 One. This meeting is being recorded. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. And thank you for joining today for your advisory committee meeting. Before we begin, please ensure that you have opened the WebEx participant and chat panel by using the associated icons located at the bottom of your screen. These note or audio connections are muted at this time, and this conference is being recorded. If you require technical assistance, please send the chat to the event producer. Also, to present a comment via WebEx audio, please click the raise hand icon on your WebEx screen, which is located above the chat panel on the right. Place yourself in the comment queue. If you are connected to today's webinar via phone, audio, please dial pound two on your telephone keypad to enter the comment queue. I will turn the meeting over to Deborah Sidelwald, Acting Archivist of the United States. Ma'am, please go ahead. Thank you, Michelle, and good morning, everyone. Welcome, committee members and members of the public to the first meeting of the fifth term of the FOIA Advisory Committee. It's nice to see those of you who I reappointed, as well as those who are new to the committee. Thank you for the work you do for us. Today is also a special day here at the National Archives, which I'll get to in a moment. But first, regarding the package of 21 wide-ranging recommendations from the previous term. One was approved last year by Archivist David Ferriero. Over the summer, I gave each of the 20 recommendations very close consideration in collaboration with the OGIS team. And as noted on the FOIA Advisory Committee dashboard, work on five of the recommendations has already started. With regard to four of the six recommendations that would reimagine OGIS, I paused action on them pending review of the outcome of a feasibility study to more deeply study the cost and benefits of those four recommendations. And I did reject the recommendation to move OGIS in NARA's organizational chart. Committee members, although some of FOIA's toughest challenges remain and there certainly are rich opportunities for exploration, I hope that you will review prior committee recommendations and consider whether additional work is needed as you fulfill your mandate to advise on improvements to the administration of FOIA. So in other words, please don't feel compelled to make another 20 recommendations this time around. Although if you do, if you need to, you're certainly empowered to do that. So and now to the special day here at the National Archives. 13 years ago today, the first director of the brand new Office of Government Information Services unlocked the door to the office to find requests for assistance already awaiting her attention. Miriam Nisbit had no staff and no process in place for handling those requests. She used as her guiding light 104 words in the FOIA statute, as well as the international ombudsman standards of independence, impartiality, and confidentiality. That first year, OJIS handled 391 cases, largely from requesters who had already been through the FOIA administrative process. Today, OJIS handles more than 4,000 inquiries a year from both FOIA requesters and agency FOIA professionals at all stages of the FOIA process. By observing the FOIA process in action and offering dispute resolution services, OJIS fulfills Congress's mandate to resolving disputes or resolve disputes as a non-exclusive alternative to litigation. By allowing its casework to serve as a FOIA barometer and assessing a range of FOIA issues, OJIS fulfills Congress's mandate to review FOIA policies, procedures, and compliance. And by speaking about systemic change in a variety of ways, OJIS fulfills Congress's mandate to identify procedures and methods for improving compliance. And certainly the FOIA Advisory Committee is a very important part of identifying improvements to the FOIA process. I'm extremely proud of all that OJIS has accomplished in the last 13 years. OJIS's work complements the National Archives strategic goals of making access happen and connecting with our customers from federal agencies to the American public. With that, happy birthday to OJIS and welcome to your teenage years. So while many teenagers experience periods of moodyness and their willingness to not meet, not me when I was a teenager, but while some do, I'm confident that you'll continue to offer just exceptional service both to the FOIA Advisory Committee and to the American public. So I'm happy to turn the meeting over to OJIS Director Alina Simo. Okay, great. Thank you so much, Deborah. And thanks for the good wishes. Good morning, everyone, as the Director of the Office of Government Information Services, OJIS, and this committee's chairperson. It is my pleasure to welcome all of you to the inaugural meeting of the fifth term of the FOIA Advisory Committee. I would also like to introduce the committee's designated federal officer, DFO, Kirsten Mitchell. Kirsten, would you like to wave? Thanks. She's going to help me stay on track, not just today, but for the next two years. Kirsten will brief you later this morning on the DFO role with the advisory committee, so you'll be hearing from her soon. I do hope everyone who's joining us today, not just our committee members, but our listening folks are continuing to stay safe, healthy, and well. I want to just quickly tell you that I am back from a very quick trip to Kansas City to give two plenary session presentations to the American Society of Access Professionals. I had the pleasure of talking about the FOIA Advisory Committee for one of the plenary sessions, and was very well received by 120 FOIA professionals and invited everyone to participate and make their views known, and hopefully we'll be getting participation from them, and they'll be watching us when they're not in the ASAP conference, which is ending on Friday. So I want to welcome all of our committee members who are able to join us today, express my gratitude for your anticipated commitment to studying the current FOIA landscape and developing consensus recommendations for improving the administration of FOIA across the federal government. We will give our committee members the opportunity to introduce themselves momentarily. I have some housekeeping notes I have to go through first, so bear with me. First, members' names and affiliations are posted on our website. We are working on posting members' biographies. They will be posted soon. I also want to let everyone know we have recently updated our FOIA Advisory Committee recommendation dashboard on the OGIS website. Look for the blue radio button on the lower right-hand side of our front webpage. The dashboard reflects all 51 recommendations that the committee has made since its inception in 2014, along with progress updates. I also want to welcome our colleagues and friends from the FOIA community and elsewhere who are watching us today, either via WebEx or with a slight delay on NARA's YouTube channel. I am advised that committee member Ginger Quintero Macal is unable to join us today, and I know that for a fact, because I saw her in person yesterday at the ASAP conference. She is teaching there for the next couple of days, but hopefully she'll be back with us on September 14 at our next meeting. Kirsten has hopefully taken a visual roll call. Kirsten, can you confirm, please, we have a quorum? We do indeed. Terrific. Meeting materials are available on the committee's webpage. Click on the link for the 2022 to 2024 FOIA Advisory Committee on the ODA's website. Please also visit our website for today's agenda and slides. We will upload a transcript in minutes of this meeting as soon as they are ready. During today's meeting, I want to encourage committee members to use the All Panelists option from the drop-down menu and the chat function when you want to speak or ask a question. You can also chat me or Kirsten directly. However, in order to comply with the spirit and intent of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which Kirsten will discuss later this morning, committee members should keep any communications in the chat function to only housekeeping procedural matters. No substantive comment should be made in the chat function, as they will not be recorded in the transcript of the meeting. If a committee member needs to take a break at any time, please do not disconnect from the web event. Instead, mute your microphone by using the microphone icon and turn off your camera by using the camera icon. And please send a quick chat to me and Kirsten to let us know if you'll be gone for more than a few minutes. Join us again as soon as you can. We have not planned on taking a break today as we plan to wrap up by noon eastern time today as per our posted agenda, and we have a sharp noon cutoff time due to AV requirements. A reminder to all committee members, please identify yourself by name and affiliation each time you speak today and every meeting. I'm guilty of doing this sometime, so I'll try to be better about it this term. But it helps us tremendously down the road with both the transcript and the minutes, both of which are required by the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Transcripts and minutes from all the prior committee term meetings are posted on our website. If you're not fully up to date now, you may access all of our prior meetings on the NARA YouTube channel and we provide links to each meeting on OGIS's FOIA Advisory Committee webpage. A few words about public comments. We have received and posted several written comments in advance of today's meeting. We review all public comments and post them as soon as we are able. We have also alerted committee members and have invited them to view public comments on our website. If anyone wishes to submit any additional written public comments regarding the committee's work, you may do so at any time by emailing FOIA-advisory-committee at nara.gov and we will consider posting them on the OGIS website. An important reminder, please do not use the chat function on either the WebEx or the NARA YouTube channel platforms to submit extensive public comments. The chat function on both platforms should be limited to asking clarifying questions or providing brief comments or questions that we will consider reading out loud at the end of today's meeting. Members of the OGIS staff will be monitoring the chat function on both platforms throughout our meeting and I want to thank them in advance for all that work. It's hard work. In addition to the written public comments we have already posted, we will invite oral public comments at the end of its first meeting today. As we noted in our OGIS 22nd 2022 Federal Register notice public comments will be limited to three minutes per individual. Okay, at this point I would like to take a few minutes for each committee member to briefly introduce themselves and their affiliation and briefly state how their work relates to FOIA. So that's the challenge for today. I'll call on each of you to go in alphabetical order and