Transcript

FOIA Advisory Committee Meeting (Virtual Event)

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

10:00 a.m. (ET)

Event Producer: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. And thank you for joining today's FOIA Advisory Committee meeting. Before we begin, please ensure that you have opened a WebEx participant and chat panel by using the associated icons located at the bottom of your screen. Please know all audio connections are currently muted and this conference is being recorded. To present a comment via WebEx audio, please click the raise hand icon on your WebEx screen. The raise hand icon is located in the lower toolbar. You'll hear a beep tone when you are unmuted. At that time, you may state your name and question. Our attendees that dialed in on the phone only conference line can dial pound two. You'll hear a notification when your line is unmuted. At that time, please state your name and question. If you require technical assistance, please send a chat to Intellor events. With that, I'll turn the meeting over to the deputy archivist of the United States, Jay Bosanko. Please go ahead.

Jay Bosanko: Hi. Thank you for having me. I am excited to be here today. Spent most of my career at the National Archives as an access professional in some way, shape or form. I've processed FOIAs, I've filed FOIAs, so this is sort of an exciting day for me.

So my name's Jay Bosanko on behalf of the Archivist of the United States, Dr. Colleen Shogan, who's unable to be here today, I am happy to welcome you all to the eighth meeting of the fifth term of the FOIA Advisory Committee. It is fitting that this meeting falls nearly 50 years to the day after the United States House of Representatives passed the 1974 amendments to the FOIA. Just as President Johnson opposed the original FOIA, though reluctantly signed the landmark bill into law in 1966, president Gerald Ford opposed the 1974 amendments. His opposition was so vehement that he vetoed the bill. Among President Ford's concerns: that the time limits proposed in the bill, 10 days for an initial response and 20 days for an appeal response, would burden agencies.

President Ford was also concerned that the bill gave too much deference to federal judges regarding classified documents. The house voted 371 to 31 to override the veto, and the Senate followed with an override vote of 65 to 27. I mentioned this history today because the legislative record shows that both chambers spent several years deliberating on reforms to the nascent FOIA statute. Their work resulted in true consensus, veto proof legislation that strengthened the law granting Americans the right to request records concerning what their government is doing. Committee members, this work towards consensus 50 years ago mirrors your work today toward advising on ways to improve FOIA administration and proactive disclosure.

While not every idea survives consensus building, your work as representatives of government agencies and the requester community, very much, is the catalyst for fostering dialogue and consensus in accordance with the committee's charter. The 1974 FOIA Amendments were the result of the work of many, including a young staffer on the Senate Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedures. 50 years later that staffer, Tom Susman, is serving his fourth term on this Advisory Committee. Thank you, Tom, for your service then and now.

Committee members, regardless of the number of years of FOIA experience you have, we at the National Archives thank you for volunteering your time and expertise to make FOIA better. Before I turn the mic over to Alina Semo, the chairperson of the FOIA Advisory Committee, I invite you all, committee members and members of the public, to a panel discussion on artificial intelligence and government access. It will be held at 1:00 PM Eastern Time on Thursday, March 14th, at the National Archives in Washington DC. We are pleased to be able to host the event in person this year, as well as live-streaming it on the National Archives YouTube channel. After a lively discussion about the intersection between AI and access to government information, in-person participants will have the opportunity to view FOIA related historical documents, which will be on display outside of the William G. McGowan Theater immediately after the event. I hope you'll join us. And now Alina, I'll turn the mic over to you. Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Great. Thank you so much, Jay. Really appreciate it. Good morning, everyone, and welcome. As the Director of the Office of Government Information Services or OGIS, and this committee's chairperson, it is my pleasure to also welcome all of you to the eighth meeting of the fifth term of the FOIA Advisory Committee. I want to welcome all of our colleagues and friends from the FOIA community and elsewhere, who are watching us today, either via Webex, or with a slight delay on the National Archives YouTube channel. This meeting is being held publicly in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which requires open access to committee meetings and operations. FACA requires us to post minutes, and a transcript of today's meeting, and we will do so as soon as they are ready. Committee Alternate Designated Federal Officer Dan Levenson and I, have certified the minutes from the December 7th, 2023, meeting and those along with the transcript are now posted on the OGIS website in accordance with FACA. Please visit the website for today's agenda along with committee members' names and biographies at www.archives.gov/ogis. Next slide, please.

So, a few housekeeping rules. We've updated our slide. I'm very excited to share this new slide that we have reviewed today, and we're hopefully going to be using in future meetings. And I don't want to read every single thing that's on here, but I will go over a couple of the house rules. First, I am very pleased that everyone is here today, for the FOIA Advisory Committee, all 20 members, and very shortly I'm going to ask our designated federal officer, Kirsten Mitchell, to confirm that there is a quorum.

I am advised that Luke Nichter has to leave our meeting today by 12:30 Eastern Time, but he will stay with us as long as he can. I also specifically want to welcome back Kirsten, our Committee's DFO, who has returned to OGIS following a four-month detail as Acting Deputy and Chief of Staff for Legislative Archives, Museum Services, and Presidential Libraries at the National Archives. We definitely have missed her, and we are very happy to have her back. Thank you. 

Kirsten, over to you. Have you taken a visual roll call and can you please confirm we have a quorum today?

Kirsten Mitchell: I can indeed confirm that we have a quorum. Not only that, we have perfect attendance, so thank you, everyone.

Alina M. Semo: Great, thank you. Committee members. Again, I give these housekeeping rules every time, but they ring true today as they do any other time. Please bear with me while I try to run through these housekeeping rules to ensure a smooth meeting. I will do my best to keep an eye out for everyone during the committee meeting. And if you're raising your hand, or waving at me, or jumping up and down in your chair, I will try to call on you. Raising your hand using that raise hand icon at the bottom of your screen is also extremely helpful, and I will try to be fair in terms of calling people in the order in which they have either waved at me, or raised their hand. Also, you can use the “all panelists” function in the dropdown menu, in the chat function when you want to speak or ask a question, or you can chat me or Kirsten directly. We will also be monitoring that as well.

But as I always warn everyone, and remind everyone, in order to comply with both the spirit and intent of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, please use the Webex chat for housekeeping and procedural matters only. No substantive comments should be made in the chat function, as they will not be recorded in the transcript of the meeting. If you need to take a break at any time during the meeting, please do not disconnect from the web event. Instead, mute your microphone by using the microphone icon, and turn off your camera by using the camera icon. And please send a quick chat to me and Kirsten to let us know if you'll be gone for more than a few minutes, and then join us again as soon as you're able. And a reminder to all committee members, please identify yourself by name and affiliation each time you speak today. It makes our lives a lot easier when we prepare the minutes down the road.

Members of the public who wish to submit written public comments to the committee may do so using our public comments form that is available on our website. We review all public comments, and if they comply with our public comments posting policy, we post them as soon as we are able. In addition, we will have the opportunity for oral public comments at the end of today's meeting. As we noted in our Federal Register Notice announcing this meeting, public comments will be limited to three minutes per individual. So, before we move on to our very busy agendas today, Kirsten has a few reminders to our committee members in her DFO capacity. So over to you, Kirsten. Next slide, please.

Kirsten Mitchell: Thank you, Alina. I'm Kirsten Mitchell with the National Archives, and I'm this Committee's Designated Federal Officer, or DFO. Thanks to Alternate DFOs, Dan and Kimberlee, for stepping in while I was away on detail, and also big thanks to them for the logistical details in putting together all of these meetings. We have four right in a row as the term winds down, and there's a lot of behind the scenes logistics that goes into these.

For those of you joining us today for the first time, my job as DFO is to provide managerial and administrative and logistical support. I have a quick update regarding records, and then I want to briefly go over voting procedures. Regarding records, I may sound a bit like, well, a broken record, but I wanted to remind everyone that committee members must copy the DFO on all committee and subcommittee emails to simplify record keeping. There's a very easy way to do that. Email foia-advisory-committee@nara.gov. Emails to that box go to several of us on the staff and they do get read. Why is this important? Because according to NARA's General Record Schedule 6.2, advisory committee and subcommittee emails and reports are permanent records, and that ensures that they are captured. Next slide, please.

So as I mentioned earlier, we are entering the time in the committee term in which we expect draft recommendations will be voted on, particularly at the April meeting. But should any recommendations come up for a vote today, I just want to remind you of voting procedures. Any member, including Alina as chairperson, may move that the committee votes on a matter. No second is required, which is odd to those of us who pay attention to parliamentary procedure. But a second has become, well, second nature, and Alina and I are always happy to accept.

There are three types of passing votes: unanimous in which every member votes except abstentions; general consensus, at least two thirds of total votes cast; and general majority, a majority of the total votes cast. There's no need to memorize any of this or do any math. That's my job to keep track. And a quick sidebar, I will often conduct a roll call vote to ensure accuracy. I don't mean to slow things down, but I just want to make sure I have everything accurately captured.

So we have a super busy agenda today. So with that, I turn it back over to you, Alina.

Alina M. Semo: Great, thank you so much, Kirsten. Just want to ask any committee members if they have any questions about anything that Kirsten just went over. No, I'm seeing people shake their heads no. That's great. Thank you. Okay.

So today we're going to devote our meeting to hearing from the committee's three subcommittees. I know everyone has been very, very hard at work. I'm just going to kick off the meeting by just expressing my gratitude to everyone, everyone's been working very hard. And as Kirsten said, we're in the home stretch. We've got four meetings back to back, and we anticipate having a lot of good work being done.

Today, we're going to hear in this order from the Resources Subcommittee first, and then Implementation Subcommittee, and then Modernization Subcommittee. The co-chairs of each subcommittee will provide updates on their work. I believe that they will also open up the floor to working group members who would like to speak regarding specific reports, or work that they've been working on specifically.

We will take a break, which is currently slotted after the Resources Subcommittee, but before Implementation. But we will play it by ear, see how things are going, and remain flexible. And we will close the meeting with a public comment period. So with that, if there are no other questions, I'm just looking at all the committee members to make sure no one's waving at me. I would like to turn things over to the Resources Subcommittee co-chairs, Gbemende Johnson and Paul Chalmers.

Gbemende Johnson: Thank you.

Paul Chalmers: Good morning... Sorry, you go ahead.

Gbemende Johnson: So Paul, do you want me to start?

Paul Chalmers: Sure.

Gbemende Johnson: Okay. Well, thank you, Alina, for the introduction. And today the Resources Subcommittee is going to discuss a number of recommendations. I wanted to start by noting one of the prongs of the Resources Subcommittee's mission is to investigate areas where existing resources can be used more economically. And a lot of our recommendations are geared towards that goal. We're going to discuss five recommendations, four regarding personnel and staff, and one regarding training. But before discussing those, we wanted to briefly discuss the recommendation that you won't see, and that's actually a recommendation calling for more funding explicitly.

We were all aware that FOIA requires more fiscal support. However, as a subcommittee, we wanted to make sure to put forward actionable recommendations. And towards that end, something that the committee did discuss exploring on multiple occasions was the potential for FOIA funding to become a budget line item across agencies. We wanted to understand what would be the procedural administrative work necessary to make that happen, and is there evidence that that would actually be beneficial for FOIA within agencies. However, we were not able to get to the stage for a formal recommendation, and that would be suitable for subcommittee or full committee assessment and voting. But in our final reports, that's going to be something that we stress, be explored by future committees. And with that, I will turn it over to Paul.

Paul Chalmers: Thank you, Gbemende. As we've done our work, we've formulated a number of proposed recommendations. Alina, if you want to start with the slides, we can talk through these. Four of them at least are ones that, or three of them are ones anyway, that we have talked about in prior sessions. They're based on feedback we received from FOIA officers, and officials, as part of the survey that we conducted last summer, as well as a series of interviews we conducted and informal discussions that we had with colleagues, coworkers, and members of the FOIA community and as we've seen in other areas where there's been shortage of resources. So this first draft recommendation that we pull up here is one that I believe we talked about at the last meeting in December. I'll give everybody a minute to read it, but the essence of it is... Oh, this is the training one. Alina, can we come back to this one?

Alina M. Semo: Sure, absolutely.

Paul Chalmers: There you go. We'll do these first. We'll come back to the training one in a few minutes, because I think that's going to entail more discussion, and we've not previously talked about that as far as I understand. As far as I recall, we've not previously talked about that in a full committee meeting. So we'll start with these, which I think are a little easier to digest at this point given prior discussion.

This is one we talked about back in December, the first draft recommendation that the subcommittee has come up with is that we recommend that the Office of Personnel Management [OPM] offer the 0306 government information specialist job series to the direct hiring list. That is, to me, a very simple recommendation, but to members of the public, it's challenging to understand because it is written in federal bureaucrat jargon. What this means is that instead of going through the normal competitive hiring process that most federal jobs go through, you put a posting out, you put it on usajobs.gov, you go through multiple interviews, you have a whole process that you have to follow. There's potential blocking by certain groups and preferential hiring positions.

