 Meeting is being recorded. Welcome and thank you for joining today's meeting of the Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee. Please note this conference is being recorded and all audio connections are muted at this time. If you require technical assistance, please open chat with the associated icon at the bottom of your screen and send a message to the event producer. And thank you for joining today's meeting of the Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee. Please note this conference is being with that I'll turn the conference over to Alina Simo, Director of the Office of Government Information Services and Committee Chair. Thank you. Good morning and welcome everyone as the Director of the Office of Government Information Services, OGIS, and this committee's chairperson. It is my pleasure to welcome you all to the 10th meeting of the fifth term of the FOIA Advisory Committee. We are in the home stretch. We will wrap up this committee term with a final public meeting on Thursday, June 13th beginning at 10 a.m. I would like to welcome all of our colleagues and friends from the FOIA community and elsewhere who are watching us either via Webex or with a slight delay on the National Archives YouTube channel. This meeting is public in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, FACA, which requires open access to committee meetings and operations. FACA requires us to post minutes in transcript of today's meeting and we will do so as soon as they are available. We have posted the minutes in transcript from the March 5th meeting and we will post the minutes in transcript from the April 4th meeting as soon as they are ready. Please visit our website for today's agenda along with committee members' names and biographies at archives.gov.org slash OGIS. Next slide please. And thanks for flipping to the first slide. So some housekeeping notes that I always go through. Be our please bear with me. Before we launch I am advised that we're going to lose Luke Nictor at 12 30 Eastern time but I am hopeful that we will be able to wrap up our meeting by then. And I'm going to now turn to our designated federal officer Kirsten Mitchell and ask Kirsten if she's taken a visual roll call. And whether she can confirm that we have a quorum. I have indeed taken a visual roll call and we do indeed have a quorum. Okay great thank you. During today's meeting I want to encourage committee members to use the raise hand icon at the bottom of your screen when you wish to speak or ask a question. Committee members may also use the all panelists option from the drop down menu in the chat function when you want to speak or ask a question and or please chat me or Kirsten directly. In order to comply with the spirit and intent of the Federal Advisory Committee Act please use the WebEx chat for housekeeping and procedural matters only. Please do not enter any substantive comments in the chat function as they will not be recorded in the transcript of the meeting. If any committee member needs to take a break during the course of the meeting please do not disconnect from the Web event. Instead mute your microphone by using the microphone icon and turn off your camera by using the camera icon. Please send a quick chat to me and Kirsten to let us know if you'll be gone for more than a few minutes and join us again as soon as you can. Reminder to all committee members please remember to identify yourself by name and affiliation each time you speak today. It makes our lives a lot easier down the road when preparing the minutes. Members of the public who wish to submit written public comments to the committee may do so using our public comments form. We review all public comments and if they comply with our public comments posting policy we post them as soon as we are able. In addition we will have the opportunity for oral public comments at the end of today's meeting. We will be holding a public comment period once the committee has completed its business today. My goal is to end early on the agenda. We have March 12th 15th as our end time. And as we noted in our federal register notice announcing this meeting public comments will be limited to three minutes per individual. I have one announcement I would like to make today. Our committee member Patricia Webb would be switching agencies later this month. She is leaving the EPA on May 17th and joining committee member Paul Chalmers at the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation PBGC. The archivist has reappointed Patricia to continue and complete her term as this does not conflict with the terms of the committee charter or bylaws. So as this is the perfect time since I uttered I uttered the word bylaws we are now going to turn to our DFO Kirsten Mitchell and she is going to take us through a discussion of some amendments to the bylaws that we have proposed and that we have received public comments on. So with that Kirsten I'm going to hand it over to you. Thank you Alina and good day everyone. As Alina said I'm Kirsten Mitchell. This committee's designated federal officer. Before I go through the proposed bylaws amendments I wanted to let everyone know that on April 26th archivist of the United States Dr. Colleen Shogan signed a renewed charter for the 2024 the 2026 term of the FOIA advisory committee. So there will be a sixth term of the committee. We will publish a federal register notice seeking nominations for the sixth term. And as we have done in the past we will blog and ask about it. Before I go through the proposed changes to the bylaws a bit of background as we were preparing for the charter renewal we learned that the bylaws and the charter were not harmonized with regard to the number of designated and non-designated seats for both government and non-government members. I'll go into more detail about this in a moment but wanted to let you know what the spark was for amending the bylaws which as far as we know have not been amended since the committee was first established in 2014. Amendments to the bylaws require agreement by two thirds of the members or 13 of you. I'm going to very briefly walk you through the changes which have been shared with all committee members and posted on the FOIA advisory committee page on the OJIS website. Next slide please. So Article 2 discusses authority. The language changes proposed here reflect OJIS's role that has changed in the FOIA statute since the National Archives established this committee in 2014. When the committee was born the statutory language did indeed say that OJIS will quote recommend policy changes to improve FOIA. Congress struck that language in 2016 and replaced it with quote identify procedures and methods for improving compliance with FOIA. So this proposed language more accurately reflects OJIS's role and the statute. Article 3 on its face it may appear that we are trying to reduce the number of seats. That is not the case. I'm going to pause here and ask our event producer Candace to share a graphic that illustrates the seats to help I hope clarify what we were talking about. Committee members received this graphic and it is posted on the FOIA advisory committee page of our website. There are designated seats and non-designated seats and the charter and bylaws address only designated seats. Designated seats are for those for which a member represents the interests of a particular group. For example one designated seat for non-government members represents the interests of FOIA requesters who fall into the new media FOIA C category. Non-designated seats have no parameters other than those who fill them must of course be FOIA experts. As I noted a few minutes ago these edits would result in consistency between the bylaws and charter and there will be no reduction in seats. I'll also note that the Federal Advisory Committee Act or FOCA requires advisory committees to be balanced and to submit a membership balance plan to the General Services Administration. So again no reduction in seats. Candace can we please go back to slide five. Thank you. The next change simply has to do with failure or inability to participate regularly in committee work. In cases such as those the archivists shall appoint a replacement. Bottom line there are participation expectations. Article 4 about meeting with regard to meeting the bylaw states of the committee will meet up to four times a year. Beginning several terms ago we started holding more frequent meetings in the last several months of the term as we are now doing. Regarding a quorum the bylaws currently state that members will quote state their presence. That sounded a bit like a roll call which we may do at the beginning of a term but we really don't think you need to hear from me calling roll at each meeting for forum or attendance purposes. Next slide please. So article 5 pertains to voting. These changes reflect how we have conducted business in the virtual world. As you all know I try to avoid roll call votes but I want to make sure that I am accurate in my vote tallies. So article 6 you'll see in the proposed amendment that there is this big block of text regarding the chairperson and vice chairperson which up until now we have not had. This language might look completely new but it is actually lifted from the original charter and the subsequent charter renewal. This is language that the General Services Administration in the charter renewal process this year noted would have a better home in the bylaws than in the charter. Regarding the language about a designated federal officer and an alternate it is not correct to say that FACA requires both a DFO and an alternate. FACA does require a DFO designated federal officer and there have been times since 2018 when I operated without one. On a related aside I am very happy to have alternate DFOs and I want to send a shout out to my two alternate DFOs Dan Levinson and Kimberly Reed. So article 7 this is a technical amendment that has to do with how the bylaws quoted the FOIA statute and its implementing regulation. How technical is it? It involves moving quotation marks so it's very technical. So that is it for the proposed amendments. But before I move on I just want to note that the General Services Administration on April 18th published in the federal register an update to its final rule implementing the Federal Advisory Committee Act. That rule goes into effect on May 20th. It's the first time since 2001 that the rule has been amended and we closely read the new rule as we were working on these proposed bylaw changes. Next slide please. Kirsten can I just. So article 9. Kirsten I'm sorry