tools to walk away from this presentation. Okay, so again these are five of the early findings we're going to look forward to a full presentation that we're going to provide with this working group as part of their charter but we want to just give you a taste of some of the early findings and give you again a few things to take away from the video redaction schedules can vary widely some of the videos that you'll see when you walk into a building may have a 30-day loop may have a 14-day loop it's going to vary from system to system and a lot of these are age dependent how old is the system, what's the capacity of the server to hold this information so if a request isn't received and promptly processed to put a hold on that information say October 14th it's going to happen at this social trade administration office well if you don't put a hold on that very quickly that tape is going to get overdubbed or that data is going to be dumped and oftentimes it's not recoverable so a key to process these things early and understanding what your record retention schedules are if you're going to have a run a successful and transparent FOIA program another one is that the tool is very in complexity so matching the tools for the job we found in the FOIA field so you could get a very robust system that you could basically make the next iteration of Star Wars on or you can get something that does a very simple task and the complexity varies like what level of education do you need to have or felicity with these tools do you need to be able to properly redact these moving images because some of them are very complex and labor and time intensive so matching the tool to the job do you get a program that costs $5,000 and takes three weeks to learn how to do in a rudimentary way or do you have a tool that's maybe more targeted for what you're looking to do which is basically blur faces and voices largely another key early finding was that litigation can drive schedules and agency resource allegation everyone who's been in FOIA for any significant period of time has probably dealt with litigation and court mandated schedules and you don't want to miss a court mandated schedule so if the court says you must have this by date certain then the agencies are often forced to scramble and allocate resources in a reactionary way so those schedules those production schedules can drive how the agency allocates funding and so the sense is what can we do proactively as directors of FOIA programs or senior folks FOIA officers is we're making our resource requests for our fiscal years so we don't have to go into kind of unallocated funds and tap into those budgets that the agency may have other priorities for because certainly the Veterans Health Administration has plenty of use for funding during this COVID pandemic so going to them and saying hey I need 200 grand to stand up a VA Redaction Team in the midst of that isn't going to be received as well if I say it now you know prior and say hey this is an ongoing demand we need to have this resource capability or these are the consequences and we need to make a management decision to see what the business use is there for that resource earmarking funds for FOIA contractors with specialized skills that some agencies have done can be very efficient so rather than taking someone who may or may not be very proficient with this type of advanced software and hiring that skill out you could change the brakes on your car but you don't most people anyway so you take it to a brake specialist someone that can change your brakes and likewise if you have an occasional very rare FOIA request that's going to demand video redaction rather than having your one or two or three FOIA officers spend three weeks learning this tool and then using it when they could process some number of requests or include further litigation or include other issues popping up backlog increases and the like it may make more sense to take that off your plate you don't necessarily have to do everything in a FOIA office if you are able to allocate some resources to your marketing funds for kind of a surge capability or capacity rather when you get these types of requests in however a really visionary member of this working group and I'm so proud of what happened in this video redaction group is the recommendation to consider adding the video reduction skills to your PDs into performance plans as we all think about succession planning and bringing new talent into our FOIA programs it's very likely that people in different generations will have more felicity with these tools they'll have grown up on Instagram they'll have grown up videoing things and doing projects over and over in school so building that in contrary way for a professional individual looking to find a FOIA career that can be the one key differentiator that makes them a great member of your team moving forward so kind of building that into your PD and adding those video redaction skills to performance plans if you're an agency that has this could be a really useful thing a really useful thing moving forward it'll help those folks that are even looking for jobs you know as they do their keyword searches to say well well I've got this background and now I can take this background and apply it in a really special way in working in transparency for the federal government so just having that there in the USA Jobs is a keyword for people to search could be useful as we're looking to strengthen our own benches I know we've got 300 plus FOIA officers all across the country having a handful guys or gals that know this technology really well is really useful for our workforce multiplier for our entire entire program doesn't have to be at every facility but having a handful of folks that know what they're doing in that area is super useful so again we just felt that it would be important to give you a little taste you know we're very excited about the AIPs first and then I think next will be the video redaction and we're going to roll these presentations out and this information out as quickly as we can to the FOIA community to give you the best thoughts of the folks that are doing this you know and again it's an action-oriented group who want to get this information out as quickly as we can so we can help you