Instead of going through that process, you would have to direct hiring authority, which means that the agency can simply hire the people that it needs without going through that whole process. It's authority that exists currently with respect to a number of job series. I am an attorney with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Federal agencies have direct hiring authority with respect to attorneys, so I wouldn't have to go through this process to be hired.

OPM also has the authority to add other job series to that list of categories that don't have to go through the competitive hiring process. Most recently it did it a year or two ago with respect to a whole range of jobs involving intellectual property, or IT [information technology]. A whole range of them, cybersecurity experts, just IT experts. There are other areas where a variety of job series outside of that where direct hiring authority has been added over time.

The essence of it is the importance of the work to the federal government and the difficulty in finding people to fill those jobs. And our belief based on the evidence that we gathered as part of our work is that the government information specialist job series fits within that parameter. As everyone knows, unfortunately, the backlog of FOIA requests has been increasing year over year for quite some time. As the number of requests increases, the complexity of [the] requests increases. And one of the things that we heard from many agencies was that they simply aren't able to fill the FOIA positions that they have available to them. We will get to it in a minute. Some of them have difficulty creating positions, but a number of them that have positions and have open jobs, can't fill the jobs. And based on experience that we've seen in other job series, this proposal is one that we think would help agencies in filling those open positions. Gbemende, anything to add on this one?

Gbemende Johnson: No, I think you summed it well.

Paul Chalmers: Okay. Alina, you're the parliamentarian on this. Is this open to discussion?

Alina M. Semo: Yes, absolutely. The first thing I always do is ask other subcommittee members if they want to weigh in on what you just said. So first, I'm going to give that opportunity to the subcommittee members. No, they're shaking their heads at me. Okay. Thank you, Lauren. Let's open up the floor to discussion among committee members, please. Questions? Comments?

Paul Chalmers: It's pretty boring, Alina. I'm not sure you're going to get much.

Alina M. Semo: Yeah, but it's a good one.

Gorka Garcia-Malene: Hi, good morning. This is Gorka from NIH [National Institutes of Health]. Just to buttress the recommendation, I will add that we have, I've been aware of folks that have applied that were fully qualified for the position, overly qualified for the position, and through the vagaries of the HR [human resources] process did not make it to the panel. And that just resulted in a lot of wasted time, a lot of wasted conversations, and ultimately not being able to add those folks to the team. So I think this is a great idea. Well done, Paul.

Paul Chalmers: Thank you. I appreciate that.

Alina M. Semo: Anyone else? Catrina, you always have something to say about hiring. Have your hand up, thank you.

Catrina Pavlik-Keenan: Yes, I would just echo what Gorka said because of the fact that, yes, there's been many a time that we miss out getting the people that are actually qualified for these positions due to the way the hiring process is. And it's very cumbersome, and it delays us in getting it. And we don't always necessarily get the best qualified person.

Alina M. Semo: Great. Thank you. Anyone else? Gorka, is your hand still up from last time, or new hand?

Gorka Garcia-Malene: You're just going to get a lot of Gorka this morning. I just wanted to add an anecdote that, from a sister agency, I know that these vacancies, when they open up, they just fill up with applicants. And so it takes HR, last time they took HR at that agency something like five months to get through everything, right? And so by the end of the five months when they started contacting applicants, all the more interesting applicants had already found other jobs. So it really is just a big waste of time sometimes. That's all.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you, Gorka. I see Carmen, your hand is up.

Carmen Collins: Hi, Carmen with US Cybercom. I wanted to just thank you guys for this recommendation. It certainly would make it a lot easier to get the qualified applicants in a position that I think we all are really looking forward to hire people that are really qualified. And removing that process and us being able to quickly assess whether somebody is qualified, really would help us out. I was hiring from a direct hiring authority list, and it was incredible how the process went so fast for me. And I appreciated that, because going through the regular process takes a long time. You don't know for a while, opportunities come and go, and then a couple of months later you get reached out, "Hey, how about this position?" And it's true, it's been quite a while since I applied, or somebody else applied. So I think this is going to be hopefully a really great, great advancement for our field. That's all.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, great. Paul, turning back over to you.

Paul Chalmers: Okay. Do you want to go to the next one?

Alina M. Semo: Sure. You're driving.

Paul Chalmers: Okay. I'm going to turn this one over to Gbemende to discuss, but before I do that, I just want to note this is actually a suggestion that came from OPM. This is a procedure that they suggested that we look into, and we've talked about it with the Chief FOIA Officers Council as a way of sort of herding cats. But with that, I'm going to turn it over to Gbemende.

Gbemende Johnson: Thanks so much, Paul. In our conversations with FOIA officials one of the things that they mentioned relating to hiring was thinking of new and creative ways to recruit individuals for positions. And we believe that this points in that direction. So the Office of Personnel Management has created a new feature on USAJobs called ‘talent pools,’ and that allows agencies to participate in shared job postings. So applicants that have been assessed as eligible and qualified are available for consideration by multiple agencies who are participating in the talent pool. So this can be beneficial in multiple ways. One way is that it reduces the burden on applicants from having to apply for multiple positions, because they can apply once and be considered for multiple postings. And this is something that they would opt into. So that can make the hiring process easier on their end, but it can also make it a bit easier for agencies to find qualified applicants, and also reduce agency burden from having to post multiple hiring actions or similar positions throughout the year.

Some components of this involve that you have to have at least five agencies participating with the intention of hiring candidates eligible for the position. And with this recommendation, so this is something that exists, it would not have to be created, but we are recommending that the Chief FOIA Officers at Council through COCACI [Committee on Cross-Agency Collaboration and Innovation] work to organize agencies who are attempting to hire for FOIA positions to participate in the talent pool. And in addition to perhaps taking the lead on helping coordinate agencies, enter into a talent pool together, we recommend that the Council track, if they do enter into it track the effectiveness of talent pools fulfilling FOIA positions, and whether it's something that should be pursued in the future. Turn it over to you, Alina.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Comments from the subcommittee members? Anyone else want to comment on this recommendation? Okay. Some shakes of heads no. What about the full committee? I see Gorka, we're going to get a lot of Gorka today. Gorka, go ahead, please.

Gorka Garcia-Malene: Gorka Garcia from NIH. Yeah, Gbemende, I was wondering, what are the mechanics of this approach? In other words, are you just getting an ever expanding list of talent that is available into perpetuity, or does it expire at some point and you start from scratch?

Paul Chalmers: Gbemende's muted.

Alina M. Semo: Gbemende, I think you're on mute.

Gbemende Johnson: My apologies. It really depends on the pool that's set up with the agencies. There's a particular certificate that's put in place, and that outlines the requirements for the position, how long we will be open, and the number of agencies involved, and how long they would be looking for particular positions, or looking to fill a particular position.

Paul Chalmers: Yeah, I mean, the certs on hiring tend to expire after a certain period of time. OPM has limited experience with this, Gorka. I think the only example they cited to us of where they did it, and it was one they were very excited about, was data scientists. They said it had been very effective. Agencies were very pleased, they got a good talent pool. I will confess we didn't get into the details of how long the search stays open. I mean, there is a link, I think it's in the white paper that we're working on to the OPM site where they get into the real mechanics of it. But that might be a question for a follow-up call with OPM.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Paul. Anyone else?

Gbemende Johnson: And I would say the... Oops, sorry.

Alina M. Semo: Sorry, go ahead, Gbemende.

Gbemende Johnson: The one example that they known it was with hiring data scientists. And if I recall, Paul, they said they received hundreds of... Seems like a lot, but they received lots of applicants that many agencies were able to hire from.

Paul Chalmers: I think what she said was at least a hundred. I don't know how many agencies participated in that one. But as I said, they want, or as you said, Gbemende, they want between four or five, or more, to participate. And that's the reason for my reference of herding cats. If COCACI can line up a number of agencies to all join into the posting, so much the better.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Anyone else? I don't see anyone else raising their hand or waving frantically at me. Okay. Paul or Gbemende, I don't know who wants to...

Paul Chalmers: I got the next one.

Alina M. Semo: Great. Thank you. Go ahead, please.

Paul Chalmers: Okay. You want to go to the next slide? There you go. All right. So this one is another bureaucratic jargon laden recommendation, where actually this one is in tandem with something COCACI is working on. And I don't want to step on their toes, their report should be coming out sometime around Sunshine Week. But one of the things that we heard back from agencies, and let me give you a little bit of a tutorial on this, the way that federal pay structures work for most agencies is called the General Scale, the GS Scale and there are certain grades for positions starting, I don't even know what the bottom one is, a five or a six, and then goes up to a GS-15 with various grades along the way. The higher the grade, the higher the pay, and what a lot of agencies have run into, there's this process, it's an arcane process called classification. And what that means is that you, as the program office and a federal agency, have to come up with what's called a position description, which lays out the effective, sorry, the essential functions and qualifications for the position. And then the HR office will look at that, look at guidance that OPM has issued, and then make a determination of where that falls on the GS scale. Is it a GS-11, 12, 13, whatever. The problem a lot of agencies have run into, and I will attest that I've dealt with this process myself with my own HR department, is that HR departments are sometimes reluctant to classify new positions, let alone those at the higher end of the scale, the 13s, 14s, 15s.

And so some agencies have not been able to convince their HR offices to classify higher graded positions. The reason that that becomes a serious problem is you can't hang on to your employees after they max out on the pay scale in that grade. So if you run up to a GS-12 at your agency and the person is good at their job and wants more pay, there are other agencies that have positions at a GS-13 or 14 and the person can leave and go elsewhere. That's a very common problem. What this does, there's no universal way to solve that problem. HR departments act independently, so OPM does not tell them, you must classify this at a 13 or a 14. What we can do is provide the tools to program offices in dealing with their HR departments to help them in dealing with classification issues. It's something that OPM and OMB did a number of years ago with respect to privacy positions where they were running into the same sorts of issues there. 

So what this recommendation basically calls for agencies to share their position descriptions and make them available, and we need to store them someplace. And the recommendation is that we put them on the COCACI website someplace. I mean, it doesn't really matter where, but make them available to program offices so that when they're dealing with their HR departments, it's a lot easier when you're going in and saying, we need to classify this as a GS-13 position, if you've got a number of other federal agencies that have already done it. No one likes to be the first one to do it. That's especially true of HR departments. So if you've got a bunch of others and you can say to your HR department, "Hey, we're the outlier," it becomes a lot easier to get the position that you need.

And from what we can tell a lot of, and in talking to COCACI, I think they've seen the same thing, a lot of agencies are able to have the higher graded positions and a lot of agencies are not. So if we can do some collaboration, provide some tools to agencies to help, then I think, it's not a home run, but it might be a single. And the effort, and why I say this is in tandem is that COCACI, again, I don't want to step on their toes. I'm not going to preview their recommendations, but they're focusing on other parts of the hiring process and helping agencies and putting together the tools that they need to hire people and providing information, the toolkits and things like that. So this would be something that would work in conjunction with what they're doing and hopefully help solve the problem.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Paul. I appreciate that. Subcommittee members. Anyone else want to comment or add any other thoughts? Okay. Oh, Patricia, I see your hand up. Go ahead, please.

Patricia Weth: Yes, good morning. Patricia Weth from EPA. Well, I like all of our subcommittee’s recommendations, but just to share with you how helpful this particular recommendation can be. I think one of the things about resources in the federal government is we rely on our colleagues. We rely on our friends at other agencies for assistance. And I can tell you at two different agencies that I've worked at, I've gone through this process and I've had to contact colleagues at other agencies to get a copy of their position description to try and revamp the position descriptions at my agency. So to have this resource, to have this database available to all of the federal government agencies, like a one-stop shopping, that's going to save agencies so much time and trouble.

And as Paul said, you can also make the argument to your HR department if you are trying to get a GIS at a higher grade, perhaps at a 15. And you can make the argument, well, they've done this at X, Y, and Z agencies, so it has been done before. And here's the description and it meshes with what we're currently doing. So that's just some background from my personal experience, why I really support this recommendation.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thanks, Patricia. I see Catrina's hand is up. Catrina, go ahead please.

Catrina Pavlik-Keenan: So I'm one of the people that everybody comes to to ask for PDs to use for this, so it would be very helpful to already have it. And I also think it would be beneficial to the employee because of the fact that the jobs that they're doing, that way when they go to these other positions or try to get these other positions, it's not an apple to orange type of thing because it should be basically kind of standardized across the board. And we know sometimes that people have a hard time with that because they don't see the exact same type of work listed in the descriptions. And so I think that this would greatly help out in people getting additional chances for growth, employment and things like that, and having a consistency with the work quality that you're going to get from people.

