 Before we begin, please ensure that you have opened a Webex participant and chat panels by using the associated icons located at the bottom of your screen. Please know all audio connections are currently muted and this conference is being recorded. To present a comment via Webex Audio, please click the raise hand icon on your Webex screen. The raise hand icon is located in the lower toolbar. You'll hear a beep tone when you are unmuted. At that time, you may state your name and question. If you require technical assistance, please send a chat to and tell the events. With that, I'll turn the meeting over to the Deputy Archivist of the United States, Jay Bansanko. Please go ahead. Hi, thank you for having me. I am excited to be here today. I spent most of my career at the Natural Resources Center. As an access professional in some way, shape, or form, I've processed foyers. I've filed foyers. So this is sort of an exciting day for me. So my name is Jay Bansanko. On behalf of the Archivist of the United States, Dr. Colleen Shogan, who's unable to be here today, I would like to introduce Jay Bansanko. Hi, Jay Bansanko. My name is Jay Bansanko. I'm the Deputy Archivist of the United States, Dr. Colleen Shogan, who's unable to be here today. I am happy to welcome you all to the eighth meeting of the fifth term of the FOIA Advisory Committee. It is fitting that this meeting falls nearly 50 years to the day after the United States House of Representatives passed the 1974 amendments to the FOIA. Just as President Johnson opposed the original FOIA, though reluctantly signed the landmark bill into law in 1966, President Gerald Ford opposed the 1974 amendments. His opposition was so vehement that he vetoed the bill. Among President Ford's concerns that the time limits proposed in the bill 10 days for initial response and 20 days for an appeal response would burden agencies. President Ford was also concerned that the bill gave too much deference to federal judges regarding classified documents. The House voted 371 to 31 to override the veto, and the Senate followed with an override vote of 65 to 27. I mention this history today because the legislative record shows that both chambers spent several years deliberating on reforms to the nascent FOIA statute. Their work resulted in true consensus, veto-proof legislation that strengthened the law granting Americans the right to request records concerning what their government is doing. Committee members, this work towards consensus 50 years ago mirrors your work today toward advising on ways to improve FOIA administration and proactive disclosure. While not every idea survives consensus-building, your work as representatives of government agencies and the requester community very much is the catalyst for fostering dialogue and consensus in accordance with the committee's charter. The 1974 FOIA amendments were the result of the work of many, including a young staffer on the Senate subcommittee on administrative practice and procedures. 50 years later, that staffer, Tom Sussman, is serving his fourth term on this advisory committee. Thank you, Tom, for your service then and now. Committee members, regardless of the number of years of FOIA experience you have, we at the National Archives thank you for volunteering your time and expertise to make FOIA better. Before I turn the mic over to Lena Semo, the chairperson of the FOIA advisory committee, I invite you all, committee members and members of the public, to a panel discussion on artificial intelligence and government access. It will be held at 1 p.m. eastern time on Thursday, March 14th at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. We are pleased to be able to host the event in person this year, as well as live streaming on the National Archives YouTube channel. After a lively discussion about the intersection between AI and access to government information, in person participants will have the opportunity to view FOIA-related historical documents, which will be on display outside of the William G. McGowan Theater immediately after the event. I hope you will join us. And now, Lena, I will turn the mic over to you. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Good morning, everyone, and welcome as the director of the office of government information services or OGIS. And this committee's chairperson, it is my pleasure to also welcome all of you to the 8th meeting of the 5th term of the FOIA advisory committee. I want to welcome all of our colleagues and friends from the FOIA community and elsewhere who are watching us today either via WebEx or with a slight delay on the National Archives YouTube channel. This meeting is being held publicly in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, FACA, which requires open access to committee meetings and operations. FACA requires us to post minutes and a transcript of today's meeting, and we will do so as soon as they are ready. Committee Alternate Designated Federal Officer Dan Levinson and I have certified the minutes from the December 7, 2023 meeting, and those along with the transcript are now posted on the OGIS website in accordance with FACA. Please visit the website for today's agenda along with committee members' names and biographies at www.archives.gov forward slash OGIS. Next slide please. So a few housekeeping rules. We've updated our slide. I'm very excited to share this new slide that we have reviewed today and we're hopefully going to be using in our future meetings. And I don't want to read every single thing that's on here, but I will go over a couple of the House rules. First, I am very pleased that everyone is here today. So Mark, Wade, Biserie committee, all 20 members and very shortly I'm going to ask our designated Federal Officer Kirsten Mitchell to confirm that there is a quorum. I am advised that Luke Nichter has to leave our meeting today by 1230 Eastern time, but he will stay with us as long as he can. I also specifically want to welcome back Kirsten, our committee's DFO, who has returned to OGIS following a four month detail as Acting Deputy and Chief of Staff for legislative archives, museum services, and presidential libraries at the National Archives. We definitely have missed her and we are very happy to have her back. Thank you. Kirsten, over to you. Have you taken a visual roll call and can you please confirm we have a quorum today? I can indeed confirm that we have a quorum. Not only that, we have perfect attendance. So thank you everyone. Great. Thank you. Committee members, again, I give this housekeeping rules every time, but the ring crew today as they do any other time, please bear with me. While I try to run through these housekeeping rules to ensure a smooth meeting, I will do my best to keep an eye out for everyone during the committee. Meeting and if you're raising your hand or waving at me or jumping up and down your chair, I will try to call on you. Raising your hand using that raise hand icon at the bottom of your screen is also extremely helpful. And I will try to be fair in terms of calling people in order in which they have either waved at me or raised their hand. Also, you can use the all panelists function and the dropdown menu and the chat function when you want to speak or ask a question. Or you can chat me or Kirsten directly. We will also be monitoring that as well. But as I always warn everyone and remind everyone in order to comply with both the spirit and intent of the federal advisory committee act, please use the WebEx chat for housekeeping and procedural matters only. No substantive comments should be made in the chat function as they will not be recorded in the transcript of the meeting. If you need to take a break at any time during the meeting, please do not disconnect from the Web event. Instead, mute your microphone by using the microphone icon and turn off your camera by using the camera icon. And please send a quick chat to me and Kirsten to let us know if you'll be gone for more than a few minutes and then join us again as soon as you're able. A reminder to all committee members, please identify yourself by name and affiliation each time you speak today. It makes our lives a lot easier when we prepare the minutes down the road. Members of the public who wish to submit written public comments to the committee may do so using our public comments form that is available on our website. We review all public comments and if they comply with our public comments posting policy, we post them as soon as we are able. In addition, we will have the opportunity for oral public comments at the end of today's meeting. As we noted and our federal register notice announcing this meeting public comments will be limited to 3 minutes per individual. So, before we move on to our very busy agenda today, Kirsten has a few reminders to our committee members in her capacity. So over to you Kirsten next slide please. Thank you, Alina. I'm Kirsten Mitchell with the National Archives and I'm this committee's designated federal officer or DFO. Thanks to alternate DFOs Dan and Kimberly for stepping in while I was away on detail and also a big thanks to them for the logistical details and putting together all of these meetings. I have four right in a row as the term winds down and there's a lot of behind the scenes logistics that goes into these. For those of you joining us today for the first time, my job as DFO is to provide managerial and administrative and logistical support. I have a quick update regarding records and then I want to briefly go over voting procedures. Regarding records, I may sound a bit like, well, a broken record, but I wanted to remind everyone that committee members must copy the DFO on all committee and subcommittee emails to simplify record keeping. There's a very easy way to do that email foya dash advisory dash committee at nara.gov. So, emails to that box go to several of us on the edge of staff and they do get read. Why is this important? Because according to NARA's general record schedule, 6.2 advisory committee and subcommittee emails and reports are permanent records and that ensures that they are captured. Next slide please. As I mentioned earlier, we are entering the time in the committee term in which we expect draft recommendations will be voted on, particularly at the April meeting. But should any recommendations come up for a vote today, I just want to remind you of voting procedures. Any member, including Alina as chairperson, may move the committee votes on a matter. No second is required, which is odd to those of us who pay attention to parliamentary procedure, but a second has become, well, second nature and Alina and I are always happy to accept. There are three types of passing votes. The unanimous in which every member votes accepts abstentions, general consensus, at least two thirds of total votes cast and general majority, a majority of the total votes cast. There's no need to memorize any of this or do any math. That's my job to keep track. Next slide bar. I will often conduct a roll call vote to ensure accuracy. I don't mean to slow things down, but I just want to make sure I have everything accurately captured. So we have a super busy agenda today. So with that, I turn it back over to you, Alina. Great. Thank you so much, Kirsten. Just want to ask any committee members if they have any questions about anything that Kirsten just went over. No, I'm seeing people shake their heads. No, that's great. Thank you. Okay. So today, we're going to develop a meeting to hearing from committees, three subcommittees. I know everyone has been very, very hard at work. I'm just going to kick off the meeting by just expressing my gratitude to everyone. Everyone's been working very hard. And as Kirsten said, we're in the home stretch. We've got four meetings back to back and we anticipate having a lot of good work being done. Today, we're going to hear in this order from the resources subcommittee first and then implementation subcommittee and then modernization subcommittee, the co chairs of the subcommittee will provide updates on their work. I think I believe that they will also open up the floor to working group members who would like to speak regarding specific reports or work that they've been working on specifically. We will take a break, which is currently slotted after the resources subcommittee, but before implementation, but we will play by ear and see how things are going and remain flexible. And we will close the meeting with a public comment period. So, with that, if there are no other questions, I'm just looking at all the committee members to make sure no one's waving at me. I would like to turn things over to the resources subcommittee co chairs, but then Johnson and Paul Chalmers. Thank you. Good morning. Sorry, you go ahead. So, Paul, do you want me to start? Sure. Okay. Well, thank you, Alina for the introduction. And today we're going to the resources subcommittees going to discuss a number of recommendations. I wanted to start by noting one of the prongs of the resources subcommittees mission is to investigate areas where existing resources can be used more economically and a lot of our recommendations are geared towards that goal. We're going to discuss five recommendations for regarding personnel and staff and one regarding training. But before discussing those, we wanted to briefly discuss the recommendation that you won't see and that's actually a recommendation calling for more funding explicitly. We're all aware that FOIA requires more fiscal support. However, as a subcommittee, we wanted to make sure to put forward forward actionable recommendations and towards that end something that committee did discuss exploring on multiple occasions was the potential for FOIA funding to become a budget line and across agencies. We wanted to understand what would be the procedural administrative work necessary to make that happen. And, you know, is there evidence that that would actually be beneficial for FOIA with an agencies. However, we were not able to get to the stage for a formal recommendation that would be suitable for subcommittee or full committee assessment and voting. But in our final reports, that's going to be something that we stress be explored by future committees. And with that, I will turn it over to Paul. Thank you, Bimende. As we done our work, we formulated a number of proposed recommendations. Alina, if you want to start with the slides, we can talk through these four of them at least are ones that are three of them are ones anyway that we have talked about in prior sessions. They're based on feedback we received from FOIA officers. And officials as part of the survey that we conducted last summer. As well as a series of interviews we conducted and informal discussions that we had with colleagues. Co workers and members of the FOIA community. As we and as we've seen in other areas where there's been shortage of resources. So this first draft recommendation that we pull up here is one that I believe we talked about at the last meeting in December. I'll give everybody a minute to read it. But the essence of it is, oh, this is the training one. Alina, what can we come back to this one? Absolutely. There you go. We'll do these first. We'll come back to the training one in a few minutes, because I think that's going to entail more discussion. And we've not previously talked about that. And as far as I understand, as far as I recall. We've not previously talked about that in a full committee meeting. So we'll start with these. Which I think are a little easier to digest at this point given prior discussion. This is when we talked about back in December. The 1st draft recommendation that the subcommittee has come up with is that we recommend that the office of personnel management. Offer the 0306 government information specialist job series to the direct hiring list. That is. To me, it's a very simple recommendation, but to members of the public, you know, it's, it's challenging to understand because it is written in federal bureaucrat jargon. What this means is that instead of going through the normal competitive hiring process that most federal jobs go through, you put a posting out. You put it on USA jobs.gov. You go through multiple interviews. You have a whole process that you have to follow. There's potential blocking by certain groups and preferential hiring positions. Instead of going through that process, you would have direct hiring authority, which means that the agency can simply hire the people that it needs without going through that whole process. It's as authority