Transcript

FOIA Advisory Committee Meeting (Virtual Event)

Thursday, April 4, 2024

10:00 a.m. (ET)

Candice [Producer]: Welcome and thank you for joining today's meeting of the Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee. Please note this conference is being recorded and all audio connections are muted at this time. If you require technical assistance, please open chat with the associated icon at the bottom of your screen and send a message to the event producer. With that, I'll turn the conference over to Alina Semo, director of the Office of Government Information Services and Committee Chair.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you Candice. Good morning everyone. As the Director of the Office of Government Information Services or OGIS and this committee's chairperson, it is my pleasure to welcome all of you to the ninth 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 either via Webex or with a slight delay on the National Archives YouTube channel. This meeting is public in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, FACA, which requires open access to committee meetings and operations. FACA requires us to post minutes and a transcript of today's meeting and we will do so as soon as they are ready. Our committees Designated Federal Officer [DFO], Kirsten Mitchell and I have certified the minutes from the March 5th, 2024 meeting and those are now posted on the OGIS website in accordance with FACA. The transcript will be posted as soon as it is ready. Please visit our website for today's agenda along with the committee's members' names and biographies at www.archives.gov/OGIS. Candice, next slide please.

So a few housekeeping notes before we get started into the substantive part of our meeting today. I have a few housekeeping items. First, I am very happy to know that Jason Baron is joining us I believe from midair somewhere and he's on the phone. I am advised that Bobby Talebian is going to be joining us very shortly. He is running a little bit late. Hopefully he'll be here soon. I'm further advised that Ben Tingo is able to join us after 11 A.M. Eastern time. And I believe that accounts for everyone and everyone else is here today. So thank you for joining us today. Kirsten, have you taken a visual roll call and can you confirm please that we have a quorum?

Kirsten B. Mitchell: I have indeed and we do indeed have a quorum.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, perfect. Thank you. During today's meeting, I want to encourage committee members to use the raise hand icon at the bottom of your screen when you wish to speak or ask any question. I'm finding it very helpful during the meeting if you can use that. It's even better than visually checking everyone's individual squares, so that would be very helpful. You can also use the all panelists option from the dropdown menu in the chat function when you want to speak or ask a question and/or you can either chat me or Kirsten directly to let us know.

In order to comply with the spirit and intent of the FACA, please use the Webex chat for housekeeping and procedural matters only. Please do not enter any substantive comments in the chat function as they will not be recorded in the transcript of the meeting. If any committee member needs to take a break during the course of the meeting, please do not disconnect from the web event. Instead, mute your microphone by using the microphone icon and turn off your camera by using the camera icon. Please send us a quick chat, me and Kirsten, to let us know if you'll be gone for more than a few minutes and join us again as soon as you are able. And a reminder to all committee members, please identify yourself by name and affiliation each time you speak. It's very helpful and a lot easier for us as we prepare the minutes of the meeting down the road.

Members of the public who are joining us today and who wish to submit written public comments to the committee may do so using our public comments form. We review all public comments and if they comply with our public comments policy, we will post them 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 the meeting, public comments will be limited to three minutes per individual. Kirsten, next slide please. Candice, I'm sorry. Kirsten, I'm going to turn it over to you to go over a few voting reminders.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Great, thanks, Alina. I'm Kirsten Mitchell with the National Archives and I'm the committee's Designated Federal Officer or DFO. We are expecting a lot of votes to be taken today. So Alina asked me to go over voting procedures just real quickly. Any member, including Alina as the chairperson, may move that a committee votes on a particular matter. No second is required, but it's always welcome. And there are three types of passing votes: unanimous, every member except abstentions; general consensus, at least two thirds of total votes cast; and general majority, which is the majority of the total votes cast. There's no need to memorize this or do any math. That's my job to keep track of this. And if it's unclear who is voting in which way, I will conduct a roll call vote to ensure accuracy. And I don't mean to slow things down, I just want to make sure I have everything correct. We have a really busy agenda today. So with that I'm going to turn it back over to you, Alina.

Alina M. Semo: All right, thank you, Kirsten. I appreciate that. So before we launch into our busy agenda today, I have a few substantive announcements to make. First, we have some shuffling around of seats on the committee. Former committee member Lauren Harper resigned from this committee effective March 15. We are really going to miss her. Lauren left the National Security Archive and joined federal service making her ineligible to continue representing the interest of a non-governmental organization, NGO, that advocates on FOIA matters. We want to thank Lauren for her service on the committee and for her work on the Implementation and Resources Subcommittees. We also wish her the best as she embarks on her federal service. And Lauren, if you're watching us today, there's something coming in the mail for you.