Alina M. Semo: All right. Thank you, Catrina. Gorka again, go ahead, please.

Gorka Garcia-Malene: Hi, Gorka, at NIH. I was wondering whether this in any way might actually hamper agencies hiring activities. And by that I mean there's some agencies that hire reviewers that are doing standard review, but they have a pretty robust science background because you need that to understand what you're reading. Right. So I wonder if I try to hire a 13 with a robust experience in science, do you think that my HR office could come back and say, we've reviewed the standardized PDs. That's actually a 12.

Paul Chalmers: I mean, that happens all the time. I mean, that's the reason for this recommendation is so that we have the examples. But I hear what you're saying, Gorka. I mean, are you talking about hiring them as GISs or is it a different job series that you'd be bringing them in at?

Gorka Garcia-Malene: That very series. Yeah.

Paul Chalmers: Oh, 306?

Gorka Garcia-Malene: Yeah.

Paul Chalmers: Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a separate issue because having the ability to have the higher graded positions is one thing. Then you have the other issue of is the employee qualified to be in those positions? And that's something that you run into, is the employee, if they're GS-11, are they performing at the next higher grade and ready to be promoted to that next higher grade? That's something that the program office has to work out with, and the HR department might disagree. I don't know how to solve that problem in terms of a recommendation, but what this is trying to do is just provide the tools so that the higher grade of position is at least available.

Gorka Garcia-Malene: Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. I just want to point out, Kirsten in the chat, very helpfully posted the link to the draft final white paper that the subcommittee has put together on the staffing recommendations. Because we just posted them very recently before the meeting today, we wanted to give everyone the opportunity to really thoroughly digest all of these recommendations that includes the public. We welcome comments from the public, any feedback that you would like to give us, we would be happy to receive. And at this point, our anticipation is that we would be voting on these recommendations at our next meeting in April. Paul and Gbemende, can you confirm that please?

Paul Chalmers: Sure. I think that's right. And then are we ready to go to the next one? I know I'm,-

Alina M. Semo: Yes, please.

Paul Chalmers: Doing a lot of talking and people are probably sick of hearing from me.

Gbemende Johnson: No, you're doing great, Paul. Keep going.

Paul Chalmers: You want to go to the next slide, Alina? There we go. All right, so this one I know we've talked about in prior meetings, so I won't spend a huge amount of time on it here. The idea for this is to facilitate the ability of agencies to bring aboard contractor staffing when needed. It's not in any way, I mean, I'll give a little bit of background because we've got the full committee here, and maybe not everybody's heard me speak about it before. The procurement process for federal agencies is tortuous. It can take over a year to get a contract out and filled, putting aside the budgeting questions. So what the GSA, the government, or I'm sorry, the General Services Administration has done, has issued a series of schedules, they're called where vendors can basically bid on those schedules.

The GSA does all the legwork and agencies just need to write a task order against that schedule, which is a much simpler process in order to get the services that you need. What we discovered in doing our work is that while there's a schedule or two that explicitly mentions FOIA, there's not one devoted to FOIA. The one that mentions FOIA includes a host of other services. And so when you look at the vendors who have bid on that schedule, most of them are e-discovery vendors of one sort or another, rather than FOIA vendors of any sort. Agencies use a variety of, again, it's in the white paper, but they use a variety of schedules to get the services that they need, and none of them are particularly good fits for what an agency needs when it needs to have FOIA contractors. I'll note that one of the schedules goes so far as to include millennial transition services, which for those of you who don't speak government jargon means Y2K.

So it's been a while since that schedule's been updated. And what we propose is that the GSA issue a schedule or revise a schedule, whichever it thinks is the easiest way of doing it, so that it's focused on FOIA services. In the white paper, we've got examples of what one might look like, but again, that would be up for GSA to really work through, hopefully with the agencies and dictating their needs. But that's the essence of the proposals, to have this available so that when it comes time, if an agency's got a backlog that it needs to tackle or it's got an unusually high volume of requests coming in, they can quickly go out and get some additional contractor help if they need.

And in prior discussions, we've heard the message that contractors are not the optimal solution, and we agree with that. The better solution is to have a fully staffed federal office of qualified GIS professionals who can deal with it on their own. And that's the purpose for the first three recommendations in our set here. But there are times when you need help, and this is what we're trying to accomplish with this. That's all I've got Alina. If anyone's got a question..

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Great. Paul, thank you.

Paul Chalmers: I'm happy to answer.

Alina M. Semo: Any subcommittee members would like to comment on this particular recommendation? I know we've talked about it before. I'm just looking around to see if anyone has to, yeah, Mende, go ahead please.

Gbemende Johnson: I'll just stress that, and what Paul noted, that this is geared towards agencies who find themselves in a situation where they think they need contractor support, not making a claim that agencies should turn to a contractor more frequently. It's if you need contractor support, are there ways to at least make the process quicker, especially given the statutory timeline that agencies are under to respond to FOIA requests.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thanks. Catrina, go ahead please.

Catrina Pavlik-Keenan: Hi, Catrina Pavlik-Keenan, Department of Homeland Security. Well, since I have 50% of all the FOIAs that are submitted to the government, I have to use contractors. So this is, actually, would be very helpful. It's very difficult right now sometimes when we do contractors to find the adequate one, the budget for the adequate labor category because there is not a labor category specifically for contractors. And then also when you're going to put a category in there, you have to put almost like the PDs, you have to actually put skill sets in there that are more closely related to somebody who actually does FOIA. Because one of the things we find is mostly when we get some of the people on a contract to do FOIA, they're more administrative people and we're basically training them from the ground up. The contractors are hiring them, they don't really, I mean they know the concept of FOIA, but then we train them. And so that's a little bit of a heavier lift for a fed to have to actually train up the contractor to get them up to speed for work, that if they actually had the category fields. Because if you have a journeyman FOIA person, a senior FOIA person, that you would have less of that uptick of training. So I'm very much supportive of this type of recommendation. I think it would be extremely helpful.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thanks Catrina. I believe Allyson raised her hand next and then Patricia. Allyson, go ahead please.

Allyson Deitrick: Thanks. I like this recommendation. I think it'll be a big help, but I just had a question about the proposed description for contractors. It mentions assist with FOIA analysis, but should it maybe include also applying redactions or that was just my only thought was to knit it to the description.

Paul Chalmers: Yeah, I think we definitely can do that. I don't think that's a problem at all. I mean, this was just an example of what one might look like, but I think it's perfectly, assuming this gets through and as we start working on the final, the committee report, I think we definitely add that.

Allyson Deitrick: Okay. Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Patricia, go ahead please.

Patricia Weth: Good morning. Patricia Weth from EPA. And I was just going to echo Catrina's experience. Going through this process to get FOIA support, oftentimes you find contractors who, as Catrina said, that they don't know the FOIA. And so then the agency has to train the contractors on FOIA when the whole purpose of it was to get a team in place who could do the job and assist with reducing the agency's backlog. So I think this is going to go a long way to helping federal government agencies get the right FOIA contract support that they need.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thank you so much, Patricia. I don't see any other hands on this recommendation. I'm going to ask our event producer to go back to slide R-1. Thank you. And Paul and Mende, back to you to ask folks on your subcommittee to present this.

Paul Chalmers: Yeah, Stefanie?

Gbemende Johnson: Yeah.

Paul Chalmers: Go ahead, Gbemende.

Gbemende Johnson: No, I was just going to say we were going to turn the floor over to the sub-subcommittee comprised of Stefanie, Michael, and Carmen to discuss this recommendation gears towards training, so.

Stefanie Jewett: Okay, thank you. Hi, Stefanie Jewett, HHS OIG [Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General]. I'm going to talk a little bit about it, then I'm going to turn over to Michael and then Carmen. So this is our recommendation here, and I'll just read it for those of you who maybe haven't seen it yet. So we recommend that the Department of Justice Office of Information Policy issue guidance to all Chief FOIA Officers outlining minimum requirements for training to agency staff, including non FOIA professionals, outlining the requirements of Section (j)(2)(F) of the FOIA, which states, "The Chief FOIA Officer shall offer training to agency staff regarding their responsibilities under the section." Particular suggested guidance that we suggest includes mandatory annual FOIA training for non FOIA professionals in the federal government and mandatory FOIA training for all new employees, including non FOIA professionals within 60 days of onboarding. So that is our recommendation.

And now I'm going to walk through a little bit of how we got there. Previously, the FOIA Advisory Committee, the past terms, there have been two recommendations that were made previously that surrounded education and training of government employees to ensure compliance with requirements of the FOIA. Both of those since then have been marked complete by OGIS. The one particular one was 2020-05, and that one stated that guidance will request agencies to provide annual mandatory FOIA training. So that is different then this particular recommendation where we're saying that it would be mandatory. It wouldn't just be a suggestion or a recommendation. It would actually, we recommended that it be mandatory FOIA training.

Some things that we did, and I'll let Michael and Carmen cover some other things that we did to come up with this, but we went out and we interviewed several senior FOIA leaders across government, and we asked them a variety of questions involving the FOIA. A number of the questions involved training to try to determine the state of where the FOIA training is government wide right now. So the results to us were very eye opening when it comes to how the federal government agencies train their FOIA staff.

The short answer that we receive through these interviews is that most do not train non-FOIA professionals on FOIA. So for example, the responses from throughout the government showed that there was almost no FOIA training provided to new staff at onboarding, not only for new FOIA employees, but for everyone across government. In addition, in these interviews, we learned that most agencies have no formal training or annual FOIA training for non FOIA staff. A common theme across all the interviews was that the FOIA was not just the FOIA staff responsibility, but it's the responsibility of everyone. Therefore, everyone kept telling us that there was a strong desire to have mandatory annual training for all government employees, much like they kept relating it to an annual records management training or the annual ethics training.

And in that, to train employees during these interviews, everyone kept saying how they currently train their employees. Almost every single agency relies in some part on the DOJ OIP resources to provide the necessary training for their staff, whether it be to their FOIA or to their non FOIA professionals. After we received that feedback, we looked across the government and we saw that actually the Department of Interior has implemented a mandatory biannual FOIA training for all employees, not just their FOIA employees, but all employees. And they do use the DOJ OIP targeted online FOIA training modules developed by DOJ OIP for all their training. Some things that they said to us was that they didn't have to start from scratch. So they were really clear that in order to do mandatory training, the agencies won't have to create this training themselves, right? So the training is already out there. DOJ OIP has already taken this initiative and lead, and they've created these targeted FOIA trainings for FOIA personnel, for executives, and then all other federal employees who are not FOIA employees. There's a suite of FOIA resources there designed to train up and down.

This is a little bit of other detail, but files for these are called the FOIA e-learning models, and they can just be assessed through the OMB MAX Drive [governmentwide collaboration platform]. And the agencies can directly upload those into their learning management system. And if an agency doesn't have a learning management system, they can simply just put them and be assessed through our web browser.

Another thing that the Department of Interior told us is that when a government agency fails to meet its FOIA obligations with respect to a particular request at either the initial stage or of course the appeal stage, as everyone knows, the FOIA requesters can seek resolution in federal court. And for this reason, failure of everyone to understand and properly execute one's duties under the FOIA presents significant potential liability for an agency and FOIA litigation. To summarize my part here is that the reason we came up with the mandatory FOIA training, we decided that it was critical to ensure that the federal workforce, which includes federal employees, contractors, senior executives, political appointees, volunteers, and others who are the ones that create, receive, and use federal records on behalf of their agency, or make sure that they're well-educated about the importance of administrating the FOIA and their roles and responsibility that the FOIA statute mandates. So now I'm going to turn it over to Michael to sort of talk about the other research that we did to come up with this recommendation. Michael.

Michael Heise: Thank you. This is Michael Heise, I'm with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And so yeah, just to add a little bit onto that, what we noticed from the, we looked at the Chief FOIA Officer Reports from 2023 and 2022, and one of the things that we noticed was that agencies had a variety of different responses with respect to training of non-FOIA staff based on what the question was and how the question was actually worded. And so in 2022, we found that there was a lot of agencies reporting training to non-FOIA staff, and that ran the gamut from basic visibility to much more than that. And in 2023, at least, because I think the non-FOIA training question kind of appeared elsewhere in the CFO report. The one that we were examining, the answers to the question about training was really absorbed by agencies as something having to do with FOIA professionals only and so the answers were kind of different.