that exists. Currently with respect to a number of job series. I am an attorney with the pension benefit guaranteed corporation. Federal agencies have direct hiring authority with respect to attorneys. So I wouldn't have to go through this process to be hired. OPM also has the authority to add other job series to that list of categories that don't have to go through the hiring, the competitive hiring process. Most recently it did it a year or two ago with respect to a whole range of jobs involving intellectual property, intellectual, or IT, a whole range of them, cybersecurity experts, just IT experts. There are other areas where a variety of job series outside of that where direct hiring authority has been added over time. The essence of it is the importance of the work to the federal government and the difficulty in finding people to fill those jobs. And our belief based on the evidence that we gathered as part of our work is that the government information specialist job series fits within that parameter. As everyone knows, unfortunately, the backlog of FOIA requests has been increasing year over year for quite some time as the number of requests increase and the complexity of requests increases. And one of the things that we heard from many agencies was that they simply aren't able to fill the FOIA positions that they have available to them. You know, we'll get to it in a minute. Some of them have difficulty creating positions, but a number of them that have positions and have open jobs can't fill the jobs. And based on experience that we've seen other job series, this proposal is one that we think would help agencies in filling those open positions. Amanda, anything to add on this one? No, I think you summed it well. Okay. Is there any just, Alina, you're the parliamentarian on this. Is there open to this to discussion or? Yes, absolutely. The first thing I always do is ask other subcommittee members if they want to weigh in on on what you just said. So first, I'm going to give that opportunity to the top committee members. No, they're shaking their heads at me. Okay. Thank you, Lauren. Let's open up the floor to discussion among committee members, please. Questions, comments. It's pretty boring, Alina. I'm not sure you're going to get much. Yeah, that's a good morning. This is good. Got an IH just to buttress the recommendation I will add. That we have, I've been aware of folks that have applied that were fully qualified for the position overly qualified for the position and through the vagaries of the HR process did not make it to the panel. And that just resulted in a lot of wasted time, a lot of wasted conversations. And ultimately not being able to add those folks to the team. So I think this is a great idea. Well done, Paul. Thank you. I appreciate that. Anyone else Katrina, you always have something to say about hiring. I would, I would just echo what said because of the fact that yes, there's been many a time that we miss miss out on getting the people that are actually qualified for these positions due to the way the hiring process is, and it's very cumbersome and it delays us and getting it and we don't always necessarily get the best qualified person. Great. Thank you. Anyone else. Is your hand still up from last time or new hand. You're just going, you're just going to get a lot of Gorka this morning. I just wanted to add an anecdote that, you know, from from a sister agency. I know that the these vacancies and they when they open up. They just still up with with applicants. And so it takes each hour. Last time they took each hour at that agency something like five months to get through everything. Right. And so by the end of the five months, when they started contacting applicants. All the most interesting, all the more interesting applicants had already found other jobs. So it really, it really is just a big waste of time sometimes. That's all. Thank you, Gorka. I see Carmen your hand is up. Hi, Carmen with the cybercom. I wanted to just thank you guys for this recommendation. It certainly would make it a lot easier to get the qualified applicants in a position that I think we all are are really looking forward to hire people that are. I'm sorry, that are that are really qualified and removing that process and us being able to quickly assess whether somebody's qualified. Really help would help us out. I was a hire, a hiring from a direct hiring authority list and it was incredible how, you know, the process went so fast for me. And I appreciated that because going through the regular process takes a long time. You don't know for a while. Opportunities come and go and then, you know, a couple months later, you get reached out. Hey, how about this position and it's true it's it's been quite a while since I applied or somebody else applied. So I think this is going to be hopefully a really great, great advancement for our field. That's all. Okay, great. All turning back over to you. Okay, do you want to go to the next one? Sure, you're driving. Okay, I'm going to turn this one over to Bimende to discuss but before I do that, I just want to note this is actually a suggestion that came from OPM. This is a procedure that they suggested that we look into and we've talked about it with the chief FOIA officers council as a way of sort of hurting cats. But with that, I'm going to turn it over to Bimende. Thanks so much, Paul. And in our conversations with FOIA officials, one of the things that they mentioned relating to hiring was thinking of new and creative ways to recruit individuals for positions and we believe that this point in that direction. So the office of personal management has created a new feature on USA jobs called talent pools and that allows agencies to participate and share job postings. So applicants that have been assessed as eligible and qualified are available for consideration by multiple agencies who are participating in the talent pool. So this can be beneficial in multiple ways. One way is that it reduces the burden on applicants from having to apply for multiple positions because they can apply once and be considered for multiple postings. And this is something that they would opt into. So that can make the hiring process easier on their end, but it can also make it a bit easier for agencies to find qualified applicants and also reduce agency burden from having to post multiple hiring actions for similar positions throughout the year. Some components of this involve that you have to have at least five agencies participating with the intention of hiring candidates eligible for the position. And with this recommendation, so this is something that exists. It would not have to be created, but we are recommending that the chief way officers that counsel through cookie work to organize agencies who are attempting to hire for positions to participate in the talent pool. And in addition to perhaps taking the lead on helping coordinate agencies. Enter into a talent pool together. We recommend that. The council track, you know, if they do enter into it track the effectiveness of talent pools for filling for positions and whether it's something that should be pursued in the future. Turn over to you, Alina. Okay. Comments from the subcommittee members. Anyone else want to comment on this recommendation. Some shakes of heads. No, what about the full committee? I see Gorka, we're going to get a lot of work out today. Gorka, the call ahead please. Gorka from NIH. Yeah, but then I was wondering, what are the mechanics of this approach? In other words, are you just getting an ever expanding list of. That that is available into perpetuity, or does it expire at some point in your start from scratch? I think the mandate is muted. My apologies. It really depends on the pool that set up with the agencies. There's a particular certificate that's put in place and that outlines the requirements for the position. How long will be open and the required and the number of agencies involved and how long they would be looking for positions or looking to fill a particular position. Yeah, I mean, the certs on hiring tend to expire after a certain period of time. OPM has limited experience with this. Gorka, I think the only example they cited to us of where they did it, and it was one they were very excited about was data scientists. They said it had been very effective agencies were very pleased. They got a good talent pool. I will confess we didn't get into the details of how long the search stays open. I mean, there is there is a link. I can, I think it's in the white paper that we're working on to the OPM site where they get into the real mechanics of it. But that might be a question for a follow up call with OPM. Thanks, Paul. Anyone else? And I will say the, sorry. Sorry, go ahead. The, the one example that they know it was with hiring data scientists and if I recall, Paul, they said they received hundreds of hundreds could be and that seems like a lot. But they received lots of applicants that many agencies were able to hire from. I think it was a, I think what she said was at least 100. I don't know how many agencies participated in that one, but as I said, they, they want, or as you said, they want between four or five or more. To participate and that's, that's the, that's the reason for my reference of, of hurting cats. If, if co-cacky can line up a number of agencies to all join into the, into the posting. Then that, you know, so much the better. Anyone else? I don't see anyone else raising their hand or waving frantically at me. Okay. Paul or Mandy, I don't know who wants to. I got the next one. Great. Thank you. Go ahead. Okay. So the, oh, you want to go to the next slide? There you go. All right. So this one is another bureaucratic jargon laden recommendation. We're actually, this one is in tandem with something co-cacky is working on and I don't want to step on their toes. I've got their, their report should be coming out sometime around the sunshine week. But one of the things that we heard back from agencies and let me give you a little bit of tutorial on this. The way that federal pay structures work for most agencies is called the general, the general scale, the GS scale. And there are certain grades for positions starting. I don't even know what the bottom one is a five or six and then goes up to a GS 15 and with various grades along the way. The higher the grade, the higher the pay. And what a lot of agencies have run into, there's this process, it's an arcane process called classification. And what that means is that you as the program office and a federal agency have to come up with what's called a position description, which lays out the effective, sorry, the essential functions and qualifications for the position. And then the HR office will look at that, look at guidance that OPM has issued and then make a determination of where that falls on the GS scale is it a GS 11, 12, 13, whatever. The problem a lot of agencies have run into and I will attest that I've dealt with this process myself with my own HR department is that HR departments are sometimes reluctant to classify new positions, let alone those at the higher end of the scale, the 13s, 14s, 15s. And so some agencies have not been able to convince their HR offices to classify higher graded positions. The reason that that becomes a serious problem is you can't hang on to your employees after they max out on the pay scale in that grade. So if you run up to a GS 12 at your agency and the person is good at their job and wants more pay, there are other agencies that have positions at a GS 13 or 14 and the person can leave and go elsewhere. That's a very common problem. What this does, there's no universal way to solve that problem. HR departments act independently. So OPM does not tell them you must classify this at a 13 or 14. What we can do is provide the tools to program offices and dealing with their HR departments to help them in dealing with classification issues. It's something that OPM and OMB did a number of years ago with respect to privacy positions. Where they were running into the same sorts of issues there. So what this recommendation basically calls for agencies to share their position descriptions. And make them available and we need to store them someplace and the recommendation is that we put them on the co khaki website someplace. I mean, it doesn't really matter where. But make them available to program offices so that when they're dealing with their HR departments, it's a lot easier when you're going in saying we need to classify this as a GS 13 position. If you've got a number of other federal agencies that have already done it. No one likes to be the 1st 1 to do it. That's especially true of HR departments. So if you've got a bunch of others and you can say to your HR department. Hey, we're the outlier. It becomes a lot easier to get the position that you need and from what we can tell. A lot of agent and in talking to co khaki, I think they've seen the same thing. A lot of agencies are able to have the higher graded positions and a lot of agencies are not so we can do some collaboration provide some tools to agencies to help. Then I think. You know, it's not a home run, but it might be a single. And the effort and and why I say this is in tandem is that co khaki. Again, I don't want to step on their toes. I'm not going to preview the recommendations, but they're focusing on other parts. Of the hiring process and helping agencies and putting together the tools that they need to hire people. And providing information to tool kits and things like that. So. This would be something that would work in conjunction with what they're doing and hopefully help solve the problem. Thanks, Paul. I appreciate that subcommittee members anyone else want to comment or add any other thoughts. Okay. Oh, Patricia, I see your hand up. Go ahead please. Good morning. I'm Patricia Weth from EPA. I, well, I like all of our subcommittees recommendations, but just to share with you how helpful this particular recommendation can be. I think one of the things about resources in the federal government is we rely on our colleagues we rely on our friends and other agencies for assistance. And I can tell you at 2 different agencies that I've worked at. I've gone through this process and I've had to I had to contact colleagues at other agencies to get a copy of their position description to try and revamp the position descriptions at my agency. So, to have this resource to have this database available to all of the federal government agencies like a one stop shopping. That's, that's going to save agencies so much time and trouble and as Paul said, you know, you can also make the argument to your HR department. If you're trying to get a GIS at a higher grade, perhaps at a 15. And you can make the argument. Well, you know, they've done this at X, Y and Z agencies. So, you know, it has been done before and here's the description and, you know, it meshes with what we're currently doing. So, that's just some background from my personal experience why I really support this recommendation. Okay, thanks for Patricia. I see Katrina, go ahead, please. So, I'm one of the people that everybody comes to to ask for PDs to use for this. So it would be very helpful to already have it and I also think it would be beneficial. To the to the employee, because of the fact that the jobs that they're doing that way when they when they go to these other positions or try to get these other positions. It's not a apples to orange type of thing because it should be basically kind of standardized across the board. And sometimes that people have a hard time with that because they don't see the exact same type of work listed in the descriptions. And so, I think that this would greatly help out and people getting, you know, additional chances for growth, employment and things like that and having a consistency with the work quality that you're going to get from people. Right. Thank you, Katrina. Go ahead, please. Hi, I was wondering whether this in any way might actually hamper agencies hiring activities and by that I mean, you know, there's some agencies that hire reviewers that are doing standard review, but they have a pretty robust science background, because you need that to understand what you're reading. Right. So, I wonder if, if I try to hire a 13 with a robust experience in science. Do you think that my HR office could come back and say, you know, we've reviewed the standardized CDs. That's actually a 12. I mean that happens all the time. I mean that's that's the reason for this recommendation is so that we have the examples. But I hear what you're saying, Gorka, I mean, is it are you talking about hiring them as GIS is or is it a different job series that you'd be bringing them in at that very theory. Yeah, 306. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's an issue. It's kind of a separate issue because having the ability to have the higher graded positions is one thing. Then you have the other issue of is the employee qualified to be in those positions. I mean, and that's something that you run into is, is, you know, is the employee if they're GS 11. Are they are they performing at the next higher grade ready to be promoted to that next higher grade. You know, that's something that the program office has to work out with and the HR department might disagree. I don't. I don't know how to solve that problem on in terms of a recommendation. But what this is trying to do is just provide the tools so that the higher grade of positions at least available. Thank you. Okay, I just want to point out Kirsten in the chat very helpfully posted the link to the draft final white paper that the subcommittee has put together on the staffing recommendations. Because we just posted them very recently before the meeting today. We wanted to give everyone the opportunity to really thoroughly digest all of these recommendations. That includes the public. We welcome comments from the public. Any feedback that you would like to give us, we would be happy to receive. And at this point, our. Anticipation is that we would be voting on these recommendations at our next meeting in April. All and then can you confirm that please. Sure, I think that's right. Okay. Yes. We ready to go to the next one. I know where I'm doing a lot of talking and people are probably sick of hearing from me. No, you can do a great call. Keep going. Um, you want to go to the next slide? Alina. There you go. All right. So this one, I know we've talked about in prior meetings, so I won't spend a huge amount of time on it here. The idea for this is to facilitate the ability of agencies to bring aboard. Contractor staffing when needed. It's not in any way. I mean, I'll give a little bit of background because we've got the full committee here and not maybe not everybody's heard me speak about it for. The procurement process for federal agencies is tortuous. It can take over a year to get a contract out and and filled. Uh, putting aside the budgeting questions. So what the GSA, the government, or I'm sorry, the general services administration has done has issued assist a series of schedules. They're called where vendors can basically bid on those schedules. The GSA does all the legwork and agencies just need to write a task order against that schedule, which is a much simpler process in order to get the services that you need. What we discovered in doing our work is that there's while there's a schedule or two that explicitly mentions FOIA. There's not one devoted to FOIA, the one that mentions FOIA includes a host of other services. And so when you look at the vendors who have bid on that schedule, most of them are e-discovery vendors of one sort or another rather than FOIA vendors of any sort. Uh, agencies use a variety of, again, it's in the white paper, but they use a variety of schedules to get the services that they need. None of them are particularly good fits for what an agency needs when it needs to have FOIA contractors. I'll note that one of the schedules goes so far as to include millennial transition services, which for those of you who don't speak government jargon means Y2K. So it's been a while since that schedule has been updated. And what we propose is that the GSA issue a schedule or revise a schedule, whichever it thinks is the easiest way of doing it, so that it's focused on FOIA services. In the white paper we've got examples of what one might look like. But again, that would be up for GSA to really work through, hopefully with the agencies and dictating their needs. But that's the essence of the proposals to have this available so that when it comes time, if an agency's got a backlog that it needs to tackle, or it's got an unusually high volume of requests coming in, they can quickly go out and get some additional contractor help if they need. And in prior discussions, we've heard the message that contractors are not the optimal solution, and we agree with that. The better solution is to have a fully staffed federal office of qualified GIS professionals who can deal with it on their own. And that's the purpose for the first three recommendations in our set here. But there are times when you need help and this is what we're trying to accomplish with this. That's all I've got. Any subcommittee members would like to comment on this particular recommendation. I know we've talked about it before. I was just stressed and what Paul noted that this is geared towards agencies who find themselves in a situation where they think they need contractor support, not making a claim that agencies should turn a contractor more frequently. Yes, if you need contractor support, are there ways to at least make the process quicker, especially given the statutory timeline that agencies are under to respond to FOIA request? Okay, thanks. Katrina, go ahead please. Hi, Katrina Pavlikianen, Department of Human Security. Well, since I have 50% of all the FOIAs that are submitted to the government, I have to use contractors. So this is actually would be very helpful. It's very difficult right now sometimes when we do contractors to find the adequate, one, the budget for the adequate labor category because there is not a labor category specifically for contractors. And then also, when you're going to put a category in there, you have to put almost like the PDs, you have to actually put skill sets in there that are more closely related to somebody who actually does FOIA. Because one of the things we find is mostly when we get some of the people on a contract to do FOIA, they're more administrative people. And it takes, you know, we're basically training them from the ground up, you know, the contractor hiring them, they don't really, I mean, they know the concept of FOIA, but then we train them. And so that's a little bit of a heavier lift for a Fed to have to actually train up the contractor to get them up to speed for work that if they actually had the category fields. Because if you had like a journeyman FOIA person, you know, a senior FOIA person that you would have less of that uptick of training. So I, you know, I'm very much supportive of this type of recommendation. I think it would be extremely helpful. Okay. Thanks, Katrina. I believe Allison raise your hand next and then Patricia Allison go ahead please. Thanks. I like this recommendation. I think it'll be a big help. But I just had a question about the proposed description for contractors. Is there, it mentions like assist with FOIA analysis, but we shouldn't maybe include also like applying redactions or that was just my only thought was a knit to the description. Yeah, I think we definitely can do that. I don't think that's a problem at all. I mean, this is, this is just an example of what one might look like. But I think we could, I think it's perfectly as, as we, assuming this gets through and as we start working on the final date, the committee report, I think we definitely add that. Okay. Thank you. Patricia, go ahead please. Good morning, Patricia Weth from EPA and I was just going to echo Katrina's experience. I'm going through this, this process to get FOIA support. Oftentimes you, you find contractors who, as Katrina said that they don't know the FOIA and so then the agency has to train the contractors on FOIA when the whole purpose of it was to get a team in place who could do the job and assist with reducing the agency's backlog. I think this is going to go a long way to helping federal government agencies get the right FOIA contract support that they need. Okay. Thank you so much, Patricia. I don't see any other hands on this recommendation. I'm going to ask our event producer to go back to slide R1. Thank you. And Paul and Mendy back to you to ask folks on your subcommittee to present this. Yeah, Stephanie. Yeah. Go ahead to be Mendy. No, I'm just going to say we were going to turn this the floor over to the sub subcommittee comprised of Stephanie, Michael and Carmen to discuss this recommendation gears towards training. So. Okay. Thank you. Hi, Stephanie, Jewett, HHS, OIG. I'm going to talk a little bit about it. Then I'm going to turn over to Michael and then Carmen. So this is our recommendation here and I'll just read it. Maybe haven't seen it yet. So we recommend that the Department of Justice Office of Information Policy issue guidance to all chief FOIA officers outlining minimum requirements for training to agency staff, including non FOIA professionals outlining the requirements of section J2F of the FOIA, which states the chief FOIA officers shall offer training to agency staff, regarding their responsibilities under the section. Particularly suggested guidance that we suggest includes mandatory annual FOIA training for non FOIA professionals in the federal government. And mandatory mandatory FOIA training for all new employees, including non FOIA professionals within 60 days of onboarding. So that is our recommendation and now I'm going to walk through a little bit how we got there. Previously, the FOIA advisory committee, the past terms, there have been two recommendations that were made previously that surrounded education and training of government employees to ensure compliance with the requirements of the FOIA. Both of those since then have been marked complete by OGIS. The one particular one is it was 2020-05 and that one stated that guidance will request agencies to provide annual mandatory FOIA training. So that is different than this particular recommendation where we're saying that it would be mandatory. It wouldn't just be a suggestion or a recommendation. It would actually be recommended that it be mandatory FOIA training. Some things that we did, and I'll let Michael and Carmen cover some other things that we did to come up with this, but we went out and we interviewed several senior FOIA leaders across government. And we asked them a variety of questions involving the FOIA, a number of the questions involved training to try to determine the state of where the FOIA training is government wide right now. So the results to us were very eye-opening when it comes to how the federal government agencies trained their FOIA staff. The short answer that we received through these interviews is that most do not train non-FOIA professionals on FOIA. So for example, the responses from throughout the government showed that there was almost no FOIA training provided to new staff at onboarding, not only for new FOIA employees, but for everyone across government. In addition, in these interviews, we learned that most agencies have no formal training or annual FOIA training for non-FOIA staff. A common theme across all the interviews was that the FOIA was not just the FOIA staff responsibility, but it's the responsibility of everyone. Therefore, everyone kept telling us that there was a strong desire to have mandatory annual training for all government employees, much like they kept relating it to the annual records management training or the annual ethics training. And in that, to train employees during these interviews, everyone kept saying how they currently train their employees. Almost every single agency relies in some part on the DOJ OIP resources to provide the necessary training for their staff, whether it be to their FOIA or to their non-FOIA professionals. After we received that feedback, we looked across government and we saw that actually the Department of Interior has implemented a mandatory by annual FOIA training for all employees, not just their FOIA employees, but all employees. And they do use the DOJ OIP targeted online FOIA training modules developed by DOJ, OIP for all their training. Some things that they said to us was that they didn't have to start from scratch. So they were really clear that in order to do mandatory training, the agencies won't have to create this training themselves, right? So the training is already out there. DOJ OIP has already taken this initiative and lead and they've created these targeted FOIA trainings for FOIA personnel, for executives, and then all other federal employees who are not FOIA employees. There's a suite of FOIA resources there designed to train up and down. This is a little bit other detail, but files for these are called the FOIA eLearning models and they can just be assessed through the OMB Max Drive. And the agencies can directly upload those into their learning management system. And if an agency doesn't have a learning management system, they can simply just put them and be assessed through our web browser. Another thing that the Department of Interior told us that is when a government agency fails to meet its FOIA obligations with respect to a particular request at either the initial stage or of course the appeals stage, as everyone knows this, you know, the FOIA requesters can seek resolution in federal court. And for this reason, failure of everyone to understand and properly execute one's duties under the FOIA presents significant potential liability for an agency and FOIA litigation. So to summarize my part here is that the reason we came up with the mandatory FOIA treatment, we decided that it was critical to ensure that the federal workforce, which includes federal employees, contractors, senior executives, political appointees, volunteers, and others who are the ones that create, receive and use federal records on behalf of their agency or make sure that they are well educated about the importance of administrating the FOIA and their roles and responsibility that the FOIA statute mandate. So now I'm going to turn it over to Michael to sort of talk about the other research that we did to come up with this recommendation. Michael. Thank you. This is Michael Heiss. I'm with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And so, yeah, just to add a little bit onto that. What we noticed from the, we looked at the chief FOIA officer reports from 2023 and 2022. And one of the things that we noticed was that, you know, agencies had, you know, a variety of different responses with respect to training of non FOIA staff. You know, based on what the question was and how the question was actually worded. And so in 2022, we found that there was a lot of agencies reporting training to non FOIA staff and that ran the gamut from basic visibility to much more than that. And in 2023, at least because I think the non FOIA training question kind of appeared elsewhere in the CFO report, the one that we were examining, the answers to the question about training was really absorbed by agencies as something having to do with FOIA professionals only. So the answers were kind of different. So one of the things that we recognize, you know, if the committee were to accept a recommendation such as this is that a good way for agencies to be able to report whether or not they're, or how they are providing, you know, mandatory, as we say, training to especially non FOIA professionals. Is to maybe have it, you know, first ask the same question each and every year the same way, which quite frankly I think that DOJ does a good job at doing that it just appears maybe in different sections under I think it's sometimes it's in other initiatives, things like that. This isn't part of the recommendation, but it would make sense to kind of house training for both FOIA professionals and non FOIA professionals probably under section two of the chief officer report, which is usually styled FOIA administration. That way it's easier, I think for the requester community and other agency folks to and agency folks to, you know, kind of get to the, that part of the report if that's what they're interested in looking at. And I think they would be because I think it, it makes sense that training, we all know that training of FOIA professionals is necessary. You have to know how to do your job, right? But it's the, it's the non FOIA staff that I think is really, really critical. And, you know, just like every agency employee, you know, is required to do records management training ethics training. I know those are pursuant to entirely different things. You know, the FOIA, the FOIA is a statute that applies to virtually all administrative agencies, but