I just want to interrupt you. Do we want to just take a beat and pause for a second. I just want to make sure there are no questions from committee members on everything you've said so far because there was a lot of information. That was a lot. Anyone have any questions so far. Thank you. Great. Thank you. So article 9 deals with amendment of charter and bylaws. There are no proposed changes to this particular article. Regarding confirmation of receipt by members I email these proposed changes to each member and have obtained confirmation of receipt from all but a couple of you and I will be following up to make sure I have email confirmation receipt from everyone. The amendments as I said earlier require agreement by two-thirds of the committee members. That's 13 of you. So an 18. We have 18 here today so that's good. So before I turn the floor back to Alina I also want to note that we received some public comments on these amendments that I have alerted committee members to and that are posted on the FOIA advisory committee page on the OJIS website. I will go through the comments very briefly. The commenter Mr. Robert Hammond notes that the new bylaws reduce the number of seats on the committee. As I explained earlier the amendments do not reduce the number of seats on the committee. I'm hopeful that the graphic we created that Kansas shows you a few minutes ago and that is posted on our website will help folks visualize this issue. Mr. Hammond suggests adding that 10 days prior to a meeting the agenda slides and meeting materials be posted on the committee webpage. In response I know that there is no such requirement in the federal advisory committee act or it's implementing regulations. We post materials as soon as they are available for posting. For example we posted the implementation subcommittee report earlier this week when it was finalized and the graphic that I just mentioned we posted yesterday. Mr. Hammond also would like the bylaws to reflect that NARA YouTube chat comments be turned on and that more than three minutes per individual be allowed for public comment. I note again that we hold these meetings in accordance with the federal advisory committee act and government and sunshine act. He suggests that we certify minutes within 45 days of the meeting rather than 90 days. FACIS implementing regulation clearly states that the designated federal officer must ensure that minutes are certified for accuracy within 90 days of the meeting and that's 90 calendar days. Finally he suggests that the DFO keep an accurate time card of time spent on DFO duties which should be provided to the general services administration and made available for public inspection. This is a great time to talk about the FACA database. The general services administration requires annual reporting including on pay and full-time staff equivalency of federal support staff for all advisory committees. And by the way there are at least a thousand federal advisory committees across the government according to GSA's website. I invite anyone who is listening to visit FACADatabase.gov and learn more. Again that's FACADatabase.gov. So with that does any committee member have any questions or comments about these suggested bylaw changes or the public comments that we have posted on the OGIS website and that I briefly just went through. I see Ara has her hand up and Alex has his hand up. I'm not sure who had their hand up first. Okay well since you said Ara first I will say to her first Ara. Hi this is a this is Ara Tansy from Memory Rising LLC. This is a quick point of clarification I have about the membership and the different categories that members may be representing. So although I am not an official representative of the Society of American Archivists I did learn about the FOIA Advisory Committee from SAA and had sought some of the support from SAA leadership when I applied for this committee. So I know that I am in the non-designated part but that prompts a question from me which is if in the future there were like an official representative from the Society of American Archivists applying for membership in this would they be considered an individual representing the interests of a non-governmental organization advocating on FOIA matters would they represent an individual representing historians and history related organizations or would they continue to be in sort of that non-government non-designated category. That's just my question for clarification. Thanks. Yeah that's a great question Ara and I wanted to say two things and the first is that when we go out and publish the notice and the federal register seeking nomination I mentioned that we blog about it we you know X about it we get the word out we also do go to organizations. And ask them to help get the word out about that we are seeking nominations with regard to the government or the non-government plot there's a little more knee way there in terms of people being placed in different seats just because of the way the charter is written on the government side one either works for a covenant level department or a non-tabinant level agency it's one or the other but on the non-government side people can fit into different slots. You know I'm thinking of some of the professors on this committee could fit into several slots and then you know I mentioned earlier the news media FOIA C category I believe Adam Marshall is in that slot he could very easily fit into a slot of representing an NGO a non-governmental organization that advocates on FOIA matters so I hope that answers your question. Okay I think so it sounds kind of like where a person might be able to justifiably fill one of those slots is where they are designated. Yeah exactly and a lot of it just depends on how many nominations we get and you know sort of fitting people in to various slots so Alina I believe you said Alex had his hand up that's correct. So first of all I really appreciate you creating that graphic Kirsten I had the same confusion I think the yellow line not a red line of the by-law changes suggested that there was a reduction in head count and just the way that it was communicated that would that's a reasonable takeaway so the creation of this graphic and narration of it I think hopefully clarifies that it certainly answers my concern and makes it very clear that there will be proportional half and half NGO civil society representation alongside U.S. government representation and that's I think of one of the most important symbolic aspects of this committee as a open government kind of commitment right that this fulfills an open government commitment as you've mentioned this is a freedom of information act committee not an open government one I of course think that FOIA is a canonical open government pillar alongside participation and collaboration and on that count the charter specifically says that we're supposed to foster dialogue both within us which represents the requester community and a solicit public comment um as the people know if they've been around this committee for a while I showed up at McGowan theater for many years in my role as either a journalist or as an advocate at the sunlight foundation where we're very concerned about the FOIA and its administration and had I would say a robust dialogue with committee members including past representatives the department of justice unfortunately Bobby isn't with us today and one of the things I'd like to suggest is that we try to replicate if we're continuing to have this only virtually some of the conditions that exist at McGowan which include the ability for someone who's asking a question or making a public comment to ask another one so for this particular concern that's been expressed about having one person being able to only make speak for three minutes and then not come back I would suggest that we try to replicate the offline condition that pertained before if there are no other people there to ask questions and you have someone there to ask one then I think it's both common sense and in the spirit of the charter to continue taking questions and I ask this as an advocate myself having just participated in a public meeting of the FOIA officers council which was a mandatory meeting I believe under the FOIA for a body that was created by the FOIA Improvement Act 2016 I would ask that we not limit people to just three minutes I would say that looking forward this is being chartered again which is tremendous that we think about how to bring people back in person using hybrid technology I know that right now the considerations around technology have hindered us coming to do that and that it is still a challenge for volunteer members to travel to Washington so we need to think about how to mitigate this concern but as we think about a post-pandemic future I hope that we create conditions for more robust comment and that if there's not more than one or two commenters that they have the opportunity to continue asking questions so I just wanted to levy that as someone who cares a great deal about comment as someone who's asked many questions before and as someone who would not like to be limited to just three minutes if there's no one else to ask questions suggest that we consider that Okay great so thank you Alex for that there's a lot that you said there so I'll just quickly try to address and respond to what you said first of all thank you so much for raising the issue about the membership because really I realize that there was some confusion out there you were not alone and so that was what really sparked me to create that graphic so I just have to thank you for bringing that up with regard to the three minutes rule I'm using air quotes here that is not something that we will put in the bylaws it doesn't belong in there so it's like a pretty much space that we can allow public comment as long as the rules of the agency allow it so we will not stop public comment in any way and certainly we will look at this issue for the upcoming term as we will the meetings it has not yet been decided virtual in person we've got a lot to talk about there so I'm going to stop and see if Alina has anything to add to what I just said no no I don't think so go ahead no okay so any other questions from committee members Tom shaking his head no and I don't see any hands up Alina no Katrina's hand is up go ahead please no I just wanted to say thank you for doing that graphic like Alex said that that really made it very clear I was a little bit confused to Alex when when I first started reading that so I do appreciate the graphic I think that that makes