 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome and thank you for joining today's Chief Foyer Officers Council meeting. Before we begin, please ensure that you have opened the WebEx participant and chat panels by using the associated icons located at the bottom of your screen. Please note, all audio connections are currently muted and this conference is being recorded. You are welcome to submit written questions throughout the meeting which will be addressed at the Q&A session of the meeting. To submit a written question, select all panelists from the drop-down menu in the chat panel, then enter your question in the message box provided and send. To ask the question via WebEx Audio, please click the raise hand icon on your WebEx screen which is located above the chat panel to the right to place yourself in the question queue. If you are connected to today's meeting via phone audio, please dial pound two on your telephone keypad to enter the question queue. If you require technical assistance, please send a chat to the event producer. With that, I will turn the meeting over to Alina Sima, Director, Office of Government Information Services. Alina, please go ahead. Thanks, Michelle. Good morning, everyone. Apologies for the slight delay and us getting started, but we assure you that we still have a great program up ahead. Thank you again for joining us today for our second Virtual Chief Oil Officers Council meeting. Probably not our last. I hope everyone has been staying healthy, safe, and well. I am Alina Sima, Director of the Office of Government Information Services here at the National Archives and Co-Chair of this Council. Let me introduce my Co-Chair, Bobby Tullibian, Director of the Office of Information Policy. Bobby. Bobby, please unmute your line. We're unable to hear you. I will do that for you right now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Can you hear me? Thank you, Alina, and thank you all for joining us for a great meeting today. We have a really great agenda and look forward to getting into it. In a minute, you're going to hear welcoming remarks from Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero, and then Bobby will introduce the Associate Attorney General, Anita Gupta, who will provide opening remarks as well. Yeah, I will then each provide an overview of OIP Notices' work since our last meeting. We have some exciting updates to share. And then you will next hear from the Council's two committees, the Committee for Cross Agency Collaboration Innovation and the Technology Committee. Excited to have the two Co-Chairs of the committees join us later this morning along with a few members of the committee. And we're going to plug now and throughout. We hope that the work that they're doing, which we truly, really appreciate, inspires other agencies to both take advantage of those resources, but also to join our efforts and join the committee. We're always taking volunteers, and if you're interested in volunteering, please do reach out to either Alina or myself or directly to one of the Co-Chairs of the committees. Great. Thanks very much, Bobby. I want to just second that plug. We definitely need more volunteers. During the course of our meeting today, we will pause and check in to see if there are any questions from our agency for colleagues that come and be a chat. We are simultaneously live streaming today's meeting of the NARA YouTube channel, and we will be monitoring the chat functions both on WebEx and YouTube. So please chat any questions you may have. You'll see the slide that we have up that says chat to all panelists to ensure that comments are seen by our moderators. That's very important. Bobby, over to you. Thank you, Alina. As we have in the past, we will reserve time at the end of today's session for public comments. We'll be opening the telephone lines at the end of our meeting for the last 15 minutes for any oral questions or comments from the public. We ask out of consideration to others and the time that you please limit your comments to three minutes. And once your three minutes has expired, we'll let you know so that we can move on to the next commentator. We're monitoring the chat on WebEx and on the NARA YouTube channel and we'll read out any appropriate questions or comments you receive from the public. Alina. Thanks. We have received several written comments and submissions in advance of today's meeting. We have reviewed all of them carefully and evaluated them prior to posting. 9 of them to ensure they satisfy our posting policy on public comments. So I want to invite everyone to look at our website archives.gov forward slash. And go to the chief officers console link on the left hand side. And there you can see the comments that have been posted. We posted these public comments after remediating them to ensure that they are compliant with section 5 away of the rehabilitation act. I also want to know that the chat function in WebEx or the NARA YouTube channel is not the proper form to submit extensive public comments. You may submit public comments at any time by emailing us at OGIS open meeting all one word at NARA.gov and we will consider posting them to the OGIS website. The chat function on both platforms should be used to ask clarifying questions or provide brief comments or questions that we will consider really out loud at the end of today's meeting. Finally, a reminder that the council meeting is not the appropriate venue for concerns about individual FOIA requests or issues. If you need OGIS assistance, you may request it by emailing us at OGIS at NARA.gov. At this time, I would like to introduce Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero. David, over to you. We may proceed. You are unmuted. Can you hear me now? Yes, so we can hear you. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. Greetings from National Archives flagship building in Washington, D.C., which sits on the ancestral lands of the Koch Tanks people. No, it's weird. The speaker, you can kind of hear it from my position. Are you hearing an echo? No, so you may proceed. We can hear you. It's hard to believe that we're 20 months into the COVID-19 pandemic, which has challenged us all in ways which were hardly imaginable when the Chief FOIA Officers Council was established by the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016. While the council was created five years ago, it was the Open Government Act of 2007 that established the role of Chief FOIA officer. Mandating that each agency designated a senior official to oversee and ensure FOIA compliance and efficiency. Here at the National Archives, that person is our general counsel, Gary Amstern. Like many Chief FOIA officers across the government, Gary has faced enormous and unique challenges since the pandemic began in March 2020. In the National Archives and Records Administration, a large percentage of FOIA requests we receive seek access to records that exist in paper. The vast majority of them are cover records created by executive branch agencies in the White House, deemed to permanent and transferred to the legal custody of the National Archives. The pandemic forced full or partial closure of all of our offices that process FOIA requests. The National Personnel Records Center, although we had to reduce our onset capacity, we never fully closed, continuing to process emergency requests from veterans. NPRC started to ramp up its staff and they needed to address the backlog of FOIA requests and recently began operating around the clock to ensure veterans and their families get records they need for medical treatment, burials, and other services. Despite those unprecedented challenges, I'm proud of the FOIA work accomplished during the pandemic at the Gary's leadership as a FOIA officer. The National Archives suggested staff work priorities, the best position these offices to continue to facilitate access to NARA's records, and to that end, some of the staff in these offices were issued laptops and given access to additional software to allow them to conduct searches and complete redactions where possible. The archival FOIA processing offices focused on identifying records, preparing files, and creating descriptions for records of great public interest that had previously been available only in paper format for access through the National Archives catalog. Staff in these offices also spent time updating or creating processing guidance. We at the National Archives acknowledge that closure of federal records centers to the circumstances well beyond our control has affected FOIA programs throughout the government, even as FRC staff have responded to emergency requests for records throughout the pandemic. I appreciate your patience during these unprecedented times, and I'm pleased to report that our centers are gradually resuming operations based on local public health conditions and specific safety criteria. Without much to do, the Chief FOIA Officers Council, a happy fifth anniversary. I look forward to hearing reports today from the Technology Committee and the Committee on Cross Agency Collaboration and Innovation. The important work above committees ties directly to the statutory mandate that the Chief FOIA officer of each agency monitor for implementation and ensure efficient compliance. Before I turn the meeting back over to Bobby, I invite you to join me tomorrow afternoon, Thursday, November 18th at 5 p.m. each of time for a conversation between law professor Margaret Welker, former committee member FOIA Advisory Committee member, and current FOIA Advisory Committee member Tom Sussman about Professor Clark's new book, Saving the Freedom of Information Act. I look forward to an interesting, rich discussion, and I hope you will join us. Details are available on the events calendar at r-counters.com. Thank you, and back to you, Bobby. Thank you so much, David. Very much. Appreciate all your support for the Council. At this time, I'd like to welcome, and we've had some technical difficulties, hopefully this works, but we'd like to welcome the Associate Attorney General of the United States, and I'm very excited to have her provide us welcoming remarks. Thank you, Bobby. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for today's Chief FOIA Officers Council meeting. On behalf of the Department of Justice, I'd like to welcome all of the Chief FOIA Officers and agency FOIA officials to our fall FOIA Officer Council meeting. I also want to welcome the members of the public that are joining us today. At the Department of Justice, we take very seriously our responsibility of transparency and accountability through faithful compliance with the Freedom of Information Act. In his first week in office, Attorney General Garland recognized the importance of the mission of FOIA at the Department of Justice's annual Sunshine Week event. The Attorney General noted that without accountability, democracy is impossible, and democratic accountability requires the kind of transparency that FOIA makes possible. More than 55 years ago, the Freedom of Information Act has been an important tool for keeping the federal government open and accountable. The Supreme Court explains that the basic purpose of FOIA is to ensure an informed citizenry vital to the functioning of a democratic society needed to check against corruption and to hold the governed accountable to the governed. As someone who has utilized FOIA in my own prior role outside of government, I know how important the act is for government accountability. At its core, FOIA is about public trust, trust that those who are charged with faithfully executing the laws are in fact doing so with integrity and in the public's interest. Fulfilling the goals of the FOIA is not an easy task, as many of you know best, and COVID only made that even harder. The U.S. government received in processes over 700,000 FOIA requests every year, many involving multifaceted searches, consultations and complex line-by-line reviews of large number of documents. FOIA work is often very difficult and time-intensive. And finding the balance between FOIA's presumption of disclosure while also upholding legal guardrails for the protection of sensitive interests such as our national security, individual personal privacy and law enforcement is also very challenging. And that's what the law requires for us to lift up and protect a person's ability to seek information from the U.S. government while also ensuring that guardrails to protect the public interest are maintained. As many of you who have worked in FOIA over the years know, the department has long held that FOIA is everyone's responsibility. And I want to thank all of the FOIA professionals who work tirelessly day in and day out to meet their agency's disclosure obligations. The key to the success of any agency FOIA program is the leadership you provide. The law itself recognizes the importance of leadership support by designating a chief FOIA officer at each agency that is at the assistant secretary or equivalent level. And I take great pride in serving as the Department of Justice's chief FOIA officer. As chief FOIA officers, we must all continually review all aspects of our respective agency's FOIA administration to ensure that records are released lawfully and efficiently. As I mentioned, the day-to-day work in administering the FOIA is often not easy. And