Normally when there's a committee vacancy, we reopen nominations and the Archivist appoints a replacement, but with about two months left in our 2022 to 2024 term and the solicitation and appointment process likely to take at least a month at best, we have determined it is not practical to reopen nominations. So we will remain at 19 members but to remain in compliance with the charter, Archivist of the United States, Dr. Colleen Shogan, has reappointed Alex Howard to the committee to fill Lauren's seat as a representative of an NGO. Alex's non government, non designated seat will remain unfilled, which is also in accordance with the charter. Thank you, Alex.

Second, we have some amendments that we are going to be visiting for our bylaws. In revisiting the committee's charter and bylaws prompted by Lauren's departure, we noted there are a few inconsistencies between the charter and the bylaws. Don't worry, nothing to be alarmed about. We are currently working on a red line version of those bylaws so that they sync up with the charter. We will share those proposed bylaw changes with committee members and we'll also post them on our website prior to our next meeting on May 9th. And we're going to ask the committee to review them and vote on those amendments at that meeting, or at the very latest, at our last meeting on June 13h.

Any questions so far? I saw a couple of faces looking alarmed. Don't look alarmed. It's all good. It's all very procedural in nature. Okay, last announcement is our final report working group. We are now in the homestretch of our committee term with two more meetings remaining, May 9th and June 13th. I anticipate that we may vote on a number of recommendations today and the remainder will be voted on at our May 9th meeting.

But in the meantime, the three subcommittees have been hard at work on their white papers. Some of them are in progress, some of them have neared completion. We have formed a working group consisting of two government and two non-government members. Our government members are Paul Chalmers and Patricia Weth. Our non-government members are Jason Baron and David Cuillier. And I want to thank all four of you in advance for all the anticipated hard work you're going to be putting into pulling together the subcommittee white papers and putting them into a great final report. We are going to be relying on those white papers from the subcommittees, so if they're not done yet, I hope you're hard at work on that.

Okay. Onto our agenda today, we are going to be hearing from the committee's three subcommittees in the following order. Resources Subcommittee will be up first, Implementation, second, and Modernization, third. We're going to get updates from co-chairs of each subcommittee and any members of each subcommittee as the co-chairs would like to call on. We will take a break at a logical point today, we'll see how things are going and try to remain flexible, but I'm hoping it'll be approximately 11:30. And as I mentioned earlier, we will close our meeting with a public comment period.

Before I go on, I just want to make sure that no committee members have any questions about anything I've gone over today? Lots of information that I've thrown at you. No. Okay. All right. I don't see any raised hands, so that's great. So with that, I'm going to kick off our meeting with the Resources Subcommittee, Gbemende Johnson and Paul Chalmers. I'm going to turn it over to the two of you and let you kick things off. Please go ahead.

Paul Chalmers: Thanks. Oh, go ahead, Gbemende. I knew that was going to happen.

Gbemende Johnson: You go ahead, Paul. You keep doing that. You go ahead.

Paul Chalmers: So we have a number of votes to take today, but I think our next slide is, yeah, there you go. This is the slide on training that we had some discussion about in the last meeting. There's been some amendments based on that discussion to the recommendation. Gbemende, unless you've got anything to add, I would like to turn it over to Stefanie to launch into the discussion of the amendments.

Gbemende Johnson: That works, thanks.

Stefanie Jewett: Okay, thank you, Paul. Thank you, Gbemende. This is Stefanie Jewett, HHS OIG [Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General]. The last time that we met about this recommendation, the language was similar to what you see on the screen. The only difference, previously it said, "suggested guidance includes," and I believe that is on, so nothing has changed with what you see on the screen here. The changes are on the next screen. If we could please go to the next slide. Okay. The next slide previously stated, "suggested guidance includes," and now we have changed it based on the discussion from last time to read, "For example, DOJ OIP [Department of Justice Office of Information Policy] in its discretion, could consider issuing guidance concerning the following." Of course one and two there was at our last meeting. So we just changed that very first sentence and that was to address the concerns from Bobby and others that they were not sure that they could make the training mandatory.