it very clear cut what's going on and I appreciate that thank you Katrina okay so if there are no other questions I think Alina I can turn the mic over to you yeah I would like to see whether the committee is ready to vote on the bylaw amendment changes that we have proposed and if that's the case we can commence with a vote does everyone ready to vote okay can I get a motion please I'll make I'll make a motion Alina to amend the bylaws as stated by Kirsten okay and do I have a second second thank you Tom all those in favor please say aye aye aye aye aye aye aye those opposed please say nay I don't hear any nays anyone abstaining I don't hear any extensions Kirsten did you get all of that I did are you abstaining Alina no I said yay okay I said aye there were a lot of eyes floating around so it appears the vote is 18 to 0 to approve the bylaws amendment so thank you all very much and we can move on to the next slide please and I think we are on the next slide so yep thanks again Kirsten great job so on to our agenda for today we're going to hear from one subcommittee today the implementation subcommittee they've been very hard at work they have proposed three recommendations to the committee and we will be voting on those today I know we have a break scheduled on our agenda at a logical point if we're doing really well and we're just swimming right through we may just skip the break if everyone is okay with that because maybe that'll help us to end even earlier but we'll see how everyone is feeling if there's meeting fatigue we can certainly take a short break well then also going to get an update from the working group for the final committee report and we will close the meeting with the public comment period so with that I would like to turn things over to Dave Coolier and Michael Heiss I don't know who's speaking David over to you oh okay thank you Alina yeah this is Dave Coolier from the University of Florida Breckner FLI project and we bring to you committee fellow committee members three recommendations which you've already seen for a couple meetings now so probably have had a chance to look at them as well as the background information that that we put together including a lot of explanations that I think Jason Baron will flesh out for everybody but we have the three recommendations and feel free to advance the slides I think the next three slides show what they are and I think we could probably take one vote on all three I don't think we have to individually but we could certainly go through individually and start that way so either way I'm fine but so the first recommendation is that various entities follow up with some some certain recommendations from the past that we think need a little more attention continued attention and maybe this Jason it would be a good opportunity for you to kind of explain that and what those are Jason would you like to go ahead well David I was counting on you to do the explanation this morning oh I'm sorry I asked you misunderstood that's okay would you like to chime in Jason or I could take care of it why don't you start and I will give commentary if I think there's something to add okay great all right well we'll do that so as you see in the report there's several sections kind of breaks down and that's in fact I've got to follow it up I don't think I need to share the screen probably everybody probably has a copy of it but the first section kind of lays out the methodology that we took a lot of work over the past nearly two years now and and then kind of some of the successes things that have been accomplished through the years often like recommendation might say oh just should send a letter to entity acts urging x y or z or look into this issue and report back and and by all accounts that's what happened now whether or not that issue actually sees improvement you know may or may not happen because oh just may not be able to control that but they certainly followed through on the recommendations so so we list quite a few of those recommendations that and some you know did lead to direct changes or implementation of certain certain committees or or what not so so so we wanted to highlight those and make it clear that there's been some good things that have happened over the past terms and that was part of our charge the next section kind of talks about some of the recommendations from the past that we feel more work needs to be done and we've identified 17 of them to be exact I think and kind of ordered and ranked them in importance as well as a committee based on our findings and our research and our you know and different folks's expertise and and so you can see that the various details of what we think needs more work on it and that's what recommendation one addresses that's what we're saying is you know tackle those things folks who really need to bear down and keep working on those and then then the rest of the appendices are basically the research findings, the survey a summary of the interviews we had with officials and a summary of the chief FOIA officer reports that we looked at and all of that kind of comes together and hopefully we are you know future committee which glad to hear that that it's on the in the works we'll take a look at these and maybe come back and help work on these perhaps OHS, OIP other entities can continue working on this and that's that's pretty much what we wanted to set out and do this term and I think we're successful really looking at what's happened 51 recommendations over what eight years or so and a lot of good this happened but a lot of work yet to be done so that's recommendation one more or less and if there are any questions we're happy to take them all right I oh I do see a hand Allison thanks David I guess I was just curious why you guys focused on the whether or not agencies followed the guidance or the recommendations and not what caused them not to be followed I found that much more interesting creating the report honestly like okay the recommendations seem like they were too high in the sky or they the agency felt that the recommendations were geared more towards larger agencies or they didn't apply to the situation I think that would be much more helpful than just saying why didn't an agency follow all of our recommendations especially when a lot of them are best practices and not requirements well that's a really good point Allison yeah I mean and I I could certainly see it from an agency's perspective it feels like the report's a little heavy on beaten up on agencies saying boy they're just not doing squat and and we don't really want you know that's not our intention here and you're absolutely right in in the report and this was particularly noticeable in the interviews we could really see you know there are a lot of reasons why progress is difficult on a lot of issues primarily resources right right if agencies had all the resources in the world this would probably all be done we'd be disbanding and and the world would be all unicorns and rainbows but and so that's I hope we noted that and we certainly believe that there are a lot of impediments that are outside of agencies controls that said you know we that that's why I think we really encourage solutions toward overcoming those those roadblocks and that may be what future committees and work could be done is okay if resources is an issue and getting x y or z done well let's continue talking about how to get those resources and fortunately in this term I think some of those will be addressed but obviously more works to be done and we also did appreciate the feedback we got from chief officers saying look you know some of these recommendations are a little naive or they don't apply to our agency so you know I think that's a really important finding that we should future committee should consider as they're working up recommendations because often well I think primarily we all have had a broad sweep you know agencies should do x without really considering the nuances of different agencies so we hear you I hear you and hopefully future committees will take a look at this and all of the report including the observations with the interviews and take all that into consideration did I hit that okay Jason Allison anybody else want to chime in the only thing that I would add is just under faculty it's up to the agency to determine if they want to accept recommendations so I would just do our job we provide the best recommendations we can and then if the agencies decide to accept them great if not we did our best and try to provide good recommendations as we can thanks absolutely we're advisory so we can't force anybody doing anything let's see Alex I see a hand your hand up nope okay too thick too quick things in response to what you said and an Allison's comment it is true that the report does not intend to beat up on agencies so to speak it is also true that there is widespread dissatisfaction with the FOIA process in the requestor community which we represent in terms of people here and that on the one hand the comment that resources are at issue is spot on one of the things that we pulled out in this report is that there's a consensus around certain recommendations that we all collectively voted that they think will make a big difference improving agency FOIA websites and online interactivity aiding search and redaction through better technology which could involve AI but there's lots of other options removing first person requests from the FOIA process the A files USCIS are the things and then the last one nurturing a culture of transparency through government which is not about resources and one of the things that has come up in the recommendations that we've made across our committees is the need for senior leadership across government now I can understand why there is significant reticence from the government members of this committee from speaking up and criticizing the leadership of the current administration or past administrations but I think it's fair to say that the Freedom Information Act has not been a political priority for an administration in quite some time the last time we had a president really talking about the FOIA was President Obama when he directed the Department of Justice to explore a release to one released all FOIA policy which I and other people still believe would be in the best interest of not just the request to community but of agencies out of recent in our forum we had a wonderful FOIA officer from the State Department talk about how adopting that policy has had an impact not just in the request to community but also agency operations