know be a resource or we'll go to resource for folks in the FOIA community looking to add tech to innovate and streamline and increase efficiency in their programs so with that next slide please. Okay so we'll toss it over to Eric for what our working groups next steps are. Great thanks Mike we've already talked about finalizing the charters so our target is to be done by next month so you can check the OGIS website and our targets to have that completed and posted they're living documents so they're subject to change but we're really trying to focus on the target deadlines for each deliverable so that's where we are with the charters then of course as Mike and I discussed implementation hold some of the sessions including the November 5th workshop I believe the information about that will come out from OIP or OGIS so stay tuned or check their websites and they may touch on those points we're going to look at other sessions on potential video redaction and looking at FOIA express and FOIA online and exploring ideas Mike back over to you Sure and the complete is a really important word here right because I don't think we'll ever be complete with technology it's always a change in and always an iterative thing but we really want to knock out these recommendations in the FOIA report sorry in our report in terms of we've maintained a technology committee and again we've made a ton of progress on a number of these things but working on getting those schedules out assisting where we can there's other folks working on these things as well to make sure that operations of all size can have access to the same tools that Eric might have or I might have or other large agencies might have you know making sure that we're getting this information out that the AI piece is a great first step and then video redaction FOIA my place for these things are going to roll out and roll out and roll out and you know serving at that body is the you know first putting the information out on our website or just website but then also serving as that go to group where you've got a question you've got you've got something going on you're not alone in the field you know again a lot of this is about building community there's so many of us out here 5000 plus in this community doing the same thing largely right you know it's not just drawing red boxes around things but we're all doing important things in terms of moving the transparency of our agencies forward because so many of us and indeed all of us have great stories to tell about our agencies the great work that's going on in each of our agencies whether it be state or veterans health or NIH or wherever it may be but you know being able to serve you know to help you get that message out on that tech side is so critical and part of that is what we're doing right here and soliciting right we're getting feedback from the chief FOIA officers today we're getting feedback consistently an excellent feedback from Alina and Bobby and folks on their teams in terms of what directions we should be going on because again Alina and Bobby have so many inputs in terms of people kind of going to them and they're able to kind of help steer us and help us go in a great direction and that member driven focus that we have on these working groups each person self-selecting and bringing their expertise to bear in a critical area of FOIA management and FOIA innovation so with that I think we want to pivot exactly to that solicitation we want to have that active dialogue with you know our fellows in the FOIA community so next slide please and we'd love to open it up and have you know as robust dialogue as possible in terms of any questions that folks may have anything that you would like to know about the committee things that we have coming up in our calendar areas that we're working on we're very happy to take questions and if we can't answer them we're happy to get back to you on this topic. Great so I guess Alina and Bobby are we going to answer some questions now or? Yeah that would be great I'm actually going to turn to Lindsay because I think we've had a couple of questions at least come in during chat through chat so Lindsay? Yeah so we have a couple of we have a couple of questions we also had one public comment a couple public comments come in which I'll hold till the end but some of the questions may be directed to Bobby and Alina as well so I'll just read out what we have so far but in the meantime if anyone would like to add a question in the chat go ahead and do that okay so one question about FOIA reporting the question is because many agencies have not had physical access to their FOIA tracking system does OIP have plans to allow agencies to submit an amended annual FOIA report after the initial submission in November once agencies are able to access their tracking systems so Bobby I'll leave that for you. Yeah so I encourage you just reach out to us directly so we can better understand the limitations and work with each agency to be able to get them the final agency annual FOIA report reviewed and finalized and posted on time obviously just knowing a better understanding of what the limitations are will probably help us anyone who has any FOIA reporting questions please just reach out to us we're compliant being headed by Lindsay as standing by the assist agencies with both their annual FOIA report data and their G4 officer reports great thank you we have a couple of questions about info and registration for the AI conference I can go ahead and answer that we're going to be announcing that information very soon so we don't have registration available yet but it will be within the next week and I believe that is all of the agency questions we'll just give it one more moment if there are any additional agencies that have questions to enter in the chat otherwise I'll turn it back over to you Alina Lindsay you said you had a question from one of our agencies in the IC oh yes so we did receive a question from somebody at ODNI just asking generally about how agencies are handling classified information during this pandemic and max hello work situation I don't know anyone who wants to speak to that but I know Eric and Mike you spoke briefly about your working group sure this is Eric I know the IC is made up of several different