So this gives them the option and in their discretion to figure out what guidance that they believe should be done for the training. So the change was that very first sentence there, "for example," and it previously read, "suggested guidance includes," and now instead of, "suggested guidance includes," it reads, "For example, DOJ OIP in its discretion, consider issuing guidance concerning the following." So just one quick change to that sentence there.

Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Paul and the Gbemende, do you want to go ahead and put this recommendation up for a vote at this point?

Paul Chalmers: Should we open for further discussion first?

Alina M. Semo: Sure, absolutely. We can certainly do that. I just didn't know where you were. First, let me ask, anyone else on the subcommittee have any comments? Okay. Anyone else on the committee? I see Michael Heise has raised his hand. Michael, please go ahead.

Michael Heise: Thank you. And I want to first say a big thank you to both Carmen and Stefanie for really working so hard on the white paper and getting a lot of this kind of stood up. Just wanted to say a couple of things here. The first slide, the one that we just looked at, that's the recommendation here, right? Thank you. And then the second slide, just to be clear, that really is an example, right? And so we know the word mandatory appears on points one and two. But carefully read, we understand the limitations with respect to some kind of mandatory thing. And so that's why this is an example and the language is crafted the way it is. The other thing I'd say, I guess in support of this recommendation is that we think it's a very easy lift for most federal agencies. They might even largely be doing it anyway as reflected in the CFO reports, or at least from the last couple of years.

But this is DOJ OIP to the extent that anyone doesn't know has already very good training modules, not just one, not just two, but three, for the different kinds of roles federal employees might have, whether you're a SES [Senior Executive Service] or whether you are a non-FOIA pro or whether you're a FOIA pro. So it's a really easy lift in the sense that ideally, agencies would have training for non-FOIA staff that are relevant to their mission and the equities that they routinely have and maybe the exemptions they commonly face. But there is something that DOJ OIP already has and it would be great if at a minimum, agencies across the board really worked on having that as like a floor.

Finally, I'll just say this one piece, especially with respect to non-FOIA professionals. I think it almost goes without saying agencies would be training their FOIA professionals on how to do FOIA, but non-FOIA professionals, quite frankly, in my opinion, those are the ones that the public is generally interested in the work that they're doing. And to have real training about not just that the FOIA exists and has existed for decades, but that it applies to them, it applies to their day-to-day work, is really, and I'm not a requester, but I think it's really beneficial for the requester community because by having that kind of non-FOIA professional training, it allows for I think, a greater likelihood of a more efficacious processing of FOIA requests generally. Because there's already that institutional kind of knowledge en masse that, hey, I've been asked for some FOIA records. I need to kind of stop what I'm doing a little bit and kind of focus on this because it is important and it's part of my job too.

And I also think it's good for agency staff because the more agency staff know, I like to say FOIA is just the air you breathe when you're a federal employee. The more you know that that's just a part of your day-to-day work, that your stuff can and will be FOIA’d. It helps you internalize that and implement your day-to-day work in a way that is consistent with the fact that the FOIA exists and applies to you. So that's why I think this is a really good recommendation.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Michael. Dave Cuillier, I see your hand up. Go ahead please.

David Cuillier: Thank you, Alina, and great comments, Michael. I agree and I'm supportive of this as well, but I would just like to say I don't think it goes far enough. I think it could be worded much more strongly. I'm not sure what the limitations are of mandatory training. We know at least four states that have mandatory training for non-FOIA employees. Many countries have implemented that. I've seen three empirical studies that show that when you have mandatory training of non-FOIA employees, it improves the process, it improves compliance. I'll vote for this, but I think future committees may want to revisit this and maybe consider mandatory training. But great work by the subcommittee. Thanks for proposing this. It's great stuff.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you, David. Alex Howard, go ahead please.

Alex Howard: I just wanted a plus one what David said and say that I think it's a great recommendation and I really appreciate Michael's very thoughtful comment on it and I certainly support it. I also want to say that it would benefit from revisiting and strengthening in terms of being clear that OIP should do this and that it should be an affirmative policy across all of the federal agencies to offer this as a training. Whether or not it must be mandatory for every person in federal government, I think that that might be a congressional level, but I would certainly support the Justice Department and to the extent ombuds office can do this, encouraging every single person to make the Freedom of Information Act part of their job as opposed to something that the FOIA office does. I think it would make a huge difference in the implementation of the law.