and to this point around implementation one of the things that came away from our work was that many agencies when you get down below the senior official level don't know about the committee or its recommendations and there's a gap and my view as a person in the advocacy is that the culture of transparency we're recommending is something that has to be led from the top down so that people from the bottom up can feel like they're protected if they do what the FOIA is intended which is to disclose information when people request it even if it causes embarrassment and one of the things that I hope to see is if our recommendations are in fact heated that that cultural transparency culture of transparency rather will ensure that agencies across the government are aware that this work exists and then evaluate how the recommendations can improve their work including the dialogue with the requesters that I think might change a real cost to taxpayers which is the lawsuits that we see the stance that the agencies take with respect to requesters and then to litigation is something that we should evaluate in terms of the impact of our recommendations and whether or not we're carrying out one of the important parts of the charter which is improving dialogue and fostering comment in a way that will I hope create with more virtuous outcomes so I just wanted to pull that in because I feel like it might get lost this is not just about resources but it's also about our government at every level making it clear that upholding the FOIA and ensuring that people have access to information is something that's not just the job of people in one part but of everyone thank you thank you Alex I see by the way Alina do you want to get the moderator here I don't know no you're doing a great job I'm just going to let you drive all right thank you looks like Ben do you have your hand yes thank you Ben from Ben Tingo from OPEXIS I just wanted to mention I think that everything Alex just mentioned is very important and for us to recognize but one thing in particular that we found very interesting going through this exercise was exactly what he said that in many situations we found especially during the interviews that we conducted that many agencies and many agency personnel just simply weren't aware of a lot of the recommendations and a lot of the activities that the advisory committee had conducted and had engaged in over the past many terms and so even when you see when we identify something has been complied with very often that was sort of an endeavor that was taken in parallel with our own activities of they happen to be doing what we may have recommended they do and maybe have arrived at that conclusion by themselves that this is a best practice and something they should do or learn that from another source and so one of the we've talked a lot about that over the course of the term of ways to get the committee to engage more with the public ways to increase a lot of that engagement so that agencies do look at the committee as a key resource in establishing and disseminating best practices and we think that that would be something very valuable to continue efforts in order to make sure that we are a resource for FOIA across the federal government and that we are making recommendations that are likely to be adopted will be appreciated will actually have an impact moving forward on the administration of FOIA. Thank you Ben. Yeah, any other thoughts or questions on this recommendation? Anybody want to make a motion? I'll make a motion. And what would you like to motion? I would like to motion that we carry this recommendation forward as it stated. Okay, great. Second. We have a second. Second. Second the motion. Thank you. Okay, let's take a vote. David, if that's okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Anyone oppose? Please say nay. Nay. Who was that that said nay? I heard one person. Alison said nay. Okay, thank you. Any abstentions? Alina is going to abstain. Okay. Let me just check in with Kirsten for a second, David. Yeah. Kirsten, are we good? Did you get that tally count for the vote? We are good. I tally the vote. This proposed recommendation. Aye. One passes 16 to one. One nay vote, which is Alison and one abstention, which is you, Alina. Great. Thank you so much. David, back over to you. Of course. All right. Thank you. Let's see. On recommendation two, go ahead and advance the next slide. As we did our research, we noticed it was difficult to sometimes ascertain from this chief boy officer reports, kind of consistent information relative to previous recommendations. So we thought we might recommend that in future chief boy officer reports, some of the questions really get at some of the more critical recommendations from the past. And that's not to say that the reports don't already have a lot of that because they do. That's what helped us in a sense of some of them. But I think we might be able to use that reporting system to help track some of these more critical issues. So that's what we're recommending here. And we're giving OIP a lot of leeway on how they want to do that. We understand can add 51 extra questions to the report form. It's already a lot of work for them, I suppose. But a few that might be helpful for future committees and folks. So that's kind of what recommendation 2 is about. Any questions on that? Anybody want to move to approve recommendation I2? I move that you approve. Recommendation I-2. Seconded. Yeah, just a second. Let me, yeah. And we can go to discussion now that we have a motion in second on table. I think Patricia moved and Alex seconded. Okay, ready. Um, okay. Tom, this is Kirsten. That's for four o'clock this afternoon. We talked about that. Tom, you're not muted there, sir. Yeah, can't just be able to mute Mr. Sussman. Glass of business meeting. Yes. Any discussion on this motion? Yeah, I just want to make, yeah, I'm just going to ask the same question, David. I didn't see any raised hands. And Michael Heist is raising his hand. Michael, go ahead, please. Just because you said so, said raised hand, Alina. I'm just kidding. Well, I just, I'm just thinking about what Allison had commented on the first recommendation. So it just, where she was saying, if I remember correctly, even though it was just a few minutes ago, that, you know, there might be certain agencies that, there might be certain reasons that are attendant to that agency, not necessarily, you know, meeting whatever guidance is provided by this committee or future committees. So, and Allison, I don't know what you think about this, of course, but I'm just thinking that, you know, this recommendation about asking agencies to report activities they have implemented, I mean, I don't know how many agencies would actually do this, but it, you know, when you prepare these reports, most of the time there's a narrative, right, the section, you know, and so it'd be like, okay, I don't know how this would look, but let's say it says, out of the 50 recommendations, or, you know, which one did you do, or maybe the question selects the top, you know, three particular recommendations or something, did you do this, right? So, the way I think the CFO report would look based on how it looks now is that there'll be a question presented, agency, did you do this? Then the next question is, if you didn't do this, why? And so I think that's where I kind of bridged this one with the last one Allison, to your point, because I think it's a really good point that, you know, depending on where a particular agency is with respect to their tender, I'm putting things out there on the Chief FOIA officer report in terms of exactly what they're saying, you know, and how much they want to really get into it and what the value at is on that, that that could be an opportunity for that particular agency. And by agency, I mean in no way the commission, I just mean agency with just one of the federal agencies, what they could do, you know, is, you know, provide whatever reasons they have about it, about why they maybe have not yet met that recommendation. That could also help future committees in understanding the practicalities of implementation if those kind of questions are asked in that way. So anyway, I just thought, Allison, that that might maybe assuage a little bit of what you were talking about, but maybe it doesn't. Anyway, that's it. Thank you. It looks like Alex was next, then Allison. Alex, I think it's muted. Sorry about that. It's 2024. I'm still finding the mute button. You know, I just wanted to follow up on Ben's point about making recommendations that we think are likely to be implemented. I think this is a good example of one that's likely to be implemented. My only concern with it is how much impact it will have. You know, there are lots of questions that get asked in these reports that the agencies do know which provide information to us and others interested in how administration of the FOIA is going on, like outreach to their cluster community. Asking whether they're doing or not creates a useful data collection point. Does it create pressure for them to actually carry through with it? I'm not so sure about that, but I certainly support the recommendation as written and drafted and think that it's a useful point for agencies to be thinking about whether they've actually reviewed the recommendations and then implemented any of them. And for that reason, I support it. Okay, thanks, Alex. Allison, you have your hand up. I just wanted to get back to Michael. I have much less concern with this recommendation. I think it's open-ended enough. I know IP has some discretion in how they phrase it if they ask about certain recommendations that the committee has made over the last however many number of terms or if they just say here are the last couple of reports. Recommendations have pressure agency implemented any of these yes or no, which ones, why, why not? I think that would be a helpful data point. So I'm okay with this one. Thanks. Thanks, Allison. Any other discussion or questions? Okay. David, I know we went out of order. Let's just be clear. We've got a motion to vote on this particular recommendation from Patricia Webb, I believe. Yep, yep. And we had a second from Alex Howard. Is that correct? Okay. Are we ready to vote? I think so. Okay. Please let us know. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone oppose? Please say nay. Any abstentions? Kirsten, over to you. I want to make sure you got all of that, Alex. Yeah. So I think I heard everyone, but I wanted to see if Tom was available and what his vote is or might be. We'll discuss it at four o'clock. Yes. Sounds good. Okay. So we, it appears that the vote is 17-0 for recommendation. Aye. Two. Thank you. I have a question. 