So one of the things that we recognize, if the Committee were to accept a recommendation such as this, is that a good way for agencies to be able to report whether or not they're, or how they are providing mandatory, as we say, training to especially non-FOIA professionals, is to first ask the same question each and every year the same way, which quite frankly, I think that DOJ does a good job of doing that. It just appears maybe in different sections under, I think sometimes it's in other initiatives, things like that. This isn't part of the recommendation, but it would make sense to kind of house training for both FOIA professionals and non FOIA professionals, probably under section two of the Chief Officer Report, which is usually styled FOIA administration. That way it's easier, I think, for the requester community and agency folks to kind of get to that part of the report if that's what they're interested in looking at. And I think they would be, because I think it makes sense that training, we all know that training of FOIA professionals is necessary. You have to know how to do your job, right, but it's the non-FOIA staff that I think is really, really critical. And just like every agency employee is required to do records management training, ethics training, I know those are pursuant to entirely different things. The FOIA is a statute that applies to virtually all administrative agencies, but because every agency is so different, its impact and applicability could be very different across from agency to agency.

And so that's why we think that providing this recommendation really hits home because it would soak in, I think, into the administrative state, what this attorney general has said is, FOIA's everyone's responsibility. And we think that the training, this is why I think we pointed to those modules, the OIP modules are already there, and they set a good sort of baseline for what, kind of like the, maybe the most rudimentary sort of general FOIA training can be provided to politicals, SESs [Senior Executive Service], leadership, non-FOIA professionals who aren't in those categories, and then FOIA professionals. I mean, it's already there. So it's kind of easy to do, but it's important for a FOIA processor. I could tell you firsthand that I've been in a number of agencies, and it's important that the rank and file and the leadership in an agency, the vast majority of whom are not FOIA professionals, understand, appreciate, and buy into the federal statute.

So for example, and this is not in there, but training I think would consist of things like something more than just visibility, like FOIA is located at 5 USC 552, that sort of thing. But it would be more about that the folks who are processing these FOIAs are processing the people's records, right? Not your records, the people's records because sometimes it's hard to tease that out. I mean, sometimes. And that it is a disclosure statute and that really has to hit home. And I think that the only way you can hit that home is by repetition.

And so a mandatory training for non FOIA professionals who, quite frankly, I always tell people, my job is knocking on doors. Right. I don't really generate a lot of things except I harvest a lot of things. So I reach out to other internal stakeholders for records. So it's the vast majority of the folks who are not in FOIA, that are in government service that need to kind of understand, really, really understand the fact that this statute is a disclosure statute. The fact that these records are the people's records and a mandatory training, I think would do a very good service for both the agency, for the federal government, and for the requester community. That's it. Thanks.

Stefanie Jewett: Okay, Carmen?

Carmen Collins: Yes. Hi, Carmen, US Cybercom. I think this recommendation is a bit different, like Stefanie explained, as far as the actual implementation of the work that was previously done, that was a direct result of the previous recommendation where now there is a tool available for agencies to use, or at least an idea of what a course would look like. I think we all, FOIA program managers, and directors of programs, we love to train. We love to really teach our agency colleagues what the FOIA is about. I know that I do a once a month new onboarding presentation where I usually ask the question, who knows what FOIA is, what the Freedom of Information Act is? And not surprisingly anymore, only about out of 20 people, maybe one or two raised their hands and had no idea.

I had no idea what the FOIA was even before I became a FOIA professional. Didn't know about this law that permits me to obtain the information as a taxpayer that I own. And just honing in that, driving that point to agency personnel. If per the Attorney General's 2022 FOIA guidelines, I'm going to quote, "Successful FOIA administration also requires proper training and a commitment to FOIA compliance by agency personnel." Simply put FOIA's everyone's responsibility. So if it's everyone's responsibility and you're unaware that this is your responsibility, how are you going to fulfill it? And awareness comes from education and training. That in itself is critical. We know also that as Michael referenced, we seek information from other people, right? We ask for search requests. We ask them to search their records. We also ask them to review records because we cannot possibly be the subject matter expert on every topic within an agency. So when we ask for a review of the information, they are very knowledgeable of, we have to explain to them why, correct? And we don't mind. I think a lot of us don't mind having chats with people to teach them what it is that we're asking for. That's no problem at all. But it would be an incredible aid if this information, or at least it's touched upon with a mandatory training course.

I took part in both the courses that OIP DOJ, actually there's three of them, and they're incredible. I really enjoyed the transitions it honed in, right where I think we all have been translating this information. It's not technical, it's very direct. This is what we're asking. This is what the responsibility is. So this would definitely be another tool in our FOIA programs across many agencies that could be able to really bolster response time, review time. Can we quantify these results? I'm not sure, but maybe it's something that we could work on after the mandatory training is instituted.

And also the training aspect of our jobs, which we all, I believe we like, but that time that we're spending on training 101, on presentations, et cetera, could be spent on working the requests that we are usually overloaded with. And there's a huge backlog, but we're taking time, which we don't mind because we are the people that have knowledge about this law. But that time could be spent if a few of the agency personnel that are non-FOIA have that information already. It could lead to having less questions or, "oh yeah, I learned about this", or referencing something back that could help them. With that said, we think that this recommendation could really have a very powerful effect on the everyday, day-to-day practices within our FOIA program.

Stefanie Jewett: Thank you, Carmen.

Alina M. Semo: I see a couple of hands up. I just want to give subcommittee members a chance to weigh in like I have been doing. Otherwise, I will turn to the two hands up. Bobby's was first and then Tom. Bobby, go ahead please.

Bobby Talebian: Thank you, Alina. Good morning still everyone. Bobby from DOJ. First of all, I just want to thank everyone, all these recommendations sound great. Obviously you can tell we are very committed to having quality training available to agencies both for federal FOIA professionals and non-FOIA professionals. It's what led us to develop our learning modules. And we also will try to take the burden off training for agencies to the extent that we can provide that and provide training to 8,000 folks every year. And then try to ensure that agencies are taking advantage and are training their folks we keep the Chief FOIAs Officers accountable to whether it's for FOIA reports as mentioned, so very supportive of this in training. But I want to set out the expectation because I don't believe that OIP can mandate government-wide training to all the other agencies, especially non-FOIA professionals. Typically, the trainings that are mandated government-wide, like the No FEAR Act [Notification and Federal Employee Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act] training or cybersecurity training are established through the statute or OPM regulations. So I just wanted to, it's not that we wouldn't be supportive of it, but it's not something that I think can be accomplished through OIP guidance.

Alina M. Semo: Michael, do you want to address Bobby's comment? It looks like Carmen also has her hand up. Go ahead please.

Michael Heise: I was. But Carmen, go ahead.

Carmen Collins: Bobby, and we appreciate that. I think we looked into it as well, but we were kind of seeking a way to figure out who then or what agency would be responsible for… As you said, it's an OPM statute, correct. All of these trainings that are mandatory come from statutes that are in place and say this is mandatory. So as far as FOIA the Freedom of Information Act, what agency would be responsible to introduce the idea?

Bobby Talebian: That would be something that I would want to look into.

Carmen Collins: Okay.

Bobby Talebian: And just this specific recommendation is outlining guidance as making it mandatory. I mean, we've issued guidance on training before and we've had best practices workshops on training and shared best practices.

Carmen Collins: Right.

Bobby Talebian: I had issued guidance on training again, and even in the context of this, I thought maybe guidance specific to the Chief FOIA Officers fulfilling their statutory obligation to provide training, like we could do that. But as far as a government-wide mandate on FOIA training for all FOIA personnel, that's going to take a little bit of digging into that I've not done as of today.

Carmen Collins: Thank you. Thank you, Bobby. I appreciate that answer because that's really bolstering this recommendation and you guys have been great at providing us the tools and resources to give it to our employees, our agency colleagues. And where we found it hard, all this work that DOJ OIP has done, which really incredible courses, I love them so much, but it's just suggested, right? We suggest. And maybe a lot of agencies aren't aware of it, aren't aware that this tool is right there. You even provide the coding to put it into learning management system, which is just, wow. For agencies that already have a learning management system, it's just about putting it on there and taking it. It's really easy, so I think that's where the suggestion versus the, I don't know if there's a stronger word, not requirement or mandatory, but like, "Hey guys, this would be a great idea."

Bobby Talebian: I really appreciate it. And we can certainly look at other avenues to kind of make sure agencies are aware of it. I will say, and maybe it's just another reminder, but when we did launch the e-learning modules, the Associate Attorney General sent a memo to all general counsels and Chief FOIA Officers reminding the importance of training and pointing them to the direction of these resources. So certainly we could think about advertising, refreshing, but obviously we put a lot of sweat equity into this. And the last thing I want to hear is that the agencies aren't aware or are not using it. So there's definitely a lot of things that maybe we can do. I just wanted to point out just the way this is phrased and that there's a little bit problematic.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, so Tom has his hand up.

Stefanie Jewett: Can I just weigh in on that part really fast to respond also to that point?

Alina M. Semo: Sure. This is Stefanie, right?

Stefanie Jewett: Yes, Stefanie Jewett, HHS OIG. I thank you for that comment. We did consider that, and that is why in the recommendation we just said that DOJ OIP would outline the minimum requirements from section (j)(F)(2). The mandatory training, and was just a suggestion of what potentially the guidance could be after everyone looks into whether that could be a possibility, so I just wanted to point that out, that the actual recommendation, the main language of the recommendation does not have any phrasing about mandatory training. That was just suggestions that we were including. But the actual recommendation is for that DOJ OIP outline the minimum requirements, which are suggested in (j)(2)(F), so I wanted to add that clarification that we are just asking DOJ OIP to state what the minimum training requirements are to the Chief FOIA Officers. Because as it stands now, after we sort of explained what we looked at, there are no minimum requirements right now as it stands.

If you ask agencies across the board, they're not going to say, this is what we require, so I don't want to get caught up in the mandatory part because that was only suggested guidance. That's not the actual recommendation. I hear what you're saying, but I want to be very clear. Of course, we would love for it to be mandatory, and we thought that would be something that you could potentially look at after you get this recommendation. But again, the recommendation is just to interpret that the minimum requirements of that one section of the FOIA law.

Bobby Talebian: Yeah. And so framed that way, I think that's very reasonable. We can definitely do guidance specific to the obligation of the Chief FOIA Officer.

Stefanie Jewett: Thank you. I just wanted to clarify. I didn't want to go down that rabbit hole. We did consider there's the things that you spoke about. Thank you.

Bobby Talebian: Then I would just suggest that the language would say that this is coming up for a vote next year. Suggested guidance could include, instead of should.

Stefanie Jewett: Sure. Okay. That's a great point. Thank you.

Bobby Talebian: Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Tom Susman has been very patient. And Jason, I see your hand up next.

Thomas Susman: Tom Susman. I'm a great fan of training, a great fan of mandatory training for new employees. And so you might wonder why I'm questioning sort of the annual mandatory training for all employees, considering the number of people in the government. I would think that the resources, even if it's just an online thing each year, I have to do a mandatory training every year on something in my job. And I find it totally distracting and boring after the first year and somewhat resent having to do it, actually. So I wonder if you'd consider at least whether there's some way of softening the annual nature of mandatory for everyone. I mean, you've got forest rangers out there who don't even work with paper except for personnel related stuff, so I just raised that. I'm sure you've thought about it, but it seems like kind of an awfully heavy investment considering the potential return.

Stefanie Jewett: Right. Thank you. And again, I think we should play with that language of it. I think we need to put [what] suggested guidance could include. We were being very ambitious with what could include language there at the end. But yes, I agree with you, but we did the survey and the questions and interviewing everyone that we said. Everyone of course in the FOIA community wants it to be a mandatory training because of one, if it's mandatory, if it's a mandatory training, it rises, it increases the elevation of FOIA, right? Then people will think, "Oh, it's important. I have to do this training." Second, when you go to them, like Michael was saying, when you go and say, "Hey, can you give me these records?" They'll understand the importance that, "Oh, we're working on these very tight timeframes. We only have 20 days to turn these around." It is important. And I remember taking this training, this can, if I don't comply with my obligations, this can cost the agency money through litigation. There'll be appeals that are filed. So that's why I hear you that there could be people out that don't even deal with paper, but they do have a cell phone. They could have text messages, they still have emails. And then what if someone does want their records, right? They still need to be... What everyone said consistently. Everyone at the very least should have this 15 minute DOJ OIP training that quickly tells them their obligations under the FOIA, so that they know when we go coming to them, first of all, we're not trying to tell them what the FOIA is, and this is the coming out of the resources, right? No one has the resources to process FOIA requests.

We just don't have the staff. We don't have the time, so to have your basic employees already know what FOIA is and have a little bit of knowledge to be able to say, "Oh, I remember taking this 15 minute training. I have to provide my record." That's why we are recommending that it be for everyone because that's what we heard over and over and over when we went out to the community that my time is being spent, I can't get employees, but all my time is being spent trying to tell people that have no idea about FOIA, that I need their records. And then if it's not an annual training, if it's not coming from your leadership saying you have to take this training, then it can be pushed aside. I hope that answers your question.

Alina M. Semo: All right, thank you. Jason has been waiting patiently. Jason, go ahead please.