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

Bobby Talebian: Alina-

Alina M. Semo: Bobby, go ahead please.

Bobby Talebian: Hi, Bobby from Department of Justice OIP. I just want to make clear that we do encourage this. So the encouraging of training for FOIA professionals, non-FOIA professionals annually is something we do encourage, but the guidance will focus on what the CFO [Chief FOIA Officer], its role in the statutory responsibility can do in furthering its a specific statutory requirement that it provide training to the agency staff.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Bobby. All right, I don't see any other hands up. Anyone else have any other comments on this or are we ready to take a vote?

Tom Susman: Vote.

Alina M. Semo: Vote. Thank you, Tom. Okay. Do I have a motion to move this recommendation forward?

Tom Susman: Vote. Yes.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you, Tom. Do I have a second?

Patricia Weth: I second it.

Alina Semo: I heard lots of seconds. Thank you so much. All right. All those in favor of this recommendation going forward, please say aye.

Group: Aye.

Alina M. Semo: Anyone opposed? Please say nay. Kirsten, I don't hear any nays. Anyone abstaining?

Bobby Talebian: OIP abstains.

Alina M. Semo: Kirsten, are you good with the vote?

Kirsten B. Mitchell: I'm good with the vote. It sounds like it is 18 to zero unanimous with Bobby abstaining.

Alina M. Semo: Right. And I'm not sure whether, were we able to hear from Jason?

Kirsten B. Mitchell: I'm sorry, Alina, I couldn't hear that?

Alina M. Semo: Were we able to hear Jason's vote? Who was on the phone?

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Yes. Jason votes yes.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thank you. Just wanted to double check.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: I'm confirming that.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, great. Thank you. All right. Congratulations. And back to you Paul and Gbemende, on to your next recommendation.

Paul Chalmers: Gbemende, you want to take the next one or do you want me to do it?

Gbemende Johnson: Sure, so next slide. Oh, it's up there. Oh. So this is one of the recommendations that we discussed at the last meeting. Well, first I wanted to see if there are any additional questions on it and hoping to bring it for a vote. And this recommendation, and Paul, I'll actually have you come in as well. We recommend that the Office of Personnel Management [OPM] add the 0306 Government Information Specialist jobs series to the direct hiring authority list. So Paul, do you want to elaborate?

Paul Chalmers: Sure. Just to recap on this one briefly, we, in our investigation talked to a number of agencies that reported they have positions that are in the 0306 category. They are unable to fill or just are running into difficulties filling the positions because of the obstacles of the procedure that you need to follow in the competitive process. And if agencies were able to direct higher, that might speed their ability or everyone believes that will speed up the ability to fill these slots. So that's the rationale for this particular recommendation.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. I just want to open up the floor to any comments or discussion. I don't see any hands up. Is everyone ready for a vote on this one?

Patricia Weth: Yes.

Alina M. Semo: Yes. Okay. Do I have a motion to move this recommendation forward,

Patricia Weth: This is Patricia Weth from EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] and I motion that we vote on this recommendation.

Alina Semo: Thank you, Patricia. Do I have a second?

Gbemende Johnson: Second.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you. Okay. All those in favor of this recommendation, please say aye.

Group: Aye.

Alina M. Semo: All those opposed, please say nay. Kirsten, I didn't hear any nays. Any abstentions?

Bobby Talebian: I'll abstain.

Alina M. Semo: That was Bobby Talebian abstaining. Got that Kirsten?

Kirsten B. Mitchell: I got it.

Alina Semo: Okay. Just want to make sure you're good.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Yes. The vote is 18 to zero, unanimous, with Bobby abstaining.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thank you. All right, let's go on to the next recommendation, please.

Paul Chalmers: I'll take this one, Gbemende. So this is another one that we discussed last time. The rationale behind this one is that we organize what's called talent pools or hiring pools through a new procedure that OPM has so that agencies can coordinate and put out basically a mass blast hiring notice and then can all choose from that same pool. OPM is very excited about this procedure that's worked in one or two other instances since they rolled it out late last year, and they recommended that we try to implement it.