17-0? Oh, yes. Not 18-0? Sorry? It's 17-0, not 18-0? Well, Bobby is absent and I didn't see Tom raised. Okay. So you saw Tom and we're good. Then it's 18. Yes. I think he just raised his hand. Okay. Then it's 18-0. Thank you, Alina. Yeah, I just wanted to clarify. Thank you. All right. David, back over to you. Okay, great. And just to clarify, Alina, do you usually abstain or no? I abstain sometimes. I voted in favor of this recommendation just now. I abstain from I-1, though. Oh, okay. All right. Gotcha. Yeah. Moving on to I-3, the last one. And I think an important one. One thing that we got out of this was the value of looking back and seeing what's advanced and what needs more work on. So we're recommending, and of course, they don't have to follow this, but the next term and beyond, perhaps create a working group, a small group. It could be three people, doesn't have to be huge, whatever, that can kind of continue on this exercise. That we found valuable, including educating at the beginning of a term, everybody on there on kind of what's happened in the past and in priorities, maybe to consider for the future, since it's a lot of work when you start on this committee to go through all the previous terms, reports and recommendations. And frankly, I suspect a lot of committee members just don't have the time to do that. So we're recommending a small group help them get started quickly and provide that background and context. Also, to help coordinate and help the subcommittees and whatnot in future terms, you know, navigate through the issues they may want to address. I mean, sometimes, why reinvent the wheel? Sometimes we know, hey, a couple of terms back, they tackled this issue. Here was some information they gathered and their conclusions that might help them. You know, I think it definitely, we didn't get everything done that we wanted. I thought two years would be sufficient, but it is not. And there's a lot of more research we could have done to really get at some of these recommendations and progress made. And so I think we'd like to see that work continue to flush things out. And continue highlighting things that still need to be worked on. Because a lot of these recommendations are ongoing. A lot of these are works in progress and should be monitored. So that's our recommendation here for future committees. And we think it's an important one because this especially as these number of recommendations keep growing every term, it could get out of hand. So that's our recommendation. And it looks like Alina, you have your hand up. Inadvertently. Oh, okay. I pulled the back down. So if anybody would like to make a motion and second, we can go to discussion. Well, let's reverse. David, I usually like to have discussion first and then. Oh, is that what you like? Okay. Yeah. So if we could open up the floor to any questions or comments, I see Katrina's hand is up. And then I see also Michael. So I just wanted to say that one of the things that we noticed like when we first, and this is a lot of work, I reiterate that with David, that there was a lot of things that when we found was repetitive or and we felt like people might have because there's so many committees and people change in the committee and things are looked at. And that this, that there were things that were sort of not exactly looked at the same way, but very similarly looked at or addressed. And so we combined some of that together. And so the purpose of this, and I really feel this is important is so that future committees don't do duplicative work or similar duplicative work of things that have already been looked at and made recommendations to. And so because that, since we all are very busy doing, you know, our regular jobs, to look at something that doesn't need to be looked at because it already been looked at one time before or something similarly had been looked at and a recommendation had been made and we just didn't know if anybody was even knew about the recommendation or was even, you know, trying to fulfill the recommendation. I just feel like this was important because of the fact that we don't maybe don't need next time. And I agree with David as big of a committee as we had this time looking at this because this was a huge project to tackle. A lot of people might not have realized that because there were so many to look at and find out about and kind of summarize. And so now that we've got it at a manageable place where it can be like kept up, I think that it takes, it now allows people to focus on things that are really problems or issues and not going back over things that have already possibly been looked at or you know, discussed or even recommendations previously been made. And so we're trying, we were trying to make sure that duplicative work wasn't being done by this committee over and over and over again. Thanks Katrina. Alina, I'll hand you the talking stick. So. Oh, thanks. I think in this order, I see Michael's hand was up then Aira, then Tom, then Luke. So Aira, go ahead please. Oh, I thought wasn't Michael ahead of me. Oh, maybe he was. Yeah. Michael. And then I can go after him. Thank you. So this, okay, so there's four points on this. And I guess I just have some questions. And I get it Katrina, it was, you know, a lot of work, you know, to do this stuff. So I guess for this first one, providing the summary, that seems, I mean that seems like something that can be done, it was done. But I also wonder and I, there is a dashboard where I, on the website, that kind of has things spelled out. I know that wasn't sufficient for the, you know, reasons we all talked about in committee, subcommittee. But there is that. And then the third one, I think we, you know, the folks on the subcommittee did a lot. That's the conducting research about these recommendations, right? That was, that was where all the things that we did. So I get number three. And then I get number four. I guess I'm just a little worried about number two. And this is mostly now that I've learned more than I ever thought I wanted to know about, you know, when we have to, you know, have things public and not public and all that stuff. So Alina and Kirsten, you know, this says the word that, that triggers me is the word coordinating. So, coordinating with subcommittees throughout the term to provide research and contact from previous terms related to their work, right? I guess I just want to make sure. I mean, what I wouldn't want to do, and this is what I just don't know. So Alina and Kirsten, you know, they're the, the, the future term, the future implementation subcommittee or working group would need to be careful not to coordinate with everybody on mass because then that's going to trigger one of these meetings, right? And so I just think that maybe that's common sense, but I just think that when you have, what if, what if one time, what if we've had the benefit of some folks here that have been around for a long time and veterans, I mean, veterans in terms of veterans in the committee, and we've had the benefit of their institutional knowledge. But what happens if when there is an entire slate of 100% newbies never done this before at all, okay? Maybe it'll never happen. But, you know, I know that I just get, I just worry that with that number two, you know, and I know someone in standing in Kirsten or Alina Shoes will be able to prevent this, I guess, but that coordinating, I think they're, they just have to be careful that it's not everybody all at once because then that causes problems. I also think that I wouldn't want number two, let's say I'm on one of the committees that isn't the implementation, maybe because when I saw this, I said, I'm not going to do that. And so I went in and I went and did some other subcommittee. Now I'm thinking, okay, like, okay, so the implementation, there are research guys. So they'll, they'll like conduct research for us when we ask them and stuff like that. So I just, I'm a little nervous about number two for the reasons I said, but mostly, like I say, Kirsten and Alina, maybe you have comments on this, maybe you don't. Yeah, the whole it's coordinating and drawing the line with that. Thanks. Yeah, thank you, Michael. I see Kirsten's hand is up and maybe she's thinking the same thing I am. My only comment is going to be that one of the roles that I believe that the DFO and the chairperson provide is that continuity from committee term to committee term. You know, we may not have perfect memories, but we really do try to remember what's happening. We also try to coordinate and liaison with the chief way officers council and making sure that there's coordination and no extra work or duplication of work that occurs. So we definitely try to fulfill that role as best as we can. Kirsten, you want to add something to that, please? Sure, I was going to say exactly what you just said, but I'll also add that really the threshold for a public meeting is a quorum, which is 13 members. And subcommittees and working groups are generally smaller than that. If the DFO or the chairperson were to see that it was veering beyond that and it would be a quorum, then we would have to take appropriate measures, you know, announcing a public meeting and so forth. So, but I really appreciate Michael you looking at this and thinking that through because it is very important. Thanks. Okay, Aira, I believe you're next. Hi, this is Aira Tansy of Memory Rising. I definitely share some of Michael's concerns and I'm a little concerned that there's a lot going on here that kind of might put too much work on a future working group. But there's one thing that I really find very compelling here and it's item number one, which is providing a summary of previous recommendations to committees early in the term. I do think this gets at what I view as one of the biggest challenges for me having not having worked in federal government and not being as much of a FOIA expert as most of the other people on this committee. It has been very difficult to figure out as a new person how to get a foothold and how to contribute to this committee. And I do think that there is a perhaps some of that like can be addressed with when the new next term is, you know, comes forward like almost making some kind of job description or like preferred experiences, right, for what you want people on the term to have because it kind of felt like being thrown in the deep end of an Olympic-sized swimming pool and my