agencies so it's hard to discuss this one thing I think each has their own respective FOIA programs they have their own challenges they're facing from what I found is that there are offices in different places but overall the challenges they face with processing classified information in general technology searching are similar to those that I've already covered previously and I really don't have anything else to add on that other than to say we do look forward to engaging with more employees including IC agencies on those challenges pre-COVID during COVID and moving forward I don't know Mike do you have anything else to add I think that's right and I think this has been a tremendous learning experience for everyone in the FOIA community and not just in the FOIA community but in terms of having to do this from out of COVID and being able to access these things remotely I know we've been in a really quick learning curve to make this work and to be able to with tremendous success this year we're very fortunate due to the hard work of our folks all across our agency but yeah it's definitely a huge learning curve in the area that we're looking to add lessons learned and add contributions as we move forward in this process I just want to take a second to give a shout out to some of our attendees who are actually Technology Committee members and thank you for joining us to add anything to the discussion anything that Eric and Mike should have said that they didn't which I'm sure is not the case please feel free to chat and I've also been kind of remiss and I apologize for this any of our agency friends who want to chime in orally if you press pound two on your telephone line you will be able to come through and our event producer Michelle can let you in if you prefer not to type anything out and you just want to talk it up that's certainly an option as well so if I can go ahead I was just going to say yeah that's Alina's we tried to trust but it's really worth repeating the real strength of the committee is 45 plus members the energy and the direction that they bring Eric and I just happen to be the guys that are lucky enough to be able to work with them and the energy coming from the folks and the working groups is what's going to move the ball forward and what is really transformative in this I think and what makes the group so kind of indeed powerful in terms of the energy that's bringing and it's real solutions that the folks on these committees want to bring to bear to the larger FOIA community so yeah a huge thanks to each and every one of the folks on the committee is fantastic I mean it really is transformative and we are FOIA we're the people that decide what happens in this field and if we get together and move the ball forward together then it's going to be a great field if it's going to be what it's going to be but the people that dedicate their additional time and energy to making it better for everyone in the FOIA community it's just fantastic and a huge gratitude to each and every one of them for that thank you for your time I know we talked a lot about technology but technology is we need it now to be successful and it is I think worthy of the time it was married and I appreciate the time taking this opportunity so there's nothing else that these want to say thank you and I really appreciate this opportunity today Thank you Eric and Mike we all really appreciate it and I think and everyone on the committee this is really a really great illustration of the success of the council and the your committee's work has been incredible and couldn't agree more that technology was always important for it but even more so now and Mike and Eric you promised to stick around in case people think of other questions before we end today so thank you for that in advance Marca tells me there are no questions from agency folks on the YouTube channel so far but maybe folks are still thinking about things but I think Bobby if you're ready we can now turn to the public comments portion of our program today I know we're running a little bit early but maybe we give everyone half an hour back today at least but we have now reached the public comments part of our council meeting so with that we look forward to hearing from folks in the public who have ideas or comments to share we will also be opening up our telephone line so Michelle can you please provide the telephone instructions again for everyone absolutely so ladies and gentlemen if you would like to ask a question or comment via phone please press pound two on your telephone keypad to enter the questions or comment queues you will hear a notification when your line is unmuted at that time please state your name and question once again pressing pound two we'll enter you into the queue thanks Michelle Lindsay I know we have at least a couple of public chat comments that we were saving till the end and I'm going to turn it over to you first great thank you so the first public comment from Mr. Harrington the comment is it's a bit long but I will read it I will read it all it states that the chief FOIA officers council is charged with developing recommendations for increasing FOIA compliance and efficiency yet when it comes to compliance with FOIA it is difficult to understand how many people are processing requests at each agency as director Bobby Tlaibyan of OIP claims agencies are receiving more requests but our agencies also not hiring more necessary staff to ensure compliance with rising requests for example recently FDA provided information that due to an increase in the number of incoming requests we may be unable to comply with the 20 day working time limit in this case as well as the 10 additional days provided by the FOIA but the FDA makes no mention that there are sometimes one person or two people processing requests at a specific agency such as FDA ORA FOIA or FDA CVM FOIA so FDA is not being fully truthful with this information they're putting out further trying to blame the request to community for compliance purposes how can I understand how many government information specialists are processing FOIA requests at each agency and then this there's another comment that was submitted via YouTube that is related to this same one so I'm going to read that as well it continues is there a number