because every agency is so different. It's impact and applicability could be very different across from agency to agency. And so that's why we think that providing this, this recommendation really, really hits home because it would soak in, I think, into the administrative state this, what the attorney, this attorney general said is FOIA is everyone's responsibility. And I, we think that the training, this is why I think we pointed to those modules, the OIP modules are already there. And they set a good sort of baseline for what, you know, kind of like the, maybe the most rudimentary sort of general FOIA training should, you know, can be provided to politicals, SESs, leadership, non FOIA professionals who aren't in those categories and then FOIA professionals. I mean, it's already there. So it's kind of easy to do. But it's important for a FOIA processor. I can tell you firsthand that, you know, I've been in a number of agencies and it's, it's important that the rank and file and the leadership in an agency, the vast majority of them are not FOIA professionals. Understand, appreciate and buy into the federal statute, you know, that, you know, so for example, and this is not in there, but, you know, training, I think would consist of things like something more than just visibility, like FOIA is located at 5 USC 552, you know, that sort of thing. But it would be more about, you know, that the folks who are processing these FOIAs are processing the people's records, right, not your records, the people's records, because sometimes it's hard to ease that out. I mean, you know, sometimes, and that it is a disclosure statute. So, you know, and, and that really has to hit home. And I think that the only way you can hit that home is by repetition. And so a mandatory training for non FOIA professionals who quite frankly I always tell people, my job is knocking on doors, right, I don't really generate a lot of things, except, yes, I harvest a lot of things. So I reach out to other internal stakeholders for records. And so it's all it's the vast majority of the folks who are not in FOIA that are in government service that need to kind of understand really, really understand the fact that this statute is a disclosure statute. The fact that these records are the people's records and a mandatory training, I think would do a do a very good service for both the agency for the federal government and for the requester community. Okay, Carmen. Yes. Hi, Carmen and you a cybercom. You know, we, we, I think this recommendation is, is a bit different like Stephanie explained as far as the actual implementation of the work that was previously done. That was a direct result of the previous recommendation where now there is a tool available for agencies to use, or at least an idea of what a course would look like. I think we all FOIA program managers and directors of programs, we love to train. We, we love to really teach our agency colleagues what the FOIA is about. I know that I do a once a month new onboarding presentation where I usually ask the question who knows what FOIA is, what the Freedom of Information Act is. And not surprisingly anymore, only about out of 20 people, maybe one or two raised their hands and had no idea. I had no idea what the FOIA was even before I became a FOIA professional. I didn't know about this, this law that permits me to obtain the information as a taxpayer that I own. And just honing in that, driving that point to agency personnel. You know, if per the Attorney General's 2022 FOIA guidelines, I'm going to quote, successful FOIA administration also requires proper training and a commitment to FOIA compliance by agency personnel simply put FOIA's everyone's responsibility. So if it's everyone's responsibility and you're unaware that this is your responsibility, how are you going to fulfill it? And awareness comes from education and training. That in itself is, is critical. We know also that, you know, as Michael referenced, we seek information from other people, right? We, we ask for search request. We ask them to search their records. We also ask them to review records because we cannot possibly be the subject matter expert on every topic within an agency. So when we ask for a review of the information they are very knowledgeable of, we have to explain to them why, correct? And we don't mind, I think a lot of us don't mind having chats with people to teach them what it is that we're asking for. That's no problem at all. But it would be an incredible aid if this information or at least it's touched upon with a mandatory training course. I took part in both the courses at OIP, DOJ, actually there's three of them. And they're incredible. I really enjoyed the transitions. It honed in right where I think we all have been translating this information. It's not technical. It's very direct. This is what we're asking. This is where the responsibility is. So this would definitely be another tool in our FOIA program programs across many agencies that could be able to really bolster response time, review time. You know, can we quantify these results? I'm not sure. But maybe it's something that we could work on after the mandatory training is instituted. And also, you know, the training part of aspect of our jobs, which we all, I believe we like. But that time that we're spending on training 101 on presentations, et cetera, could be spent on working the requests, right? That we are usually overloaded with and there's a huge backlog, but we're taking time, which we don't mind because we are the people that have knowledge about this law. But that time could be spent if a few of the agency personnel that are non FOIA have that information already. It could lead to having less questions or, oh yeah, you know, I learned about this or referencing something back that could help them. So with that said, we think that this recommendation could really have a very powerful effect on the everyday day to day practices in our, within our FOIA program. Okay. Thank you, Carmen. I see a couple of hands up. I just want to give subcommittee members a chance to weigh in like I have been doing. Otherwise, I will turn to the 2 hands up Bobby was 1st and then Tom. Bobby go ahead please. Thank you. Good morning. So everyone from DOJ. First of all, I just want to thank everyone. All these recommendations are great. Obviously, you can tell we were very committed to having quality training available to agencies, both for federal. FOIA professionals and non FOIA professionals. It's what led us to develop our learning modules and we also will try to take the burn off training. For agencies to the extent that we can provide that and provide training to 8,000 folks every year. And then try to ensure that agencies are taking advantage in our training there folks we. Keep the chief for after accountable whether she for officer reports, as mentioned, so very supportive of this in training. But I want to set out the expectation because I don't believe that can mandate. Government wide training to all the other agencies, especially non FOIA professionals typically the. Trainings that are mandated government wide, like the no fear act training or cyber security training are established through statute or regulations. So I just wanted to. It's not that we wouldn't be supportive of it, but it's not something that I think can be accomplished through IP guidance. Michael, do you want to address Bobby's comment? It looks like Carmen also has her hand up. Go ahead. Carmen, I was, but Carmen, go ahead. Bobby, and we appreciate that. I think we looked into it as well. But you know, we were kind of seeking a way to. Figure out who then or what agency would be responsible. For, as you said, it's an opium statute, correct? All of these trainings that are mandatory come from. From statutes that are in place and say, this is mandatory. So as far as FOIA, the freedom of information act. What agency would be responsible to, to introduce. The idea, the, the. That would be something that I would want to look into. I just, this specific recommendation is, is outlining guidance as mandated, making it mandatory. I mean, I'm all, we've issued guidance on training before and we've had best practices workshops on training. And shared best practices. She guidance on training again. And even the context of this, I thought, maybe, maybe guidance specifically for officers to filling their statutory obligation to provide training. Like, we could do that. But as far as a government wide mandate on FOIA training for all FOIA personnel, that's going to take a little bit digging into that. I have not done. Thank you. Thank you, Bobby. I appreciate that answer because that's really, you know, bolstering this, this recommendation. You know, and you guys have been great at providing us the tools and resources to, to give it to our, our employees, our agency colleagues. You know, and, and where it's where we found it hard, like all this work that DOJ, OIP has done, which really incredible courses. I love, I love them so much. But it's just suggested, right? We suggest. And, and maybe a lot of agencies aren't aware of it, you know, aren't aware that this tool is right there. You know, you even provide the coding to put it into a learning management system, which is just, wow, you know, for agencies that already have a learning management system. It's just about putting it on, on there and taking it. It's really easy. So, you know, I think that's where the suggestion versus the. I don't know if there's a stronger word, not requirement or mandatory, but like, hey guys, it's be a great idea. You know, let's, let's. So, no, thank you. I really appreciate it. And we can certainly look at other avenues to kind of make sure agencies are aware of it. I will say. And maybe it's just another reminder, but when we did it, launch the learning modules, the associate training general, send a memo to all general councils. And she foil officers. Reminding reminding the importance of training and pointing them to the direction of these resources. So, certainly, we could think about advertising. You know, refreshing. But we, obviously, we put a lot of sweat equity into this and we, the last thing I love that I want to hear is that agencies aren't aware or not using it. But so there's, there's definitely a lot of things that we can do. I just wanted to point out just the way this, this is phrasing. How it's that there's a little bit problematic. So, Tom has his hand up. Can I just weigh it on that part really fast to respond also to that point? Sure. This is Stephanie, right? Yes, Stephanie, do it. I thank you for that comment. We did consider that and that is why in the recommendation, we just said that. DOJ. He would outline the minimum requirements from section J F2. The mandatory training and the was just a suggestion of what potentially the guidance could be after you, everyone looks into whether that could be a possibility. So I just wanted to point that out that the actual recommendation, like the main language of the recommendation does not have any phrasing about mandatory training. That was just suggestions that we were including. But the actual recommendation is for that DOJ. Outline the minimum requirements, which are suggested and J to F. So I wanted to add that clarification that we're just asking DOJ. To state what the minimum training requirements are to the chief boy officers. Because as it stands now after we did all the, you know, after we sort of explain what we looked at, right? There are no minimum requirements right now as it stands. There are most eight there. If you ask agencies across the board, they're not going to say this is what we require. So the recommended, I just want, I don't want to get caught up in the mandatory part because that was only suggested guidance. That's not the actual recommendation. So I just want to, I hear what you're saying, but I want to be very clear. Of course we would love for it to be mandatory. And we thought that would be something that you could potentially look at after you get this recommendation. But again, the recommendation is just to interpret that, you know, the minimum, the minimum requirements of that one section of the FOIA law. Yeah. And so frame that way. I think that's very reasonable. We definitely do guidance specific to the obligation. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify. I didn't want to go down that, that, that whole, that rabbit hole. We did consider there's the things that you spoke about. Thank you. Thank you. Then I would just suggest that the language would say that this is coming up for about next year suggested guidance could include that it should. Sure. Okay. That's a great point. Thank you. Thank you. Tom Sussman has been very patient and Jason, your hand up next Tom Sussman. I'm a great fan of training a great fan of mandatory training for new employees. And so you might wonder why I'm questioning sort of the annual mandatory training for all employees, considering a number of people in the government. I would think that the resources, even if it's just an online thing each year, I have to do a mandatory training every year on something in my job. And I find it totally distracting and boring after the first year and somewhat resent having to do it actually. So I wonder if you'd consider at least whether there's some way of softening the annual nature of mandatory for everyone. I mean, you've got, you know, forest rangers out there who don't even work with paper, except for, you know, personnel related stuff. So I just raise that I'm sure you've thought about it, but it seems like a kind of an awfully heavy investment considering their potential return. Right. Thank you. And again, and we'll have to, I think we should play with that language of it. I think we need to put suggested guidance could include. We were being very ambitious with the what could include language there at the end. But yes, I agree with you, but we did the survey and the questions and interviewing everyone that we said everyone, of course, in the for your community wants it to be a mandatory training because of. One, if it's mandatory, if it's a mandatory training, it rises it increases the elevation of for your right, then people will think, Oh, it's important. I have to do this training. Second, when you go to them, you know, like Michael was saying, when you go and say, Hey, can you give me these records? They'll understand the importance that, oh, we're working on these very tight timeframes. We only have 20 days to turn these around. It is important. I remember taking this training. This can if I don't comply with my obligations, this and cost the agency money through litigation. And then there'll be appeals that are filed. So that's why I hear that there could be, you know, be people out in the that don't even deal with paper. But they do have a cell phone. They could have text messages. They could have, you know, they still have emails. And then what if someone does want their records, right? They still need to be what everyone said consistently, everyone at the very least should have this 15 minute, you know, DOJ, OIP training that quickly tells them their obligations under the FOIA so that they know when we go coming to them. First of all, we're not trying to tell them what the FOIA is. And like, we already, I mean, this is the coming out of the resources, right? No one has the resources to process FOIA requests. We just don't have the staff. We don't have the time. So to have like your basic employees already know what FOIA is and have a little bit of knowledge to be able to say, oh, I remember taking this 15 minute training. They have to, I have to provide my record. That's why we are recommended that it be for everyone because that's what we heard over and over and over. We went out to the community that my time is being spent. I can't get employees, but all my time is being spent trying to tell people that have no idea about FOIA that I need their records. And then if it's not an annual training, you know, if it's not coming from your leadership saying you have to take this training, then it can be pushed aside. I hope that answers your question. All right. Thank you. Jason has been waiting patiently. Jason, go ahead, please. I like the recommendation with the asterisk that Bobby has put on it. I do want to say that this is actually in the spirit of the implementation subcommittees work because you pointed to prior recommendations where you think that they've been partially implemented based on CFO reports, but not implemented