competition was Michael Phelps. And so I think that there's a lot to be said for developing some kind of onboarding for new members, particularly for those who do not have the institutional knowledge that many, many, many people on this committee have. And so I do want to lift up that first item, which is that providing that summary of previous recommendations to committees early in the term, I think would be enormously helpful for those of us who are new and those of us particularly who don't have both the committee institutional knowledge, but also perhaps not the depth of subject matter knowledge that many of the other continuing members have. So thanks for including that. Okay, thanks, Sarah. Really appreciate that. I believe Luke was next and then Alex and then Tom and then back to Katrina. I think that's the order I see it in. Anyone disagrees? Let me know. Thanks, everybody. Luke Nectar, Chapman University. I'll try to be quick because I know we've had a lot of comments in particular in response to this recommendation. My comment is going to sound a bit like Eris and I said something similar at our last public meeting as someone who's a non-fed, non-foyer professional first time on the committee this term. You know, when I signed up for this subcommittee, I had no idea what I was getting into and I think it's been the most interesting education I've had so far in the two years. I realized this subcommittee contains an awful lot of institutional knowledge about everyone who's come before us. And, you know, I did all the things I was told to do when we started these two years. I looked at the OGIS dashboard. I read all the resources on the website that were available. But really until you do the deep dive to figure out what the origin is behind a lot of these and you also don't realize a lot of the new ideas that we have might have been tried in some way before. I think it's however this recommendation goes forward, I just think it would be a missing opportunity lost if we don't take advantage of all that we learned you know, up until this point. Now here I sound like the historian that I am and that's the seat that I represent on this committee. But I think it's really important and I think well, well, not it won't create it will save us more work than it will create I think going forward having the benefit of this knowledge. Thanks. Thanks, Luke. I appreciate that. Let's see, Alex is next. Luke, I think that was a missed opportunity to quote Santiana, right? If we don't learn from the past we are doomed to keep repeating it. Alex Howard here, happy to just share that for me, one of the most positive parts of my participation on the committee by far was getting the opportunity for this subcommittee to speak with Bobby from OIP who's not here today, unfortunately and Alina about these past recommendations and to go through them all and hear from them how it was going. What was, what happened? What kind of impact did it have? Why or why did not, why didn't that happen? That process created knowledge which went into a spreadsheet and then informed our subcommittees report out. And I would just say in response to this idea that coordination tipping off a point where we then have a quorum and have to report it out, I think that's a good thing. I think that our conversation is becoming open by default where we create knowledge, co-create knowledge even in a collaborative open dialogue between people who are on the NGO side and on the government side about the past recommendations of the committee is in fact exactly what this committee is supposed to do and that moving those conversations into the public domain, having them be documented, having the insights from them then being summarized and put into a narrative form and then discussed at these public meetings is a really useful way of informing the public about what's happening with the administration of the FOIA and how our work connects with past work. And I would say that if we had maybe gotten to a point where we understood that there's a consensus, that we all think that there should be a much better central way to make FOIA requests to see which requests have been made already to see where those records have been disclosed, maybe it would have put us in a different place as a committee so that when we heard from people talking about sunsetting FOIA online we could have come together and had a vote on whether we thought that was a good idea or not in the moment and taken a stance as a committee and saying this isn't in the best interest of the country and the decision that the Office of the Government and OMB and EPA made without consulting the FOIA community might not be the best thing. Maybe we shouldn't support FOIA online going away or if it is going away we should have a more robust discussion about what exactly is going to replace it and what that will look like and how it will affect the administration of the FOIA and the requester experience. Now I think the immense credit of OGIS and the committee we got an opportunity to talk with officials from the EPA and we have an extraordinary resource in Patricia and in other people within the committee who have given us a very rich I think and useful set of resources but I would just say that I think the extent to which we can have these discussions in the open and try to create that default and the extent to which we can create knowledge going forward and I say we as a committee not necessarily as members right now that that's a really public good like it's a profoundly public good and a valuable one and that's why I certainly very supportive of this recommendation as it stands and I hope that future iterations of the committee are able to pull out excellent work from the past like OGIS 2.0 this wonderful report that came from the past term and then use that as a way to advocate for increasing the resources and capacity of the institutions like OGIS which are conflicted out from requesting resources for themselves that are clearly needed if our country is going to see the impact from having an on buds office that other countries do you know which would look like you know 50 or 100 full-time employees or even more I think that's a really important practice and that's why I was so supportive of this recommendation coming forward and so grateful to everyone on this committee for taking the time to work through all of these recommendations and to understand what did or didn't happen as a result of them and as a way of and then by doing that hopefully increase in the impact which I think is what we care about a future commit thank you Alex appreciate all of that I believe Tom Sussman's hand was up next go ahead please yeah Tom Sussman thank you this is my third term on the committee so obviously I'm very dedicated towards the subject of implementation because I've been involved in voting for and working on a number of the recommendations through the last six years and I want to start by thanking David for a lot of grunt work to pull all of the things together surveys excel spreadsheets etc a few comments first I agree with Katrina entirely about the preventing duplication overlap and so on but in my and I'm not really concerned about the coordination aspect I think that that can burdens can be minimized I want to focus on really the last issue which hadn't been discussed that number four which is proposing ways to achieve greater implementation you know we've got all these terrific recommendations going back to the the entire first advisory committee came up with a single recommendation that has not yet been fully implemented that could be very easily and so well I guess my inclination would be to go further than that in terms of the advisory committee I think the advisory committee's charter won't let us put together a SWAT team to go into the agencies and lobby and advocate and go up to the hill and send additional letters and push the persuade the archivist to do more but I do think that having a group within the advisory committee looking for how to get those earlier not just summarize not just educate not just coordinate not just research but actually advocate for implementation and think of ways to for example bring the OMB director or OIRA director before the full committee to explain why they haven't implemented some of the recommendations to them so that's my view I think this is a terrific recommendation and I'd like to register my vote in favor because unfortunately I'm going to be offline for a few minutes starting in 10 minutes all right thanks Tom I want to correct the record this is your fourth term on the committee it is yes sorry about that but we'd love to have you it's been a great number Katrina you're next okay sorry about that so I just wanted to say so Luke and Ira I totally 100% agree with you this was my first term on here and even though and I don't think it has anything to do with knowing FOIA because I know FOIA pretty good but I think it's and I will say with Tom when I got on this when I got on this committee I did not realize how much work this was going to be and you know I'm really kind of busy but I didn't realize how much work and how in depth we were going to do on all this stuff and everything and go through all the things that that we looked at and but I do agree with you I 100% wholeheartedly agree with you and I don't think it has to do with anything having to do with how much FOIA you know when you get on these committees and you've never been on before because this was my first time I really didn't know what to expect and how what was going to happen and how to dig into all this stuff and everything and then so I just want to say because you were saying about how you have to have all this experience or whatever I don't really think that that's true I think that it's a learning curve for everybody FOIA experience or non FOIA experience and I do agree I think some of this stuff would have been really really helpful because like I said even I didn't know what I was doing in the beginning and what I was taking on and what all that meant so I agree with you I just wanted to put that out there for the record Okay Thanks Katrina Certainly Kirsten and I are very open to feedback if you want to give us at any point in time about what we can do better to improve onboarding new committee members so you know we're definitely hoping that we've been doing our best trying to introduce everyone but if there's anything we can do to improve we're always open to that Right Kirsten Yes she's nodding Thank you Okay Michael you're the last hand up I believe Go ahead please Yeah thanks