Jason R. Baron: I like the recommendation with the asterisk that Bobby has put on it. I do want to say that this is actually in the spirit of the mple[I]mentation [S]ubcommittee’s work because you pointed to prior recommendations where you think that they've been partially implemented based on CFO reports, but not implemented in the way that would lead to more employees and agencies, non-FOIA professionals working. But I do want to caution that what is said in the recommendation is important, and it's actually not the commentary to recommendations, but the recommendation itself, so I believe this does need some reworking. I don't think the statute says all in terms of shall offer training to all agency staff.

I think there's a rule of reason, and I don't think DOJ is interpreted so consistent with what Bobby said. I think one could rework the language. I'd be happy to assist and help figuring that out so that a proposal that is in the spirit of what you're trying to do, which amplify past recommendations of this committee can be put out by DOJ. And Bobby, I would certainly support your coming out with guidance that says mandatory training is strongly recommended, but I agree with you, I don't think the statute empowers OIP to require it.

Stefanie Jewett: Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Michael, you've got your hand up. Is that a new hand?

Michael Heise: Yes, it is. Okay. And I'm just taking notes here. This draft recommendation, Stefanie and Carmen and I can kind of go back and consider the suggested guidance could include and reword that. One of the things just since we're all here meeting as a committee that I was thinking is first off, the modules are... Except for the one that's for the actual FOIA professionals, the modules are relatively short. I mean, I think the ones for leadership are really short, and I guess I'll have to look a little bit more about what that means in terms of shall offer training to agency staff and what that means. Quite frankly, I just presumed that meant all because, well, because the FOIA applies to every agency staffer and a forest ranger out in Alaska somewhere probably has more tech in their back pocket than I do. So anyway, we'll have to look at that. But I think that the issue is we want the requester community to benefit from this, I think.

And one way to benefit from it is if a FOIA professional, I'm not speaking for myself here, just the hypothetical FOIA professional in a hypothetical agency doesn't feel that she is fighting a war on two fronts, right? Having to deal with a queue of requests where the clock is ticking, but then also have to deal kind of in the back office with training on the fly for folks about FOIA. And I think that's what we're trying to get at. So what the suggested guidance could include, and Stefanie and Carmen, I'll talk to you about this a little bit more later, I think. Modules, if we are going to limit all, that the training, I do think annual training is important, even though it's not fun because repetition is key, but maybe training that's targeted to folks that agency think are most likely to be custodians of records, that would be subject to a FOIA request. I don't know. And then also, I think it would be interesting to put, if we're talking about suggesting guidance that agencies do what they can to decipher and then train non-FOIA professionals on what the substantial harm analysis is.

Because a lot of times we're not subject matter experts, SMEs, on the actual record itself usually. So there is value in being able to have a conversation with the SME in a language that we both can speak, which is FOIA. It should be FOIA, at least in that limited sense, so that we understand because substantial harm analysis doesn't mean it shouldn't go out because I don't want it to go out. I'm not saying that's ever been said to me. I'm just saying that that's a line that is not legally cognizable, but being able to work with folks that way. And I think that's what we're getting at, that the training about FOIA needs to get into the bones of agency staff more than it is now. If the requested community would like to have a more efficient, at least in one sense a more efficient cadre of FOIA professionals processing their requests. So we could talk more later.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Michael. So I've got four hands up and I was hoping to take a break soon, so Alex, David, Mende and Catrina in that order. Alex, go ahead please.

Alex Howard: Thank you for sharing these recommendations. They clearly reflect deep research and understanding of these challenges, that goes much higher than I think the top line. But in light of that though, what you just said, Stefanie about the reality of the moment that there's a rapid continuing increase in requests, and you said no one has the resources, staff or time. If that's the case, if the conclusion of the subcommittee is that there isn't the human capacity for this, would it not make sense for the Resources Subcommittee to state so clearly and to recommend something along the lines of the talent surge that we see ongoing for other aspects of government, specifically AI, which has been a priority of the administration.

Why wouldn't the subcommittee take the conclusion that increasing demand and the human capacity isn't there, we recommend that there be more investment in bringing more people into government and retaining them so that the capacity issue doesn't get worse. Sorry if I'm not articulating this well, but it seems like that top level conclusion is one that would make sense to make with clarity so that the people who are thinking about funding as the next year goes on, at least have a prompt from us that this is something that needs to have more investment.

Stefanie Jewett: Sure, that makes sense. When we went out and we did the interviews and everything, that wasn't something that came up with any of the FOIA officers or anyone. They all have a lack of resources, and they thought if there was training across the board, it would make it easier for them to get the documents and process FOIAs quicker. I just don't think there's enough knowledge out there right now within the government agencies in order to try to, for us right here, it just wasn't suggested at all. I don't think in one interview anyone ever suggested that. It was over and over and over FOIA needs to be made a priority. The thing that could help, because I don't have the resources to hire more people, but what could really, really help is if everyone across government knew their FOIA obligations, that FOIA isn't just on me.

Yes, I'm the FOIA officer. Yes, I'm the government information specialist. Yes, I'm the attorney, but it's not my, I cannot do everything. I can't search the record, and this is what you're getting to, right? I can't search the records for you, I can't process the records, I can't do everything. But right now, as it stands right now, a really quick fix, especially since you know DOJ OIP already has these trainings out there is if at the very minimum we get some type of minimum requirement for everyone across government to just know so that when I'm coming to them, it's not the first time they're hearing the letters, F-O-I-A, they already know what FOIA stands for. They know they have to give me their records. So that's why we came to this conclusion with this recommendation. I would just say simply because no one said anything about... That's what they want, everyone said over and over in the FOIA community, please, if we could just have some type of mandatory, was always the word, training, so I don't have to keep doing that over and over in my job.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thanks, Stefanie. Dave Cuillier, over to you. David, you're on mute.

David Cuillier: Thanks. Sorry about that. Rookie. Yeah, great discussion, great recommendations. I totally understand the concerns that Bobby and Tom and folks raised. I would hope... I sent an email to the advisory committee, and I assume that will be in the public record then, with three studies that I hope y'all take a look at because we don't have to reinvent the wheel here. [OGIS note: The studies are copyrighted; abstract links are below.] Shelley Kimball looked at 10 states that have training of all their public employees in their state public records laws, including four that are mandatory. And her research indicates that it makes things better in those states that they report, things work a lot better. And so I hope folks take a look at that by Michele Bush Kimball, she's awesome. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2011.04.003]

And then two other studies that actually looked at the effect of mandatory training. One in Chile that found that it led to more proactive posting online of information [https://doi.org/10.1080/15309576.2018.1462215] and one in Brazil that showed training lotteries where agencies were selected randomly and made to go through training, did much better in complying with the law [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2021.101659], so I hope people have a chance to look at those and when we come back to consider the final wording and recommendations, consider that because I think the emerging evidence seems to indicate it could really go a long ways to making things better for everybody.

Stefanie Jewett: Thank you, David.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, David. Let's see, Catrina. No, I'm sorry. Mende is next, and then Catrina. And Alex is your hand up from earlier. Are you putting it down? Okay, thanks.

Gbemende Johnson: I'll be super quick. And this is just to express my support for the recommendation and the mandatory and annual part. If it can come about through research if possible, but also stressing it might be even more imperative in this post COVID universe where you may have more remote positions and also trying to attract more talent includes offering more opportunities for remote work, which is great. But you do also have, you can have a loss of knowledge that can happen from individuals who are working together. And that is perhaps one way where people get an understanding of FOIA, so if they're not getting it from going into a workplace on a regular basis, having this training during recurring periods I think can help compensate for that. So that was it.

Stefanie Jewett: Okay.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you so much. Catrina?

Catrina Pavlik-Keenan: Catrina Pavlik-Keenan, DHS. So the one thing I was going to say was, so it's really kind of... I'm all about training. I created a DHS boot camp and all that kind of stuff for training. And one of the things that I think that, and I don't know and maybe Bobby can issue some kind of just guidance from DOJ, but one of the things that I've come to find, and we have this quite often at DHS, is we get a big bang for the buck when we have the new politicals or new senior leadership that come in when they're hired. We give them training about FOIA. That's one of the things that we do when they come into those levels of positions. And we find it very beneficial when we go to, have to, search for records or ask them for records or things like that.

And so I think, I know we're talking about trying to make things mandatory, but I think that if DOJ would issue some type of guidance that basically says that we're getting ready to go into election year, people are going to be changing over, and it would be a good point to start realizing that we need to have that guidance for those people at the beginning of their appointments and positions in the hiring that we have going on. And I also want to keep in mind, I mean, I know that, again, I have 50% of all FOIAs in the whole federal government, but we do a lot of training. I do a lot... At DHS, I'm responsible for all the components, and so I do a lot of training and I'm also responsible for the DHS proper FOIA requests, so I do a lot of training, not just within my own area of responsibility, but all the components within DHS.

I think that, that has shown results in that you do and agreed with a lot of people that have talked on here, is that you do get people that have a better understanding of the FOIA and process work quicker and easier because they understand what it is that they're doing. Also, I also think that these jobs burn you out. I've been doing FOIA for 30 years, and if you don't have some type of training that gives you a little bit of a break from time to time to rejuvenate you, to possibly give you something new that you didn't know, a new tool that you might've learned or something like that. I think that it is actually also very important for the wellbeing of the FOIA professional to have these type of training opportunities. So that's all I want to just add.

Alina M. Semo: Okay.

Stefanie Jewett: Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks Catrina. So great segue into our break. I think we probably all could use a little bit of a break in case we're being burnt out by this great discussion. I do want to remind everyone, Kirsten in the chat posted to everyone, the link to the white paper that the working group on training has put together. It's posted on our website. And again, the idea is we want to give everyone the opportunity to look at it, comment and refine this recommendation, which it sounds like Stefanie and Michael and Carmen are going to be doing in the next few weeks between this meeting and our next meeting.

So with that, unless anyone has any other burning comments to make, I'm just looking around. I don't see any other hands up. I'm going to ask our event producer to flip over to several slides forward to our break slide. We're going to take a, could we make it a 10-minute break instead of 20 minutes, 15 minutes rather. Let's make it 10 minutes, if that's okay with everyone. We'll come back at 11:50. Well, so 11 minutes, 11:50 AM. Let's take a break. And again, don't disconnect. Just mute and stop your video please. Thank you so much.

[Break]

Alina M. Semo: Welcome back everyone. This is Alina Semo, your chairperson. I believe everyone is back, but to the extent you haven't turned on your cameras yet, just a reminder, please turn your cameras back on from break. I want to thank the Resources Subcommittee for their presentation, and I hope that everyone will read their two white papers that are posted online. We're happy to receive comments in between. And thank you for the lively discussion that we've had today. We are pivoting to the next agenda item presentations are going to be flipped. We're going to be hearing from the Modernization Subcommittee first and then from [the] Implementation Subcommittee. So with that, I'm going to turn things over to Jason R. Baron and Gorka Garcia-Malene, our two co-chairs. Jason, go ahead please.

Jason R. Baron: Can you hear me, Alina?

Alina M. Semo: Loud and clear.

Jason R. Baron: Great. Thanks everybody. I want to first do a shout-out. I want to thank Gorka for his co-chairing for this term to date, and to every member of our subcommittee listed here for their work. We already came up with a recommendation that was approved last year about (b)5 designations, and happy about that. Also, later we'll hear from Adam about the model determination letter that was out for public comment, and hopefully there'll be a vote on that today. There are other recommendations that we want to get to in draft form, to talk with the members of the committee and everyone out there. I also want to say one more thing, which is that we have a pretty comprehensive subcommittee report that backs up in commentary what we're suggesting in draft recommendations, and I really urge people to read that and comment on it. So, with that, go to the next slide.

The first draft recommendation is that we're recommending that OIP issue guidance, federal agencies stating that agencies should proactively offer requesters the opportunity to discuss their request with an agency. Representative OIP has done a great job in issuing all kinds of guidance over the years, suggesting that agencies be receptive to the idea of engaging with individual requesters and seeking out requesters when there are complex requests or when there are just questions about to clarify requests. And they've done so in their FOIA public liaison commentary and their OIP quality request or services commentary. Where this is trying to make a modest change is that it recognizes that there's a basic reality out there. As mentioned previously, there are backlogs that are growing in many places and that means delays in getting two requesters about the substance of their requests. It's also true that many FOIA requesters file requests that are not as clear as they can be that have raised questions and as to the subject matter or time range of requests or who may possess records in their request.

And so, what we're suggesting is an early heads-up to requesters, and what we have in our commentary for language supporting this is simply to say this, either in an acknowledgement letter or when a FOIA request is teed up in queue for going forward with a search, the notice would be something like this. "A FOIA staff representative is willing to discuss your FOIA request with you, to assist you in understanding how we intend to process your request, and to give you the opportunity to provide additional information to clarify or narrow your request, to assist us in making a further response to you as efficiently as possible." That would be it, in some way, shape or form, to give a heads-up to requesters.