And the procedure that we've got here that the Chief FOIA Officers Council organize agencies to participate is the way we need to do it. You basically need someone just to round up a number of agencies to participate and I think the Chief FOIA Officers Council is the best way to do it. We've spoken with the Chief FOIA Officers Council and they are behind it. So with that, I'll open it up to any other questions or discussion that might be out there.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Paul. Okay. I don't see any hands up. I think we're ready for a vote on this one too. Okay. Can I have a motion?

Patricia Weth: This is Patricia Weth from EPA, I motion that we vote.

Alina M Semo: Okay. Do I have a second?

Adam Marshall: Second.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you for the second, Adam. All those in favor of this recommendation, please say aye.

Group: Aye.

Alina M. Semo: All those opposed, please say nay. Abstention?

Bobby Talebian: Bobby is abstaining.

Alina M. Semo: Kirsten, are we good?

Kirsten B. Mitchell: We are good. The vote is 18 to zero unanimous, with Bobby abstaining.

Alina Semo: Okay. Thank you very much. All right, Paul and Gbemende, back to you.

Paul Chalmers: Gbemende, you want to take the next one?

Gbemende Johnson: Sure. Next slide. So next one was the recommendation introduced at the last meeting, we recommended that the Chief FOIA Officers Council through its Committee on, sorry, my voice is a little croaky this morning, Committee on Cross-Agency Collaboration and Innovation [COCACI] create and maintain a database on its website of position descriptions in the Government Information Specialist job series at various grades. And the motivation for this recommendation, there are a couple of motivations in our conversations with agency officials and also with surveys. One of the things that came up was in addition to retention, also concerns about the ability for individuals to advance among the job series. So this would be a way to help assist with this process. Paul, do you want to add anything?

Paul Chalmers: No, I think that covers it.

Gbemende Johnson: Okay. Thanks.

Alina M. Semo: All right. Any comments or questions about this recommendation? I don't see any hands up. I think we're on a roll. Do I have a motion for this recommendation to move forward?

Michael Heise: This is Michael-

Patricia Weth: This is Patricia Weth from EPA, I motion that we vote.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Do I have a second?

Michael Heise: Second. Michael, EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission].

Alina M. Semo: Thank you, Michael. Please vote. All those in favor, please say aye.

Alina M. Semo: Anyone opposed? Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to speak over someone. Anyone opposed? Please say nay. Any abstentions?

Bobby Talebian: Being consistent, this is Bobby and I'm abstaining.

Alina M. Semo: Kirsten. Are we good?

Kirsten B. Mitchell: We are good. And I have a mathematical correction to make. So this motion or this recommendation, R4, passes unanimously, 17 to zero with one abstention, and that's Bobby. And I need to correct the other three votes on R1, R2 and R3 to show that the votes were actually 17 to zero with one abstention since Ben is not here with us, yet. So I make that correction and apologize for any confusion. Thanks.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, that's great. Thank you so much. Ben is missing all the fun. That's what I have to say. Okay, let's move on to the next slide. And Paul and Gbemende, back to you.

Paul Chalmers: So I think this is the last one that's ripe for a vote from our subcommittee today. This one is, again, we've talked about this one a couple of times. This is the recommendation that the General Services Administration [GSA] create a labor category on its schedule specifically for FOIA contracts, or contractors, sorry, to facilitate efficient procurement. Essentially at this point, the schedule lumps FOIA in with dozens of other vendors. It's very difficult to use. There are a number of different schedule listings that agencies use in order to get around that problem. And we think that procuring contractors for when agencies are in difficulties in terms of their backlog or staffing, is an efficient way to deal with the issues if they don't have federal staff available. And making it easier for them to procure the contractors when they are in that kind of difficulty might help to reduce the backlog that agencies are facing. So that's the gist of the recommendation. I'll open it up for questions or discussion.

Alina M. Semo: I don't see any hands up. Okay. Do I have a motion to move this recommendation forward?

Patricia Weth: Patricia Weth from EPA. I move that we vote on this motion.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you, Patricia. And thanks for your consistency. Do I have a second?

Gbemende Johnson: Second.

Alina Semo: Okay. Thank you for that. Second. All those in favor, please say aye.

Group: Aye.

Alina M. Semo: All those opposed, please say nay. Abstentions?

Bobby Talebian: This is Bobby abstaining.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Great. Okay, this is Kirsten and the vote appears to be 17 to zero, unanimous with one abstention and that is Bobby. Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: All right. Paul, Gbemende, do you have any other recommendations to present today?