and I just in an abundance of caution I just want to make sure that no one's comments with respect to this issue thus far have in any way mischaracterized what I was saying about number two on the coordination so let me just make sure that I'm clear here on by having reservations about the coordination with subcommittees I am not in any way articulating that somehow I think that you know we you know we shouldn't have public meetings or something like that we're having a public meeting right now there's several meetings that we have I'm assuming that the purpose of the subcommittees maybe it's in the bylaws themselves or in the law or whatever the purpose of the subcommittees and the reason why there isn't a forum necessary for that to trigger the public meeting is so that there's some space for the subcommittees to do their work and so all I was saying is you know so I hope everyone on YouTube and everything hears me that I'm I'm very interested in the public meetings that's why I'm here right now but I'm also interested in making sure that folks in future terms have the space to do their work I have I think that's what the structure wants to because otherwise there wouldn't be this thing called subcommittees the reason why coordination triggered me in terms of the word is because I think this will be the first time that there's a recommendation that's kind of self-directed like kind of like inwardly looking first okay so this isn't like a nothing burger it's an inward looking thing a recommendation that the FACA makes for itself and and I and I don't know if there's any in the past to talk about like there is no formal coordination with subcommittees that I can think of maybe Alina you've mentioned certain things where the where the tops you know talk to each other but not about the actual subcommittee as a group why do I know that's true because when we first started out of the blocks two years ago Alina encouraged folks to be on more than one subcommittee well why the heck would that be it's because there isn't the coordination in the way that we're thinking so folks on youtube out in the world and on this transcript understand I'm all about the and the commission is all of it equal employment opportunity commission it's all about having things you know in a public forum but I do think subcommittees are a fact of life it's how a lot of things get a lot of work gets done because there's a space to do it and so I I don't know if anyone would think it's a good idea to have 100% pure purest take that each and every word ever uttered out of anyone in the sub in in in the future for advisory committee is somehow made public to the entire planet I just don't know how any work it's done that way so with that I hope the record is cleared and I didn't mind to get even more that's it thanks okay thank you I don't know if we have to wind up first Kirsten or Allison you guys helped me out here I'm not sure either this is Kirsten Mitchell the designated federal officer and I just wanted to respond real quickly to what what Michael just said subcommittees are indeed how the work is done on this committee and I also wanted to note Michael that you were extremely helpful because you are I think the only member of this committee who is on all three subcommittees and it is super important for all the subcommittees to know what is going on so that there isn't duplication so I just wanted to say that and I will lower my hand and I'm sorry to jump ahead of you Allison no worries Kirsten one question is working group and the recommendation is that synonymous with subcommittee or are you guys seeing this as something different from the regular subcommittees and then the second question is what if the next slate of members don't want one that's just a second yeah Allison I could probably chip in yeah yeah the working group was kind of intentional we thought we wanted to make kind of a nimble little task force little group but nothing as formal as a subcommittee kind of working behind the scenes and helping not necessarily coming up with additional recommendations although I suppose it could anybody could recommend something I suppose to the full committee so that was the idea sort of I think and someone can correct me if I have that off a little and then to your second question which was again reminding me what was it again sorry the second part was hypothetically what if oh yeah yeah what if they don't want this yeah well well then they don't have to have it so it's just a recommendation we're recommending that future committees do this we think could be valuable but if they choose not to that's okay and again I think we're recommending a small group you know let's say three people maybe a couple folks who have been around a while maybe a new person and which I don't think would trigger any FACA issues if they're chatting with another subcommittee I can't imagine even this implementation subcommittee was huge it was like 10 or 11 or something but in the future this wouldn't trigger that so so I think that was kind of the idea and again it's just a recommendation if folks don't want to do it that's your choice okay thank you yeah and by the way I'd like to add you know I really did enjoy this process and Jason Barron did a ton of the work the past month or two pulling it all together kudos to him as well as a lot of the subcommittee members chiming in providing thoughts suggestions making it better so I really did think this was a great effort and I want to thank everybody who put time in on it because I was frankly a lot more thrilled with the end product than I expected at the beginning exceeded expectations I think okay any other comments or are we ready to vote David good news I don't see any other hands up do I have a motion or Patricia left from EPA I motion to to vote on proposed recommendation I dash three okay thank you do I have a second I'm seconded second all right I think we have I heard two seconds that's great all those in favor please say aye aye and you want to post please say nay nay nay Allison Dietrich was that a nay correct okay anyone abstaining abstaining Sarah is upstanding okay Greg if I can see upstanding Kirsten turning over to you yes Selena this is Kirsten how do you vote on this aye aye yes okay so the vote is 17 to one um there was one no vote I believe it's Allison and there was one abstention and that was the error that doesn't add up hold on a second shouldn't it be 16 to one indeed it should thank you okay 16 to one with one advisory committee not the math advisory committee so let me correct the record the vote is 16 to one the one no vote Allison with one abstention error and I did note that Tom is um still in the meeting okay thank you so we're um right about the time we were going to take a break I was going to ask committee members what they would prefer do we want to power through without a break or do we want to take a 10 minute come comfort break let's say just to give ourselves a little bit of I'm seeing nods on comfort break okay uh how about 10 minutes can we come back at 11 44 that would be great thank you everyone welcome back everyone we are back from our break and we are now ready to go on to our next agenda item which is an update from the final report working group and that working group is Jason Baron Paul Chalmers David Collier and Patricia Weth and I believe Jason has agreed to just give a brief update Jason over to you please uh thanks Alina can you hear me loud and clear thank you okay um well it's been a privilege to serve this term on the committee and to be part of this final working group uh with Paul with David with Patricia I've uh I want to say that the subcommittees this term have produced uh rather extensive subcommittee reports that I think are worth reading independently of any final report that comes out of this committee by my tally there the three subcommittee reports uh resources modernization and implementation have produced something on the order of 120 pages of substantive material counting their reports and their appendices now obviously uh the final report is going to be a more refined and abridged product but I can assure that uh the final report will have links to the subcommittee reports that are independently worth checking out uh because of the recommendations that went forward that uh have all been approved by the full committee so consistent with past practice uh there will be a final report that's divided into subcategories of topics uh that the various recommendations fall into and with the help of Kirsten there are a set of these categories that the final working group has put forward and basically inserted recommendations into provisionally as we draft the final report and those subcategories are best practices and there are four of our recommendations for that training there's one on that staffing for technology there are two recommendations one on public engagement one on open government and three that were passed uh this morning on implementation that's 16 recommendations so um we have a schedule and we will be presenting this final report um to the full committee and making it publicly available before the next June meeting I want to say that in addition to just reporting out recommendations it's my hope and I think I can speak for other members that in the final report we want to emphasize or highlight some of the comments that have been made here today by uh members of the committee as a whole as to where this committee should be going in future terms assuming it's chartered to do so and in the subcommittee reports there's been rather extensive material that's really in the nature of observations that are that stand apart from recommendations in the resource committee report there's a section on backlogs which is of paramount importance and does amount to something that needs to be considered when agencies are thinking about implementing recommendations the what I want to read here from the implementation subcommittee report one passage which I think is important and I think I would hope that would be in the final report like to hear other people comment on it which is that we have been in the recommendations business for all these terms and we have this term 16 recommendations that adds to the 51 and so there's 67 now to consider the passage that I want to read says given the reality of the 67 recommendations the foundational question otherwise left unaddressed in this report we're talking about the implementation subcommittee report is whether the FOIA advisory committee in future terms should continue to be in the business of