agency FOIA professionals deserve our support to meet these challenges. It's also important that we continue to remind agency program personnel outside the FOIA office of their critical role in making sure the agency's FOIA obligations are fully and timely met. The Department of Justice is committed to serving as a resource and providing counsel to your agency in the advancement of FOIA administration. In just a few minutes, Bobby will be providing updates on several important initiatives that the—that OIP has been working on that will benefit your agency's FOIA administration. He'll be discussing new reporting requirements and tools, items that encourages agencies to offer additional substantive FOIA training and establish standard operating procedures, and the application of the deliberative process exemption. We're also looking forward to releasing new standardized e-learning trainings this year. Finally, as you know, we are continuing to build on the functionality of FOIA.gov. The development of centralized search capability across agencies is going to greatly enhance the public's ability to find the information that they're seeking. We'll also hear about the work of two committees established by the Council to address technology resources administering the FOIA virtually and professional development. I want to especially thank the committee members for their dedication to FOIA and their hard work on these issues. Thank you again for all you do as chief FOIA officers to ensure that we have an accountable democracy and transparent government that works for the public interest. Thank you. Thank you so much, either for the kind words and continuous support for the departments and agencies FOIA administration. All right. I think next we'll move on to—we have some updates. I have some updates from OIP. So we'll go to the next slide. And we can skip this slide and go to the next one. Thank you. So a number—a few updates I wanted to provide and some initiatives that we're excited about. We'll discuss new reporting requirements and tools. It recently issued guidance since our last chief FOIA officer council meeting and some updates on new resources and updates to FOIA.gov. Next slide. First, as you all know, agency annual FOIA reports, it's that time of year again. And agencies have been working—and you've been working on your annual FOIA reports. Those were due to OIP by November 15, just a couple days ago. We appreciate all the effort that you're putting into compiling this data, which is really important in shedding transparency on the FOIA itself, the administration of the FOIA itself. If your agency has not submitted your data, please do so as soon as you can. And if you're having trouble, please do reach out to OIP's compliance team. All agency annual FOIA reports are required to be posted by March 1 of this year. So we want to make sure that you are on track and your data is appropriately validated to meet that deadline. We did, and as you know, a significant resource in compiling and producing your annual FOIA report is the Department of Justice annual FOIA report handbook available on the department's website. We did update the handbook due to enhancements to the annual FOIA report tool, which hopefully you'll find helpful in submitting your report, but also in some of the substantive areas. One substantive area specific, on pages 60 to 62, we updated the guidance on how agencies should report their subsection 18 proactive disclosures. We did this after engagement with GAO. And specifically, we wanted to emphasize that the way that they should be reported are by the number of records that are posted that are subject to A2 online, as opposed to pages. This is specifically drawn from the statutes language. We can recognize that that is difficult because records are posted in a variety of different ways. And so how you can account for a record for purposes of reporting this might be challenging depending on how it's posted, whether it's a PDF or it's laid on the website on HTML. It's a video. It's a spreadsheet. It's a response. It's a frequently requested record, which may in itself has multiple records, but it's one posting. And so what we've done is we've laid out a number of these examples and how agencies should report them, count them in terms of each of those examples. So hopefully that will make it easier for agencies to account for this reporting requirement, but also will help us have more consistency across agencies on how this data is reported. Next slide. Of course, the one of the other three reports that agencies are obligated to complete during the year is the 20 is the chief FOIA officer report. And we issued the 22 chief FOIA officer report guidelines. Deadlines for those for agencies that receive more than 50 requests prior fiscal year there. We ask that they provide their draft report to OIP by January 10. Agencies that receive 50 requests or less are not required to report, but are encouraged to report if there's additional information that would provide context to what's being reported in their annual report. And we ask that those draft reports be provided to OIP by February 11. This all leading to all agencies required to leading for all agencies to be required to post their final chief FOIA officer reports on March 14, 2022. Next slide. And the 2022 chief FOIA officer report guidelines continue to focus on the 5 key is the FOIA administration we focused on in the past, applying a presumption of openness and administering the FOIA, ensuring that their effective systems in place for responding to requests. The use of proactive disclosures, increasing the use of technology, and of course, improving timeliness and reducing backlogs. Next slide. As we've done in the past every year, based off of feedback from the public and from agencies and new initiatives in our engagement, we've modified or added new questions to the chief FOIA officer report. Just to highlight some of the new questions for this year, recognizing the importance of records management, we've added a question regarding records management training for FOIA professionals, emphasized requests or outreach by modifying that question. And also recognizing as the associate mentioned that for everyone's responsibility that non FOIA professionals are receiving briefings and trainings, and in particular senior leaders are aware of their FOIA obligations. Standardized operating procedures. We're asking more specific questions about that. Continuing to survey agencies on first party requests and alternative access to technology and really focus this year on the core responsibilities in the statute for chief FOIA officers for reviewing their programs to ensure that they have adequate technology and resources to meet the needs of their FOIA administration. We modified questions to focus on A2 proactive disclosures. And also, we're continuing to monitor how agencies have been impacted by COVID-19 on reducing their backlogs and effectively administering their FOIA administration. Finally, we've always had a question in the final part of the chief FOIA officer report for reducing backlog and backlog reduction plans. This year we're asking for a little bit more than we have in the past for agencies to detail about what their backlog reduction plans are and in particular how they develop them. Next slide. Finally, the quarterly FOIA report, as you know, agencies have for a long time now in addition to the annual FOIA report and the chief FOIA support provided for a number of key FOIA statistics on a quarterly basis. The number of requests received, processed in the process at the agency, the number of requests in the backlog, and the agency's status of their 10 oldest requests. Well, we issued new guidance recently and we're excited to have launched this that allows you to use a new tool directly on FOIA.gov and providing this data to us and on the website much more efficiently and effectively. So as in the past where you may have had to involve your CIO team now as the agency FOIA.gov manager at your office can directly put this data in FOIA.gov through their account and it will appear on FOIA.gov in that way. So we're excited to have that out there to lessen the burden, this reporting burden on agencies. Next slide. But also the new tool has allowed us to streamline the public and improve the public-facing side of this data. Now, requesters, agencies and the public can view this quarterly data just like they can view the ANOFOIA report. And significantly moving forward now, we're able to retain this data not just for the current fiscal year, but historically. So over time, agencies, the public requesters can look to see historically how agencies have done in a certain quarter. Not in just that fiscal year, but compared to other fiscal years. Next slide. So since our last meeting, we've had a couple of formal guidance articles that have been issued by OIP and I just want to touch on those and bring everyone's attention to them. As we've done in prior years after reviewing your chief FOIA officer reports, we conduct an assessment. And last year issued guidance for further improvement based off of the chief FOIA officer reports in our assessments. This guidance highlights the importance of substantive FOIA training. But as the associate mentioned, we recognize that FOIA is everyone's responsibilities. Also training and briefing all agency program personnel. Including senior leadership on FOIA and FOIA's, the obligations of FOIA to your agency. One thing we've noted we've now from the past couple of years now to, you know, in looking backwards have seen as the impact of COVID-19, of course, was significant for a lot of agencies at the beginning. But it also has pushed a lot of us to improve processes and we've mitigated some of those challenges with improved processes, workflows and technology. So taking those lessons learned, we want to encourage agencies to plan ahead and build on those. We work towards reducing backlogs and processing times. Also, emphasizing the importance of standard operating procedures. This was a question that we had in the chief FOIA officer report and a lot of agencies have and are various types of standard operating procedures, which is really important for ensuring not just consistency and the quality of FOIA review and production, but also retaining institutional knowledge, particularly for those agencies that have smaller FOIA offices where turnover could be significant. So we want to continue to encourage standard operating procedures, both having them and updating them regularly and we're asking you about that in the chief FOIA officer report again. And if any agency would like to discuss their standard operating procedures or how the best put together one and update it, we're happy to work with agencies on this as well. And of course, agencies were encouraged to review their FOIA regulations and ensure that they are up to date as well. Next slide. And as you know, last March, the Supreme Court issued an opinion in U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services vs. Sierra Club, which examined exemption five of the FOIA and the deliver process privilege. I've spoken about the case in prior meeting, so I won't get into the details of the case, but I just wanted to emphasize the guidance, which emphasizes two key takeaways from the decision. The court did not modify the standard exemption five, but it did, as I said mentioned, highlight two key elements of consideration when determining whether something, a record is pre-decisional. First, the court recognized that a record is not final simply because it's the last version of something and nothing else follows it. The key consideration in determining whether a record is final is whether it is final, it is the final decision that the agency has settled on. And second, when determining whether a position is the final decision that the agency has settled on, we look to the legal consequences of that record and not any practical impact or effect it had on the agency's decision making. So key to that is that the agency itself treated that record as a final decision with legal effect. So those are the two key considerations of whether a record is pre-decisional that the Supreme Court emphasized in the Sierra Club case and two key takeaways from our guidance, which is available on OIP's website. Next slide. We're also excited to talk about FOIA.gov. We have a lot of exciting initiatives around FOIA.gov improving the functionality of the site. One of the projects that we've been working on with GSS 10x team, which we completed the first two phases, was a proposal to investigate a centralized search capability where requesters can search for records on agency website and FOIA libraries from a central place without having to go to individual websites and FOIA libraries. We hope that this is going to assist requesters in getting information that is already available more easily without having to make a request or assist in making more targeted requests that are easier to process. We have been approved and so we're excited here at OIP and for the government. For phase three, where we're going to now work with GSA on the idea that we have and how we can accomplish this and prototype it, probably with a small group of agencies. So we'll be looking for some volunteers for the prototype as we build