Paul Chalmers: What's the next slide? Is there another slide for us? Yes, there it is. This one's not up for a vote today. This is up for discussion, Gbemende, do you want to talk more about it and then...

Gbemende Johnson: Well, I don't know if Patricia wanted to-

Paul Chalmers: Yeah.

Gbemende Johnson: ... discuss it?

Patricia Weth: Sure-

Gbemende Johnson: Did you?

Patricia Weth: ... yeah, thank you, Gbemende. This is Patricia Weth with EPA and yes, this is a recommendation that the full committee has not previously discussed, but the Resources [Sub]committee has approved. And so for our resource subcommittee, our mission is to seek to improve the speed, efficiency and effectiveness of FOIA processing by identifying gaps in agency office resources and to investigate areas where existing resources can be used more economically and to consider potential solutions that can ensure the resources actually arrive in the FOIA offices.

So during this term, our subcommittee had discussions with various federal agencies and we heard frustrations about their FOIA case management systems. Agencies were expressing significant inefficiencies, they were spending significant agency labor hours implementing and maintaining their system or losing labor hours due to work stoppage issues. In addition, there was the financial cost. So what is a FOIA case management system? To date, there's a couple of different types. Some federal agencies will build internal systems, other federal agencies will purchase a system from commercial vendors. And until very recently there was a shared federal FOIA case management system known as FOIAonline, where agencies could become an agency partner through a memorandum of understanding and they would pay a cost. But this FOIAonline was decommissioned in September of 2023.

And why are these FOIA case management systems so important? Well, they're of great use to federal agencies as well as to members of the public, for federal agencies, for FOIA professionals, we use them to receive, manage and track FOIA requests. Certain systems allow us to communicate with the requesters inside the system, so all communications are tracked. FOIA professionals are able to manage their FOIA case files as electronic records, and also agencies in certain systems are able to publish responsive records in a record repository. Another feature of these systems is it allows FOIA professionals to generate reports. Agencies can create custom reports and these reports help them internally improve their process and identify issues. Also, federal agencies are required to submit certain reports to DOJ via foia.gov, and that's the quarterly reports and the annual report. And for members of the public, you can view these reports on foia.gov as well as all of the agency's websites.

And if you've never looked at an annual report, it's a real look under the hood at an agency's FOIA program, there's all kinds of metrics and it's a true example of accountability and transparency. And then for members of the public, the importance of a FOIA case management system is it allows requesters to submit FOIA requests to agencies. Additionally, requesters are able to check on the status of their requests and check on the progress. They're able to retrieve large record sets from certain case systems and for certain systems in the reading rooms, requesters are able to view previous responses to other FOIA requests. And so this FOIA case management system is really important to the administration of FOIA. It's important for small and large agencies and it helps agencies stay on track of their FOIA requests, generate reports, and it also allows requesters to stay in touch with their FOIA request and track it.

Some other federal committees' agencies have also been looking at FOIA case management systems. The Chief FOIA Officers Council Technology Committee has been reviewing various FOIA case management systems. And most recently DOJ OIP is seeking comments on proposed FOIA business standards developed for federal agency FOIA case management systems and the goal with that is to increase efficiency and consistency in FOIA administration. And the comment period on that closes May 17th of this year.

One of the features of FOIAonline, which as I mentioned was decommissioned, was that it was a centralized record repository for all of its 18 partner agencies and it contained 11 years worth of records. And this was a win-win for requesters, members of the public and federal agency professionals. Requesters could search for previously released records that can result in less FOIA requests for agencies, and also it gave requesters an ability to obtain records quickly. In responding to FOIA requests with this centralized record repository, agencies could provide a link to those previously released records that would save the FOIA professionals time in processing the FOIA cases, but also it allows the requesters to get these records in, in a quick manner.

Through our research, the subcommittee is aware that several public interest groups retrieve records before FOIAonline was decommissioned to assist the public and POGO [Project on Government Oversight] and MuckRock had partnered to host a publicly available archive of nearly 34,000 documents. And another entity, Environmental Data and Governance Initiative [EDGI] had a similar project. So with this in mind, the Resources Subcommittee proposes this recommendation. We recommend that the Chief FOIA Officers Council form a working group to analyze the interest and need for a shared FOIA case management system and a centralized record repository for use by federal agencies and the public. The working group shall draft a white paper of its findings and present it to the council within two years of its formation.