in the way that, you know, would lead to more employees and agencies non FOIA professionals working. But I do want to caution that what is said in the recommendation is important and it's actually not the commentary to recommendations, but the recommendation itself so I believe this does need some reworking. I think the statute says all in terms of shell offer training to all agency staff. I think there's a rule of reason. I don't think DOJ has interpreted it. So, consistent with what Bobby said, I think, you know, one could rework the language. I would be happy to assist and help figuring that out so that a proposal that that is in the spirit of what you're trying to do, which amplify past recommendations of this committee can be put out by DOJ. And Bobby, I would certainly support your coming out with guidance that says mandatory training is, you know, strongly recommended. But I agree with you. I don't think the statute empowers OIP to require it. Thank you. Michael, you've got your hand up. Is that a new hand? Yeah. Yes, it is. Okay. So, and I'm just taking notes here. So the, this draft recommendation. Stephanie and Carmen and I can kind of go back and consider the suggested guidance could include and reword that one of the things just since, you know, we're all here meeting as committee that that I was thinking is, you know, first off, the modules are, except for the one that's for the actual FOIA professionals, the modules are relatively short. I mean, I think the ones for leadership are really short. And, you know, I guess we'll have, I'll have to look a little bit more about what that means in terms of shall offer training to agency staff and what that means. Well, quite frankly, I just presume that meant all because, well, because the FOIA applies to every agency staffer. So, you know, and, you know, a forest ranger out in, you know, Alaska somewhere probably has more tech in their back pocket than I do. So, you know, I think that, so anyway, we'll have to look at that. But, you know, I think, I think that the issue is, we want the requester community to benefit from this, I think, and one way to benefit from it is if a FOIA professional, I'm not speaking for myself here, just the hypothetical FOIA professional in a hypothetical agency doesn't feel that she is fighting a war on two fronts, right? Having to deal with, you know, a queue of requests that where the clock is ticking, but then also have to deal kind of in the back office with, you know, training on the fly for folks about FOIA. And I think that's what we're trying to get at. So, you know, with the suggested guidance could include, and Stephanie and Carmen, you know, I'll talk to you this a little bit more later, I think, you know, modules, you know, if we are going to limit the, you know, all, you know, that it's that the training. I do think annual training is important, even though it's not fun. The reputation is key, but you know, maybe training that's targeted to folks that agency think are most likely to be custodians of records that would be subject to FOIA request, I don't know. And then also I think it would be interesting to put, if we're talking about suggested guidance, that agencies do what they can to decipher and then train non FOIA professionals on what the substantial harm analysis is. Because a lot of times, you know, we're not subject matter expert SMEs on the actual record itself, usually. So, you know, there is value in being able to have a conversation with the SME in a language that we both can speak, which is FOIA. It should be FOIA, at least in that limited sense, you know, so that we understand, because you know, substantial harm analysis doesn't mean it shouldn't go up because I don't want it to go up. I'm not saying that's ever been said to me, I'm just saying that that's a line that is not legally cognizable. But, but, you know, having that haven't being able to work with folks that way. And I think that's what we're getting at that, that the training about FOIA needs to get into the bones of agency staff, more than it is now, if the requester community would like to have a more efficient at least in one sense a more efficient FOIA professionals processing their requests. So we can talk more later. Thanks, Michael. So I've got four hands up, and I was hoping to take a break soon. So Alex, David, Mindy and Katrina and that order Alex go ahead please. We're sharing these recommendations. They clearly reflect deep research and understanding of these challenges that goes much higher than I think the sort of top line. But in light of that, though, you know what you just said, Stephanie, about sort of the reality at the moment that there's a rapid continuing increase in requests, and he said no one has the resources, staff or time. If that's the case, if the conclusion of the subcommittee is that there isn't the human capacity for this, would it not make sense for the resources subcommittee to state so clearly. And to recommend something along the lines of the talent surge that we see ongoing for other aspects of government, specifically AI has been a priority of the administration. Why wouldn't the subcommittee take the conclusion that got increasing demand and the human capacity isn't there. We recommend that there be more investment in bringing more people into government and retaining them so that the capacity issue doesn't get worse. I'm sorry if I'm not articulating this well but it seems like that top level conclusion is one that would make sense to make with clarity, so that the people who are thinking about funding as the next year goes on, at least have a prompt from us that this is something that needs to have more investment. Sure, that makes sense. When we went out and we did the interviews and everything, that wasn't something that came up with any of the FOIA officers or anyone. They all have a lack of resources and they thought if they were training across the board, it would make it easier for them to get the documents and process FOIAs quicker. I just don't think there's enough knowledge out there right now within the government agencies in order to try to, for us right here, it just wasn't suggested at all. I don't think in one interview anyone ever suggested that it was over and over and over FOIA needs to be made a priority. The thing that could help because I can't, I don't have the resources to hire more people, but what could really, really help is if everyone across government knew their FOIA obligations, that this isn't, FOIA isn't just on me. Yes, I'm the FOIA officer. Yes, I'm the government information specialist. Yes, I'm the attorney. But it's not my, I cannot do everything. I can't search the, and this is what you're getting to, right? Like I can't search the records for you. I can't process the records. I can't do everything. But right now, as it stands right now, a really quick fix, especially since DOJ OIP already has these training out there, is if it's a very minimum, we get some type of minimum requirement for everyone across government to just know so that when I'm coming to them, it's not the first time they're hearing the letters FOIA, right? They already know what FOIA stands for. They know they have to give me their record. So that's why we came to this conclusion with this recommendation. I would just say simply because no one said anything about, you know, that's what they want. Everyone said over and over in the FOIA community, please, if we could just have some type of, you know, mandatory was always the word training. So I don't have to keep doing that over and over my job. Okay. Thanks, Stephanie. Dave Collier over to you. David, you're on mute. Thanks. Sorry about that, Rookie. Great discussion, great recommendations. I totally understand the concerns of Bobby and Tom and folks raised. I would hope, I sent an email to the advisory committee and I assume that will be in the public record then with three studies that I hope you all take a look at. Because we don't have to reinvent the wheel here. Shelly Kimball looked at 10 states that have training of all their public employees in their state public record spots, including four that are mandatory. And her research indicates that it makes things better in those states that they report things work a lot better. And so I hope folks take a look at that by Michelle Bush Kimball. She's awesome. And then two other studies that actually looked at the effect of mandatory training, one in Chile that found that it led to more proactive posting online of information and one in Brazil. That showed training lotteries where agencies were selected randomly and made to go through training did much better in complying with the law. So I hope people have a chance to look at those and, you know, when we come back to consider the final wording and recommendations. Consider that because I think the emerging evidence seems to indicate it could really go long ways to making things better for everybody. Thank you, David. Thanks, David. Let's see Katrina. No, I'm sorry. Mendy is next and then Katrina. And Alex from earlier, are you putting it down? Okay, thanks. I'll be super quick and this is just to, you know, express my support for the recommendation and the mandatory mandatory and annual part if they can come about, you know, through research if possible, but also stressing. It might be even more imperative than this post COVID universe where you may have more remote positions and also trying to attract more talent includes offering more opportunities for remote work, which is great. But you do also have a, you can have a loss of knowledge that can happen from individuals who are working together. And that is perhaps one way where people get an understanding of the way out. So if they're not getting it from going into a workplace on a regular basis, having this training during a reoccurring periods, I think, and help compensate for that. So that was it. Okay, thank you so much Katrina. Katrina public in DHS. So the one thing I was going to say was. So, it's really kind of, you know, I'm all about training. I created a DHS boot camp and all that kind of stuff for training. And, and one of the things that I think that. And I don't know, and maybe Bobby can can issue some kind of just guidance from DOJ, but one of the things that I've come to find and we have this quite often at DHS is, you know, we get a big bang for the buck when we, when we're working. When we have the new politicals or new senior leadership that come in, when they're hired, we give them training about FOIA. That's one of the things that we do in that, you know, when they come into those levels of positions. And we find it very beneficial when we go to, you know, have to search for records or ask them for records or things like that. And so I think, you know, I know we're talking about trying to make things mandatory. But I think that if DOJ would issue some type of guidance, you know, that basically says that, you know, this, this is, you know, we're getting ready to, you know, go into an election year. People are going to be changing over and it would be a good point to start realizing that, you know, we need to have that guidance for those people at the beginning of their appointments and positions and the hiring that we have going on. And I also want to keep in mind, I mean, I know that, you know, again, I have 50% of all FOIAs in the whole federal government. And so, but we do a lot of training. I do a lot at DHS. I'm responsible for all the components. And so I do a lot of training for my, you know, and I'm also responsible for the DHS proper FOIA request. So I do a lot of training, not just within my own area of responsibility, but all the components within DHS. And so, and I think that that has shown results in that you do and agreed with a lot of people that I've talked on here is that you do get people that have a better understanding of the FOIA and process work quicker and easier because they understand what it is that they're doing. Also, I also think that, you know, these jobs burn you out. I've been doing FOIA for 30 years. And if you don't have some type of training that gives you a little bit of a break from time to time to rejuvenate you to help, you know, possibly give you something new that you didn't know a new tool that you might have learned or something like that. I think that it is actually also very important for the well-being of the FOIA professional to have these type of training opportunities. So, you know, that's all I wanted to say. Thank you. Thanks Katrina. So, great segue into our break. I think we probably all could use a little bit of a break in case we're being burned out by this great discussion. I do want to remind everyone Kirsten in the chat posted to everyone the link to the white paper that the working group on training has put together. It's posted on our website. And again, the idea is we want to give everyone the opportunity to look at it, comment and refine this recommendation, which it sounds like Stephanie and Michael and Carmen are going to be doing in the next few weeks between this meeting and our next meeting. So, with that, unless anyone has any other burning comments to make, I'm just looking around. I don't see any other hands up. I'm going to ask our vet producer to flip over to several slides forward to our break slide. We're going to take a, could we make it a 10 minute break instead of 20 minutes, 15 minutes rather. Let's make it 10 minutes if that's okay with everyone. We'll come back at 1150. Well, so, you know, 11 minutes, 11, 1150 am. Let's take a break. And again, don't disconnect. Just mute and stop your video please. Thank you so much. Hey everyone, welcome back from break. Gorka just checking in. Are you up and running everything good. I am if you can hear me. Loud and clear. Can you hear us wonderful. Okay, great. Gorka you got my text right. Let me check. We're going to go up next. No. Okay, that works. Wonderful. When we do go live again, would you like me to reintroduce the call? We're ready to go live. Give me one brief moment. Meeting is being recorded. Welcome back everyone. This is Alina Cimo your chairperson. I believe everyone is back, but to the extent you haven't turned on your cameras yet. Just a reminder, please turn their cameras back on. From break. I want to thank the resources subcommittee for their presentation. And I hope that everyone will read their 2 white papers that are posted online. We're happy to receive comments in between and thank you for the lively discussion that we've had today. We are pivoting to the next agenda item. Presentation are going to be flipped. We're going to be hearing from the modernization subcommittee 1st and then for implementation subcommittee. So with that, I'm going to turn things over to Jason, our Baron and Gorka Garcia are 2 co chairs. Jason, go ahead please. Can you hear me, Alina? Great. Thanks. Thanks everybody. I want to first do a shout out. I want to thank Gorka. For his co chairing for this term to date and to every member of our subcommittee listed here for their work. We already came up with a recommendation that was approved last year. About the 5 designations and happy about that. We're also later we'll hear from Adam about the model of the termination letter that was out for public comment and I hopefully there'll be a vote on that today. There are other recommendations that we want to get to in draft form to talk with the members of the committee and everyone out there. I also say one more thing, which is that we have a pretty comprehensive subcommittee report that backs up in commentary what we're suggesting in draft recommendations and I really urge people to read that and comment on it. So with that, go to the next slide. The first draft recommendation is that we're recommending that OIP issue guidance. Federal agencies stating that agency should proactively offer requesters the opportunity to discuss their request with an agency representative. OIP has done a great job in issuing all kinds of guidance over the years. Suggesting that agencies be receptive to the idea of engaging with individual requesters and seeking out requesters when there are complex requests or when they're just questions about to clarify request. But it is and they've done so in their FOIA public liaison commentary and their OIP quality request or services commentary. What where this is trying to make a modest change is that it recognizes that there's a basic reality out there as mentioned previously, there are backlogs that are growing in many places and that means delays in