crafting numerous new recommendations to add to the accumulated corpus of existing ones that the present rate of crafting on the order of 20 new recommendations per term by the year 2030 this committee will have produced well over 100 recommendations for agencies and other government agencies to implement the prospect of continuing down this path and expecting that interested parties that is OGIS OIP FOIA staff future members of this committee will be able to continue to reasonably keep track of and absorb this cumulative number of best practice recommendations is unrealistic and so I would hope that when this committee comes up with its final report I'll be on the drafting of that but that we consider sort of strategically what the committee can do beyond simply making recommendations to the world and perhaps engaging not only with the civic community but to a greater extent but also to the powers that be with Tom mentioned OMB and Oira the director of the Office of Information Regulatory Affairs but you know why not think big and have another presidential memo go out like President Obama did in his first days of office and so and afterwards so we should be thinking about that and I would hope that the final report will say something about that as well in any event I really appreciate Alina the opportunity to give this interim report and I'm happy to take questions and I'm sure other members of the final report committee can comment as well. Jason thanks for that thanks for all the hard work you've been putting in anyone have any questions or comments no not seeing any okay anyone have any other comments about today's meeting anything that we've talked about any other thoughts that they wanted to throw in before we wrap up our committee meeting we moved and before we move over to public comments so we have now reached the public comments part of our committee meeting as always we look forward to hearing from non committee participants who have ideas or comments to share particularly particularly about the topics discussed today all oral comments are captured in the transcript of the meeting which we will post as soon as it is available oral comments are also captured in the NARA youtube recording and are available on the NARA youtube channel and as a reminder public comments are limited to three minutes per person so at this time Candace I would like to turn over to you to open up our telephone lines and please provide instructions to any of our listeners on Webex for how to make a comment via telephone absolutely as we begin the public comment period please click the raise hand icon located at the bottom of your screen to join the queue you'll be given three minutes to make your remarks when you hear a tone your line will be unmuted at which time please state your name and affiliation then make your comments if you're not using Webex audio you may press pound two on your telephone keypad to join the queue to assist you there is a timer on the right side of your screen it will begin counting down as soon as you start to remarks and you'll hear a five-second warning when your time is up thank you Candace so do we have any callers waiting to chime in we have one person in queue so far okay caller go ahead please hello this is Jackson I would have liked to have participated contemporaneously in today's discussion through the youtube chat where my unfiltered and time-stamped comments would be preserved for the thousands who will view the youtube video of this meeting live and later I cannot imagine how hearing and speech-impaired citizens may participate at all I would like to see more participation from FOIA requesters who qualify for that quote all other FOIA requesters be category and more opportunities for meetings devoted specifically to private citizen FOIA requesters this committee is doing an awesome job at great investment of your personal time I hope that most of you will return for the 2024 to 2026 term I am confused as to why OJIS has not conducted an annual open meeting to discuss OJIS's 2023 freedom of information act ombudsman report for fiscal year 2022 published in June 2023 the freedom of information act 5 USC at 552 H 6 requires this I am wondering if I missed that meeting I have concerns about the dispute resolution figures reported each year which appear absurdly overstated and do not align with statute such an accurate over statements work against efforts to obtain urgently needed funding for OJIS if OJIS mediation were properly funded countless disputes could be resolved without appeal or litigation global unrelated matters may also be resolved through mediation with professionally credentialed mediators having great levels commensurate with their contacts and responsibilities I have been reading some things about top level line item budgets for FOIA and records management for all agencies to elevate the service to our nation that our leaders contemplate and to hold senior leaders accountable for properly funding FOIA personnel career path development retention and professional certifications and for technology enhancements I have been reading about an America first legal FOIA case concerning unauthorized records disposition cases involving the archivist of the united states and centers for disease control and prevention case number 1 colon 24 CV 1092 in the district court of columbia it is very interesting it would be great if cases like this one could be resolved for mediation once again this committee is doing an awesome job thank you okay thank you caller Jackson I do want to say that we did have our annual open meeting last year it is available in the narrative channel it's been recorded we do plan to have our annual public meeting this year in july july 24th we will be announcing that in the federal register soon and that report that that meeting will cover the report of 2024 fiscal year 2023 oh just events and activities for that fiscal year Candice do we have anything anyone else on the line waiting to be heard there are no further people in queue okay please let us know if that changes and I'm now going to turn over to my colleague Dan Levinson who's been monitoring chat despite the fact that we have managed no substantive comments we have one commenter who has been very active in chat and we do want to make sure that we capture that in the transcript to the extent that we can at least in summary form and I'm going to turn over to Dan to ask whether he could summarize what has occurred absolutely yes so these are the comments that ended up in chat even if they shouldn't have um to the minus point so first view just annual open public meeting will be july 24th of this year all goes as scheduled and we have public comment or we have a actually non-public comment that asks to be able to download the transcript and provide this meeting and I would like to say that we will post the transcript on the website with the meeting materials for this meeting and all the meetings pocket does not provide a time frame from when we must post the transcript it does however provide a time frame for when we must post the minutes all minutes will be posted within 90 days each public meeting and the transcript we posted hopefully as soon as possible which we do and will continue to do so the commenter asks why members of the public cannot have their questions addressed during the discussion while the subcommittee or all the subcommittees are reporting or the full committee is deliberating requests that we if he does not agree with reducing from two to three individuals representing the interests of different constituencies for the change of the bylaws but I believe we spoke to that earlier about that we weren't reducing it we were simply reallocating the designated seats he requests that the draft agenda draft briefing slides and any draft committee recommendations be posted 10 days prior to the public meeting we of course post them as soon as we can but they are not finalized 10 days before the public meeting I know that the subcommittees and the full committee work very very hard to produce the slides and meeting materials as soon as possible but that is frequently only finalized several days before the meeting just not allowed for 10 days beforehand he had further comments about the bylaws and he just not agree with the limitation of 25,000 characters for written public comments and wishes that he could circulate his comments in PDF form he is further unhappy with the bylaw changes and notes that as a public citizen he would be willing to do further work to promote these of this committee and advocate for the FOIA process he notes that not allowing YouTube chat potentially detrimental to people who might want to look at YouTube chat later on however not allowing YouTube chat having YouTube chat turned off is completely in line with all of narrowed policies regarding the use of chat in social media having and with their counsel about that as well as their social media team we determined that it was acceptable finally he comments that agencies are not exporting all FOIA online data and he considers that and unauthorized destruction of records but that is merely his view as he himself notes and he reiterates that as a private citizen he can push implementation in part by asking no response through FOIA might take a part by asking if there's no response for FOIA whether he can take action in high priority cases such as FOIA logs which he says he has sought on agencies and has not gotten so he volunteers his time and he ends by saying that he votes that all the committee members return for the next term so those were comments that ended up erroneously in the you in the WebEx chat okay thank you does any committee member have any comment or reaction to any of these public comments I don't see anyone jumping up and down or raising their hand double checking I think we're ready to wrap up our meeting I want to thank all committee members today for your very hard work throughout this whole term we are definitely in the home stretch this is definitely all of it but all the hard work you've been putting in is finally coming to fruition so it's just nice to see that that work product and we will be circulating a draft of the final report prior to our next meeting on Thursday June 13th which will be held virtually I want to thank all of you for joining us today I hope everyone in their families remain safe healthy and resilient and if there are no objections or any questions or comments we stand adjourned thank you everyone that concludes our conference thank you for using untiler events you may now disconnect