Our committee discussed this recommendation at length and decided that this was the best approach and we looked towards the FOIA. We looked at the creation of the Chief FOIA Officers Council and it's comprised of the deputy director for Management of the Office of Management and Budget, the director of the Office of Information Policy at Department of Justice, which is Bobby Talebian, who's our co-chair on this committee, as well as on the Chief FOIA Officers Committee. It also consists of the director of the Office of Government Information Services, which is Alina Semo, who is our co-chair for this committee as well as for the Chief FOIA Officers Council. And it also includes the Chief FOIA Officers of each agency. Further, the administrator of General Services [Administration] is to provide administrative and other support for the Council. And some of the duties of the Council is to develop recommendations for increasing compliance and efficiency under the FOIA and to identify and develop and coordinate initiatives to increase transparency and compliance.

And so with that in mind, we felt that a recommendation towards the Chief FOIA Officers Council would be effective in that it would actually create this working group. And our thought with the working group was that the working group could contact agencies to gauge a need and see if there is a need for a shared FOIA case, a shared federal FOIA case management system and a centralized record repository. And some examples that we would suggest that the working group look towards would be FOIAonline. Of course, that was the system created by feds for feds and the feds do understand the FOIA process. Also, they could look towards the management of FOIAonline and various lessons learned. Some other examples of the working group could look towards and was the management and organization of regulations.gov and foia.gov. And then if the working group did find there was a need for a shared federal FOIA case management system, some suggestions that the resource subcommittee had for assistance would be to speak with EPA's Office of Mission Support regarding the management of FOIAonline and the functionality. Also MITRE Corporation could be of great assistance, the GSA's 18F Team and also the Chief FOIA Officers Council Technology Committee. So with that, I will open the floor to my colleagues for comments and suggestions and questions.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Patricia. I just want to correct the transcript and record that I am the only chair of this committee, and Bobby is not my co-chair, although I wish he would be sometimes because it's nice to have help. But Bobby and I are thrilled to be able to co-chair the Chief FOIA Officers Council together. Okay, I’ll open the…

Patricia Weth: Sorry about that.

Alina M. Semo: ... the floor to any subcommittee members first who want to make any other comments about this particular recommendation and then open up the floor to anyone else on the committee. I see Alex's hand is up. Alex, go ahead please.

Alex Howard: I want to thank the other members of the committee for continuing to focus on this as a goal because having something like this has been a shared priority across United States civil society for over a decade. For people who've been around in this space, they know that creating such an online portal for the Freedom of Information Act has been a priority going back three administrations, it's been in national action plans and commitments like the one that created this committee. And yet as Patricia notes, the outcome of all that effort and all that investment got taken offline last year. And while the records that Patricia references have been uploaded by civil society entities, to my knowledge, they're not all back up in the FOIA reading rooms of the agencies. All of the benefits of the requesters might've gotten from this, which Patricia listed, went away.

And I'm very grateful that the committee is focusing on a very substantive, forward-looking recommendation to suggest that the people who are charged with being good stewards of public resources and of improving the administration of the FOIA are looking to restore what was taken offline. But I'm concerned that the very same people who made the decision to take this offline instead of replacing it with something or upgrading it or putting in a couple million dollars to maintain it, if that is indeed the operating expense that it would take if were given [to] agencies instead of put us in the position we are now, we're saying go back and let's study whether it makes sense to build something that was just taken away. And so I will definitely vote for this because I think it's a useful thing to do to create knowledge around this, to make a stronger case for creating this kind of shared service, which is something we see in other countries where it's provided by a central Ministry of Justice and supported as a government-wide service increasing efficiencies, improving outcomes, saving money, I think.

Instead, we're now seeing a very heterogeneous FOIA ecosystem take place across the federal government with dozens of different FOIA platforms and systems, which may take requests from foia.gov but are not connected together with a coherent, federal policy that is, I think, combining all of the different statutes and intents of Congress into an understandable single point of reference for the public and requesters to benefit from all the records that have previously been released and to see which ones have been the subject of interest. I'm very hopeful that this committee's recommendations will lead us back in that direction. But as a representative of the FOIA requester community, I want to express my dismay that we're making a recommendation to study this as opposed to making a recommendation to put back what was there or to ask the CIO [Chief Information Officer] at EPA or the United States Office of Electronic Government, the US CIO, why it did this, and if we could make a stronger case for why this kind of shared service is a public good that would improve the administration of the FOIA in the United States.