getting two requesters about the substance of their request. It's also true that many FOIA requesters file requests that are not as clear as they can be that have raised questions and as to the subject matter or time range of their quest or who may possess records in their quest. And so what we're suggesting is an early heads up to requesters and what we have in our commentary for language supporting this is simply to say this either in an acknowledgement letter or when a FOIA request is teed up in queue for going forward with a search. The notice would be something like this quote a FOIA staff representative is willing to discuss your FOIA request with you to assist you in understanding how we intend to process your request and to give you the opportunity to provide additional information to clarify or narrow your request to assist us in making a further response to you as efficiently as possible. But that would be it in some way shape or form to give a heads up to requesters and we anticipate that absolutely not every requester is going to take up that invite to to contact an agency whatever the contact person might be. In fact if there are say one more thing and then open it up which is that if there are agency concerns. You know this is a recommendation for OIP to go out with something that's discretionary not mandatory and if there's some concern out there. A department might departmental FOIA officer might say OK well we'll do a pilot program for one component that responds to FOIA request and we'll see how it goes in terms of the response. My own view is that this will be very helpful to a small set of requesters to get an early dialogue going with an agency or certainly earlier than they would otherwise have about trying to narrow the scope of their request and in that way it helps with public engagement and transparency and I don't believe it will we don't believe that the subcommittee will add to significantly to a burden with that questions or comments from any of the other subcommittee members or the rest of the committee. Oh, I just want to echo what Jason just said I mean we try to do this at my agency and and when we've done it when we've been successful in it it really does. I think we've improved the relationship with the requesters and speeds up the process of getting the relevant documents out. So I like this one. Thank you. Any other comments. Quarka. I'll just butchers the recommendation by saying that I've spoken to several requesters that explicitly told me they didn't really know how to phrase the request. And so they filed a very broad request, hoping to get some interaction with the agency and it's that interaction has proven very successful with most requesters. Okay, thank you Michael Heiss. Well, this I want to echo the support for my support for this recommendation but so I'm with the EEOC equal payment opportunity commission. And having the word should hear is is really important because our office here at headquarters, you know my folks, you know, provide this kind of service all the time. And it's very helpful, but I'm cognizant of the fact that the that the commission receives roughly 13 to 16,000 for a request a year we're a small agency. And the vast majority of those are for something called a charge file, which is a particular thing. So, you know, the word should is good because, you know, if it's, you know, to request is clear the request is clear. And I know agencies such as ours, maybe, I don't know, maybe Katrina's agency, you know, with the with a files or something, you know, having to reach out to each and every single requester every time, or some agencies could be a burden. So having the should there, I thought was very important. Okay. I don't see any other hands up. So, Jason, let me ask you to move on to do the next recommendation. Okay, put up the next slide. So our second draft recommendation is that we recommend that oh I P issue guidance to federal agencies encouraging the option of providing requesters an interim response, consisting of a small sample of documents found as the result of search is conducted and subsequently reviewed for partial or full withholding. So, I think this request is the volume of records and the complexity of some requests that are resulting in searches of tens of thousands hundreds of thousands and in the future millions of emails and other electronic records. And this is a tremendous burden going forward to agencies. So I think it's a great question for the federal agencies to, without sort of an option of looking at a sample of documents, having been that sample having been reviewed then there's the possibility they used to going to be stuck for many years in trying to work through what is the request. I must say that many agencies is reported by in chief way officer reports do a great job of anticipating this request at least to a great extent which I mean their examples in these reports Department of Education. The U.S. citizen immigration services U.S. Secret Service they all have reported of taking very large requests and working with requesters on targeted search terms result in reducing the potential response records from 100,000 to 5000 emails in the Department of Education case and, you know, 50,000 possible hits down to, you know, something that's like 2500 pages. This is all great practice on the part of some agencies. What we say in the commentary is a kind of a step by step protocol for accomplishing what this would enhance in current procedures so there would be at the requesters initiative a dialogue with an agency over custodians and locations and time periods and search terms. And once that dialogue has happened, an agency would go out, do a search, come back with whatever number of hits is reported, whatever they want to reveal about the documents that have been found. What the agreement would be would be to do a sample of those could be just 100 pages or 200 documents or whatever a much a smaller bit of the of the large collection of hits that one would get in a search request against a capstone repository for email or otherwise, and review that small sample and produce that to the requester and with redactions as appropriate and have a conversation with the requester about whether that is sufficient. That's the way that the agency should proceed or whether the requester in some cases might be satisfied with that being enough. So it is that conversation that this anticipates to look at a sample I know in my own case as a frequent FOIA requester now that I'm an academic type that some agencies have engaged with me on this, and it's been very successful in me understanding what the agency will do with redactions and I know everyone here that I, I stopped the process after that first sampling I said okay that's a good sample and I've gotten what I want that may not be the case in every case but the agency needs to work with the requester that's what they say on a, I, we think that this is the burden in very large complex productions where an agency, if they haven't had this early engagement may go off into many, many months if not years of review of a large amount of documents where the requester, first of all doesn't have transparency about the process and also may ultimately disagree and appeal even to court. We have some caveats in the commentary to make clear that there's a, that there will be a tolling provision if there's this initial conversation that the statute provides that DOJ guidance has amplified on. And there's also what we say in the commentary that we would expect that if an agency doesn't hear back from a requester if they're not engaging after an initial conversation. Well, then agency has the opportunity, just like they do now that are you still interested in your FOIA request to to basically say that the request has been closed. So there needs to be an active dialogue and nothing in this protocol that's outlined is, is designed to have FOIA staffs research FOIA requests and engage in some kind of very active process that's iterative and going on it is a sample and, and a initial dialogue that tries to set the parameters of the request. I think this would be very helpful in complex requests to reduce the burden overall on processing of those requests. Comments, questions. Lauren, I see your hand up. Yeah, this is Lauren Harper of the National Security Archive. I really like this recommendation. The archive has for a long time done a variation of this where our boilerplate FOIA letter basically asked for documents to be released on a rolling basis. It serves all the purposes that Jason mentioned and also helped achieve some of the things that were touched on with draft recommendation one from your subcommittee, which was just to get that dialogue going. And for us, especially because so many of our doc our requests are complex in nature. It's, it's just proven to be enormously helpful. So I really like this recommendation. Okay, thanks Lauren. Anyone else. Let's see, I've got Michael Heist's hand up and Bobby Tolibian. I think in that order. Okay, thank you. This is Michael. This is Michael at EEOC. Yeah, I mean, I like this recommendation. I want to at least put, you know, have it reflected in the transcript and also if there's any, especially folks on the agency side, you know, in attendance to this meeting. But, you know, read the read the comments in the commentary, because it does provide, you know, a nice work workflow and and to be clear, at least as I read this. And our office deals with this sometimes. And at least from the agency's perspective is to try to ensure that our finite resources can be can be used as efficiently as possible to maximum maximize our outreach to the entire request or community who is submitting requests to the commission. And it's hard to do that when a single request, you know, can utterly consume, you know, for all respects and purposes, a, you know, an office. And so the sampling, if you read the commentary, kind of goes like this if if the if the processor, you know, has a yield that's that's that's very, very large. And then they're able to work with the requester and the requester is able to, you know, they agree on a sampling and then the sampling provides a meaningful, a meaningful amendment, an actual amendment to to cause the request to be written to be substantially reduced in volume so that not only the agency can can get can be able to get to the next request in a first in time sort of queue, but that the requester him or herself is actually getting the documents that they say or they think they want based on what they see on the sample. So agencies want to provide a response in a timely manner to each and every requester that comes before it. And a sampling that results in a meaningful amendment reducing the yield is one of the best ways to do that. Thanks. Thanks, Michael. Bobby, I believe you're next. Thanks, Elena. I just so from my perspective, since it's aimed at us, that the recommendation there for this because I actually believe our guidance already addresses it. We've had multiple pieces of guidance that focus on interim responses, both in making sure that you're not waiting to give requesters records to the end. And also, and using this, especially in our in our code guidance, we use it as a strategy of being able to engage with the requester to be able to reformulate based off of sampling of records. So it's very much in line with this. So I think from my perspective, what would be helpful, maybe a meeting with the subcommittee between now and April is understanding where they, we believe there is a gap in our guide existing guidance. Because I mean, there's two things we can do. If there's a gap and there's additional guidance that would be helpful, then we can, we can do that. Or if it's the guidance exists and we want to reemphasize and re-communicate it, there's different ways that we can make sure that we're emphasizing this. So I just like to have a better understanding of like where, where that the maybe there is a gap or maybe this is just something of seeing that we can greater socialize. Well, I think Bobby, if I can speak, you do a tremendous job of encouraging agencies to reach out to requesters. There are two things here. One is to have requesters initiate the conversation with agencies. And that's not in present guidance or it's not spelled out in neon lights that that would be a kind of protocol. And secondly, that the specific point here is to have a review of a sample of documents that sort of set out and memorialized and guidance that this is a way to go that you have a small sample when you get a very large number of hits. And I think you do encourage agencies to narrow requests with requesters and to engage, but the extra value of this is to suggest a protocol for doing that with respect to a sample and which is then reviewed. And if agencies do that, that's great. But what we're saying is that it could be spelled out a bit more in your guidance. But I think that sort of be helpful maybe to have this discussion more because I do believe our guidance encourages a proactive not waiting for the requester engagement to provide interim responses with the aim of those inner responses being helpful and understanding whether the request can be reformulated or if the requesters are satisfied with what they've gotten. So, obviously, I'm all for this. I just wanted to make sure I understand, you know, what our guidance will look like if it's not different than what it already exists or if it already is satisfactory than I think then there's other avenues of socializing this important practice, but I certainly think that our guidance supports proactive a level of proactive by the agency not waiting for the requester to ask for interim responses or or communicate about their request. I see Luke Nick first hand us up and then Lauren Harper. Go ahead please. Yeah, thanks. So Luke Nick to Chavin University. I just want to add another two cents in here. It kind of really addresses this but in a way even the recommendation before from the requester perspective. You know, I think some agencies do a great job already and I wouldn't change anything about what they do. They really are professional the way they can. I mean it just it's very communication is very easy and you don't need a lot because they already do it well. But I would say also there are examples of agencies who you know either you get in you don't have meaningful contact information there's not an easy way to reach them you get a no reply email address. You get a phone number that goes to a full voicemail box and you can't leave a message. So I think you know I think on the whole I think there's been improvement and many do this very well. I just I'm in support of this proposal, because I think it really splits the difference between getting records in the hands of requesters more quickly, but also ideally reducing the backlog that a lot of agencies have. And again, some do this very well already, but there are others that perhaps are not aware of some of the guidelines that are already out there. Thank you. This is Lauren Harper again. I just want to speak into Bobby's point. I really like that this recommendation includes a sampling of documents because we do get an awful lot of interim responses that are still interested or where you narrow the scope of your request. And sometimes the way that can feel is, you know, my request is, you know, properly defined under the FOIA. I'm still pretty sure I want these so it doesn't really help the request or understand how narrowing may or may not help them if it's not accompanied by some of those documents. So I think a sample would would really go go a long way. Okay, thanks, Lauren. I don't see any other hands up. Jason, anything else you wanted to add or you want to go to the next one? I will turn it over to Gorka for the next recommendation. Great. Thank you. Gorka, go ahead, please. Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Alina. My name is Gorka Garcia Malene. I'm the FOIA officer for NIH and I have a pleasure of co-chairing this committee's modernization subcommittee with Jason. Our next recommendation reads, you recommend that federal agencies expand public engagement activities focused on improving all aspects of their FOIA process. With this recommendation, the subcommittee seeks to expand agency engagement, both with individual requesters and with the FOIA community and civil society at large. And most recently, DOJ's Office of Information Policy acknowledged the importance of request or engagements in its FOIA self-assessment toolkit. So that toolkit element reads specifically, agency periodically reaches out to its request to community to facilitate open communication and feedback. Now, I should add that the modernization subcommittee is mindful and appreciates the fact that many agencies already undertake these engagement activities. So, in fact, OIP 2023 Chief FOIA officers summary report references several examples. So, for instance, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's FOIA public liaison, they already reach out to frequent requesters to learn about how they use that office's practice disclosures. The Department of Commerce practically engages with requesters by offering them information that is frequently requested. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently convened various request groups to a web conference to introduce and demonstrate a new portal for submitting requests. And there are, of course, many other examples. So what we hope to do with this recommendation with respect to individual requesters is to prompt agencies to consider, for example, asking requesters if they were satisfied with the FOIA process and with the response that they received to their request. In addition, our accompanying report, which, if it isn't available yet, will be available soon, also includes several ideas for how agencies can reach out to the FOIA community at large and civil society organizations. So, for example, agencies could develop frequently asked questions or, I guess, answers to frequently asked questions to respond to common complaints or even questions received from requesters. They could adopt channels of communication to promote how they process FOIA requests, right, and to seek feedback on proposed changes to the regulations and to the policies. Agencies could also periodically reach out to the requestor community and civil society organizations to have a conversation about the agency's FOIA process and to provide an opportunity to engage evenly with the agency. Any additional work that agencies do to enhance public engagement will not only fulfill the DOJ's benchmarks for a healthy FOIA program, but also advance FOIA's aspirational goals of providing greater government accountability and transparency. Back to you, Alina. And I just want to confirm the report is posted, the draft report is posted on the website. There's some shared a link earlier, but it's available on our website. So I do encourage everyone to read it. Any subcommittee members care to comment on this recommendation? Were any other committee member? Mende, go ahead please. Thanks. I think this is a great recommendation. My question is actually probably really narrow and specific. It might be targeted towards the DOJ, but. Just thinking about requesters, you know, we speak of the community with some of the research that I do. I encounter a lot of incarcerated requesters and I'm thinking about some of the outreach mechanisms that may not be available to them. And I'm thinking are there ways for those particularly vulnerable requesters to enhance engagement with them or if their mechanisms already in place for those particular requesters who are incarcerated. Thanks, Mende. The question was to OIP, is that right? I was just going to jump in and agree. Yeah, so we have a lot of over at DHS, we have incarcerated individuals and it's very difficult for us to do that. So if there's ideas or mechanisms in place for that to happen. I would, I mean, I do have outreach where I meet with interest groups and tell them what best we need for attorneys that work for some of their clients. But some requesters are incarcerated and they're requesting information for themselves. And I don't know about anybody else, but we also have an issue with people who are incarcerated. And they get moved around and submit for your request. And then by the time it gets to them. And I don't know if anybody else is having this issue, but it doesn't. We have a hard time finding them in the system. Once they're incarcerated, they may get moved to another facility based upon, you know, the facility being full or whatever. And so we have that problem tracking people down with their for your requests. Even if even if we were to negotiate or to even sometimes when we're trying to answer it back. Alright, thanks Katrina. And Gorka back over to you. Do you have the next recommendation you want to raise or is that back to Jason. I think that's back to Jason. Actually, we're going to, if you put it up on the screen. I believe. Next slide please. We are going to have Alex Howard. Talk about this. I would say in the context of modernization. With respect to the previous recommendation. That we be, I think remiss and not offering suggestions to improve the way that there's an interaction between the requester community and the federal government through FOIA.gov and enhancements to it. In theory, if someone is able to create an account that could be tracked over space and time and changes that they could log into that would be significant. But there's also specifics with respect to internet access and the incarcerated requesters that are probably even more pertinent. And this is something that's come up with respect to continuing to maintain the ability to do print requests and receive them. Not just focusing on the online version. So in this, in this recommendation. We suggested recommended that the archivist of the United States proposed the office of management budget, the White House, the Office of Information Policy at DOJ and other relevant agency participants. That are taking a leading role in co-creating future US national action plans for open government, the open government partnership. And by doing so ensure that there are new and continuing commitments to improving FOIA administration who act the disclosure and the relationships between the American people and the governments that they look to for information. As has been commented earlier, for people who are not familiar, this committee is itself a fulfilled commitment in the second national action plan and was chartered by the, I think, 11th AOTUS and hopefully will be rechartered for another term. And the thinking here is that by making commitments to improve the FOIA flagship initiatives, as other countries have done, that many of the goals that have been expressed over the years through recommendations might be instantiated in commitments. And that there might be an outcome where the process is the product, so to speak, with respect to using the next year or so when a new national action plan should be built out. And we've seen some, I think, improvements over time when there was great interest a decade ago. But there's an opportunity, I think, now to make a recommitment to that effort and to focus FOIA on FOIA as a pinnacle, as a fundamental, I think, bulwark against the kinds of issues that we see all around the world and in our country as well, and use transparency and accountability to preserve what we value most in our governments. So that's the short version of it. There's more commentary on the draft pushed online. Okay, thanks, Alex. Any comments or questions from the rest of the subcommittee? Or the rest of the committee? Any hands right now? Okay, I'm going to move things along. Jason, back to you. Okay, up the next slide. So our next recommendation is we recommend that the Chief FOIA Officers Council Technology Committee and interested agencies publish requests for information RFIs of the subject of artificial intelligence, AI tools and techniques as an aid to FOIA processing. Let me do a shout out to DOJ to IP and the CFO Council, the Technology Committee, they've already had several forums on AI and FOIA and it's been mentioned that there'll be another one coming up that NARA is having. And this is a really important subject going forward in the future. AI is on everybody's mind these days, but we have heard from Eric Stein who is, he's at the State Department, his Deputy Assistant Secretary from the Office of Global Information Services. He came to one of our public meetings and he gave a wonderful state of the art presentation about what the State Department's doing with machine learning tools for declassification purposes and hoping to use them going forward for FOIA processing. There was a number of questions about how agencies could perhaps do something like that on their own. And that implies our way of gathering information for the purposes of potential future procurement of tools that will help with more efficiently administering FOIA. The eDiscovery community that I come from as a lawyer knows very well how to use machine learning. We call them technology assisted review or TAR or predictive coding and for 15 years in litigation, in complex lawsuits involving lots of documents and we're talking about millions, machine learning methods have used to greatly make more efficient the process of discovery where AI methods could take, reduce keyword searching from what might be a year to a week. And many general counsels offices of government too are aware of using various eDiscovery tools. You see them in CFO reports as well, some aspects of eDiscovery, but not so much machine learning based on our review of CFO reports. So this is an opportunity for agencies, first for the CFO Technology Council, if they wish to do so to take the lead in designing an RFI that would be generically applicable in government for the purposes of searching for records, using machine learning methods for searching and also a state of the art now sort of bleeding edges for filtering purposes for using AI for exemptions. And so this, the only thing else I'd want to say is that this picks up on a prior recommendations that were back in from this committee, both with respect to greater use of eDiscovery tools in the play of process and also encouragement by the archivist to work with the private sector with industry with academics to further AI research in this area. And so I think RFIs are now something that interested agencies, there'll be a few, hopefully, and the CFO Council might be able to advance the cause for the government as a whole. Comments. I don't see any hands up. So, thank you, Jason and Gorka for that presentation. I believe we're ready to go on to M6. Yes. And this one, we are going to propose for a vote and Adam, could you explain it once again? We've talked about it before. Yes. Thanks, Jason. I'm really happy to talk about this proposed recommendation on determination letters, which is something that I think everyone in the FOIA process has come across. It's the letter at the end of the tunnel that you get that says, you know, what is what is this kind of substantive response from the agency with respect to your request. It's a really important part of the FOIA process. But something that's interesting is that there's very little standardization across agencies. And so that's something that we wanted to address, but we also wanted to kind of bring the determination letter up to speed to modernize it, as it were, with the latest and greatest requirements from law, from best practices. And also through a really collaborative process that I'm going to talk about just really quickly. The process of creating this, this model letter, which is attached as appendix a to our subcommittee report was really collaborative both between members of government agencies and the requester community on the committee. But then between, I'm sorry subcommittee, but then also between the members of the subcommittee and the world at large. So on our subcommittee we went back and forth many drafts, trying to hone what we thought was was going to be a great model determination letter. And then, oh just very kindly posted it to the public so that we could receive comments from whoever wanted to comment. And we got some great comments, some very detailed ones and some broader ones. And we use those to improve the model determination letter. And we went back and forth and we did more, you know, and it's back and forth. And then we also, you know, worked with or IP Bobby and some of the staff we met with. And they provided really helpful comments that I think further improved and strengthen the letter. And so the result of all that is is what we have for about today. I am really proud of it. I think it is really good on the substance side really good on the process side. And as its name suggests, this is a model letter. It's not a requirement, but it's supposed to be a reference guide and something that agencies can aspire to in terms of providing communication in the process. So happy to take any questions or comments that people have. Adam, I also just want to add, I want to shout out to Bobby. We thank you very much for your participation in reviewing the drafts and for talking to us. And your graciousness of giving comments. And I believe, subject to whatever remarks you have here that you are supportive of going out with this draft model letter. Thank you, Jason. And I appreciate the collaboration and working with you all on this. And I will abstain as I do with all the voting that I am supportive. Thanks, Bobby. So I, I know we've talked about this recommendation several times. And unless I see any hands up in the next couple of seconds, I propose that we move forward with a vote. All right. I don't see any hands up with someone like to make a motion, please. I'll make a motion. Allison vote on make a motion to vote on them six. Thank you. And I get a second. That's for fun. Katrina. I'll second it. Thank you Katrina. All right, let's vote please all those in favor of passing proposed recommendation M six. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Yeah, the vote is 18 to 0 then, motion carries. Okay. Thank you. Congratulations. Yes. All right. Jason and Gorka, anything else before we move to implementation? Can I just say one more thing? Thank you everyone for that endorsement and for your comments on all of this. We'll go back and look, tweak whatever we have to tweak for the final subcommittee report, which we will file between now and the next meeting. I do want to say that in our report, we've had some discussions of late about generative AI, chat, GBT and other forms, and it's an emerging issue in government. And I hope that we will be able to at least provide some observations in our final subcommittee report that's reflective of a proposal that Alex and Luke have put to our subcommittee. So I thank them publicly. And you can look for that as an additional part, hopefully of our final subcommittee report. Okay. Thank you very much, Jason. Thank you, Gorka. So I'm going to turn it over to implementation. I just want to just note before I turn the floor over to that subcommittee, Katrina Pavokinan, who has been serving as the co-chair of the implementation subcommittee will be stepping back from that subcommittee co-chair role and Michael Heiss has enthusiastically agreed to co-chair the subcommittee from now through the end of the term. Many thanks to Katrina for all of the works she's done so far. And thank you to Michael in advance for stepping in. We really appreciate that. And in particular, David appreciates that. So as a reminder, each of the three subcommittees is co-chair by one government member and one non-government member. So with that, David, I'm going to turn the floor over to you. Thank you, Alina. Yeah, David Coolier from University of Florida. So I'll keep this quick because we've just provided basically an interim update report. Thanks to Jason who drafted it and the committee for going through it, subcommittee. So thank you. Jason put a lot of work into this. Really, after we've talked to folks, OGIS staff, Bobby, others interviewed folks. Jason interviewed quite a few. Surveyed, looked at CFO reports. We're now to the point where we have to boil it all down. And basically, so far, two draft recommendations. The first one is that we'll probably want to recommend that OGIS and OIP follow up on some of the recommendations. So past 51 that have been approved over the past terms for more attention. So we're putting into buckets things that still need to get done, as well as things that have been achieved and that sort of thing. So we're putting those all in the buckets over the next month here. And we'll also probably rate the importance of each of them because just because, say, a recommendation isn't done, well, maybe it's not the most critical recommendation of them all. So to help folks triage and prioritize, we want to also probably identify the things that probably matter the most. So we hope to