that means that Jason Arbaran has to go first. So Jason, if you don't mind I'm passing the baton over to you. Hi Alina, can you hear me? Yes, good morning. Hello everyone, Jason Baran. I'm a professor at the University of Maryland College of Information Studies a former director of litigation at Mara. My current work is research related to machine learning and FOIA to ensure that the government does a better job with searching electronic records and filtering for FOIA exceptions. Alina? Okay, thank you Jason. Paul Chalmers, you're next. Morning everybody. My name is Paul Chalmers. I am a deputy general counsel at the pension benefit guarantee corporation which is a federal agency. Among my jobs I am the chief disclosure officer which means I supervise the group within PBGC that responds to FOIA and Privacy Act requests. FOIA is a big part of my job. Okay, thanks Paul. Carmen Collins is next. Good morning everybody. My name is Carmen Collins. I am the representative of the committee. I am currently a program manager with the United States cyber command. In the past I have had paralegal roles and have been exclusively dealing with FOIA for the past 10 years or so in one way or another. I am looking to really help out and see how this committee can help improve the FOIA process overall. Thanks Carmen. Dave Collier. Hi, I'm Dave Collier and I'm an associate professor of journalism at the University of Arizona. I'm also president of the National Friend Reformation Coalition and I teach and research issues regarding access to government records and I'm happy to return on the committee. It's a lot of fun and I learn a lot. Thank you. Allison Dietrich, you're next. Thanks Selena. Glad to be back. My name is Allison Dietrich. I'm chief of the information mall division at Department of Commerce, Office of General Counsel. My office is responsible for adjudicating most of the departments FOIA administrative appeals and generally providing legal advice on FOIA matters. Okay, great. Welcome back Allison. Gorka Garcia-Maline, you're next. Good morning. My name is Gorka Garcia-Maline. I direct the FOIA program at the National Institute of Health. I also serve on NARA's chief FOIA officer's technology committee and there we study the deployment in the technology and FOIA programs across the executive government. And actually a lot of what we do there is take the recommendations from this advisory committee and try to identify best practices and technology based solutions to make the FOIA community more efficient just overall better. I look forward to making FOIA better participating in the advisory committee as well. Okay, thanks Gorka. Michael Heiss, you're next. Good morning. My name is Michael Heiss. I'm the assistant legal counsel for the FOIA division at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Office of Legal Counsel. Basically as 100% of what I do there is FOIA from adjudicating most of the administrative appeals processing, overseeing, processing of certain types of requests and basically providing guidance and training from everyone in the agency from the chair on down. Okay, great. Thank you. We have Alex Howard next. Hello, my name is Alex Howard. First time participant long-time commenter. I think I've been at most of these meetings since 2014 when it kicked off. Currently I'm affiliated with the Digital Democracy Project working in the non-profit space on advocacy for, as you guess, more democratic processes, better freedom of information across state, local and federal levels. Just put in a comment to our DC Office of Open Government this morning regarding the continued use of WhatsApp and ephemeral messaging here at the District of Columbia where I reside. My interests are I think fairly focused on trying to get the public more access to trustworthy information and structured formats and accessible formats on the internet. And that is animated in my work for the past decade and I'm really glad to be here with all of you. Okay, thanks, Alex. Stephanie Jewett. Good morning, everyone. My name is Stephanie Jewett and I am with the Office of Inspector General at the U.S. Department of the Interior. In my current role I am the Deputy General Counsel and I am the Director of the FOIA Privacy Act and Records Management Programs. And in this role I handle and oversee all FOIA requests, appeals and litigation and I am really looking forward to being on this committee. Thank you. Great, thanks, Stephanie. You're welcome. Gov. Dave Johnson, you're next. Thank you, Alina. Hello, my name is Dave Johnson and I'm currently an Associate Professor of Government of Political Science in the School of Public and International Affairs at University of Georgia. My research interests touch on FOIA in multiple ways including empirical examination and analysis of FOIA outcomes and FOIA litigation and I'm looking forward to building on the great work of previous iterations of this committee. Thank you. Great, thank you. Adam Marshall. Thanks, Alina. Hi, everyone. My name is Adam Marshall. I'm a Senior Staff Attorney at the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press. I primarily litigate FOIA requests and public records requests at the state level for newsrooms and reporters in the United States. Okay. That was very brief, Adam. Thank you. Luke Nichter. Good morning. My name is Luke Nichter. I'm History Professor at Chapman University in Orange, California. I'm a Senior Staff Attorney at the Reporters' Committee. So I look forward to the challenge and all that I'll learn and just frankly serving. I'm also part of the Requestor community and I focus primarily on Cold War era records both for my own publications but also for what I like to think is the greater good. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much, Luke. You're welcome. Katrina Pavlik-Keenan who is joining us by phone, I believe and not by video. Katrina, you're up next. Hi. My name is Katrina Pavlik-Keenan and I am the Deputy FOIA Officer of the Department of Homeland Security. Prior to that, I was the FOIA Officer for 15 years over at Immigration Customs Enforcement. I'm actually just finished my first year officially at DHS headquarters and I'm responsible for oversight of the department's FOIA processing for the components and also within DHS headquarters. And so I look forward to this and this is my first year. I look forward to this endeavor and I look forward to working with everyone. Great. Thanks, Katrina. Welcome. So Ginger cannot be with us today. I thought I would just give her a quick introduction. She is the legal director at Demand Progress, a progressive policy organization that works on transparency issues including FOIA. Ginger has worked on transparency and privacy issues both inside allowing her to experience FOIA both as an agency FOIA attorney and as a requester and she is a returning FOIA advisory committee member. She served two terms ago and we will welcome her next time she joins us for our next meeting. I'm going to skip introducing myself. I think maybe that seems a little obvious so I'm going to go next to Tom Sussman. This time I remember to unmute. Tom Sussman, your job is strategic advisor for global programs and government affairs at the American Bar Association. This month marks the 54th anniversary of my involvement with the Freedom of Information Act. In September 1968 I was in the office of legal counsel advising agencies on how to comply with this strange new oppressive, burdensome, legal law that Congress had enacted. In answer to the question of how does my work relate to FOIA, it doesn't. Friends used to tell me that if it's that much fun it's not work and I'm only half time at the ABA and so my passion and commitment to government transparency, open government and all kind of related issues is reflected in my involvement. It's my third term on this committee. I'm president of the D.C. Open Government Coalition on the board of under David Cullier of the National Freedom of Information Coalition steering committee chair of open government. It's my hobby as well as a passion. I'm delighted to have another opportunity to work and learn in this field. Okay. Thank you so much Tom. Tom has allowed me in the past to call him the grandfather of FOIA. I'm going to continue to stick to that. I say that in a very loving and respectful way. Okay. We're up to Bobby Tullibian. Bobby. Thank you Alina. Good morning everyone. I'm Bobby Tullibian director of the Office of Information Policy at the Department of Justice and OIP and OIP responsible for encouraging government compliance with FOIA. Do that in a number of ways. Issuing guidance, training a number of other government initiatives providing resources to agencies and also providing legal counsel agencies on their application of FOIA. Excited to be OIP has been part of all of the FACAs. I'm excited to be part of that first full-time as director of OIP. Welcome back Bobby. And thank you for all your work in the past and your partnership. We really appreciate it. Okay. Aura Tansy is next. Did I pronounce your name correctly? I hope I did. Well it's Aura Tansy. So hi everyone. My name is Aura Tansy and I am an archivist and records manager at the University of Cincinnati. And my interest in FOIA has long been active in the Society of American Archivist Committee on Public Policy. So lots of work there on various record keeping laws. And I also have filed a FOIA request myself as a requester to support some of my own research interests in labor and environmental laws. So I'm really happy to begin my term on the committee. Great. Thank you so much. Aura, welcome to the committee. We're happy to have you. We're going to start with Ben or Ben Tango. Welcome. Good morning. Thank you very much. My name is Ben Benjamin Tango. For the last six years I've been general counsel of AINZ LLC which is the developer of FOIA express which is a leading FOIA case management software. We also make other specialized case management solutions as well. I am an attorney with more than 15 years of litigation experience in private settings. At AINZ I've been very involved in examining FOIA processes and procedures and I've worked a lot to develop technologies and implement new technologies that will help to meet the current and future challenges that face FOIA general across the federal government. I also do have experience on both sides of FOIA request. I've made FOIA request and I've responded to FOIA request for AINZ's information which has been provided to the government. This is my recommendation. I do look forward to working with the committee and OGIS basically to find new ways to help continue to support FOIA professionals and to more fully enable government transparency and accountability. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Thanks Ben. Welcome. Last but not least, Patricia Wef. Good morning. My name is Patricia Wef. I work for the Environmental Protection Agency in the National FOIA Office. I am the Assistant General Counsel and I lead the FOIA operations and reporting team. For short, we call it Fort and I often say I'm holding down the Fort. I never get tired of saying it but I'm sure my EPA colleagues are a bit tired of hearing it. In my past experience, I have experienced at several federal government agencies. I have also handled FOIA on the Virginia state and local government level and I really look forward to working with the members of this committee. Thank you so much, Patricia. Okay, I just want to make sure I didn't miss anyone, right? You didn't miss anyone. You've got everyone. You'll get to introduce yourself next so I think we're running on schedule so that's great. So at this point I would like to turn things over to Kirsten Mitchell, our designated federal officer. She will walk us through some very important points for the committee members to keep in mind as we move forward. So Kirsten over to you and Michelle, next slide please. Thank you, Alina. I'm Kirsten Mitchell and I actually wear two hats at OGIS. I lead OGIS's compliance team and I'm also a designated federal officer or DFO for the FOIA advisory committee. The two roles dovetail very nicely as the FOIA statute directs OGIS to identify procedures and methods for improving FOIA compliance and the work of the advisory committee fits right into that. Next slide, please. The committee operates in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act or FACA that law governs the committee and requires that each Federal Advisory Committee across the government have a DFO to manage the committee and provide managerial administrative and logistical support. The committee also operates under its charter and bylaws which are available on the FOIA advisory committee website under governance materials. Before I get to the DFO into DFO duties a few words about the committee's duties. Plainly and simply, it's to study the federal FOIA landscape and advise the archivist of the United States on improvements to FOIA. Next slide, please. Committee members, you and I will spend a lot of time together over the next two years. As DFO I attend all committee and subcommittee meetings, prepare and approve meeting agendas maintain records and chair meetings when so directed by the archivist of the United States. We have two alternate DFOs on the OJAS staff Kimberly Reid who is unable to be with us today and Daniel Levenson who is with us. Hello, Dan, if you could wave. Great. Kimberly's name might sound familiar to some of you because she was detailed to OJAS part time during the start of the previous term and was a tremendous help with the minutes and did some research on FOIA in congressional appropriations. She's now on the OJAS staff full time and is helping out as assistant DFO along with Dan. So a few words about records management. OJAS maintains a FOIA advisory committee mailbox to assist with record keeping and in accordance with the bylaws that state that committee members must copy the DFO on all committee and subcommittee correspondence. So to simplify record keeping, the FOIA advisory committee has this email box. It is FOIA dash advisory dash committee at nara.gov Now, I know what some of you are thinking what is up with the photo of the Reagan's with cats. That photo is from the National Archives catalog and I actually put it in there because it's a great illustration of herding cats, which is a bit of what the DFO's job is like and I say that with utmost fondness with cats. Next slide please. So a very quick look at committee member responsibilities which are pretty straight forward including attend and participate in meetings. One quick note, a quorum constitutes two-thirds of the committee members or 13. We obviously have way more than that today. We've had a great group of members over the years and have never had a problem maintaining a quorum and I'm confident that that will continue. I'm not going to spend any more time on committee membership and sort of what it entails because you'll be hearing from Tom Sussman with a little bit of insight into getting the most out of your time on the committee. Final note on this, thank you government members who have submitted your financial disclosure forms to the National Archives General Counsel's office. There are several of you who have not submitted the disclosures and I have been advised by the FACA counsel here at the National Archives that without those disclosure forms you cannot participate in any committee business and that is just a requirement for the government members so if you haven't yet submitted them please do so. Next slide please. So the committee is structured in such a way that it has subcommittees that report directly to the committee. Next week's meeting will entail brainstorming and ideas sharing about various topic areas and forming subcommittees. Alina and I ask that the number of subcommittees be kept to three if at all possible. The committee had three subcommittees in each of its first three terms. Last term before there were four subcommittees and we have found that three is a bit more manageable. Subcommittees can include working groups that look at very specific issues often for a shorter term than the entire two-year term. Finally any recommendations that are made should move through and be passed by a subcommittee before being presented to the full committee. Next slide please. So each committee has two co-chairs one from inside the government and one from outside that's in accordance with the committee bylaws. We find that it is a great way to get members with differing perspectives to work together. At full committee meetings each subcommittee has time on the agenda to report their work and findings. Next slide please. So just a bit about what the subcommittee co-chairs do in case there are any of you who are thinking about stepping forward for that next week. They work with me to schedule meetings, they set meeting agendas and they basically leave the subcommittee in its work throughout the entire term. Next slide please. So a few more notes about the bylaws. We write meeting minutes for the full committee meetings in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act. BACA requires us to keep detailed minutes to post the minutes within 90 days of a meeting. BACA also requires us to post transcripts and we are generally able to post those much sooner. Committee meetings are open to the public and public comments are just accepted at the determination of the chair. And I'm going to give you that email again. It's foya-advisory-committee at nara.gov. Next slide please. So a few words about voting. Any member including Alina as chairperson may move that the committee votes on a matter. No second is required which is strange to those of us who pay attention to parliamentary procedure, but a second has become well second nature and Alina and I are always happy to accept. Only the chairperson and the members may vote. The DFO does not have a vote. Next slide please. So the bylaws state that there are two types of votes the committee can take. A show of hands which was a lot easier in the before times when we were all together in person at the National Archives and a voice vote. In these virtual meetings I find it sometimes challenging to tally a voice vote so I will sometimes do a roll call. Passing votes are either unanimous. General consensus or general majority and then when it comes time to vote on something we'll keep track of all of this so no need to memorize any of this. Next slide please. And with that here's a slide with our contact information. Committee members please do not hesitate to contact me with questions or concerns at any time. I'm your navigator here and if I don't have an answer I'm always happy to find someone who does have an answer. Before I turn it back over to Alina I'm happy to take any questions from committee members and I actually have one that was brought up last week regarding the bylaws. So the bylaws were put together during the first term of the committee the 2014 to 2013 term and they service well but if you think they need amending let Alina and me know there is a provision in the bylaws that say they may be amended but any amendments must conform to FACA the Federal Advisory Committee Act and be agreed to by two thirds of the 20 members. For those of you math challenged as I sometimes am that's 13 the same number required for quorum. So I hope that answers the bylaws question and I'm happy to answer any other questions anyone has. Thank you. I'm looking at everyone to see whether anyone is raising their hands. Everyone looks satisfied with their presentation. I just want to add as everyone is thinking about breaking out of this for next week I want to encourage everyone to join more than one subcommittee you're not barred from doing that in fact highly encouraged as you probably will hear from Tom and Dave and Patricia about their past experiences you can definitely serve on more than one committee I know Dave was very active and at least a couple of them and so was Tom and it really helps actually for me and hear what one subcommittee is talking about bringing it over to the other so I think that's actually extremely helpful in that sense as well Kirsten has to attend every subcommittee meeting I try to attend as many as possible which I myself found extremely helpful just for continuity sake so I'm toggling back and forth on my screen I just want to make sure that no one else has any questions for Kirsten about administrative roles okay I'm not hearing anyone jumping up and down so we're running a little ahead of schedule okay so Kirsten thank you for walking us through all of that very important information the good news for everyone is that Kirsten will be with us throughout this whole journey we also have our alternate DFOs Dan who's here with us today and Kimberly who you'll see next week at any time any committee member has any questions or concerns they can contact Kirsten and I really trust her when she says if she doesn't know the answer she will find out so next on our agenda is Tom Sussman who has been serving on the FOID advisory committee since 2016 as he already mentioned this is his fourth term so we could not think of anyone more qualified than Tom to share some thoughts about being an effective committee member and any other thoughts you might have so Tom over to you now thank you Alina lots of thoughts of course but I want to start by saying that you're absolutely right Kirsten has been very accessible whenever questions come up some impossible to answer most of them she has the answer on the tip of her tongue but members should not hesitate if an issue comes up to contact our assigned officer as this fifth term of the advisory committee begins I kind of harken back to short story I told at OGIS's annual meeting which is at the end of the 19th century Charles Durell was a patent commissioner and he wrote to President McKinley that he was resigning and the office should be dissolved because everything that could be invented had been invented now some people think that story may be apocryphal but I love it