towards the final product, which will be the government-wide FOIA library on FOIA.gov. Next slide. Of course, key to all of this has been the interoperability between agencies FOIA's program systems and FOIA.gov. As you know, DOJ and OMB issued guidance on achieving interoperability in FOIA.gov when the National FOIA was established and launched in February of 2019. And essentially there's two ways of interoperability. Agencies with automated systems were required to become interoperable by the end of fiscal year 21, which was just past October. And agencies with non-using an API, agencies with non-automated solutions were required to become interoperable through their agency account by receiving structured emails from FOIA.gov of requests submitted by requesters. We're really excited that the vast majority of agencies have achieved interoperability and met the guidance that we issued. And there are just some small group of agencies that we're still working with that we needed a little bit more time with. And so we appreciate agencies work on this and your patients as we work with you to make sure you're linked up to FOIA.gov. And so we'll continue to work to make sure agencies that are interoperable, fully interoperable, and look forward to building on this interoperability in the future, which I think brings me to my next slide. Next slide. So one of the other things that we've done is, and talking about building on the interoperability that now we have, is engaged AT&F, and we've been working with AT&F over the past three months, OIP, on discovery and a path analysis for the additional functionality that should be developed or pursued next. And we did extensive interviews with agencies and the public. If you are one of the agencies or a member of the public that met with us, I wanted to, again, thank you. Your feedback was very valuable and very helpful for us to determine the path for FOIA.gov. Some of the things that we considered are an improvement or additional functionality that would assist aid requesters on getting to the right record or right agency from FOIA.gov. I call it like a FOIA wizard or like a turbo tax for FOIA. And we found that there's a lot of great value there. We looked into status, also the 10X projects. And we're just wrapping it up, but looking at this as what can we do now? Immediately, some low weight design updates, as well as what we can do in the short term and what we should do more long term. So we look forward to finishing this and then building on it and we'll share our findings and next developments going forward. Before we move on, I don't have a slide on this. Another update for FOIA.gov that we are looking forward to is adding a web presence for the chief FOIA officer council on the site. As you know, FOIA.gov is the central site for government-wide FOIA administration. And so we wanted to increase our web presence. And so we look forward to hopefully by next meeting, either having launched that or demo it. And so stay tuned for that. Next slide. Finally, some forthcoming resources that we are excited that we'll launch this year. We just started our initiative of developing new eLearning training courses that will be available to all of you, your agencies, to load into your eLearning platforms. And hopefully we're trying to develop a public version that we know, the same version, but a public way of also including our websites. But we're focusing on three different trainings, so there'll be three separate training modules. One will be a brief training module for senior executives and their unique role in FOIA administration. Another will be a module focused more like a 30, 45 minute module focused on all agency personnel. And then finally, a much more in-depth two to three hour course that goes over all of the procedural and exemption requirements for FOIA professionals. So we hope that this will be an easy and a good way of providing consistent FOIA training to all members of your workforce. As I said, FOIA is everyone's responsibility and we hope that this will help your agencies in raising both awareness and then having substantive FOIA training for your FOIA professionals. And we hope to issue this sooner, but we're still working on and will issue this year our FOIA self-assessment toolkit. Next slide. Finally, as you wrap up, I just wanted to make raise awareness to the other resources that were continued update that are available to you. The guide to the FOIA was fully updated in 2019. We'll have another full update done this year. We updated on a rolling basis based off a two-year cycle. But we're also continuously and on a regular basis updating our summaries of court decisions, which you should supplement with the guide for any new decisions that come out before a certain guide chapter has been updated. Of course, we're always available for training, so if your agency needs specific training, we are happy to accommodate that. As in addition to the established training, government-wide training that we provide. And we continue to be here to provide individual guidance. So if your agency has any questions, please do reach out to us on our FOIA counselor service line, 202514 FOIA. Next slide. I will, since I'll pause if there's any questions, maybe just a minute. But I think since we're a little bit behind, maybe I'll just then pass it over to you, Elena. Okay. Thanks, Bobby. I'll try to get us back on track. Some really great updates. Thanks. And it's exciting to hear the FOIA guide is getting updated too. That's a great resource. Next slide, please. And another next slide. So here come our updates. I wanted to brief you on some activities that we've been engaged in since the last time we met in April of this year. First, I wanted to talk a little bit about our dispute resolution program, which in which we do not dictate solutions or tell agencies they have to turn over records. We sometimes joke we are not the FOIA police. We cannot write tickets for non-compliance or failure to participate in our communication process. Our mediation services are completely voluntary and we have had both agencies and requesters participate or declined to participate. Most often we act as a facilitator to help agencies and requesters better understand the issues and the other parties position. The statute specifically says our mediation services are a non-exclusive alternative to litigation. And we try to prevent litigation by explaining the FOIA process, including how a search was conducted or an explanation of the records withheld under exemption cited. There's nothing in the statute that prevents a request from filing a suit after going through our mediation process. Once the case is on litigation, we do not get involved. A number of professors have told us that even if they were not successful in our mediation process, they have at least understood more about the information that was being withheld and understood more about the agency's position. So there is definitely a lot of value to what we do. I had some stats that I'm displaying here on the slide. I just wanted to share with you that from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2021, we experienced a 4% increase in the cases we logged in. We experienced a small increase in the number of cases closed, but we kept up. So I'm very proud of our mediation team for doing that despite the challenges of the pandemic. We were able to keep our backlog down and fairly steady and did fiscal year 2020 with 27 cases in our backlog and 30 cases in our backlog fiscal year 2021. And that's still significantly down from a backlog of 153 cases that we had in fiscal year 2019. Also, we were able to close all of our cases pending from fiscal year 2020 this past year. And we shrunk the age of our oldest complex case with the oldest now pending at 237 days. Next slide please. I would like to take this opportunity to revisit an important topic, estimated days of completion, EDCs. In 2019 and early 2020, I just conducted an assessment of EDCs that we were finishing just as the pandemic moved operations from government offices to homes. As we noted when we released the assessment in March 2020 months of research and review of hundreds of cases wet into our report. And the report did not reflect the pandemic's challenges of physical distancing from computers and record systems that came after March 2020. Despite the timing, I would just believe that the topic was important enough to release our assessment in March of 2020, particularly since we knew that regardless of the pandemic's effects or clusters, we're still entitled to EDCs. We recognize that in the early days of the pandemic, our assessment are accompanying advisory opinion and FOIA ombuds observer package may have been lost in the shuffle. But the issue of EDCs has only become more relevant in the, with the passage of time. And we have seen that through the requests which have come to our attention this past fiscal year. In our role as the FOIA ombudsman, we saw the number of requests for OGIS assistance involving delays jumped 73% in fiscal year 2021. That in itself may not be surprising given the extraordinary times we have been experiencing for the last 20 months. But what was more surprising to us is that for 85% of these requests for our assistance involving delays, a requester asked for and was unable to obtain an easy. Long delays are understandable in the COVID-19 environment, particularly with regard to requests for paper records that are stored, for example, in our federal record centers or that are classified. Agencies must provide EDCs upon request to comply with the FOIA statute. And it's important to note that an estimated date of completion is just that, an estimate, not a guarantee that the agency will respond or will have responded by that date. And EDCs are subject to change and can be adjusted over time. In our role as the FOIA ombudsman, we have observed that the EDC requirement and the law sparks significant frustration among requesters and federal agencies. FOIA requesters who are unable to obtain EDCs or in some cases any information whatsoever from agencies about the status of their request frequently contact OGIS for assistance. Likewise, frustrated FOIA processors have told us about the challenges of providing requesters with EDCs, particularly when faced with growing backlogs. More than half of FOIA processors as part of eight OGIS assessments of agency FOIA programs said that they sometimes or rarely or never provide EDCs when requested. So we're taking this opportunity today to call your attention to our March 2020 compliance assessment, advisory opinion, FOIA Ombuds Observer package. We noted in our advisory opinion that if a FOIA requester is able to establish that an agency has a pattern or a practice of failing to provide EDCs, a court may find that the agency has violated the FOIA. And we hope that the information is provided in these documents will assist FOIA programs in complying with the EDC requirement. Our recommendations include that agencies should ensure that online tools that provide EDCs function properly provide the most up to date information possible and provide contact information for the FOIA program. And the agencies should use average processing times for simple and complex requests to help determine EDCs. Next slide please. Our fourth recommendation is where you, chief FOIA officers and FOIA professionals out there watching us today come in and where I ask you for your help. We recommended that chief FOIA officers should ensure that FOIA professionals have the necessary resources to provide EDCs to FOIA requesters. If necessary, chief FOIA officers should use their statutory authority to recommend to the head of the agency adjustments to agency FOIA practices, policies, personnel, technology and funding. As we said in our assessment, support from agency leadership is crucial to their success in meeting FOIA statutory requirements, including providing EDCs upon request. Chief FOIA officers who are required under FOIA to support efficient and appropriate compliance with FOIA and recommended improvements to implementation are in the best position to ensure such support. Please spend some time in the next several weeks in this space to ensure that your agencies are providing EDCs upon request and if they are not, reviewing changes to ensure mutual compliance. Next slide please. Since 2014, OGIS has been working closely with the archivist in the United States to improve the administration of FOIA through the work of the FOIA advisory committee, which I chair and which Bobby also sits on as member. The committee brings together members of the FOIA community from inside and outside of government to collaboratively identify the greatest challenges in the administration of FOIA and develop recommendations for and suggest best practices to the archivist. We have had three complete terms of the committee thus far. Three terms have produced a total of 30 recommendations and over 35 best practices. They cover a broad range of topics all designed to improve the FOIA process and access to government documents. On this slide, they are grouped by general topics. They are currently in the fourth term of the committee 2020 through 2022 and the four formed subcommittees, legislation, process, technology, and classification have been meeting on a regular basis. Some of the