compile all that here in the next month and provide that for the committee in April if we can. So I think that's pretty much where we're at at this point. The second recommendation, I should note, is going to recommend that perhaps some of this is asked in the annual FOIA officer reports if there's a way to get that some of this in there so that everybody can see progress on certain recommendations. Now, I know that's a lot of work for chief FOIA officers. They're already putting together a lot of reports, but we think it'd be helpful long-term if some of these were tracked to see how things are going, particularly after Jason and several bunch of other subcommittee members looked through the CFO reports and saw opportunities for maybe improving information gathering, but that's kind of where we stand and open to questions or comments if anybody has them. Thanks, David. Bobby, I see your hand up. Hey, Bobby, DJ, I just had one really small knit on the language of the first recommendation in action to make consistent with the second one. I think instead of saying compliance, saying efforts to have implemented because compliance and further requirement in these recommendations, it's more consistent with the second slide. We will take a look at that. Thank you for that input, Bobby. Okay, anyone else? We might be reaching meeting fatigue. I totally appreciate that. Okay, I don't see anyone else. Does anyone have any other questions or comments they would like to make about anything that we talked about today before we move on to the public comments period of our meeting? Okay, I don't see any. So while I'm moving things along, we have now reached the public comments part of our committee meeting five minutes early. Very exciting. Thank you for the slide, event producer Silas, I appreciate it. We do look forward to hearing from any non-committee participants who have ideas or comments to share, particularly about the topics that we have discussed today. And there have certainly been many topics. All oral comments are captured in the transcript of the meeting, which we will post as soon as it is available. Oral comments are also captured in the NARA YouTube recording and are available on the NARA YouTube channel. As a reminder, public comments are limited to three minutes per person. Before we open up our telephone lines, I am going to ask Kirsten, our DFO, to please let us know if we have received any questions or comments via the WebEx chat during the course of our meeting. Kirsten, go ahead, please. Thank you, Alina. This is Kirsten Mitchell, DFO. We've had several comments from Mr. Hammond. I will go through them very quickly so we can leave time for other comments. He dislikes the chat comments on YouTube or turned off. He's interested in the resource subcommittees for passing and hiring recommendations and suggests that federal offices ask for desk audit and work with the government union suggests that MITRE be invited as some of the involved in some of the recommendations. MITRE, for those of you who don't know, is a not-for-profit corporation that operates federally funded research and development on behalf of U.S. government sponsors. He reminds all of us, which we very well know, that FOIA begins with good records management. And finally, I will note that there is a, there was some interest expressed in DOJ FOIA training, which was discussed earlier. I will point everyone to the FOIA advisory committee recommendations dashboard, specifically recommendation number 2020-04, again, 2020-04. And there is a link to the three e-learning FOIA training modules that the Department of Justice put together. So that's all there for the public to see. And that is all I have, Alina. Okay, thank you so much, Kirsten. I'm going to turn now to our event producer, Silas. If you could please provide instructions again to any of our WebEx participants for how to make a comment via telephone, that would be great. Absolutely. As we enter the public comments section, please limit your comments to three minutes. Once your three minutes expires, we will mute your line and move to the next commenter. Each individual is going to be limited to three minutes each. If you are joined through WebEx, you can use the raise hand icon from the bottom toolbar to enter the queue. If you are dialed into the phone, please press pound two on your telephone keypad to enter you into the comment queue. Please stand by one moment as we assemble our queue. Thank you. Moving to the first caller in the queue, caller your line is unmuted. Please go ahead. Hello, I think I'm the first one. If you can hear me, my name is Charles Melton and I'm from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. And what I want to talk on is the mandatory training that you were speaking of. And I just want to let you know that it is very important within the IC community that we have some sort of mandatory training because our mission here is mainly to keep things from the public. So it's very important that we educate our analysts here. Why is it the importance of transparency? And one of the things that helps is if they don't understand that, it delays us getting information from them because their interest is not to release information because that's what they've been told as an analyst. And so if they have that education beforehand, it's just a lot easier for us to get records from them and help us process those records according to FOIA policies. So for us, that is very important for us to educate our intelligence community on FOIA processes and obligations. Thank you. Mr. Melton, thank you so much for that comment. I saw a couple of thumbs up from committee members so we appreciate those comments. Silas, who is our next caller, please? Moving to the next caller in queue, Bob Hammond, your line is unmuted. Please go ahead. This is Bob Hammond. I have provided the FOIA advisory committee with 62 written public comments, which I hope OGIS will promptly post. I want to address three issues today. First, might a civilian employees to individual DOJ representation in FOIA litigation gone bad. And that's 28 CFR at 50.15. Second, unauthorized record dispossession complaints to NARA. Third, DOJ, OIP, Sunshine Awards. First, civilian employee individual legal representation in FOIA. Quote, whenever the court orders the production of any agency records and properly with health when they're complaining and assesses against the United States, reasonable attorney fees and other litigation costs, dot, dot, dot, the structural council shall promptly initiate a proceeding to determine whether discipline reaction is warranted. Unquote, and that's from the FOIA. So, if you're an agency employee involved in a messy FOIA litigation or someone may have helped you with inaccurate sworn decorations or records were altered or records were destroyed, you may seek immediate individual DOJ legal representation in a closed case before plaintiff's deposition. Your agency counsel may have already obtained separate DOJ representation. You must protect your own interests. Second, unauthorized records dispossession complaints to NARA. NARA has an unauthorized records dispossession unit to address unlawful removal, destruction, or alteration of records. When an agency claims that it does not have records, it is required to have, you may submit a complaint to NARA UD. I am currently working with NARA to re-evaluate past air enclosures to my FOIA UD complaints. Third, DOJ Sunshine Awards. I asked Bobby Talabian's post the 2024 award nomination packages so that the public could weigh in. Some 2023 award citations are inaccurate. Navy's Nathan Boziak, head of the FOIA Brands General Litigation Division, Department of Navy JAG Office, won an award. The public reports show Navy-reported program, six open FOIA litigations challenging application of redactions, processing delays, and adequate of search, dot, dot, dot, and caused delays in responding to requesters. Then the average number of days where Navy appeal response was 200 days, not 32 days cited in NAICS award citation. But then Navy's FOIA reports are always materially inaccurate as our most agency reports. I hope to resolve issues with DOD and other agencies quietly. Mr. Hammond, your time has expired. Moving to the next caller in our queue. Catherine Sibley, your line is unmuted. Please go ahead. Thank you. Can you hear me okay? Yes, we can. My name is Katie Sibley. I'm on the Schaefer Committee on Historical Documentation. Usually Kristen Hockenson is sitting in for our organization, but I'm spelling her today. But my question concerned, I don't know if you can answer it, if this is just comments, but there was something you said earlier in the discussion which concerned sort of, I guess along lines of expedited processing, sort of asking for samplings of FOIA requests. So in other words, I've requested materials from our presidential library and first I was told it was gonna be 20 years. And then I was given very good advice to kind of limit my requests. So it went down to about three years. That was a lot better. But even so, that's kind of pushing it for a book. So you had mentioned about sort of these samplings, but I get the sense that I actually wrote to one of these agencies or these libraries and they said, well, you're kind of still in the queue and you can apply for expedited processing, but that requires like somebody's life is in danger or it's a matter of vital public interest, which I don't know if I could make that argument about my upcoming book. So just wondered if anyone had any thoughts about tactics for that sampling process that don't necessarily require an expedited processing, which seems more demanding. So I don't know if you can answer that today, but I just wanted to put that out there. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Sibley. Does anyone on the committee have any thoughts about that that they would like to address? This is Lauren Harper from the National Security Archive. Sorry, Lauren Harper from the National Security Archive. We also do a ton of work with the presidential libraries. I'd invite you to reach out to us at NS Archive, maybe off this call and we'd be happy to share kind of tips and tricks for the way that we try to speed up that process with presidential libraries when we can. So that would be my comment. Lauren, thank you so much. Silas, do we have any other callers on the line? At this time, no, there are no further comments in the queue. Okay, let me turn back to our committee members. Does anyone have any other comments or thoughts that they want to pose in response to our callers today? Very quiet, I don't want to say very quiet. Okay, so I think we'll go ahead and wrap up our meeting shortly. I know I promised I would try to give you some time back. Not 100% sure I can totally accomplish that, but I will try. I just want a hand, oh, I'm sorry, Silas, you're letting me know that there's another hand that has just gone up for another comment. Yes, one hand has just entered the queue. Frida Key, your line is unmuted. Please go ahead. Thank you. Thank you for taking the last comment at the last moment. I have a question about what Professor Jason Barron mentioned about the generative IAAI. Could you please clarify if you would recommend the use of generative IAAI in processing the FOIA request or could you talk more details about that? Thank you. Thanks. Well, we are discussing in our subcommittee to make some observations about what is really an emerging trend, which is thinking about the uses of generative IAAI like chat GPT, which provides narratives that may summarize what might have taken place in a FOIA review or other forms of IAAI that I was talking about in connection with RFIs. There's a question about transparency and giving notice to the public. Within the scope of this administration's executive order on IAAI to make sure that the public understands what IAAI processes are being used by agencies in going about processing a FOIA request. And we're gonna have that conversation and hopefully there'll be something in our subcommittee report about that topic. Okay, Jason, thank you so much. Okay, so let me wrap things up. I appreciate all the followers and all of them today. I appreciate all the committee members paying attention through the whole three hour meeting. I know it was kind of a long stretch, but I think we've got some really great work done. I also just wanna thank all the committee members for all the great work that's being done at the subcommittee level. I know that's where all the hard work goes in. I'm very grateful for all of that. I wanna remind everyone that we have three meetings coming up back to back, April 4th, May 9th, and we're gonna wrap up our term on June 13th. We are planning on all the subsequent meetings being virtual. I know we have talked about the possibility of in-person. I believe that we have explored this. It is not possible given our technological shortcomings at this time. We will reevaluate in the next term should there be a next term. I also would be remiss if I didn't give an opportunity to a few people on the committee to have the floor for a couple of minutes to talk about Sunshine Week. I know that's coming up. Jay Posenko, our deputy archivist, has already previewed the National Archives Sunshine Week event, which I invite everyone. That is going to be on the 14th of March, but I want to open up the floor to both Dave Collier and Bobby Tolivian to talk about any other Sunshine Week events. Who wants to go first? Bobby, do you wanna go first? Sure. Thank you, Alina. Very excited to highlight our Sunshine Week at the Department of Justice on March 11th in the Great Hall in the main Department of Justice building at 10 a.m., but also will be live streamed. So we hope that you will enjoy this one. If you can join us one way or the other, we have keynote remarks from the Acting Associate Attorney General, who is also Archie Foyle Officer, as well as we look forward to recognizing contributions and accomplishments by FOIA professionals in different award categories for this year's Sunshine Records. And this year, we're very excited to have the most nominations that we've ever had over 70 nominations. And so we're looking forward to recognizing a good amount of FOIA professionals in the work that they're doing on Monday, both to recognize them in the showcase and incentivize others to follow their suit. All right, thanks, Bobby. 79, that's a lot. Okay, Dave Collier just posted a link, HTTPS forward slash forward slash sunshineweek.org. David, go ahead, please. You are now the new owner of Sunshine Week. Yeah, yeah, we're excited. So the Breckner FOI project is coordinating now Sunshine Week moving forward. And check out the website. There's two dozen events coming up that are posted and listed. You can get more information. A lot of them are, most of them are virtual, so lots of opportunities to get involved. We're still going to be posting more content, editor our cartoons, and that great Washington Post graphic cartoon on how to submit a FOIA request that they published last weekend for anybody to put on their website. So lots of resources there for people. And a great opportunity to celebrate something that matters to everybody in our democracy. So thank you. Thank you, David. Anyone else on the committee want to talk about any public Sunshine Week events? They're hosting at their agencies, not putting anyone in the spot going once, going twice. All right, check out David's website. I think there are a lot of different events posted there, both public and private. And with that, I just want to remind everyone, keep up all the great work. Don't give up now. We're in the home stretch. We'll see each other again as a committee, Thursday, April 4th, beginning at 10 a.m. Any questions or other comments from any of the committee members? Is that Elena the talent pool link? Yes, thank you for reminding me. So Mendy would like to point out there's a talent pool link that we're going to post on our website. It's a link to an OPM memo regarding the talent pool that the resources subcommittee has been discussing. Mendy, is that correct? Yes. Okay, all right. Thank you for reminding me. I appreciate that. Anyone else? This is Kirsten. This is Kirsten. It's already posted. Oh, we're so fast. We're so efficient. Thank you, Kirsten. I appreciate that. All right, everyone have a wonderful day and enjoy the spring that's about to come upon us and we will see each other again on April 4th. Take care, stay healthy and well. Thank you to all of our speakers. And...