And we anticipate that absolutely not every requester is going to take up that invite to contact an agency, whatever the contact person might be. In fact, if there are... I'll say one more thing, and then I'll open it up... which is that if there are agency concerns, this is a recommendation for OIP to go out with something that's discretionary, not mandatory. And if there's some concern out there, a departmental FOIA officer might say, "Okay, well we'll do a pilot program for one component that responds to FOIA requests, and we'll see how it goes in terms of the response."

My own view is that this will be very helpful to a small set of requesters to get an early dialogue going with an agency, or certainly earlier than they would otherwise have about trying to narrow the scope of their request. And in that way, it helps with public engagement, it helps with transparency, and we don't believe that the subcommittee will add significantly to a burden. With that, questions.

Alina M. Semo: Or comments from any of the other subcommittee members? Or the rest of the committee? Paul.

Paul Chalmers: I just want to echo what Jason just said. I mean, we tried to do this at my agency, and when we've done it, when we've been successful in it, it really does improve the relationship with the requesters and speeds up the process of getting the relevant documents out. So, I like this one.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thank you. Any other comments? Gorka?

Gorka Garcia-Malene: I'll just buttress the recommendation by saying that I've spoken to several requesters that explicitly told me they didn't really know how to phrase the request, and so they filed a very broad request, hoping to get some interaction with the agency. And that interaction has proven very successful with most requesters.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thank you. Michael Heise.

Michael Heise: Yeah. Well, I want to echo my support for this recommendation. But so, I'm with the EEOC, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And having the word "should" here is really important because our office here at headquarters, my folks provide this kind of service all the time, and it's very helpful. But I'm cognizant of the fact that the commission receives roughly 13,000 to 16,000 employee requests a year. We're a small agency, and the vast majority of those are for something called a charge file, which is a particular thing. So, the word "should" is good because if the request is clear, the request is clear. And I know agencies such as ours, I don't know, maybe Catrina's agency with A-files [Alien files] or something, having to reach out to each and every single requester every time for some agencies could be a burden. So, having the "should" there I thought was very important. I'm glad it's there. Thanks.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. I don't see any other hands up, so Jason, let me ask you to move on to the next recommendation.

Jason R. Baron: Great. Okay. Put up the next slide. So, our second draft recommendation is that, "We recommend that OIP issue guidance to federal agencies, encouraging the option of providing requesters an interim response, consisting of a small sample of documents found as the result of searches conducted and subsequently reviewed for partial or full withholding."

What's animating this request is the volume of records, and the complexity of some requests, that are resulting in searches of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and in the future millions, of emails and other electronic records. And this is a tremendous burden going forward to agencies.

And if you just leave requesters without an option of looking at a sample of documents, that sample having been reviewed, then there's the possibility that they're going to be stuck for many years in trying to work through what are large requests.

I must say that many agencies, as reported in Chief FOIA Officer reports, do a great job of anticipating this request, at least to a great extent, which, I mean, there are examples in these reports. Department of Education, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, US Secret Service, they all have reported of taking very large requests and working with requesters on targeted search terms, result in reducing the potential response records from 100,000 to 5,000 emails in the Department of Education case. And 50,000 possible hits down to something that's like 2,500 pages.

This is all great practice on the part of some agencies. What we say in the commentary is a step-by-step protocol for accomplishing what this would enhance in current procedures. So, there would be, at the requester’s initiative, a dialogue with an agency over custodians and locations and time periods and search terms.

And once that dialogue has happened, an agency would go out, do a search, come back with whatever number of hits is reported, whatever they want to reveal about the documents that have been found. What the agreement would be would be to do a sample of those. Could be just 100 pages, or 200 documents or whatever, a much smaller bit of the large collection of hits that one would get in a search request against a Capstone repository for email, or otherwise. And then review that small sample and produce that to the requester, and with redactions as appropriate, and have a conversation with the requester about whether that is sufficient, that's the way that the agency should proceed, or whether the requester, in some cases, might be satisfied with that being enough.

So, it is that conversation that this anticipates, to look at a sample. I know in my own case, as a frequent FOIA requester, now that I'm an academic type, that some agencies have engaged with me on this, and it's been very successful in me understanding what the agency will do with redactions. And I can assure everyone here that I stopped the process after that first sampling. I said, "Okay, that's a good sample, and I've gotten what I want." That may not be the case in every case. But the agency needs to work with the requesters. We think that this will reduce the burden in very large complex productions, where an agency, if they haven't had this early engagement, may go off into many, many months, if not years, of review of a large amount of documents where the requester, first of all, doesn't have transparency about the process, and also may ultimately disagree and appeal, even, to court.

We have some caveats in the commentary to make clear that there will be a tolling provision if there's this initial conversation, that the statute provides that DOJ guidance has amplified on. And there's also what we say in the commentary, that we would expect that if an agency doesn't hear back from a requester, if they're not engaging after an initial conversation, well then, the agency has the opportunity, just like they do now, are you still interested in your FOIA request? To basically say that the request has been closed.

So, there needs to be an active dialogue. And nothing in this protocol that's outlined is designed to have FOIA staff research FOIA requests and engage in some kind of very active process that's iterative and going on. It is a sample, and an initial dialogue, that tries to set the parameters of the request. I think this would be very helpful in complex requests to reduce the burden, overall, on processing of those requests. Comments, questions?

Alina M. Semo: Lauren? I see your hand up.

Lauren Harper: Yeah, this is Lauren Harper of the National Security Archive. I really like this recommendation. The Archive has for a long time done a variation of this, where our boilerplate FOIA letter basically asks for documents to be released on a rolling basis. It serves all the purposes that Jason mentioned, and it also helped achieve some of the things that were touched on with draft recommendation one from your subcommittee, which was just to get that dialogue going. And for us, especially because so many of our requests are complex in nature, it's just proven to be enormously helpful. So, I really like this recommendation.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thanks, Lauren. Anyone else? Let's see. I've got Michael Heise's hand up, and Bobby Talebian, I think in that order.

Michael Heise: Thank you. This is Michael at EEOC. Yeah, I mean, I like this recommendation. I want to at least have it reflected in the transcript, and also if there's any, especially, folks on the agency side in attendance to this meeting, that read the comments and the commentary because it does provide a nice workflow.

And to be clear, at least as I read this, and our office deals with this sometimes, the goal, at least from the agency's perspective, is to try to ensure that our finite resources can be used as efficiently as possible to maximize our outreach to the entire requester community who is submitting requests to the commission.

And it's hard to do that when a single request can utterly consume, for all respects and purposes, an office. And so, the sampling, if you read the commentary, kind of goes like this. If the processor has a yield that's very, very large, and then they're able to work with the requester, and the requester is able to... They agree on a sampling, and then the sampling provides a meaningful amendment, an actual amendment, to cause the request that's originally written to be substantially reduced in volume, so that not only the agency can be able to get to the next request in a first in time sort of queue, but that the requester him or herself is actually getting the documents that they say or they think they want, based on what they see on the sample.

So, agencies want to provide a response in a timely manner to each and every requester that comes before it. And a sampling that results in a meaningful amendment reducing the yield, is one of the best ways to do that. Thanks.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Michael. Bobby, I believe you were next.

Bobby Talebian: Thanks, Alina. So, from my perspective, since it's aimed at us, the recommendation, I'm very for this, because I actually believe our guidance already addresses it. We've had multiple pieces of guidance that focus on interim responses, both in making sure that you're not waiting to give requesters records until the end, and also in using this and especially in our COVID guidance, we use it as a strategy of being able to engage with a requester, to be able to reformulate based off of sampling of records. So, it's very much in line with this.

So, I think from my perspective, what would be helpful, maybe in meeting with the subcommittee between now and April, is understanding where we believe there is a gap in our existing guidance. I mean, there's two things we can do. If there's a gap and there's additional guidance that would be helpful, then we can do that. Or if the guidance exists, and we want to reemphasize and recommunicate it, there's different ways that we can make sure that we're emphasizing this. So, I would just like to have a better understanding of where maybe there is a gap, or maybe this is just something that we can greater socialize.

Jason R. Baron: Well, I think, Bobby, if I can speak, you do a tremendous job of encouraging agencies to reach out to requesters. There are two things here. One is to have requesters initiate the conversation with agencies, and that's not in present guidance, or it's not spelled out in neon lights. That would be a kind of protocol. And secondly, that the specific point here is to have a review of a sample of documents that sort of set out and memorialize in guidance that this is a way to go, that you have a small sample when you get a very large number of hits.

And I think you do encourage agencies to narrow requests with requesters, and to engage, but the extra value of this is to suggest a protocol for doing that with respect to a sample, and which is then reviewed. And if agencies do that, that's great. But what we're saying is that it could be spelled out a bit more in your guidance.

Bobby Talebian: I think that's what would be helpful, maybe, to have this discussion more because I do believe our guidance encourages a proactive, not waiting for the requester engagement, to provide interim responses, with the aim of those interim responses being helpful in understanding whether the requests can be reformulated, or if the requests are satisfied with what they've gotten.

So, obviously, I'm all for this. I just wanted to make sure I understand what our guidance would look like, if it's not different than what it already exists. Or if it already is satisfactory, then I think then there's other avenues of socializing this important practice. But I certainly think that our guidance supports a level of proactive by the agency, not waiting for the requester to ask for interim responses or communicate about their request.

Alina M. Semo: I see Luke Nichter's hand is up, and then Lauren Harper. Luke, go ahead, please.

Luke A. Nichter: Yeah, thanks. Luke Nichter, Chapman University. I just want to add another 2 cents in here. It really addresses this, but in a way, even the recommendation before, from the requester perspective. I think some agencies do a great job already, and I wouldn't change anything about what they do. They really are professional the way they handle... I mean, communication is very easy, and you don't need a lot, because they already do it well.

But I would say also, there are examples of agencies who, either you don't have meaningful contact information, there's not an easy way to reach them, you get a no reply email address, you get a phone number that goes to a full voicemail box and you can't leave a message. So, on the whole, I think there's been improvement, and many do this very well. I'm in support of this proposal because I think it really splits the difference between getting records in the hands of requesters more quickly, but also ideally reducing the backlog that a lot of agencies have. And again, some do this very well already, but there are others that perhaps are not aware of some of the guidelines that are already out there. Thank you.

Lauren Harper: This is Lauren Harper again. I just want to... Speaking to Bobby's point, I really like that this recommendation includes a sampling of documents, because we do get an awful lot of interim responses that are still interested, or where you narrow the scope of your request. And sometimes the way that can feel is, "My request is properly defined under the FOIA. I'm still pretty sure I want these." So, it doesn't really help the requester understand how narrowing may or may not help them if it's not accompanied by some of those documents. So, I think a sample would really go a long way.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thanks, Lauren. I don't see any other hands up. Jason, anything else you wanted to add, or you want to go to the next one?

Jason R. Baron: I will turn it over to Gorka for the next recommendation.

Alina M. Semo: Great. Thank you. Gorka, go ahead, please.

Gorka Garcia-Malene: Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Alina. My name is Gorka Garcia-Malene. I'm the FOIA officer for NIH, and I have the pleasure of co-chairing this Modernization Subcommittee with Jason.

Our next recommendation reads, we recommend that federal agencies expand public engagement activities focused on improving all aspects of their FOIA process. So, this recommendation, the subcommittee seeks to expand agency engagement, both with individual requesters and with the FOIA community and civil society at large. Most recently, DOJ's Office of Information Policy acknowledged the importance of requester engagements in its FOIA self-assessment toolkit. So, that toolkit element reads specifically, "Agency periodically reaches out to its requester community to facilitate open communication and feedback."

Now, I should add that the Modernization Subcommittee is mindful and appreciates the fact that many agencies already undertake these engagement activities. In fact, OIP's 2023 Chief FOIA Officer's summary report references several examples. So, for instance, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's FOIA public liaison, they already reach out to frequent requesters to learn about how they use that office's proactive disclosures. The Department of Commerce proactively engages with requesters by offering them information that is frequently requested. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently convened various requester groups to a web conference to introduce and demonstrate a new portal for submitting requests. And there are, of course, many other examples. So, what we hope to do with this recommendation, with respect to individual requesters, is to prompt agencies to consider, for example, asking requesters if they were satisfied with the FOIA process and with the response that they received to their request. 

In addition, our accompanying report, which, if it isn't available yet it'll be available soon, also includes several ideas for how agencies can reach out to the FOIA community at large and civil society organizations. So, for example, agencies could develop frequently asked questions, or I guess answers to frequently asked questions, to respond to common complaints or even questions received from requesters. They could adopt channels of communication to promote how they process FOIA requests, and to seek feedback on proposed changes to the regulations and to the policies.