because it kind of you know I'm sure that some of us are thinking of this advisory committee and all of these very smart people for the past eight years is there anything else to do and part of what I'm going to try to do today is give you sort of an overview of why it's I find participating in the advisory committee so exciting Justice Scalia this is the same justice who wrote that the Freedom of Information Act had no close it's a Taj Mahal unintended consequences he also coined the phrase administrative law is not for sissies and of course the Freedom of Information Act is in Title 5 the Administrative Procedure Act and I think to some extent FOIA is not for sissies either and so this group that has assembled to attack yet another basically generation another biennial effort of addressing FOIA problems will find very quickly that there's something for everyone whatever your interest is whatever your assignment your work assignment whatever your hobbies FOIA has and the advisory committee will have something that I think will engage you Requestor Community we've done a lot on fees agency best practices for requesters and so on a very important issue see FOIA officers obviously additional resources improve training raise the profile historians improve FOIA websites records management techies search technology better use of IT embracing new technologies lots of technology related recommendations academics you know David did a masterful job at reimagining OGIS far beyond and as the archivist indicated she will follow through with looking more closely at the recommendations as were suggested because it goes really beyond sort of the mundane and the easily attainable defense and intelligence agency staff we revisited classified information in the last advisory committee litigators had something to offer in terms of their concern about GOMAR responses by agencies and having to litigate those and of course media there's always an interest in trying to be responsive to one of the areas that the freedom of information act was addressed to when it was enacted proactive disclosure FOIA logs lots of issues that would be of interest which just having gone through that you see there are recurring themes technology FOIA oversight proactive disclosure additional resources accessibility under section 508 Americans disability additional resources agency websites and logs and additional resources you'll see a recurring theme there there's lots of unfinished business though OGIS enhancing OGIS is unfinished business and even the single recommendation of the first advisory committee I thought it was kind of interesting when Pearson sent out her notice to members of this one she wrote although some of the recommendations are marked complete opportunities for additional work may exist in completion of some of the recommendations rest outside the archives well of course completion is at most of the recommendations rest outside the archives and the example I keep coming back to of one that is marked complete because the archivist has made the recommendation but as far from complete is the recommendation of the first advisory committee to OMB that FOIA fee schedule should be updated and OMB came up with basically a half a loaf there's more work to be done and that's an area that certainly can and should be followed up so Commissioner Durell our work is not done everything that could be invented relating to improving the freedom of information act has not been invented and those that have been invented still need some implementation for the first time the fourth advisory committee made a recommendation addressed to a specific agency and there was some controversy about that but we addressed a recommendation to the Department of Homeland Security because that had been well that's the department that receives by far the majority of requests and has a very large backlog and so we decided that it was worth looking at a specific agency and this advisory committee may want to do the same to focusing on an agency we also made a recommendation relating to legislative information access which was unique at first for the last advisory committee and another unique thing for the last advisory committee as the archivist told us this is the first time the archivist has rejected a recommendation which is okay our job is not to try to second guess what's going to be acceptable to Bobby or Alina or Ms. Wald or Mr. Schumer or McConnell or any of the people to whom we are making recommendations our job is to do the best we can to come together on what needs to be done to improve the Freedom of Information Act and I use the word come together emphasis because it's amazing the diversity of representation on the various advisory committees both from within government and outside government and a lot of us have been adversaries with FOIA requests and even with lawsuits in the past but we're here together to face joint challenges some involve low hanging fruit like the fee schedule I think improving FOIA websites is low hanging fruit some of them involve a little more challenging and long term issues like FOIA logs and technology and some are very ambitious legislative branch records some major overhaul for OGIS but you know I think the challenge will be enjoyable for everyone I think attending meetings we know when they're going to be I try to block them on my schedule I think I've missed one meeting in the last six years I do a lot of international travel and those are kind of hard to tune into work hard and there's plenty of opportunity to work hard the subcommittees will often schedule meetings to hear from outside experts with narrower expertise that might be worth presenting at a full committee meeting and those are all worth attending and they're all worth being involved with I probably don't need to say to this group that any committee needs to keep in mind is feel free to talk when you have something to say feel free to not to talk when you don't we know you're listening we know that you're a constructive member of the team and I was on a nominating committee once in the District of Columbia one was they don't return phone calls and the other was they talk too much at meetings so that's just a short caveat as I said when I introduced myself part of the reason I'm back again is that I do find this not just to be valuable not just to be a possibility of contributing to the continued enhancement of public access to government information on many fronts but also because it's incredibly enjoyable I mean a lot of new people I learn a lot have an opportunity to stay involved in a very interesting and consequential area so that's my message for today and I hope when our two years are done the EU will have the same positive enthusiastic response to our work as I've had for the last various committees thank you and I'll take questions if anything wants to ask questions I was going to suggest that anyone have any questions Adam clapped for you so I want to give that some recognition so I don't have a question but I have a comment is this Kirsten? yes this is Kirsten I just wanted to talk back to what Tom said about the diverse group of members over the years and working together and I hope these two past members won't mind me bringing this up but I guess it was two terms ago we had Bradley White with the Department of Homeland Security and Emily Creighton with the American Immigration Council co-chairing a subcommittee together they got along fabulously they did a great job of co-chairing and the interesting thing was they were able to do that at the same time they were sort of battling it out in court and so I always sort of hold them up as ideal subcommittee co-chairs and Alex had a question yes there's some I think skepticism about this committee in terms of how its activities have improved public access to information and with your longitudinal understanding Tom I wondered if you might reflect upon the impact or influence you've seen it have on both the administration of the FOIA and the agencies and any legislative changes and the latter is relevant because I do think this congress at least is going to consider some updates to the statutes Alex as I said I've been in this arena for a long time and I'm an incrementalist you give me a sort of my touchstone for that perspective as I went to work in 1969 on the Hill for Senator Ted Kennedy whose big issue in the 60's was health care reform and the last vote that he took before he died in the floor of the senate was for a massive overhaul of health care of the Obamacare some can't even do the math how many years later and so I mean I you know the answer is some of these you know I think about fairly quick results because we identify something that is low-hanging fruit one of the things that I'm going to recommend and I know that some of the former members of the earlier committees are likely to go along with is that we spend more time on going back to old recommendations and figuring out how to implement them you know do we need to I don't think there's any now that the recommendations been made there's no particular inhibition on individual members getting together to go up to the Hill to get up meetings with agencies and to push as a group on recommendations that are already on the books so I mean you know I haven't gone back to look at the dashboard and say wow this was really a major I think there probably were some but I just don't have them on the top of my head Kirsten may know a few because she sort of supervises the dashboard but you know and I know Bobby from time to time will say oh yeah we've come out with guidance on that issue following advisory committee recommendations that's a good question to look into further and by the way by the fact that Alina Patricia and you all have the same taste in living room furniture and backyards sorry about that I think it's the default Tom Alex has a beautiful back yard by the way thanks anyone else have any other questions for Tom and please know he's always available and happy to chat very accessible by email as well so if any committee members want to chat hopefully you can certainly do that at any time alright I'm just looking to make sure no one has their hands raised okay so with that we're doing well on time which is great and Michelle if I could ask you to go to the next slide please so this term as I mentioned earlier and as Deborah Stidowall mentioned earlier our acting archivist the committee is welcoming 12 new members and 8 returning members 4 government and 4 non-government members we are very fortunate to have corralled past committee members Professor David Collier from the University of Arizona and Assistant General Counsel Patricia West at the US Environmental Protection Agency EPA and to agree to share their experiences and ideas from this past committee term with the current members so I would like to turn it over to you Dave and Patricia you have the floor go ahead Patricia I think you're leading off right oh okay I can do that so good morning everyone I had the honor