of employees an agency should have in comparison to the number of FOIA requests for example if FDA ORA is receiving hundreds of requests a month yet only have two employees is that considered proper in regards to compliance with FOIA I just don't understand the talk of these meetings and compliance with FOIA when it seems like there's always understaffing issues but excuses from agencies are that there are quote too many requests in regards to employees processing the request and the number of requests received per month if there is much saying how can we all move towards getting this ratio is the top part of the FOIA compliance process and then there's another question for the tech committee but I will pause on that and give maybe Bobby a chance to respond to this one. Thank you Lindsay so yes I mean agencies have been working on type resources and not just in the FOIA program so resources is always something that we have to be able to address to be able to meet the FOIA demand and I think a lot of the work that we're doing as council is aimed at that best use the resources that we have to get the most efficient and effective output of information through both FOIA and proactive disclosures there is detailed statistics in agency and FOIA reports on the number of personnel that they use in their FOIA that have worked on their FOIA administration both in terms of full-time FOIA professionals and the equivalent of full-time professionals that support the agencies FOIA program and you can get all of that information on FOIA.gov under the data section or on our website or the agency's website where they post their FOIA report. As far as the ratio I would say it's not necessarily a one-to-one for every agency it will depend on the agency or the records they have, the volume of the records sometimes and maybe the complexities of the types of records they have and that can vary by agency so you really need to look at that each agency really needs to look at that individually to see what amount of resources they need to be able to succeed in their FOIA administration and we have a lot of tools that help us do that and the FOIA sales and toolkit helps make sure agencies have effective systems as they're reviewing where their resources are and how they're being used so I would say that that is out there and we hope people will take advantage of it and look at all elements of the agency's FOIA administration but as far as an equation I would say that the proper amount of resources needed by agency will necessarily vary by the nature of their FOIA program and records. Thank you. I'll read the next question from the same member of the public. It seems to be directed to the technology committee although it's possible that others may have input as well. The question is would the technology committee ever consider building something for the requester community the public slash citizens that is similar to Muck Rock where we members of the public can always access already released FOIA so this is Eric. I think we definitely would want to hear more about what was envisioned. I know that there's been work by DOJ to take process and how requests are made and I don't want to make a commitment we're not ready to make right now with regard to the FOIA library because there are a lot of groups looking at this already. I'm not focused exclusively on the FOIA libraries or online reading rooms but something we'd be happy to discuss with OIP and OGIS if they think we should take this on or if it's appropriate for a different for a group to discuss. Thanks for that Eric. I just want to add that the FOIA advisory committee's last term the third term actually looked at this issue. We had great interest from a particular member of the committee to build this one stop shopping kind of portal all documents that have been publicly released by agencies could be posted and unfortunately the technology is just not there yet. I think FOIA.gov is definitely trying very hard to meet a lot of those needs by asking agencies to make their FOIA portals interoperable with FOIA.gov. Bobby, am I speaking about that correctly? Well, as far as interoperability would be for the request submission as far as the getting access to the records already that have been posted that's certainly something that we're working on with regard to the additional access to FOIA libraries. Obviously one of the challenges of getting more information out there is the issue of 508 which is working which is a really important working group on this committee. So I think as we hit this at all angles we're eventually getting to that point where agencies can practically post more of the FOIA release record because we have more efficient ways of remediating these records and getting them posted online and on the other hand FOIA.gov is allowing us to be able to search for and access these FOIA release records more efficiently and having them be more accessible. So I think there's actually a number of initiatives now that we have to complement each other that will get us to that point. Great, thanks. Great, thank you. All right, I will move on to the next question from Nate Jones at the Washington Post. The question is for Eric Stein. Secretary of State Pompeo has stated that he will soon release more of former Secretary Clinton's email. As head of state FOIA and state D-class did you play any role in this upcoming release? Was it conducted through the typical FOIA or D-class process? I'm here today in my role as co-chair of the Technology Committee and would be happy to just provide this response. Any questions about that matter should be referred to state public affairs and the phone numbers 202-647-2492 again 202-647-2492 or you can send them an email at papressduty at state.gov. All of this information is publicly available on the state.gov website. Thanks Eric. We had just a couple of follow-up comments from Mr. Harrington saying that the technology is there and then also we want all records released to the public or as many as possible always publicly available. Thanks for your time. And that concludes the questions from the WebEx at this time. Great. Lindsay, thanks so much. Before I turn over to Martha, I think we have a couple of chat questions from the YouTube side. I want to ask our event producer, Michelle. Is