Agencies could also periodically reach out to the requester community and civil society organizations to have a conversation about the agency's FOIA process, and to provide an opportunity to engage meaningfully with the agency. Any additional work that agencies do to enhance public engagements will not only fulfill the DOJs benchmarks for a healthy FOIA program, but also advance FOIAs aspirational goals of providing greater government accountability and transparency. Back to you, Alina.

Alina M. Semo: I just want to confirm, the draft report is posted on the website. Kirsten shared a link earlier, but it's available on our website, so I do encourage everyone to read it.

Any subcommittee members here to comment on this recommendation? Or any other committee member? Gbemende, go ahead, please.

Gbemende Johnson: Thanks. I think this is a great recommendation. My question is actually probably really narrow and specific. It might be targeted towards the DOJ. But just in thinking about requesters, we speak of the community. With some of the research that I do, I encounter a lot of incarcerated requesters, and I'm thinking about some of the outreach mechanisms that may not be available to them. And I'm thinking, are there ways for those particularly vulnerable requesters to enhance engagement with them, or if there are mechanisms already in place for those particular requesters who are incarcerated?

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Gbemende.

Gorka Garcia-Malene: The question was to OIP, is that right? Or…

Catrina Pavlik-Keenan: I was just going to jump in and agree. Yeah, so we have a lot of, over at DHS, we have incarcerated individuals and it's very difficult for us to do that. So, if there's ideas or mechanisms in place for that to happen, I will... I do have outreach where I meet with interest groups and tell them what best we need for attorneys that work for some of their clients. But some requesters are incarcerated, and they're requesting information for themselves. And I don't know about anybody else, but we also have an issue with people who are incarcerated, and they get moved around, and submit FOIA requests, and then by the time it gets to them, and I don't know if anybody else is having this issue, but it doesn't... We have a hard time finding them in the system. Once they're incarcerated, they may get moved to another facility based upon the facility being full, or whatever. And so, we have that problem tracking people down with their FOIA requests, even if we were to negotiate, or to... Even sometimes when we're trying to answer it back.

Alina M. Semo: All right. Thanks, Catrina. Gorka, back over to you. Do you have the next recommendation you want to raise, or is that back to Jason?

Gorka Garcia-Malene: I think that's back to Jason.

Alina M. Semo: All right.

Jason R. Baron: Actually we're going to... If you put it up on the screen, I believe-

Alina M. Semo: Next slide please.

Jason R. Baron: ...we are going to have Alex Howard talk about this.

Alex Howard: I found the unmute button. I would say, in the context of modernization, with respect to the previous recommendation, that we'd be, I think, remiss in not offering suggestions to improve the way that there's an interaction between the requester community and the federal government through foia.gov and enhancements to it.

In theory, if someone is able to create an account that could be tracked over space and time and changes that they could log into, that would be significant. But there's also specifics with respect to internet access and the incarcerated requesters that are probably even more pertinent.

And this is something that's come up with respect to continuing to maintain the ability to do print requests and receive them, not just focusing on the online version. So, in this recommendation, we suggested and recommended that the Archivist of the United States propose to the Office of Management and Budget, the White House, the Office of Information Policy at DOJ, and other relevant agency participants that are taking a leading role in co-creating future US National Action Plans for Open Government, the Open Government partnership.

And by doing so, ensure that there are new and continuing commitments to improving FOIA administration, proactive disclosure, and the relationships between the American people and the governments that they look to for information, as has been commented earlier. For people who are not familiar, this committee is itself a fulfilled commitment in the second National Action Plan, and was chartered by the, I think, 11th AOTUS [Archivist of the United States], and hopefully will be rechartered for another term.

And the thinking here is that by making commitments to improve the FOIA flagship initiatives, as other countries have done, that many of the goals that have been expressed over the years through recommendations might be instantiated in commitments, and that there might be an outcome where the process is the product, so to speak, with respect to using the next year or so when a new National Action Plan should be built out.

And we've seen some, I think, improvements over time, when there was great interest a decade ago. But there's an opportunity, I think now, to make a recommitment to that effort, and to focus on FOIA as a pinnacle, as a fundamental, I think, bulwark against the kinds of issues that we see all around the world and in our country as well. And use transparency and accountability to preserve what we value most in our governments. So, that's the short version of it. There's more commentary on the draft published online.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thanks, Alex. Any comments or questions from the rest of the subcommittee? Or the rest of the committee? I don't see any hands right now. Okay. I'm going to move things along. Jason, back to you.

Jason R. Baron: Okay. Put up the next slide. So, our next recommendation is, "We recommend that the Chief FOIA Officers Council Technology Committee and interested agencies publish requests for information (RFIs) on the subject of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and techniques as an aid to FOIA processing."

Let me do a shout-out to DOJ OIP and the CFO Council, the Technology Committee. They've already had several forums on AI and FOIA, and it's been mentioned that there'll be another one coming up that NARA is having, and this is a really important subject going forward in the future. AI is on everybody's mind these days.

But we have heard from Eric Stein, who is... He's at the State Department as deputy assistant secretary from the Office of Global Information Services. He came to one of our public meetings, and he gave a wonderful state-of-the-art presentation about what the State Department's doing with machine learning tools for declassification purposes, and hoping to use them going forward for FOIA processes. There were a number of questions about how agencies could perhaps do something like that on their own. And RFIs are a way of gathering information for the purposes of potential future procurement of tools that will help with more efficiently administering FOIA. The e-discovery community that I come from as a lawyer knows very well how to use machine learning. We call them Technology Assisted Review or TAR or predictive coding. And for 15 years in litigation in complex lawsuits involving lots of documents and we're talking about millions, machine learning methods have used to greatly make more efficient the process of discovery where AI methods could reduce keyword searching from what might be a year to a week. And many general counsel's offices and government do, are aware, of using various e-discovery tools. You see them in CFO reports as well.

Some aspects of e-discovery but not so much machine learning based on our review of CFO reports. And so this is an opportunity for agencies. First, for the CFO Technology Council, if they wish to do so, to take the lead in designing a RFI that would be generically applicable in government for the purposes of searching for records, using machine learning techniques for searching, and also a state-of-the-art now or the bleeding edges for filtering purposes for using AI for exemptions. So, the only thing else I'd want to say is that this picks up on a prior recommendations that were back in 2020 from this committee, both with respect to greater use of e-discovery tools in the FOIA process and also encouragement by the Archivist to work with the private sector, with industry, with academics to further AI research in this area. And so I think RFIs are now something that interested agencies, there'll be a few, hopefully, and the CFO Council might be able to advance the cause on, for the government as a whole. Comments.

Alina M. Semo: I don't see any hands up. So, thank you Jason and Gorka for that presentation. I believe we're ready to go on to M-6.

Jason R. Baron: Yes. And this one we are going to propose for a vote. And Adam, could you explain it once again? We've talked about it before.

Adam Marshall: Yes, thanks Jason. I'm really happy to talk about this proposed recommendation on determination letters, which is something that I think everyone in the FOIA process has come across. It's the letter at the end of the tunnel that you get that says, what is this substantive response from the agency with respect to your request. It's a really important part of the FOIA process, but something that's interesting is that there's very little standardization across agencies. And so that's something that we wanted to address, but we also wanted to bring the determination letter up to speed to modernize it as it were with the latest and greatest requirements from law, from best practices, and also through a really collaborative process that I'm going to talk about just really quickly. The process of creating this model letter, which is attached as Appendix A to our subcommittee report, was really collaborative both between members of government agencies and the requester community on the committee, but then between... I'm, sorry, subcommittee, but then also between the members of the subcommittee and the world at large.

So on our subcommittee, we went back and forth many drafts trying to hone what we thought was going to be a great model determination letter. And then OGIS very kindly posted it to the public so that we could receive comments from whoever wanted to comment. And we got some great comments, some very detailed ones, some broader ones. And we use those to improve the model determination letter.

And we went back and forth, and we did more edits back and forth. And then we also worked with OIP, Bobby and some of the staff we met with and they provided really helpful comments, which I think further improved and strengthened the letter. And so the result of all of that is what we have for a vote today. I am really proud of it. I think it is really good on the substance side, really good on the process side. And as its name suggests, this is a model letter. It's not a requirement, but it's supposed to be a reference guide and something that agencies can aspire to in terms of providing communication in the FOIA process. So happy to take any questions or comments that people have on that.

Jason R. Baron: Adam, I also just want to add, I want to shout out to Bobby. We thank you very much for your participation in reviewing the drafts and for talking to us and your graciousness of giving comments. And I believe subject to whatever remarks you have here that you are supportive of OIP going out with this draft model letter.

Bobby Talebian: Thank you, Jason, and I appreciate the collaboration and working with you all on this. And I will abstain as I do with all the voting but I'm supportive.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Bobby. So I know we've talked about this recommendation several times, and unless I see any hands up in the next couple of seconds, I propose that we move forward with a vote. All right. I don't see any hands up. Would someone like to make a motion, please?

Allyson Deitrick: I'll make a motion.

Alina M. Semo: Allyson, thank you.

Allyson Deitrick: Make a motion to vote on M-6.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you. Can I get a second? Just for fun.

Catrina Pavlik-Keenan: Catrina Pavlik-Keenan from DHS. I'll second it.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you, Catrina. All right, let's vote please. All those in favor of passing proposed recommendation, M-6, please say, aye.

Participants: Aye.

Alina M. Semo: All those opposed, please say, nay. And all those abstaining.

Bobby Talebian: Aye, it's Bobby, DOJ, and I'm abstaining.

Alina M. Semo: Kirsten, do you need to take a voice vote?

Kirsten Mitchell: I think I got everyone. Luke had to sign off as we discussed earlier. Although he supports this recommendation, he is not here for a vote. Bobby, abstains. Alina, what is your vote?

Alina M. Semo: I'm sorry, I was so busy taking the vote. I forgot to say, aye.

Kirsten Mitchell: Aye, okay. So, let's put this up.

Alina M. Semo: Apologies, thank you.

Kirsten Mitchell: Yeah, the vote is 18 to zero then, motion carries.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thank you. Congratulations.

Kirsten Mitchell: Yes.

Alina M. Semo: All right, Jason and Gorka, anything else before we move to implementation?

Jason R. Baron: Can I just say one more thing? Thank you everyone for that endorsement and for your comments on all of this. We'll go back and tweak whatever we have to tweak for the final subcommittee report which we will file between now and the next meeting. I do want to say that in our report we've had some discussions of late about generative AI, ChatGPT and other forms, and it's an emerging issue in government and I hope that we will be able to at least provide some observations in our final subcommittee report that's reflective of a proposal that Alex and Luke have put to our subcommittee. So I thank them publicly, and you can look for that as an additional part hopefully of our final subcommittee report.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thank you very much, Jason. Thank you, Gorka. So I'm going to turn it over to implementation. I just wanted to just note before I turn the floor over to that subcommittee, Catrina Pavlik-Keenan, who has been serving as the co-chair of the Implementation Subcommittee will be stepping back from that subcommittee co-chair role. And Michael Heise has enthusiastically agreed to co-chair the subcommittee from now through the end of the term. Many thanks to Catrina for all of the work she's done so far, and thank you to Michael in advance for stepping in. We really appreciate that. And in particular, David appreciates that. So as a reminder, each of the three subcommittees is co-chaired by one government member and one non-government member. So with that, David, I'm going to turn the floor over to you.

David Cuillier: Thank you, Alina. Yeah, David Cuillier from University of Florida. So I'll keep this quick because we've just provided basically an interim update report, thanks to Jason who drafted it and the committee for going through it, subcommittee. So thank you, Jason put a lot of work into this. Really after we've talked to folks, OGIS staff, Bobby, others, interviewed folks, Jason interviewed quite a few, surveyed, looked at CFO reports. We're now to the point where we have to boil it all down and basically so far two draft recommendations. The first one is that we'll probably want to recommend that OGIS and OIP follow up on some of the recommendations, the past 51 that have been approved over the past terms for more attention. So we're putting into buckets things that still need to get done as well as things that have been achieved and that sort of thing.

So we're putting those all in the buckets over the next month here. And we'll also probably rate the importance of each of them, just because say a recommendation isn't done, well, maybe it's not the most critical recommendation of them all. So to help folks triage and prioritize, we want to also probably identify the things that probably matter the most. So we hope to compile all that here in the next month and provide that for the committee in April if we can. I think that's pretty much where we're at at this point.

The second recommendation I should note is going to recommend that perhaps some of this is asked in the annual Chief FOIA Officer reports. If there's a way to get some of this in there so that everybody can see progress on certain recommendations. Now, I know that's a lot of work for Chief FOIA Officers, they're already putting together a lot of reports, but we think it'd be helpful in a long term if some of these were tracked to see how things are going, particularly after Jason and a bunch of the other subcommittee members looked through the CFO reports and saw opportunities for maybe improving information gathering. But that's kind of where we stand and open to questions or comments if anybody has them.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, David. Bobby, I see your hand up.