of serving on the 2018 to 2020 and the 2020 to 2022 FOIA advisory committees and back again they say that there are times to charm so hopefully that will be the case I was thinking about about what's been done with all the committees since 2014 there have been 4 terms and a total of 51 recommendations so I am going to share my screen bear with me I was successful earlier today okay um so I wanted to talk a little bit about the a little bit about the past recommendations so I thought the best place to do that would be to share with committee members as well as with those watching this at home this wonderful dashboard that OJIS has put together it's on the OJIS website and it has as I said all 51 of the recommendations and what OJIS has done with them and so if you kind of go through this it lists all of them for every term and it's been categorized as well but you can click here and it will take you right to the recommendation in the final report and rather than me talking about each of these recommendations I thought it would be easier to show you where you can find them and kind of review them on etcher, leisure because there's been a lot 51 is a lot of recommendations but really what I wanted to share with the committee members is also that the OJIS website is incredibly helpful and is a great resource for committee members so another thing that I've liked to do in the past was to actually go to the final reports for each committee and read the recommendation and read the rationale for the recommendation and again you can find all of these on the FOIA on the OJIS website and another helpful item is for all of the FOIA advisory subcommittees for each term all of the subcommittees are listed and if they've done a final report for example in the 2020 term each of the subcommittees did prepare a final report but while the subcommittees were working any of their research or interview notes were put on these subcommittee sites so I wanted to share with you some examples what I thought was really good and one that last year on the legislation subcommittee we had a working group regarding FOIA fees and this site was incredibly helpful with all the research that this committee and I believe this is from the the back here I think this is from the first term from the 2014 to 2016 term and this fee subcommittee they have just a font of information up here so this is available for you also I wanted to share with you oversight and accountability committee again this is from the 2014 to 2016 term and again they have a lot of information up here that may be useful for our term this term one thing that I do want to share with you is important is each of the subcommittees must complete a final report so it's good for you to know that here at the beginning of the term so that you can kind of keep notes on your research and be able to describe your methodology and process because that goes into not just your subcommittee but also into the final report and by keeping these notes you can really really draft a stellar committee final report a report that I really referred a lot of folks to last term was a report prepared in the 2020 term by the records management subcommittee and this was led by Jason Barron and Ryan Laugh and this I felt like this their subcommittee report was just really well written and excellent and again you can get to this report through the OGIS website and I think it's a great example for folks to look at really in the beginning of this term so you kind of have some ideas of how to prepare this at the end of the term because two years could by really quickly I'm always amazed if you stay on top of it it's a little bit easier I know my first term I was kind of scrambling the last couple weeks so I just wanted to share that with you another thing that I wanted to share was that I know Tom touched upon it and Kirsten and Lena have already offered themselves as resources and they really mean it and they're incredibly helpful and they can point you in the right direction but also for this term we have several returning committee members and that's Tom and Dave Allison, Ginger, Jason and myself and I know I know I can say this about all of them that they have no problem with you contacting them and in giving guidance I can tell you my first term was incredibly helpful to us we were trying to do some international research to deal with voluminous requests and also look at different models of agencies like OGIS and Tom hooked us up with websites and people to interview so please don't be shy about reaching out to folks and I will also say another resource are your current committee members that have touched upon it we have some really, really sort of people on this committee with great experience and you know I think when we work together as a team we work better and I can just share with you some of my past experiences with Suzanne Perfosky as a professor at Rutgers she was incredibly helpful with helping us compile survey results on Michael Morrissey from Muck Rock really could hook us up with items regarding you know from the requester community perspective even James Stoker who's a professor at Trinity Washington University in one of my committees we needed a translation of German when we were looking at some international research and he you know he's fluent in German so it's amazing the resources that we have here just among ourselves and I can say this I know I've reached out to former members they're incredibly helpful and lastly don't be shy about asking you know boy professionals in the federal government I have found people in this area in the foyer world just really are very very helpful people in both the federal government and the requester community so don't be shy about that so I want to turn back to these 51 recommendations that we have and we heard earlier from archivist Deborah Wall had mentioned suggested to our committee about reviewing these past recommendations and Tom spoke about and perhaps reviewing these past recommendations and I want to share something with you all I want to share the final report from the 20 term SS Jason Barron's handiwork and he had laid out recommendations for last term and one recommendation was hey we weren't able to get to extending some aspects of FOIA to parts of the legislative and judicial branch well last term we did the recommendation expanding the FOIA to the legislative to parts of the legislative branch but Jason has a second recommendation and because he's much more eloquent than I am I'm going to read that to you and that's this paragraph here but his suggestion we have one further suggestion for the committee to consider rather than viewing their mission as one primarily involved in drafting many additional recommendations members should spend a portion of their time devoted to publicizing past recommendations and measuring evaluating compliance with them throughout the executive branch members may want to proceed could include interviews with agency staff conducting surveys and inviting speakers to the committee public meetings to report on the progress being made at their respective agencies implementing committee's recommendations the committee may also want to focus on one or more agencies to examine how implementation of past FOIA advisory committee recommendations have been or will be accomplished so I have to say when I read this in the final report I had an aha moment and I thought gosh we do have a lot of recommendations we can all give recommendations as a lawyer I give recommendations all day long and whether people listen to or not is a completely other story but in reading this I felt inspired and I thought that I and perhaps other committee members could contribute by evaluating the compliance of past recommendations I mean this example in here of having agency staff come and share their unique ways of implementing certain recommendations would be a fantastic platform to share with other federal government agencies as well as the request or request or community so I do echo Tom's suggestion and part of this several walls suggestion and Jason Barron's suggestion from two years ago about committee to assist with reviewing the compliance of past recommendations can I just pull over see if I can do this so I went to the dashboard and downloaded the information to Excel spreadsheet and did a pivot table to kind of look at the different themes and it's you know Tom talked about reoccurring themes and you can see there's there's are a lot of there's a lot of recommendations 51's a lot but there are a lot of reoccurring themes and one just going to throw it out there was providing alternatives to a FOIA access a lot of that has to deal with first party requesters individuals trying to get their own records and it was really inspired by former committee member Professor Margaret Koka she did a presentation which you can watch it's available on the OGIS website she's also written a book since then called saving the freedom information act and it's about trying to allow individuals to get their records without having to go through the FOIA and it might be really interesting to hear what other agencies are doing to accomplish this for example the IRS you don't have to file a FOIA request to get your tax return that's kind of one example there are a lot of recommendations regarding technology, search technology and technology and in the federal government we're always looking for ways that can help us get out a voluminous request and do things with a shorter response time and we lean on technology a lot so it might be interesting to see and hear about how some agencies have implemented these past recommendations in their agency raising the profile of FOIA within agencies that is really helpful for federal agencies because when you have the support of your leadership you can you know you can really make some great strives in the administration of the FOIA and also enhancing online access of records that had a significant number of recommendations five and that could be another topic that could be revisited so I would just encourage you before the 14th I know we have some time but you may want to look over these recommendations and if anyone has any questions please feel free to contact me and I'm happy to talk about these if anyone has any questions and if anyone has any questions right now I will try and answer them well I guess hearing none I will turn it over to Dave and I'll try and stop sharing Dave thank you Patricia boy I love that table you put together that's great thanks for doing that and I'll share here real quick and yeah I mean as folks have mentioned Wednesday next week we're going to start you know working through what we want to do for the next two years and one thing I really like with Alina and Kirsten have done is plan two meetings for this initial month and I think that's new and it's smart because I think I don't know about others but last year or last term that getting started can be really require a lot of time and then review and maybe this term will