subcommittees have further broken down into working groups, some of which stand more than one subcommittee and they are considering a broad range of topics including FOIA fees, design and authority of OGIS, also known as reimagining OGIS, one of my favorite topics, agency FOIA program funding, first party requests. I'll touch on that briefly a little bit later on as well, clarity and consistency of processing. And some members are also taking a look at past committee recommendations to see whether any of them could be amplified or refined including training, section 508 compliance, e-discovery, and online databases for commonly requested records. I'm excited to report that current committee has already delivered to the archivist the 31st recommendation. On precedented in the past, all of the recommendations were at the end of the term. This was midterm. The recommendation states that Congress should adopt rules or enact legislation to establish procedures for affecting public access to legislative branch records in the possession of congressional support offices and agencies modeled after those procedures contained in the FOIA. These should include requirements for proactive disclosure of certain information, procedures governing public records, requests for records, time limits for responding to requests, exemptions to be narrowly applied, and an appeal for many additional decision to deny access. Oh, just deliver the recommendation to the archivist after the committee's vote at its June 10, 2021 meeting. And our next step is one that we're currently working on. We're working out the best way for the archivist to convey that recommendation to Congress. So please stay tuned for that. Next slide, please. We have created a recommendation dashboard in order to keep track of the committee's work to date, which we update periodically. And I'm proud to report that thanks to OGIS's hard work, 10 recommendations have already been completed, 15 recommendations are in progress, and another six are pending action, meaning roll up our sleeves and start working on those as soon as we are able. And I just want to take a minute to thank Bobby and all of the staff at OIP. We've had an extremely collaborative relationship and bringing to fruition. Many of these advisory committee recommendations. And I'm very grateful for the partnership and look forward to continuing to do things along. So hopefully we can have all 31 recommendations completed one day. Next slide, please. So this past 6 months or so, since we last met from April of 2021, we have published 2 additional reports I wanted to highlight. One of the issue assessments that we published in August of this year represents a very successful collaboration among the FOIA advisory committee, OIP and OGIS. The committee recommended that OGIS and OIP asked agencies to identify common categories of records requested frequently under the FOIA and or a privacy act by or on behalf of individuals seeking records about themselves. This recommendation number 2020-14. To fill that recommendation, OIP asked agencies that received more than 50 FOIA requests in fiscal year 2019 to answer the following question in their 2021 Chief FOIA officer reports. Does your agency frequently receive common categories of first party requests? If so, please describe the types of requests and if your agency has explored establishing alternative means of access to these records outside of the FOIA process. OGIS reviewed these responses of 70 agencies that answered the question in their 2021 CFO reports and analyzed individual agency and component efforts regarding categories of information regarding the subject of first party requests and agency processes for responding to such requests. And we made 4 major findings which you can find in our report. I've linked it here. The first finding the majority of agencies that submitted CFO reports frequently received first party requests, not great talk, I suppose. The second finding is that first party requesters frequently request general categories of records maintained by most agencies. That was kind of interesting. So some of them are more routine requests for records that span many different agencies. A third finding is that first party requesters frequently seek access to unique records maintained by specific agencies. And the last finding was that sub agencies do provide alternative non FOIA means of access to first party records. Recognizing that there's no one size fits all approach to alternative processes for obtaining first party records. OGIS recommended that agencies examine closely all of the records that they generate, collect and or maintain and seek creative ways to provide non FOIA access to first party records whenever possible. OGIS also recommended that agencies use their websites to explain in plain language the steps requesters should take to obtain access to first party records. Finally, a note that a working group of the process subcommittee of the current term of the committee I referenced that earlier is studying the issue of first party requests to see whether additional recommendations may warrant it. Next slide please. For the fourth consecutive year we partnered with our colleagues in the Chief Records Officers Office to ask several questions in the Records Management Self Assessment, RMSA. Our partnership with the Crows Office has allowed us to expand our review of agency FOIA policies and procedures by asking targeted questions that help us identify potential compliance issues that merit further exploration. Results from several RMSA surveys have provided us with the foundation for additional OGIS assessments and they're all available on our website. The COVID-19 pandemic's effects on FOIA processing and the use of e-discovery are among the topics in our latest report. The RMSA survey for 2020 administered to agency records officers between January and March of 2021 by Norris Crows Office included 7 key questions regarding FOIA administration. Key results highlighted in this assessment include the following, nearly half of all respondents, 49% reported that the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted their agency's ability to respond to FOIA requests. A majority of respondents, 80%, whose FOIA programs were disrupted reported that their agency's paper records were inaccessible due to office closures. One year and a half, 46%, reported that agency staff were not available to search for records. A majority of respondents, 72%, reported that their agencies worked directly with requesters to tailor their requests for more efficient processing during the pandemic. A majority of respondents, again, 72%, reported that their agencies used e-discovery tools to search for records when responding to FOIA and or legal discovery. Of the agencies that reported using e-discovery tools, a significant majority, 91%, reported that their agencies used e-discovery tools for FOIA responses involving requests for e-mail records. Of the respondents who reported that their agencies do not use e-discovery tools to search for records, roughly half reported that such tools are not available at their agencies. A majority of respondents, 51%, reported that their agency records officer and FOIA officer worked together on information technology requirements that benefit both programs. And half, 50%, reported that their training programs addressed the importance in relationship between FOIA and records management. That's something that OGIS strives to underline as often as possible, that important relationship. So I encourage all of you to take a look at our two reports when you have a chance. Next slide, please. I wanted to highlight two upcoming events that I hope you can all join us for. The first is actually tomorrow. The Archivist has already spoken about it. I wanted to provide the NARA YouTube link. Please join us as Professor Margaret Cuoco, who is a former advisory FOIA advisory committee member, is going to be interviewed by current FOIA advisory committee member, Tom Sussman, on her new book called, Saving the Freedom of Information Act. I have included that link to the NARA YouTube live stream for the event, and join us. Also, the next full FOIA advisory committee meeting will be taking place on Thursday, December 9th, starting at 10 a.m. We don't have an event right or NARA YouTube information yet, but please visit our website and we will have more information as we get closer to that date. Next slide, please. So I'm very excited to report that we are growing our compliance team. Please check out USA Jobs for our GS13 management and program at an analyst position. It opened earlier this week on November 15th and closes November 23rd. I've included a link there for it. And please tell all of your friends and the federal family about it and encourage everyone to apply. So we're very excited about the possibility of some great applicants that I'm sure they're going to get. Next slide, please. So I also had a slide for questions, but I'm looking at my time and I think we're actually managing to catch up, Bobby. So I think we're getting back on track. I believe that next up we're going to turn it over to our two committees to start giving reports. And I'm checking in to see if we've got our co-cathy co-chairs on deck. I do just start presenting. Hi, Mike. Hello. Okay, so I don't know if your co-chair is available, but I will just pause for a second. I don't see any questions or anyone pinging me that there are any burning questions right now. So I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Mike to go ahead and turn and tell us about what's going on in your committee. Great. Thank you, Alina so much. Just making sure I'm not on mute, since that seems to be the latest craze with all these meetings. Can you hear me now, guys? Now more appropriate than ever when using the commercials. But my name is Mike Bell, and I'm one of the co-chairs of the committee on cross-agency collaboration and innovation. My co-chair is Abhi Mosheim of CPSC. She should be addressing you at the end of our committee's presentation today. In my day job, I'm the FOIA officer for the Office of the Secretary of Transportation. Luckily, transportation issues haven't been in the news much lately, so I've had plenty of time to devote to the committee. But all joking aside, I would like to point out that all the members on this committee and the technology committee all have day jobs that they are spending extra time on for these committees. Really, because they want to give a little extra to improve the FOIA process. As Professor Cuoco's book says, it may need some fixing, and these committees have gotten together with people giving up their own time to try to help out a little bit. So, next slide, please. Okay, Koukaki was first announced actually last year at the October 2020, Chief FOIA officer council meeting. And over the next few months after that, we received volunteers from all over the government. I think we're up to 13 federal agencies right now, and we're still receiving new members even up through last week. So, if anyone wants to join or they know someone in their office who might be interested, please just contact us or OGIS and we would be glad to take on more members. Our committee first met back in March of this year. And the first order of business was to come up with a better acronym than Koukaki. But actually, what happened was that student grew on us and the phrase went from awkward to actually a little beloved. So we've stuck with Koukaki. But when I took a look at what we've done so far, we could almost call ourselves, you know, the build on better committee. You know, that might be a little derivative at this point. But we really have been building on the work of a lot of other offices committees just to try to improve and spread what's been going on in the FOIA world. The committee started out first building on the work of the 2018 2020 FOIA advisory committee, especially the recommendation number 16, which is sort of our founding precept. Basically, the committee asked the chief FOIA officer council not to commit a committee quote for cross agency collaboration and innovation. And that's where we got the name Koukaki. And basically the recommendation had three main points. And you'll see as we get into our subcommittees, we have subcommittees that mesh pretty well with the three main recommendations. The first part of that recommendation 16 was a wanted to research and propose a cross agency grant program and other revenue resources. We especially wanted to focus on small agency offices because they sometimes don't get the benefits of economies of scale. That's on the larger ones do. One of the other recommendations required that recommendation was to promote initiatives for a clear career project for FOIA professionals. And we got the government information specialist job series. And we just want to try to recruit and retain the best people in this career field. So we have a subcommittee for that. And then the final part of the recommendation was to try to align agency resources with a commitment to transparency. And that really got our committees started. But however, we've also been building on the chief way officer technology committee. You're going to be hearing from them shortly, hopefully. And just doing all the amazing things that they've been doing. And then