Bobby Talebian: Hey, Bobby, DOJ. I just had one really small nit on the language of the first recommendation in action to make it consistent with the second one. I think instead of saying, compliance, saying efforts to have implemented because compliance and first a requirement and these were recommendations. It's more consistent with the second slide.

David Cuillier: All right, we will take a look at that. Thank you for that input, Bobby.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, anyone else? We might be reaching meeting fatigue. I totally appreciate that. Okay, I don't see anyone else. Does anyone have any other questions or comments they would like to make about anything that we talked about today before we move on to the public comments period of our meeting? Okay, I don't see any, so I'll be moving things along. We have now reached the public comments part of our committee meeting five minutes early. Very exciting.

Thank you for the slide event producer, Silas, I appreciate it. We do look forward to hearing from any non-committee participants who have ideas or comments to share particularly about the topics that we have discussed today. And there have certainly been many topics. All oral comments are captured in the transcript of the meeting, which we will post as soon as it is available. Oral comments are also captured in the NARA YouTube recording and are available on the NARA YouTube channel. As a reminder, public comments are limited to three minutes per person. Before we open up our telephone lines, I am going to ask Kirsten, our DFO to please let us know if we have received any questions or comments via the Webex chat during the course of our meeting. Kirsten, go ahead please.

Kirsten Mitchell: Thank you, Alina. This is Kirsten Mitchell, DFO. We've had several comments from Mr. Hammond. I will go through them very quickly so we can leave time for other comments. He dislikes that the chat comments on YouTube are turned off. He's interested in the Resource Subcommittee for staffing and hiring recommendations and suggests that federal offices ask for desk audits and work with the government union. Suggests that MITRE be involved in some of the recommendations. MITRE, for those of you who don't know, is a not-for-profit corporation that operates federally funded research and development on behalf of US government sponsors. He reminds all of us, which we very well know that FOIA begins with good records management. And finally, I will note that there was some interest expressed in DOJ FOIA training, which was discussed earlier. I will point everyone to the FOIA Advisory Committee recommendations dashboard specifically, recommendation number 2020-04, again, 2020-04. And there is a link to the three e-learning FOIA training modules that the Department of Justice put together. So that's all there for the public to see. And that is all I have, Alina.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thank you so much, Kirsten. I'm going to turn now to our event producer, Silas. If you could please provide instructions again to any of our Webex participants for how to make a comment via telephone, that would be great.

Event Producer: Absolutely. As we enter the public comments section, please limit your comments to three minutes. Once your three minutes expires, we will mute your line and move to the next commenter. Each individual is going to be limited to three minutes each. If you are joined through Webex, you can use the raise hand icon from the bottom toolbar to enter the queue. If you are dialed into the phone, please press #2 on your telephone keypad to enter into the comment queue. Please stand by one moment as we assemble our queue.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you.

Event Producer: Moving to the first caller in the queue. Caller, your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.

Charles Melton: Hello. I think I'm the first one, if you can hear me. My name is Charles Melton and I'm from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. And what I want to talk on is the mandatory training that you were speaking of. And I just want to let you know that it is very important for within the IC [intelligence community] that we have some sort of mandatory training, because our mission here is mainly to keep things from the public. So, it's very important that we educate our analysts here. Why is the importance of transparency? And one of the things that helps with if they don't understand that it delays us getting information from them because their interest is not to release information because that's what they've been told as an analyst. And so if they have that education beforehand, it's just a lot easier for us to get records from them and have them process those, help us process those records according to FOIA policies. So that is very important for us to educate our intelligence community on FOIA processes and obligations. Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Mr. Melton, thank you so much for that comment. I saw a couple of thumbs ups from committee members, so we appreciated those comments. Silas, who is our next caller, please?

Event Producer: Moving to the next caller in the queue. Bob Hammond, your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.

Robert Hammond: Hello, this is Bob Hammond. I have provided the FOIA Advisory Committee with 62 written public comments, which I hope OGIS will promptly post. I want to address three issues today. First, right of civilian employees to individual DOJ representation in FOIA litigation gone bad, and that's 28 CFR at 50.15. Second, unauthorized record disposition complaints to NARA. Third, DOJ OIP Sunshine Awards. First, civilian employee, individual legal representation in FOIA. "Whenever the court orders the production of any agency improperly withheld from the complainant and assesses against the United States, reasonable attorney fees and other litigation costs... The special counsel shall promptly be initiated proceeding to determine whether disciplinary action is warranted." And that's from the FOIA. So, if you were an agency employee involved in a messy FOIA litigation where someone may have helped you with inaccurate sworn declarations or records were altered or records were destroyed, you may seek immediate individual DOJ legal representation in a closed case before a plaintiff's fee petition. Your agency counsel may have already obtained separate DOJ representation.

You must protect your own interests. Second, unauthorized records disposition complaints to NARA. NARA has an unauthorized records disposition unit to address unlawful removal, destruction, or alteration of records. When an agency claims that it does not have records, it is required to have, you may submit a complaint to NARA UD. I'm currently working with NARA to re-evaluate past errant closures to my FOIA UD complaints. Third, DOJ Sunshine Awards. I asked Bobby Talebian to post the 2024 award nomination packages so that the public could weigh in. Some 2023 award citations are inaccurate. Navy's Nathan Boziak, head of the FOIA Branch General Litigation Division, Department of Navy JAG office won an award. A public reports show Navy reported, "Six open FOIA litigations challenging application of redactions, processing delays, and adequate of search... And caused delays in responding to requesters." Then the average number of days for Navy appeal response was 200 days, not 32 days cited in Nate's award citation. But then Navy's FOIA reports are always materially inaccurate as our most agency reports. I hope to resolve issues with DOD and other agencies quietly.

Event Producer: Mr. Hammond, your time has expired. Moving to the next caller in our queue. Katherine Sibley, your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.

Katie Sibley: Thank you. Can you hear me okay?

Event Producer: Yes, we can.

Katie Sibley: My name is Katie Sibley. I'm on the SHAFR [Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations] Committee on Historical Documentation. Usually, Kristin Hilkinson is sitting in for our organization, but I am spelling her today. But my question concerns, I don't know if you can answer it if this is just comments, but there was something you said earlier in the discussion which concerned sort of, I guess along the lines of expedited processing, sort of asking for samplings of FOIA requests. So in other words, I've requested material from a presidential library. And first I was told it was going to be 20 years, and then I was given very good advice to limit my request. So it went down to about three years.

That was a lot better. But even so, that's kind of pushing it for a book. So you had mentioned about sort of these samplings, but I get the sense that I actually wrote to one of these agencies or these libraries and they said, "Well, you're kind of still in the queue and you can apply for expedited processing, but that requires somebody's life is in danger or it's a matter of vital public interest, which I don't know if I could make that argument about my upcoming book."

So, I just wondered if anyone had any thoughts about tactics for that sampling process that don't necessarily require an expedited processing, which seems more demanding. So I don't know if you can answer that today, but I just wanted to put that out there. Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you. Ms. Sibley. Does anyone on the committee have any thoughts about that that they would like to address?

Lauren Harper: This is Lauren Harper from the National Security Archive. Sorry, Lauren Harper from the National Security Archive. We also do a ton of work with the Presidential Libraries. I'd invite you to reach out to us at the National Security Archive, may be off this call, and we'd be happy to share tips and tricks for the way that we try to speed up that process with Presidential Libraries when we can. So that would be my comment.

Alina M. Semo: Lauren, thank you so much. Silas, do we have any other callers on the line?

Event Producer: This time, no, there are no further comments in the queue.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Let me turn back to our committee members. Does anyone have any other comments or thoughts that they want to pose in response to our callers today? Okay, very quiet. Everyone's being very quiet. Okay, so I think we're go ahead and wrap up our meeting shortly. I know I promised I would try to give you some time back. I'm not a 100% sure I can totally accomplish that, but I will try. I just want to hand... Oh, I'm sorry, Silas, you're letting me know that there's another hand that has just gone up for another comment.

Event Producer: Yes. One hand has just entered the queue. Frida Key, your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you.

Frida Key: Thank you for taking the last comment at the last moment. I have a question about what Professor Jason R Baron mentioned about the generative AI. Could you please clarify if you would recommend the use of generative AI in processing the FOIA request, or could you talk more details about that? Thank you.

Jason R. Baron: Thanks. Well, we are discussing in our subcommittee to make some observations about what is really an emerging trend, which is thinking about the uses of generative AI like ChatGPT, which provides narratives that may summarize what might have taken place in a FOIA review or other forms of AI that I was talking about in connection with RFIs. There's a question about transparency and giving notice to the public. Within the scope of this administration's executive order on AI to make sure that the public understands what AI processes are being used by agencies in going about processing a FOIA request. And we're going to have that conversation, and hopefully there'll be something in our subcommittee report about that topic.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Jason, thank you so much. Okay, so let's wrap things up. I appreciate all the followers that you called in today. I appreciate all the committee members paying attention for the whole three-hour meeting. I know it was a long stretch, but I think we got some really great work done. I also just want to thank all the committee members for all the great work that's being done at the subcommittee level. I know that's where all the hard work goes in. I'm very grateful for all of that. I want to remind everyone that we have three meetings coming up back-to-back, April 4th, May 9th, and we're going to wrap up our term on June 13th. We are planning on all the subsequent meetings being virtual. I know we had talked about the possibility of in-person, I believe that we have explored this. It is not possible given our technological shortcomings at this time.

We will re-evaluate in the next term, should there be a next term. I also would be remiss if I didn't give an opportunity to a few people on the committee to have the floor for a couple of minutes to talk about Sunshine Week. I know that's coming up. Jay Bosanko, our Deputy Archivist, has already reviewed the National Archives Sunshine Week event, to which I invite everyone that is going to be on the 14th of March. But I want to open up the floor to both Dave Cuillier and Bobby Talebian to talk about any other Sunshine Week events. Who wants to go first? Bobby, do you want to go first?

Bobby Talebian: Sure. Thank you, Alina. Very excited to highlight our Sunshine Event at the Department of Justice on March 11th in the Great Hall in the main Department of Justice building at 10 A.M. but also will be live-streamed. So we hope that you'll join us one way or the other. We have keynote remarks from the Acting Associate Attorney General, who is also our Chief FOIA Officer, as well as we look forward to recognizing contributions and accomplishments by FOIA professionals in different award categories for this year's Sunshine Awards. And this year we're very excited to have the most nominations that we've ever had, over 70 nominations. And so we're looking forward to recognizing a good amount of FOIA professionals in the work that they're doing on Monday, both to recognize them and the showcase and incentivize others to follow their suit.

Alina M. Semo: All right. Thanks, Bobby. 79, that's a lot. Okay, Dave Cuillier just posted a link. https//sunshineweek.org. David, go ahead, please. You are now the new owner of Sunshine Week.

David Cuillier: Yeah, yeah, we're excited. So the Brechner FOI project is coordinating now Sunshine Week, moving forward. And check out the website. There's two dozen events coming up that are posted and listed. You can get more information. Most of them are virtual. So lots of opportunities to get involved. We're still going to be posting more content, editorial cartoons, and that great Washington Post graphic cartoon on how to submit a FOIA request that they published last weekend for anybody to put on their website. So, lots of resources there for people and a great opportunity to celebrate something that matters to everybody and our democracy. So, thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you, David. Anyone else on the committee want to talk about any public Sunshine Week events they're hosting at their agencies? Not putting anyone on the spot. Going once, going twice. All right, check out David's website. I think there are a lot of different events posted there, both public and private. And with that, I just want to remind everyone, keep up all the great work. Don't give up now, we're in the homestretch. We'll see each other again as a committee, Thursday, April 4th, beginning at 10:00 A.M. Any questions or other comments from any of the committee members?

Gbenmede Johnson: Alina, the talent pool link.

Alina M. Semo: Yes. Thank you for reminding me. So Gbemende would like to point out, there's a talent pool link that we're going to post on our website. It's a link to an OPM memo regarding the talent pool that the resources subcommittee has been discussing. Mende, is that correct?

Gbenmede Johnson: Yes.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. All right. Thank you for reminding me. I appreciate that.

Gbenmede Johnson: Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Anyone else?

Kirsten Mitchell: This is Kirsten. It's already posted.

Alina M. Semo: Oh, we're so fast. We're so efficient. Thank you, Kirsten. I appreciate that. All right, everyone have a wonderful day. Enjoy the spring that's about to come upon us and we will see each other again on April 4th. Take care, stay healthy and well.

Event Producer: Thank you to all of our speakers and thank you all in the audience for joining us today. The call has now concluded and you may disconnect.