be noted as the taking stock term because we do have so many great recommendations already out there and so much research has been done I mean several terms looked at fees in different ways and so I'm just going to briefly review some of the key things that were talked about last term and other you know informally and then next week maybe it'll get the juices flowing for us to discuss how we want to really focus what we want to do what subcommittees we want to create perhaps working groups and maybe it extends into October I don't know I hate to say that Alina but it might make sense to hone over the next month to make sure we get off to a good start and last time Kirsten had collected ideas from individual members and threw them in a spreadsheet and there were 49 ideas right at the beginning of the term and I think she's going to do that again this term and so she's going to collect all these things and we'll be able to see them and who knows maybe we can even look at that spreadsheet from the last term and that will give ideas so coming out of the last term formally in the final committee report there were mentions of some things that the committee recommended the next term consider don't have to but could one is the FOIA like transparency in the judicial branch so Tom Sussman did a great job doing making the recommendation report basically on FOIA like transparency for the legislative branch and by the way what I liked about what Tom did was he got it done early he didn't procrastinate and wait I think we approved that in 2021 and so we don't have to wait till the last minute late spring of 2024 or whatever whenever it is to do consider these vexatious requests were talked about quite a bit or volumous requests or whatever you want to call it a lot of discussion in the last term I think in previous terms and I think that's an issue that still seems to be outstanding and and then lots of discussion of electronic tools great to have Jason on board it would be great to have expertise in machine learning and proving the process those are specifically mentioned in the last report but also in the other subcommittee reports you'll see some other ideas and topics that were discussed of course the reimagining OGIS stuff and really I don't think we expected congress to turn around and pass those this year nor the archivist to even agree to and that's why I think we recommended more studies needed sometimes a recommendation especially one that's a little ambitious outside of the box perhaps it's not low hanging fruit getting the discussion started and working through the issues and continuing forward can be a good strategy like Tom said we tend to be incremental in the US to avoid violent overthrow and sudden change that's why most of the time and so I suspect I know I'm personally interested in continuing that research and looking and perhaps helping work with the archivist feasibility study fees continue to be an issue like had been mentioned and in agency funding I think we all acknowledge that agencies are underfunded I mean how can they carry out this important work and work that we keep adding on to them without the resources to do it and we have to figure out a way to do that we also just talked about topics last term and previous terms like classification and proactive dissemination of declassified records and the issue of privatized records and data when the government contracts out with private companies and then that information can be difficult sometimes to get at and we also talked about what Tuan from I think Villanova coined sharp practices kind of those things that sometimes people on both sides of the counter do for whatever reasons frustration trying to get things done on their terms that perhaps we might want to address whether it's requesters doing certain things that bog the system down or what not or agencies in the wording access so where that goes who knows but it was talked about and then additional ideas batted around lots of them you know archivist I hope we don't have 21 more recommendations this term but this is just again brainstorming starting the talk these are all topics that have been talked about many requiring extra resources for OGIS or others we have a lot of issues you know training talk of grading FOIA websites agency websites giving them maybe a rubric to give feedback what can be improved of course that's resources with FOIA online kind of being decommissioned by the EPA you know a lot of agencies are trying to scramble to figure out how to come up with good solid portals and perhaps we could still help with that you know I think there's talk of handling public input as a committee so perhaps we even have a committee process working group one of those things is how to digest, collect the public input distill it and distribute it among committee members I know committee members are busy to be honest I doubt a lot of us had the time to actually read through every comment or solicit comment from a broad spectrum of people including agencies I think most of the comment comes from the requestor community I'm really curious what agency folks have to think and they seem kind of reticent to express themselves for some reason but I would like to hear what they have to say perhaps part of that group might look at the bylaws and procedures of this committee as brought up previously you know after so many terms maybe there are things that could make it work a little better last term sometimes we would have something come up during a meeting without the subcommittee having a chance to approve it and then someone wanting to vote on it and that could be frustrating difficult for people if they don't have all the information as mentioned I think as Patricia said and Tom and others I mean clearly, probably we're going to have to look closely and maybe have some folks step up to review all the previous recommendations all the previous work those white papers and distill it for the rest of the committee to help us prioritize our two years ahead and then I love what Alex brought up is well what's the impact of all this sure word visory we don't make the decision here we just give advice to the archivist and maybe to congress generally you know relayed by the archivist but you know I think Alex is right there's frustration like what good comes of all these recommendations if you know what's the impact and can there be impact I'm guessing the FOIA officers have some restrictions on what they could do when walking up to the hill and talking to a lehi or whoever Cornyn Grassley or their staffs but I can do that and as well as many of the other committee members on that is that's something we talk about how to you know maybe the archivist wouldn't want that I don't know but that might be something we talk about so all of those you know are just to get the juices going the ideas that we're going to talk about Wednesday next week and hopefully add ideas to the shared file and I'm really excited to see what we do this term because I mean shoot there's so many amazing minds here so and I'm particularly pleased with the agency folks that I have been able to work with Patricia in particular and Allison very reasonable you know from the requestor side I all thought they came to work with horns and cloven hooves but I found that is not true they are human and smart and reasonable I mean we actually had agency folks vote in favor of enforcement binding authority biogist which kind of surprised me but they see the reasonableness of coming up with better systems that make this work better for everyone so with that I'll end open to questions or thoughts if anybody wants to chime in alrighty thank you Alina back to you yeah thank you so much Dave some really great thoughts actually I would like to just kind of gauge interest from the committee members about one thing that you said which is to meet again in October how does everyone feel about that that was a little that took me off guard I don't know either Kirsten and I have even thought about that we could certainly try to arrange it what are folks thinking about in terms of that do we need an October meeting after next week's meeting or should we re evaluate after next week see how next week's meeting goes I'm seeing nods on the ladder okay alright does anyone feel like we should try to put an October meeting on the calendar and then we can remove it if it's not needed Alina this Tom Sussman yeah please it seems to me that this as David David sort of made an argument against an October meeting when he said that matters need to come up at the subcommittee level before he feels comfortable voting and considering with the full committee and seems to mean that October is going to be the month where the subcommittees will be organizing and meeting and deciding on what working groups etc and I say that with some commitment that you know I felt like there were an awful lot of meetings in the last committee there were many too many subcommittees and each subcommittee had too many working groups and task forces and so if you really wanted to keep up with what was going on you kind of had to forego much of your day job I mean there were like meetings every week and so I'm going to suggest that we perhaps start off a little slower they should not burn people out in the first couple of months subcommittees get organized and decide what they want to do and then assuming that we can figure out what the subcommittees are next week and then we'll be ready for a substantive meeting hopefully with some maybe even some recommendations as early as next winter and spring. Tom that makes perfect sense I understand burnout completely and especially for the government folks who are coming off of trying to wrap up everything at the end of the fiscal year I think maybe they'll just want a breather so I completely appreciate that so with that no October meetings and no one should worry at this point make sure that everyone has kind of mulled over everything that you've heard so far and see whether there are any questions or comments Alina if I may Yes please go ahead I totally hear where you come from Tom I think what I was suggesting or Amis if after next week we're still kind of unclear on where we want to focus our subcommittees and we want to figure out that more before December's meeting maybe we decide at that point whether we need to continue to figure that out because I don't know if within a week we'll have it but maybe we will and maybe we keep it loosey goosey and I don't know I hope maybe we can nail it down it seems like we've laid out a lot of good direction today to start the discussion David let me just follow up on that one more emails that go to this group and they also go to Kirsten and they're also you know they're archived but it seems to me that we could do more by way of group emails with proposals I mean you and Patricia could you know send around a proposal what you think would be the three most important subjects that you among the various things listed and let people respond and Alex