finally, we've been also building on all the hard work that the FOIA offices around the government have done over the last 20 months or so during this pandemic. We have a committee for that as subcommittee for that as well, that we're trying to build on what's been accomplished for what seems like forever, but it's only been 20 months. Next slide please. Yeah, and like I said, to accomplish this, we have three subcommittees. We're going to be hearing from each of them in turn shortly. We're not going to spoil their presentations, but you can see their main themes or goals right on the slide here. For the GIS subcommittee, they want to review and promote initiatives for career trajectories for FOIA professionals. As I said, recruit and retain. We also want to keep the best people because sometimes people will leave the career field and we want to try to find a way to reward them and motivate them to stay in this field. Then we have the pandemic FOIA pandemic virtual FOIA office subcommittee. And as everyone knows, FOIA offices and everyone has been forced to adjust over this last 20 months. And we're going to have to adjust again now that we're going back to the office soon. We have to merge the virtual FOIA office with the office office. And then finally we have the FOIA resources subcommittee. We just want to look at and share what resources are out there, what can we take advantage of, and then just how to use it. So all three of these subcommittees right now gathering information and thinking of ways to get that information out to federal agencies. And we all know that there's a lot of good information, a lot of good processes out there. But we also know it's also tough to get that information through the bureaucracy to all the employees who really need it. And the committee is really looking out for a true long lasting cross-agency collaboration. If this committee were to simply compile a bunch of solutions, pass them on in some kind of report, and then disband, Kerkaki would be a failure then because we want to create a permanent infrastructure to access and share all the good ideas and information that's out there. So now I'd like to go ahead and turn it over to our subcommittees and hear some of the good ideas that they've come up with so far. And we'd like to start with the government information services professionalism subcommittee. Thank you. Hi, good morning everybody. Next slide please. Next slide please. My name is Madeline Van Nostrand, the co-chair of the GIS professionalization subcommittee. Today I'm going to go over the purpose of our subcommittee and our long term objectives. Then I'll hand it over to Nicole Rimenter who will discuss where our subcommittee is now and our plan deliverable. The GIS professionalization subcommittee was assigned to review and promote initiatives for clear career trajectories for FOIA professionals, building on the government information specialist job series, and in coordination with existing agency efforts. Before I go into more details in our subcommittee, I'd like to briefly outline the history of the GIS job series. The government information specialist, or GIS for short, was a position created in 2012 by the Office of Personnel Management as the 306 job series. OPM largely left it up to agencies how to implement the new job series. The Obama administration recognized that this new job series elevated the importance of the work performed by those in the federal government who are responsible for realizing the president's vision of an open and transparent government. This subcommittee aims to examine how the GIS job series can continue to be elevated. This subcommittee will examine future cross agency support necessary for GIS career development and advancement and will inform the development of performance standards for the GIS job series. Next slide please. Through cross agency collaboration, this subcommittee will specifically review the following areas, recruitment strategies, hiring and retention strategies, uniform pay scale assignments and key competencies for civil servants, and professional certification testing. Additional areas may be examined if identified by the research and data gathering stages. That's all I have for today. Now over to Nicole. Thank you. Thanks so much, Madeline. Good morning. My name is Nicole, mentor. I am an attorney advisor with the national FOIA office at the environmental protection agency and co chair of the GIS professionalization subcommittee. Recommendation 16 from the FOIA advisory committee's 2020 term report gave us some very important goals and highlighted the importance of supporting FOIA professionals and the government information specialist series. To that end, the submit subcommittee has recognized that our eventually proposed solution should be data driven. Our initial efforts aim to investigate the underlying obstacles and their effects on GIS career development and mobility in both the short and long terms. We are currently developing a survey of FOIA professionals have interviewed and will continue interviews of FOIA leaders and experts. All of these efforts support our information and data gathering necessary to develop a thoroughly developed white paper that the subcommittee will present to the co khaki committee and she FOIA officers council. This white paper will propose recommendations for next steps for the subcommittee that will contribute to the co khakis implementation of recommendation 16. That is our report on the progress of the community. Thank you all for your time and attention and next slide. Morning. My name is Shantae family and I'm the chair of the pandemic virtual FOIA offices subcommittee. Next slide please. The pandemic virtual FOIA offices subcommittee was created basically to analyze and review the capability of the FOIA professionals. The FOIA professional professionals to work in a virtual location during the pandemic. So we will be working to gather the lessons learned and best practices for teleworking. Not only during the pandemic, but we also want to build on what OIP has done. I know that GAO is also working this issue as well. So we want to go ahead and build upon that to make sure that we can sustain this post COVID as well. Next slide please. Long term. What we'll do is we will create a the lessons learned from teleworking and we'll make recommendations as to what the best practices are that we have already examined during COVID. The progress that we have made is we're now framing our questions now to create the survey. We want to compile answers as to what the agencies have learned as far as technology wise. How hard it was to, you know, move from an in office environment to a virtual environment. So we are planning to publish a list of the best practices, what was learned, and we're going to focus on the tactics, the techniques and procedures that were effective and making the transition from the in office to a virtual office. But we also want to be able to sustain that post COVID. And that is all I have. Next slide please. Good morning everyone. I am Brandon Gaylord. I am the chair for the FOIA resources subcommittee and I'm also the FOIA director and officer for HHS. Next slide please. The FOIA resources subcommittee is really focusing on three to four different areas. The first thing we want to do, we can actually really use your help on this is we're looking for the different types of resources out there. Specifically anything that would be outside of the usual FTE hiring process before we found a lot of agencies using some really good ideas, things like Tiger teams in the department offices, publishing areas like pathways, internships. And so we're learning a lot, but I think there's a lot more out there. So if you have things using your office that you found useful, please reach out to us and we'll definitely try to incorporate those. In our plan and we're also trying to compile and create reference materials that will be kind of a user guide to getting involved in some of these. So if you're looking to set up maybe an internship program for a certain part of your office, kind of helping you get the tools you need to start that process by following somebody who's already gone down that path before. We're looking to also identify opportunities where we can standardize our resources across government agencies. And again, kind of looking for that agency that's done something, done it well, and allowing them to kind of blaze that path for us and build out kind of the points. Yes, how they've done that. So the rest of us can just kind of draft on that. And we're looking to, we're still not quite sure how we want to post this and disseminate this information. But we do want to kind of be a reference source where you as a federal agency can go and see what's out there, what's available and choose the best path for you to go. And the last thing we're going to look at is identifying and highlighting resources that are already standardized. And as Mike mentioned, you know, a lot of smaller agencies out there don't have resources of other big agencies. So we're hoping that we'll be able to put some things out there that are already in place. And, you know, if you're a small two or three person shop, you know, and you can, you can just hop over and see what's already available. And this is something where, well, the federal resource or the four resources community is built mainly facing federal agencies. We think that the ultimate goal of this really is better customer service backlog reduction. That's still kind of the overarching mission here is to allow us to provide more resources and better resource, better user resources we have and diversify our resources to make sure that we're equipped for where four is going in the next five to 10 years. I will turn it over to Abbie who will wrap up the co-cafee presentation. Next slide, please. I thank you so much. I'm Abbie Mosheim. I'm the co-chair of co-cafee with Mike Bell and I'm also the consumer product safety commission's chief boy officer. And I want to thank Mike, Madeline, Shantae, Brandon, all of you for doing wonderful presentations and every member of the committee for all of the hard work that you're doing. We've come a long way this year, as you can see with all of the work that we're doing and the deliverables that we have in mind. And I just really appreciate each and every one of you. So just to wrap it up, we are three subcommittees, GIS pandemic and resources. We are working to improve our collaborative efforts across the federal government, examining the current state of the GIS profession with the goal of harmonizing recruitment, retention pay, and development of the career. And we're also taking lessons learned from the pandemic that we're currently in, but moving slowly out of to see how they apply to the future of FOIA offices in what will most likely be a mixed environment of virtual and in office work. And we're also reviewing the common resources that we have and uncovering existing needs in federal FOIA offices with a goal to standardize resources, improve access and efficiency. And with that all said, we could always use new members. So if anyone is interested in joining co-cafee, we would welcome you with open arms. We have a lot of great members with great ideas and we know that people out there have even more great ideas. So we'll put those ideas together and work to solve all of the challenges that are facing FOIA offices, which are really opportunities to improve. So thank you so, so much. Thank you for your presentation. I just want to echo the gratitude that Abby expressed for the work of all the committee members and all of you that presented today. Three topics that are at the core of any agency success in FOIA administration. So just wanted to reemphasize Abby's message, please reach out to us for participation or volunteers for the co-cafee. Next, I'd like to turn it over to our technology committee. I introduce our co-chairs, Michael Sarich and Eric Stein. Michael and Eric, over to you. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. Eric. Well, good morning. My name is Eric Stein. I'm one of the co-chairs of the technology committee and I'm going to turn it over to Mike for the opening comments. Next slide, please. Good morning. Thank you all. What a great presentation by Mike, Abby, and the co-cafee team. I'd be, it was really taken off and I'd be remiss if I didn't say that I'm really impressed with their work and their contributions to the community. The chief FOIA officers council tech committee was created in response to a need identified by the FOIA advisory committee. It seeks to bring members from across the FOIA and tech world together to understand the state of technology tools being used in FOIA programs, kind of find the bright stars, the best practices and take that collective wisdom and share it across the federal FOIA family. The FOIA advisory committee recognized, and I think we all agree that together we can drive improvements in FOIA processing through active dialogue, deep dives on important research areas, and embrace the diverse perspectives from agencies, both big and small. So to that end, we have 39 members from at least 23 different departments and agencies. Next slide, please. So we focus our work right now around seven groups and I'm really looking forward to Matt Pollock sharing a bit about just one of the products we've produced so far and on video redaction and Gorka Garcia Malone from NIH previewing a coming attraction on FOIA case processing. So over to Eric to share some of the FY21 highlights. Okay, next slide please. All right, good morning again. Our committee has been in existence for almost three years now, goes fast. And we have started, we started out with a broad mandate and started to work through the seven different working groups that might just mentioned. And we'll be talking and showing some of our deliverables in a few minutes. Throughout the past fiscal year, we managed to accomplish several things despite the pandemic and have several other pretty big things coming up for fiscal year 22 and beyond. The first thing here listed on the slide is the we completed work on a recommendations from a February 2020 report. One of the things we committed to was going through the recommendations and actions that we've developed and figuring out what can we do and what if anything else is needed. So we completed the work on those recommendations in this fiscal year and we're moving on now to the next listed here are charters and the work that we've scoped out through each of the working groups. Second bullet here notes that we had an event and this is important for a whole host of reasons. Our committee strives to raise awareness of technology throughout the federal FOIA community and that's introducing concept like AI machine learning and discovery tools and so on. So this event was great. It had provided an opportunity to provide an overview of artificial intelligence what it is and isn't. And how it may apply to FOIA or in the future. We'll be doing similar events this year and beyond as well. We'll talk about that a little later in the presentation. The third bullet here notes that we posted our charters publicly link is available. It's on the website and the we've been working to. To execute the different deliverables on in those charters you'll be seeing one or two of the papers and we'll talk about one of them today and preview another one. A few minutes, like I mentioned, we participated in 2 different OIP but practices workshop and these sessions are important for us in the technology committee because it gives us a better understanding of what federal agencies are and are not doing. The challenges they face and how can we apply technology to to those challenges. We of course briefed at the April 2021 meeting of this group to share our updates at that time and before we prepare this presentation today we went back to that presentation to see what did we brief you on. So for those of you who saw that presentation is nice to see you again. Nice to have you with us and for those of you who weren't there welcome and thank you for all the support you're providing to your FOIA programs. And with that I'm going to turn it over to Mike and next slide. Great, thank you Eric. So the committee has published a couple of great papers one on video redaction and another one on searches to the to the areas that we wanted to to focus on with our 7 working groups and more papers are on the way from the other 5 working groups. I'd like to focus first on one of the papers we published before we pivot to a common attraction. So first off, it is my great pleasure to introduce Matthew Pollock. That's the chief of disclosure law and judicial actions branch at the US Customs and Border Protection. But moreover, Matt's a leader in the field of FOIA Tech and he led our efforts to publish our first ever working paper on video redactions. So Matt will give us kind of a high level overview of the paper, talk about delivering resources for the FOIA community. So Matt, over to you sir. Thanks very much Michael and good morning to everybody. As Michael indicated, you know, our group was pressed to address a issue of growing concern, which is how agencies should approach requests for video records. And I mentioned that it's an issue of growing concern for two main reasons. First, the there is a growth of video records in federal agencies across the board. We see that of course over the course of the pandemic. So many more meetings, including this one are being held virtually. There are recordings of those meetings and people can request those. A second is that there has been an increased scrutiny on law enforcement agents in the way that they perform their duties. And so many agencies, including my own at US Customs and Border Protection are integrating body cameras into our law enforcement personnel practices. And so there's a significant increase in the number of videos that are being recorded in that setting as well. The second reason why this has become such a pressing issue is that courts have made an about face in the last several years. Whereas before they've acknowledged that maybe agencies don't have the proper technology that they need to redact videos. Of course, have changed that view. They've acknowledged that most people have the ability to redact videos in their pockets via cell phone. And so it's almost unreasonable to assume that the government no longer can have that technology. One court said that a judge has a teenager who can put cat faces on the videos of his friends. Why can't the federal government just make that a blur? And it makes sense. Lots of other courts have kind of followed suit in requiring agencies to possess this technology. And they've been looking beyond FOIA offices. They've been looking for the technology capabilities of the agency at large. Whether there's an office of public affairs or media affairs that might have those types of capabilities. So they're really holding the agencies responsible to addressing these records as they're creating them. So our group attempted to come up with a way to provide some best practices for agencies to right size their video redaction programs. And we put together a list of best practices. And I just wanted to hit some of the highlights here with you today. The first is making sure that you have the right people who are making these redactions that could come from inside your own FOIA office. That could mean training your current FOIA professionals. That could mean bringing in new ones and making sure that you highlight video redaction capabilities in your skill sets. That could also mean reaching outside your FOIA program to other agency personnel that might have that expertise and the right tools to be able to make those redactions. And it could mean if you have a limited number of video redactions that you might need to make, that could mean reaching out to contractors to perform that work. I know we did that when we first started our FOIA redaction program because we were a little bit behind the eight ball and that we had a request and we had no way to deal with those records. And so we had to reach out to contractors. And that kind of highlights one of the other issues that we recommend is getting started with your FOIA video redaction program as soon as your agency considers creating video records. Now for most agencies, we've already been doing that as I mentioned in the Zoom, WebEx and Microsoft Teams world of the pandemic. But we really need to consider how we're going to approach that. And so that includes figuring out who's doing it and that includes making sure that we have the tools to be able to do that. There are lots of different technology tools that are available and that includes those that are fully featured and similar to what they use in Hollywood movies. And some of those that are much more simple and that are web based or cloud based in CBP. We've transitioned from one of those fully featured systems that we determined we no longer needed anymore to one that was provided by actually some of the hardware manufacturers of our body cameras that can be used for all types of video. And it's a much more simple interface and a much more cost effective one as well. So there's you have to make sure you have the right people, you have to have the right tools and you want to make sure that you're getting started. The rest of our paper touches on other recommendations, including, you know, making sure you're aware of record retention schedules, making sure you're prepared to deal with the storage necessary to have a video redaction program. A video file is much larger than a PDF. And so as you're making redactions, you need much more space on your servers. Being aware of what the time commitment is to redact videos, redacting a five minute video might be 9000 frames and it's equivalent to redacting 9000 pages of records. It doesn't seem like a lot when you say, oh, it's only five minutes, but that can take much longer if you're going frame by frame to to redact that information. So you have to make stakeholders within the agency and stakeholders, you know, in the requester community aware that video redaction might take a different period of time to work on than than standard paper redactions. And all of this is, you know, plan ahead. That's that's the biggest recommendation that we can have make your considerations now as soon as you can. We hope that our paper at least provide some sort of blueprint for success for for agencies as they're preparing to deal with video records. But I also wanted to make a an offer of our committee for any agency that's adding this. If you have questions, if you would like to gather some additional insight from what we've learned during our research, please feel free to reach out to us. We're happy to help. And for those of you in the requester community, if you've had good or bad experiences with video records, we'd love to hear about them so that we can incorporate those in our next set of recommendations when we put them together. So we're always here and willing to assist. And with that, I'm going to kick it back to Michael, but thanks very much everyone. I think thank you so much for that excellent kind of overview of our, our video reaction paper. And it's worth highlighting a couple of and reemphasizing a couple of points that that that's okay. We pointed out and that's that the full attack advisory committee is here for folks in the FOIA community folks in the requester community just folks who are looking for federal records. We're here to work to, you know, if there's a federal record, the expectation is that under the FOIA we provide it regardless of whether it's a video or what it may be. And, you know, when these new technologies, new ish technologies come about and when agencies adopt these, it's part of our gig to make sure that we're able to provide those. So we couldn't be happier with the work product and really look forward to continue dialogue and continuing to work with the rest of folks in the FOIA community. So with that established attraction, we have a coming attraction that I'm really, really excited about. So let me kind of preview that coming attraction to do that. It's my great pleasure to introduce Gorka Garcia Malone. Gorka leads the National Institutes of Health FOIA program. And as Mike Bell pointed out earlier in his presentation, given the events of the last year and a half, you can imagine how busy Gorka has been at NIH. But again, folks in the FOIA community coming together to give of their time to help others in the FOIA community, you know, and Gorka's been able to lend his considerable talents to help us work on our FOIA case processing paper. And so it's my pleasure to turn it over to him to preview that coming attraction. Gorka? Good morning, Michael. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for that very warm introduction. I tell you, although we're very busy at NIH, the work that's being done in this committee and in our workers is critical. And it's important to just prepare ourselves for the coming waves of FOIAs. So this work really does take precedence. To tell you a little bit about myself, I started my career at the Food and Drug Administration doing a lot of FOIA litigation. I've since taken the reins here at the National Institutes of Health, and I managed the FOIA program here. I couldn't go on before mentioning other folks involved in this work group. And it's you and Michael, Michael Sarich, and Barbara Soil, the VA, Virginia Burke, the Peace Corps, and Daniel Adams at the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. And the first charge of this work group had was to come up with the top 10 questions about FOIA Express. We all have experience with FOIA Express, and we thought that we could share some of our experience with the FOIA community at lunch. That would be helpful for some of its cons. It has significant advantages and some limitations. And we wanted to share that with folks before they committed to that particular tool. We prepared that paper. I think it was extremely helpful. We got good feedback from the paper. And then we turned to what would be our next assignment. You know, as sort of, as we looked within, we found that our common experience was that when it was time for us to choose a platform to review records, to do case management and trap cases, we found that in our experiences, we felt essentially alone. We didn't know whether to go with a home ground solution or with something off the shelf commercial off the shelf. And we thought we'd spare everybody else that that experience. The reality is that there's a lot of information out there. Now it's just difficult to find there are a lot of platforms that are available to have different strengths and weaknesses. And so what we set out to do was to prepare a paper that explains what the advantages are going with the cost solution and what questions you should ask yourself because not all solutions are created equal. Right. So the people that we're preparing and we're close to completing it really deals with some of the advantages of costs, which were, for example, some of these partial off the shelf solutions. Come baked in with really strong metrics. Right. So this is the kind of information that the system can generate very quickly. You can use it to report up or to report down or to assess the health of the program. And you can do it almost instantaneously. So that's, that's definitely one of the strengths that these platforms have. In addition, the cost solutions, especially those that are dedicated to foil, update themselves. You're not working with your department to try to catch up with the requirements of changing laws and regulations. This is something that the companies themselves are leading. So it takes a lot of responsibility off your shoulders. But really, primarily, the paper focuses on, on what you should be asking yourself when determining whether you should go with the cost solution. And so with which, as I said, some of these cost solutions can be very expensive, can be very complex and have capabilities that you may or may not. So it really focuses on first giving you a sense that this is well traveling territory. We've all sort of gone through this. It explains some of the questions you should be asking yourself in terms of, you know, what specifications you may or may not want. And it also just elucidates the fact that, again, you are not alone by any stretch of the imagination. We really encourage you to reach out to colleagues, sister agencies, departments, and us. We look forward to any questions you have in order to determine what what solution is best for you. And of course, we're always very excited to see your membership bro. So please reach out to us if you'd like to participate in our work group. But as I said, the work that that's being done here is critical. The request volumes are ever increasing complexity is always increasing. And so you don't want to find yourself shopping for a solution on your heels. You know, when you've been confronted with litigation and you realize that the system that you have can't do the job. So I hope you'll be in touch with us and that you'll find our work part of useful. Thank you, Michael. Thank you so much, Gorka. And again, the work that these committees have. Done and continue to do being just exposed to them have really assisted us here at the veterans health administration in leveraging and maximizing our own cut solution. So being able to work with. Real leaders like Danielle, Virginia, Gorka have really helped Barbara and I leverage. Um, the, uh, the, uh, the module that we did, we use here at the veterans health administration. And it's really made a difference as we look to, to meet, um, meet leadership goals and then also compile that business information to kind of really tell the health of the program. And, you know, where we're at. Talking about tools that we use and technology and kind of spreading the word and sharing that sharing the wealth of information that we have in the, in the tech space. We're really excited about what Eric is going to share next on a fully technology showcase in February. So Eric, please. Great. Well, thank you. Thank you, Mike, Gorka and Matt for those overviews there. Uh, before I go to the way technology showcases want to share, we also posted a FOIA search paper on our public website encourage, uh, whether you are a play a practitioner, remember the public to check out that paper. Uh, we did that working group to an excellent job of doing research about. FOIA capabilities and agencies and we found that there were some disconnects between actual capabilities and agencies and what various members of the public thought agencies could do. For example, um, some people thought that we could just do a search across all the databases and tools at a federal agency in 1 place. And while some agencies have a more advanced technology that allow for those types of capabilities, most of the time those are manual searches of multiple databases, multiple places for different types of records and information. So there are also some tips and just best practices or recommendations in that paper. So I encourage the FOIA search paper if anyone wants to check that out. And with that, the final item on this slide here is we developed plans over this past year for the FOIA technology showcase. This is an event, a two day event that we're planning in February 2022. Currently, there's information available online. There's a link there for, um, do it. I'll come to that in a moment. What the FOIA Tech Showcase strives to do is to connect government officials with capabilities out there in the private sector. And we strive in this committee to raise awareness of technology in general, best practices, and keeping in mind that we work for the public and we want to find the best possible way to respond to requests. And with the growing volume of information, data, records out there, that challenge continues to grow. We have to look for new and smarter ways to leverage technology and people to meet these demands. So the FOIA Tech Showcase is going to be a two day event. The first day is focused on more practical applications of what technology and tools exist that are out there that would allow for federal agencies to maybe help with discovery of records, doing searches, doing redactions, different COTS products or capabilities, tools, APIs and different applications that integrate technology. And we have a series of different topics that we just, that's on the RFI right now on sam.gov. So on day 1, we want to hear what's in the practical realm right now. Day 2 is thinking bigger. It's what's the future of FOIA? What are we looking at in the next 5, 10, 15 years with technology? And what broader topics and themes gives an opportunity for the private sector to share its ideas about where things FOIA could go. Whereas day 1 is more focused on what do we need now in the immediate term to address FOIA requests in the growing volume of records and information out there. So we have the link here for the FOIA blog at OGIS, the sam.gov. We're taking RFIs as well. I should say the Department of Justice or NARA is taking the RFIs through November 23rd, at which point we will be preparing for the February 22 of 2022 event where any vendors interested or private members of the private sector who want to present can provide a video and be available for some Q&A with government officials who have questions about their capabilities. Next slide please. This brings us to our next steps when we get past our accomplishments. I'm very proud of the work that our committee has done remotely primarily throughout the past fiscal year. The first thing we're looking at now is update our working group charters and we have to update some deadlines. A few things slid over the past year. As you saw we're able to get several things done. We're going to look at do we want to devote our time and energy to some of those items from last year or do we want to pivot and take on some additional topics. And here are some of the ones that have been shared with us and we welcome your feedback on different areas we should be looking at based on your agency needs. The first one is discussion of potential new working groups on data. A lot of talk about data scientists, AI, machine learning, understanding how data is being used from a perspective of maybe managing FOIA programs and using metrics but also how to manage data as it's being pulled in response to requests and redaction requirements and just data is there's a whole lot there to unpack. Interoperability of IT tools from over the past few years we've gained in this committee a very good understanding of the technical landscape out there throughout the hundred or so federal agencies working on FOIA. And there are a lot of great applications out there and sometimes the interoperability of tools is an issue. So looking at the different capabilities throughout there so we could help advise any agencies with questions or identify best practices moving forward. We want to dig deeper into technical issues at agencies and what we mean here is we started with, as I mentioned previously, a broader understanding of what's, understand the federal landscape for FOIA and now we're really getting into, all right, different agencies have different capabilities. We want to share best practices among them and identify ways, tools, technical issues on the, considering the infrastructure at agencies, the IT systems that they run, the sources of data that they have, the records and where can we add value as a committee at different agencies because one size won't fit all. And finally, we're going to complete the pending deliverables that we ultimately keep in the charters. That's going to be and we, like I said, we have to move those deadlines just a little bit in some cases, including some of the updated papers. We're just mentioned the FOIA technology showcase event in early 2022. So we're very excited about that and connecting federal FOIA practitioners to the private sector and I believe we're going to be as open and transparent as possible trying to publish and post online as much information as we can about the events and the different tools being showcased there. With that, Mike, I'm going to turn it back over to you. Thanks so much, Eric. I appreciate that. So as we talked about today, the tech committee is a creation of the FOIA advisory committee and is hopefully an example of putting those recommendations into action for the wider FOIA community. So what we shared are just some of the things that we're working on. The tech committee is always looking for new ideas, new energy, new perspectives. And we do that to ensure that we're meeting the mandate from the FOIA advisory committee and either creating or identifying implementable ideas to help improve the operations of FOIA programs, government-wide. I think we've had some tremendous success so far and it's really energizing when you're able to put those innovations into action and I've seen them benefit my own FOIA program at VHA. We've had tremendous results and I do give a line share of the credit for the inspiration of my colleagues on the FOIA tech committee when I have questions. I always have an open ear and you get a tremendous amount of support from your colleagues in terms of ideas and advice and guidance because really, at the end of the day, we're all kind of doing the same thing. We're all kind of doing the same thing. We're illuminating the operations of the federal government and we do them in different agencies but the mandate's the same. It's the same 20 days for me at the VHA as it is for Eric at State or Gorka at NIH or Matt at Customs and Border Protection. So there we are. So with that said, we want to thank and acknowledge the members of that team for all the hard work they've done, you know, along with their tireless work and the guidance of both Alina and Bobby along the way through this entire journey. And so with that said, Eric and I open to questions, feedback and any input folks would like to provide. And we can go to the next slide. Yeah, Mike, I would just add we too are soliciting new members all the time. We had some members drop off over the past year. I think one of our colleagues from CoCAC, you mentioned this is additional responsibility that people take on and we're so grateful for the time that they commit to this, to this committee, which we think is very worthwhile. I just want to echo Bobby's thanks and appreciation to Mike's thanks and appreciation of Bobby and Alina and all the members of our committee who make this happen. So with that, thank you. Okay, great. Thank you so much, Eric and Mike and Gorka and Matt, you guys all did an outstanding job. I'm going to ask Martha Murphy. Oh, just as deputy director if there have been any chat questions from our federal family colleagues. I haven't seen any, but I just want to make sure I didn't miss it. So we did have one question for Bobby about the training. Question is, will OIP E learning courses be available to agencies who don't have E learning platforms? Yes, thank you for that question. Yes, we are planning to. So the initial goal is to have these and platform format, but we're also planning to have a version. It won't have all the functionalities that you have any learning module, but have all the lessons that we'll post on our website that agencies would be able to use so that we can have it available both for those agencies that do have your learning platforms and those that don't. Okay, great. Martha, thanks. There's a question here from about how can one apply to be part of the committees. And so, if you're interested in the tech committee, you see Eric and and Michael's email address, but you can also reach out to Alina and I and we're happy to connect to you with either committee. Glad to see that question. So hopefully that means we've inspired the committees inspired and just inspired me