there anyone waiting on the telephone line to ask any questions? There are currently no questions on the line. And remind the ladies and gentlemen, pound two we'll enter you into the verbal questions. Okay, great. Thanks so much. Martha, over to you for any questions. He says, would you talk and this is, I think, for Eric and Michael, would you talk about how we in industry can engage so many RPA solutions are available to help take pressure off your foliage? Mike, you want to take this one? Sure. RPA robotic process automation, being able to take those things that are repetitive and take them off the foil processors is critical. Anything that takes foil away from doing a line-by-line analysis of a complex request, implicating significant agency records to be released as far as the transparency mission is critical. One of the things that we're looking at doing, and we talked about this in the five recommendations, is venues and opportunities for folks on the industry side to work with FOIA professionals and really the vision there, what we envision is an active and robust dialogue because, for example, industry could go and create things in a silo that may not work for folks on the ground doing FOIAs 40 hours a week, 50 a year, but if we have an active dialogue exactly what our needs are, real honest dialogue between FOIA practitioners that are deep in the weeds in this field, or deep in this field and industry, it's incredible the synergy that can be found there and the solutions that can happen. Indeed, some of the things that we've had, some of the dialogue that we've had with our own cops producer for our systems has resulted in some innovations that are coming up in the next fiscal year in future iterations of that software. Exactly, having that venue is critical and having that opportunity to work with them is critical when we're partnering with Alina and Bobby and others to make sure that all the T's are crossed and eyes are dotted on something of that scope and scale, but yes, that's definitely something to look for in a coming attraction. Eric, anything you just want to add or Alina or Bobby to that as well? Just two quick points. One of the key requirements to make sure that that's being able to list out those requirements that clearly matter and to make sure whatever's being laid out matches with the network, the IT systems because there are a lot of solutions out there that can do a lot of things, but they have to be compatible and that's always a challenge. The other one is GSA has a lot of really great things already on its website and then we've worked with OGIS and OIP just to kind of see how there are ways we're looking to engage with the private sector and the public on these points more so as Mike said, stay tuned. Okay, I had one more question and it's a little unclear. We asked for some clarification. We haven't received any back yet, but basically what this is meant for OIP, what area is the most requested for FOIA actions and what is a ballpark percentage of these overall requests? So I'm not sure what they meant by what area. So I'm not sure either, but I would just emphasize the availability of a lot of this data in the ANO4 report as well as some useful information to FOIA but in the ANO4 report you can see the number of requests each agency and each component of the agency is getting and then detailed information about those requests. So the answer is looking for as far as information, obviously. Each agency is responding to different variety of requests based off the records they have and their program missions, but I think maybe the ANO4 data would be helpful for the individual asking that question. Okay, thank you. And that's all the questions we had from YouTube. Great. Thanks so much, Martha. I did have one other comment with ODNI friend who is asking that we remind everyone and especially members of the public who are watching today that it is not that easy for IC agencies during COVID to be processing documents due to, of course, the classified nature of their business and that time frames for responses have been impacted greatly. I know everyone is working as hard as they can under these constraints. The IC is asking for a little bit of patience and understanding from the public during these times. I would just echo part of our guidance and just encourage agencies to in any ways you can convey the difficulties to the requesters so they have a better understanding of challenges that your agency might be facing because of the necessary workplace precautions and what you can and can't do. Agents have been doing that on their website but also in acknowledging letters and communications and so encourage agencies to continue to do that that this is one of the transparent as possible and also work with requesters the best we can. Yes, communication is very, very important. That's one of the things that ODNI always stresses so I want to second that. Lindsay, any other questions that might be working out there? No additional questions. No. I saw that the item that might be a question but it's not clear that that person is an attendee so if anyone does have any questions about annual floor report, please contact us. Thank you. Great, that sounds great. All right, Bobby, any parting thoughts? I think we're at the end of our session. Yes, no, I just wanted to thank you. Thank Eric and Mike and thank all of you for a really great meeting. We look forward to the next meeting having another good agenda and work of the technology committee and the new work of our new committee. I definitely want to echo what Bobby said. Thanks to everyone today for attending our council meeting. Thanks in advance to those of you who have already volunteered to work on the new committee or are thinking about it so don't be shy and I hope everyone who's joining us today is healthy and resilient, close to many of your families. We will reconvene in 2021 with future dates of council meetings to be announced soon so please stay tuned for that and there are no other comments or questions we can adjourn this council meeting today. Thank you very much everyone. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Mike, that concludes our conference. Thank you for using event services. 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