will have his ideas and someone you know he'll say you know what he thinks is a good and bad and maybe by the time we get together things will begin to coalesce a little more just by that off I would not offline exchange but exchange in between the meetings I think that's a great idea yeah I'm ready for Kirsten to jump in because she's going to tell us that that violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act well yes what I was going to say I guess a couple of things I was going to say that that yes we need to do business in the public right but also after this meeting I plan to send an email to all of the committee members asking them for their top two or three ideas can be just a couple of words of what they would like the committee to focus on in the next two years and then compile them in the spreadsheet that David is referencing which we did last year and then bring that up for the full committee and we will post that information yes it will be posted the one from two years ago is posted as well so that is there for all to see and I didn't want to do it before this committee before this particular meeting I wanted the new members to get up to speed on where the committee had been before and Dave and Patricia and Tom sort of summarizing everything that's come before so I'm hoping that committee members are really we'll take a look at the dashboard we'll take a look at some of these resources that you all pointed to and then be able to answer that question which I will ask via email so we cannot reply all to the whole committee to an email that it violates the law or what not even if that email is put online at the website before the public to all see perhaps just wondering I didn't realize that well committee business needs to be conducted in the public eye clearly there are emails that go around among the subcommittees because that's where a lot of the real work gets done that is okay the subcommittee meetings the subcommittee communication all of that not public as you know David no requirements for minutes or transcripts or anything like that so that and that's as you know where the work really gets done the issue becomes when it's the higher committee David it doesn't violate the law to send an email around to everyone it just has to be public but email is a slippery slip so I mean I would advise that because inevitably there's a candid conversation that really is if it were within government itself it would be be five deliberate this body is different that was Jason Darren by the way from the University of Maryland speaking thank you Jason yes and one law that I did not mention was the Sunshine and Government Act and we really government and the Sunshine Act government and the Sunshine Act thank you Alina I always fumble over that one but we strive to do all our business in or as much of it as possible in the public if and when someone emails the entire committee which happens is that posted online and should we refrain from replying all of it we do not post the committee emails online we try to post as much as possible if there's a report or some proposed recommendations or a slide deck or anything like that that we post so when people email that email box foyer-advisory-committee at nara.gov that doesn't go to the whole committee that's not the whole committee doesn't see it that's a NARA mailbox if you will that is used for for capturing the emails regarding the advisory committee but I think Jason was completely on point when he said email is a slippery slope that it is okay with that Dave are you good okay maybe not as happy as you wanted to be with those answers but we'll make the best of it anyone else have anything that they want to ask or comment on before we turn to the last item on our agenda which is public comments I'm just looking around to make sure that no one has anything they want to add Patricia has her hand up thank you Patricia hey Patricia from EPA I was just wondering if you know we the past members shared ideas that we had for potential subcommittees and I was just wondering if some of the new members wanted to share if they had an idea for a subcommittee so basically you're putting everyone on the spot today the 12 new members okay got it I didn't mean to do that I don't think any of them are that shy so it's fine okay you know I've noticed a lot of people come in with great ideas I just thought I would throw that out there so alright so without calling on anyone in particular does anyone want to throw out anything this is Michael Heiss with the EEOC hopefully I don't step my foot in anything they say on this what I was thinking what I've been thinking about is maybe this would be something about how the statutes are written but for Exemption 5 I always thought it was interesting and I haven't had a chance to look at all of the recommendations and white papers which is I hope to be my weekend project so that I have kind of all that by the 14th so maybe this was covered in the last years it's interesting to me that Exemption 7 has sub sub parts but Exemption 5 doesn't even though there are sub parts in my opinion because there's the deliberate process which we all like that's used like a lot and then there's attorney client then there's work product and then there's what executive 2 so it seems to me like when professionals are drawing redacting into things and invoking B5 it would be really nice to be able to say it was B5A or B5B or B5C and then we would know by the statute that A means deliberative and B means attorney and C means work product and you could have all three of them or something or whatever and then for metrics in terms of reporting I think it would be very interesting because then you can more easily capture how many times one or the other is being invoked by particular agencies in a given fiscal year I just think it's a failing in B5 that doesn't have that kind of granularity that's it okay well thanks Michael for that comment Bobby that would mean more reporting work for agencies right well I mean one distinction they make between Exemption 5 and 7 is 7 does point to specific law enforcement interests and B5 incorporates essentially civil discovery privileges even though it's a global process attorney work product and attorney client are the ones that are most cited it also incorporates communication privilege theoretically any other civil discovery privilege that also meets the threshold so I think there's a distinction and a difference there but we have asked agencies to report in the CFR reports on the different uses of exemptions that's more like a survey to get an idea so that's maybe depending on you know how that's going to help us in improving for administration but if that's like a level of data that's helpful that's something that maybe is good for discussion yeah and this is Michael you'll see again and I appreciate that when I look at the yellow book which for anyone who doesn't know that's like the guide book it used to be yellow now it's online but you know it's I know in the guide book itself it kind of categorizes you know there's a section deliberative, there's a section on attorney product there's a section on executive and I don't know how many other professional think like this but when I'm thinking of B5 those are big buckets I think of I mean there might be other ones but you know maybe having it and I don't know I like things to kind of be in different buckets and so even though you know there is a difference between B5 and that way if the vast majority of what agencies are doing is really invoking those big buckets that are you know that are you know in the yellow book as well and I think everyone thinks of them that way when courts write about B5 those are the things they're talking about that maybe having those sub parts and then maybe another sub part that says other or something and they can you know but I think that for me it just would make more sense because I think of them myself as being you know kind of sub parts like I see B5 as having sub parts but I get it you know I get it that there's maybe it's not a value add that's cool if it's not and I think it would be and yeah definitely you know there's other things beyond like Bobby was saying so anyway you know so for whatever it's worth that's great. So hi this is Katrina Pueblo Kenan and I'm going to jump in and I've got actually two ideas one is of course and I think David Mitch's funding you know we need funding for technology solutions we need funding for offices that are not funded because they're not staffed appropriately and so I think that that would be a good topic to cover and another thought is for you know we've talked about in great depth and Leaning you and I talked about this prior to this committee about first party requests and non-first party requests and changing the policy and how we would do that and so those are two things that I think would be a really we can make headway in that and make some recommendations for that and understand the process I think those would be something that I would think that would be good working groups that we could make maybe good advances in. Okay thanks Katrina for all those comments so this is exactly the kind of dialogue that I hope we will be engaging in at our next meeting and I know we have a hard stop at noon and I want to make sure that we have enough time for public comments and I know that we have gotten a number of comments on the chat that I was going to ask Martha Murphy or deputy director to read out loud so without further ado we have now reached our public comments section of our meeting so I want to just turn it over to Martha to read some questions out loud and we will also open up our telephone lines Hi Alina can you hear me yes great so first off we had a very lively chat on the YouTube and we are getting a lot of questions specifically about the FOIA and the FOIA advisory committee coming through the chat on YouTube so we would like to refer folks to FOIA.gov for more general information on the Freedom of Information Act anything you really need to know about the background of the act and the agencies and how to file the FOIA I think you can find linked off of FOIA.gov for more information about this actual advisory committee we suggest you go to OGIS's website which is archives and I will spell that for you A-R-C-H-I-B-E-S .gov forward slash OGIS on the left hand side you will see a link to our FOIA advisory committee and again we will give you more information than you ever wanted to know about this committee and all previous committees how they are formed who the members are and all the like so I just want to start off right there because I know we are very excited to see how many people are interested in what we do but it is just too hard to answer all the specific questions in this forum so we are going to point folks to resources for them secondly we have received 11 questions for Bobby and Alina that the submitter requested that we read aloud I think it would take all of our time if I read and then you