inspired other agencies to participate in volunteer. It really, it's hard to believe that the tech community is now 3 years old, but a lot's been accomplished and it's due to the great work of the members and so I appreciate that. It looks like we have another question come in. When will the new E learning courses be available? So, we are working on developing them now. We're, our plan is not to wait and release them all at once because we want to get them to in your hands as soon as possible. And so our current plan is to work on the ones that are smaller first, the executive and roll that out as it's produced hopefully by March. And then roll out the non for a professional program personnel version. And then a little bit after that later in the year. But before the summer, we're hoping to be able to release the 2 to 3 hour version for for professionals. Michael offered an email in the chat. Well, 1 at dot dot gov for any potential Kukaki volunteers. Great. And I think the other question we had was a similar 1, the estimated timeframe for training. To be able to work to agencies and you've already answered that. So thanks Bobby. Thank you. So, if there's no other questions in the agency questions. I believe now we've reached the portion of our program where we can open the meeting to public comment section of our meeting. And we promise to leave time for that. We look forward to hearing from members of the public who have ideas or comments that they would like to share. I also want to remind everyone that you may also submit your in comments. Please email them to excuse me. Go just open meeting at nara.gov. Any oral comments will be captured in the transcript of this meeting. Which we will post on our websites as soon as they are available. Okay. So we will open up our telephone lines now to begin. So if I could turn to our producer, Michelle, please provide instructions for our listeners for how they can ask any questions or make any comments via telephone. Absolutely. So, ladies and gentlemen, as we enter the public comment session, please limit your comments to three minutes. Once your three minutes expires, we will mute your line so that we can move on to the next commenter in queue. We will definitely give you notice of that, but after three minutes you will be muted. And as a reminder to ask a question via the WebEx audio, please press the raise hand icon which is located above the chat box on WebEx. If you are on the main line, audio, please press pound two on your telephone keypad to enter the question or comment queue. All right. Thanks, Michelle. Do we have any callers waiting to be heard? I do not see anybody quite yet. Okay. While we're waiting for that, I'm going to just ask Martha any other comments that popped up or questions that popped up during our event today. Have we addressed everything? I think we've addressed all the questions that came up. I agree. I do not currently see any questions or comments in the audio queue. Okay. All right, we're just going to give Bobby, maybe give folks one more second to think. When we could start a wrap up, I would love to be able to give back to folks about 25 minutes of their afternoon back today. I think we could all use that. The hope that Bobby and I have is that we're going to have our next CFO council meeting sometime in the spring. We haven't worked out a date yet, but please stay tuned. We're very hopeful that we could do this at least twice a year if not more frequently. So stay tuned for further announcements on that front. It's doing an exact date and time as well as registration information. I predict it's going to be virtual again, but, you know, who knows everything is talk in the air. Please bear with us. I do know we've gotten feedback generally from some of our other events that folks prefer the virtual platform because it makes it more accessible to a lot more people as opposed to having to come in person. So that Michelle, I'm going to pop in here. Alina, we do have one person who's trying to call in Mr. Hammond and is having. Yes, I do see that. Mr. Hammond, you are joined via WebEx Audio. So you would need to click the raise hand icon, but I'm going to go ahead and unmute your line for you so that you can make your public comments. All right, Mr. Hammond, your line is unmuted, sir. You may go ahead. Yes. Good morning. Can you hear me? Hello. So please go ahead. We can hear you. Okay. Well, in three minutes, I can't say very much, but let me just first, I'd like to say that this council is co-chaired by two incredibly talented people with equally impressive leadership. Alina Cimo, Georgetown University Law Center, Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Maryland, College Park, graduated with high honors. Bobby Tlaibyan, University of Tennessee College of Law, where he served on the law review, Go Vols. The Honorable David Fierro worked his way up from a Navy corpsman saving lives. God bless you. Thank you for your service. To a presidential appointment by Barack Obama as the 10th archivist of the United States of America. Associate General Anita Gupta, graduated magna cum laude from Yale University and received her law degree from New York University School of Law. I don't have time to go through. I'd ask for time to make some oral presentations today. I'm going to submit my speaker notes. I've already entered them as best I could into YouTube. And I would ask that those be appended to the meeting minutes as my oral comments since there's not time to make them. I have to say that this is an unlawful meeting. It wasn't properly advertised in the federal register. That's not the first time this has happened. I attribute this and many other shortcomings to grossly inadequate funding for both OGIS and for DOJ, OIP. And I'm asking that DOJ and NARA please properly fund these missions so that this beleaguered staff can properly do their job. With just a few minutes, I'd just like to skip to my closing remarks. And those are great meeting today, but unlawfully held. Great people at OGIS and DOJ, OIP, but grossly under resourced and not enough of them. NARA and DOJ should take immediate action to properly resource OGIS and OIP respectively based on significant mission failure and not doing so. The situation is dire. We need an American OGIS and OIP Rescue Plan and an OGIS and OIP Build Back Better Plan from Congress and the Executive Branch. The Chief Foreign Officer Council must post all of my public comments or state publicly the statutory basis for not doing so. The Chief Foreign Officer's Council should reconvene within two months to address public requester where compliance concerns, hear my briefings and decide on my recommendations. I do not believe that with the intent of Congress or President Obama that oral public comments should be arbitrarily limited to 15 minutes per year in an open meeting. Thank you for considering my oral comments and my written public comments. There are posters on the website. Please review them. There are several items in there that I'm seeking decisions from this Council on. I'd like to close with the words of proud American citizens. Go ahead, thank you so much. Go ahead, thank you so much. We the people enshrined in the Constitution will not again be a house divided against ourselves no matter the rhetoric. In 1865, 165 years ago, we fought and won a bloody war to advance equity of opportunity, not guaranteed equity of outcomes as we're all unique in our pursuit of our dreams. Messi as it is, that is our history, the greatest nation in the history of the world. Let us all be judged by the content of our character. God bless the United States of America. Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to make a good comment, please press the raise hand icon on your WebEx screen if you're logged in on the WebEx audio, otherwise you may press pound two if you are on regular phone audio. Michelle, do we have any other callers? I do not see any other raised hands at this time. Okay. I don't see any other chat comments, but Martha, I'm just going to triple check with you to make sure we addressed all the questions that came in. We do have actually, but someone was trying to make a comment and then they, oh, it looks like someone is in the queue. Are you able to take the comment? All right, Spencer, your line is unmuted. You may go ahead. Are you able to hear me? Yes. Oh, okay. I actually had a question as it relates to FOIA improvements. I was recently, I guess, doing the annual report and some questions arose regarding being able to pull these annual reports. I know that you had mentioned that one of the improvements looks like we'll be able to get the quarterly analysis individually and that helps a lot. When we've been running our reports, we've been running into conflicting issues using the old way of counting the cases with what we have on our share drive. And then with FOIA Express, are there any ways to help to ensure the accuracy of discrepancies between what agencies are able to come up with as they're trying to learn and utilize FOIA Express? I know they mentioned some training, so just asking that. Yeah, thank you for the question. And so just, I think a couple of things there. So we do go through a level of validation once the report comes to us to help zero in on potential data validation issues. But before that, obviously the best method to catch any kind of data errors or corrections is obviously at the at the raw level while you're producing a report. So I will offer and we have a dedicated compliance team at OIP that works individually with agencies to troubleshoot these issues. So I encourage you if you don't mind just reaching out to us 202-51 for FOIA asking for a member of the compliance team and we can work in the in the weeds on this with you to figure out what the best solution is. Another plug though is obviously the Technology Committee has a working group for FOIA Express and this might be something of interest with other members of the group as far as the reporting functionality of FOIA Express. And so I encourage you to maybe reach out and as I said, they are always looking for volunteers on that on that committee, but please reach out to us as you're preparing a report again 202-51 for FOIA and we'll be happy to troubleshoot what the issues are that you're having. Thank you. And the second part of my question goes out to the broad community. I've noticed that FOIA and just privacy as a whole programs could benefit from a second tier analysis of their program capabilities and FOIA and privacy posture so there's no conflicts. So my question is, have you guys considered recommending third party auditing or, you know, in our agency auditing of FOIA programs to, you know, either be mandatory or highly encouraged. So I will, one thing I wanted to offer is we have developed a FOIA and I mentioned that we're going to update a FOIA self-assessment toolkit which provides an objective way for you to evaluate each part of your FOIA program. So I definitely would encourage you to use that toolkit to assess the needs of your agency and then it highlights relevant guidance and resources and also our office is happy to work with you individually as you're assessing and looking for improvements. Thank you Mr. Spencer Christian for your comment. If anybody else has a comment please place yourself in the queue with the raised hand icon or pound two on your phone. I just wanted to say I'm someone asked where we could find a transcript of this meeting and I did respond in the chat but we will be posting a transcript to our website as soon as possible. Also please be aware this has been live streamed on YouTube and we'll live on the National Archives YouTube channel for folks to watch at a later time. Thank you. All right. And there are no additional questions in here. All right. So I think Bobby we can get ready to wrap up. I think it's been a great meeting today again. Just very grateful for all the presentations we've had. I hope it gets everyone excited about the possibility of joining your federal colleagues on these committees and working groups and subcommittees. So please consider signing up. And as I said earlier we will reconvene in the spring. Please look out for other notifications on that. I want to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. Hope everyone stays healthy, healthy, safe and resilient during these continuing difficult times. And Bobby over to you. Thank you Alita and thank you again everyone who's joining us for a really great meeting and special thanks to our presenters particularly the two co-chairs of the committees for the great presentation but more importantly the great work that they're doing that's going to benefit all of us. Just one more plug please if you are interested reach out to us for working with the committees. We are interested in your participation and also very open to what our next meeting in the spring would look like if there's anything that you would like us to address or happy to include agencies as part of the program. Agency CFOs or agency FOIA officials. If you do have suggestions please reach out to either myself or Alina. And with that I just want to thank everyone again and wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. Thanks everyone. Take care. Thank you. That concludes our conference. Thank you for using event services. You may now disconnect.