answered and I read and then you answered so I am going to read them out now and then give you both time to respond to anything that can be responded to today so if you don't mind I am just going to jump right in for OIP Bobby one word answer what is the dollar funding level that DOJ OIP needs to effectively statutory missions for fiscal year 23 and also for OIP I am prepared to provide you 1,000 to 2,000 compliance inquiries of incontrovertible false FOIA reporting and other potential malfeasance are you staffed to prepare moving on to questions for OJIS Alina again one word answer what is the dollar funding level that OJIS needs to accomplish its statutory FOIA compliance and mediation missions for fiscal year 2023 with full mediation when saw Alina why did you discontinue satisfaction surveys and how do you now validate your suspect claims that requesters are satisfied statutory basis is what for statement I guess what is the statutory basis for the statement quote OJIS staff may need to consult with the office of information policy at the department of justice before accepting the request for mediation not familiar with that statement but that is the question the next question is OJIS has never engaged in mediation of my specific request to do so upon what authority is OJIS refusing mediation the next question is why changed in 2022 ombuds reports statutory wording from offer mediation services to help resolve disputes per 5 USC section 552 H3 OJIS shall offer mediation services to resolve disputes next question why changed 2022 ombuds request for mediation to request for assistance not the same I think that is a similar question how many of the 2022 purported OJIS 4100 cases went to mediation next question OJIS an agency FOIA public liaisons routinely refused to engage in ADR why does OJIS incorrectly report the number of OJIS cases and number of times FPL assistance sought ADR in lieu of engaged in ADR next question OJIS in my request for mediation OJIS often says file an appeal and the agency will address your issue not what congress intended how can OJIS count such actions as an ADR case closure figures and finally recommendation number 2020-19 in the absence of oversight from congress FOIA otherwise lacks a sustaining enforcement mechanism why did OJIS non concur with additional hearings and inquiries so if either of you would like to address any of these questions I'll be quiet now and let you do some probably you want to go first I can go first since you had a lot more questions than I did so as far as funding I can tell you that every year we evaluate OIP's funding to ensure that we can meet the demands of our mission and the department has been very supportive of funding OIP of course we all I can't think of an agency component or organization that would say I can't use more resources but we are able to fully meet our mission and the department is very supportive I'll give one example of that and that's one of our recommendations just recently the associate attorney general issued a memo to chief FOIA officer and general counsels advising them to use new e-learning training modules that we developed for the entire federal workforce separate e-learning modules so that every agency has these training resources one specific for senior executives one specific for all agency personnel that are at FOIA professionals and then one very comprehensive e-learning module for FOIA professionals and of course that required funding and the department funded that effort and over the past year we were able to develop those training modules so that's just one example as far as compliance inquiries we've always encouraged requesters to come to us if they see compliance issues one so that we can get a better understanding what the issue is talk to the agency give guidance if necessary but also also just like our partnership with OGIS and hearing their feedback from their work helps us get that feedback to implement in our guidance and our training and so forth so I think that covers both those questions I'm not going to be able to answer all the questions that were asked in part because one of the instructions that I always give at the beginning and at the end right before we start a public meeting public comment section rather of our meeting is that we're not able to address individual requests or individual issues related to individual requests for assistance we just invite you to email us at OGIS at narra.gov for individual questions with regard to OGIS related questions and funding at this point the best answer is we support the feasibility study and we believe the feasibility study that the archivist has the acting archivist has accepted as a recommendation is a great way to study the myriad issues that were discussed in the white paper OGIS 2.0 and all the issues that the committee considered in the last term and undoubtedly will continue to consider in this term the feasibility study will hopefully answer a lot of the questions that have been raised so with that I would like to ask Michelle if she would like to give instructions for telephone line comments absolutely so ladies and gentlemen as we answer the public comment session please limit your comment to three minutes once your three minutes expires you align and move on to the next comment each individual will be limited to three minutes each and with that I do see that we have someone on the line for a comment Robert your line is on mute please go ahead yes hi this is bob heaven those questions were mine thank you for reading them with three minutes when my three minutes are up I'm going to call back in if there's no one else please accept my call back I want to clarify one of the recommendations that I made to the committee and that is when I talk about 15 minutes for public comments that's 15 minutes total so if there are five people that call in they each get three minutes one person then you keep going to use up 15 minutes last year's committee was absolutely awesome I think some of the most consequential recommendations including re-emphasizing a requirement to post FOIA processing logs I thought that was absolutely tremendous FOIA funding look it is absolutely the biggest issue is there's no funding for OIP and there's no funding for Alina I understand within their organizations if they complain about it it's going to be a problem I think they came to this committee last year and asked you to find money for her including taking it away from agencies to fund just mediation Bobby and Alina this wasn't in my comments prepared but you both got your tails kicked at the senate judiciary hearings you're not doing your jobs you don't have the money you got great people you just need about 10 to 20 times more and I apologize for getting so emotional about that two years ago I emailed Alina offered lobby congress for additional OJIS funding but narrow gets every time it asks for and budget submissions while seeking grossly insufficient funds that went to all stop now I'm asking congress for GAO and OIG audits of OJIS and OIP funding and mission degradation it's been well received I've had two conference calls this week at their request and I have one more this afternoon an adverse audit finding is a blessing if the reason is insufficient funding attach the audit to the next budget and place the onus on OMB and congress and I asked the question for Ms. Wall and Ms. Gupta to take a look at that I believe that every agency budget should contain a line item for FOIA supported by what they will do to improve FOIA that being increased staffing their grade levels and reduced backlogs and so if I make just one comment today it is that the biggest issue is a lack of funding for OJIS and DOJ it's not Bobby's fault it's not Alina's fault but there's absolutely no FOIA compliance oversight whatsoever none Bobby you don't answer the compliance inquiries you do about 20 a year and you're not staffed to do it anybody want to review the comment? thank you Martha I do not see any additional questions in queue OK thanks Michelle Martha has apparently one more comment Martha do you want to go ahead I'll be real quick this is from an attendee from Germany we received the following since we like to promote evidence act at Germany I'm interested how the foundations for evidence-based policymaking act of the US effects or helps FOIA in the US is there any experience yet and I believe Alex you wanted to respond to this one sure so thanks for this question can follow up afterwards for those who aren't familiar policymaking act that was passed in 2018 that President Trump signed into law in 2019 it has a number of things in it that codify the idea of open government data which is to say making information in the United States government open and accessible by default and published and stored and created in a machine readable format the most substantive impact so far has been through the chief data officers council and the creation of chief data officers who are going about the work structuring information and making it more accessible being good stewards of it which in turn makes it easier to respond to FOIA requests the thing that many people are waiting for is guidance from the office of management and budget on title two of the evidence act which is the open government data act which would instruct agencies what their obligations are under the law to structure information in machine readable format to make it accessible which in turn would have a transformative effect upon the ability of FOIA officers to get information more quickly and to get it out in theory would mean that we would no longer see FOIA officers sending in scans of tables or scans of things in pdfs or tiffs we'd see the disclosure of spreadsheets instead that I think is something that hopefully we can discuss as a committee in terms of requesting OMB to do what Congress told it to do all right thanks Alex really appreciate that I just want to wrap up we have a hard stop today at noon as I indicated I want to thank all the committee members for your anticipated hard work for the next two years I hope that the presentations from your fellow committee members Tom have gotten your creative juices flowing our primary order business for our next meeting is to have the very discussion that we started engaging in today which is to talk about the issues that we want to take up select subcommittees and subcommittee co-chair so please think about volunteering to step up for that spend some time in the next few days thinking about what these issues are and what you want to focus on and I want to thank everyone today for joining us I think everyone continues to say safe, healthy and resilient we will see each other again virtually in the same space at our next meeting Wednesday September 14 from 10 a.m. to noon eastern time if there are no other questions and I don't have time to take any questions at this point I am going to declare this meeting adjourned we stand adjourned thank you everyone that concludes our conference thank you for using your minutes