And I'm very grateful that this other subcommittee has arrived at this because I can tell you sitting on the Modernization Committee and Implementation Committee, this set of needs, this kind of goal is something that we've also cohered around and I'm hopeful we get back towards it. And I'm very grateful to you, Patricia, and your colleagues for so thoughtfully crafting something that I think will make a difference around public knowledge of why this matters. So thank you.

Patricia Weth: Okay.

Alina M. Semo: I saw Bobby's hand go up next. So Bobby, go ahead and then I see Tom Susman's hand too.

Bobby Talebian: Thank you, Alina. I just wanted to, with regard especially to the centralized records repository recommendation, that's certainly something that we've been working towards. And I know I mentioned this a lot during Sunshine Week and some other events, but that's the goal of what we have upcoming with our upcoming guidance and next steps with the FOIA wizard essentially meeting that goal. So I think it's great that it's part of the recommendation. I appreciate it, Patricia and the team discussing it with me and the working group because I think then the committee can see how that effort is satisfying what this second part of this recommendation is.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thanks. Bobby. Tom Susman, go ahead, please.

Tom Susman: Tom Susman, public member. Patricia, why didn't the committee go further? I mean, what Alex says, it seems to me that the subcommittee must have considered recommending that there is a need for a shared case management system and centralized record repository. So there must have been some strong arguments not to make that as a final recommendation, but to do a study of it. Could you perhaps-

Patricia Weth: Yeah. Absolutely, Tom. This is Patricia Weth from EPA. The Resource Subcommittee originally drafted the recommendation towards, directed it towards the director of OMB. And we did that looking at the FOIA statute. But one of our concerns, and Tom, you may feel my pain on this, is one of our concerns is that the recommendation would go nowhere, that OMB would not move forward with it. This committee has had recommendations in the past that have been directed towards different agencies as well as to Congress, and there's been no movement. And here the thought was any time that a recommendation by this committee is made towards the Chief FOIA Officers Council or OGIS or OIP, it gets done. They take action on the recommendations. And our concern, the subcommittee's concern was that we just didn't want this to be something that falls by the wayside, that the Chief FOIA Officers Council, they will create a working group, I know that they will and so we felt that this would be the best way to move forward on this important topic.

Tom Susman: So just a quick follow up, Tom Susman again. What makes you, this is, I don't mean to be adversarial, but what makes you think that OMB or GSA would follow the recommendation of the FOIA Officers Council, but not the Archivist transmitting a recommendation of this committee? In other words, isn't this just putting things off for a couple of years?

Patricia Weth: And again we considered that, but the Deputy Director of Management of OMB is a member of the Chief FOIA Officers Council. And so we felt that as a member, they would be part of this process and be more aware of the need. Tom, I hear you and I often say I wish I had a magic wand and I could make these things happen, but in our subcommittee's discussion, we thought this was the best path forward.

Tom Susman: Thank you. I'm ready to vote for it.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. I see a couple other hands up though, Tom. So just a second.

Alina M. Semo: Bobby, was that your hand up from earlier? I think it was.

Bobby Talebian: Oh no, it's Bobby back again.

Alina M. Semo: It's a new hand, but I think Stefanie was before you?

Bobby Talebian: Okay.

Alina M. Semo: Stefanie, go ahead please.

Stefanie Jewett: Oh, thank you. Stefanie Jewett, HHS OIG. I just wanted to answer a little bit on that question as well of why we directed it this way as opposed to the other. You're right, we did consider all the options, but the reason we ultimately went here is because we thought they could really build a business case for why this is needed, right? For why a centralized records repository is needed across the government. So if they were able, over the next few years or hopefully quicker, to build this giant business case for why it's needed, we thought there would be more support and if you have, let's say they do a survey, right? If every agency says, "Yes, we need this, we want this," that would give more support in the end. So that's why we went that way. Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, Bobby? And then I see Michael Heise’s hand is up. Bobby, go ahead, please.

Bobby Talebian: Yes, I really appreciate the thoughtful consideration of this recommendation. And just to add on that is that I think building a business case is really important because we've come a long way since we had a shared service. And so we're, in the next month, going to have an industry day to see all of the different technologies that are options for agencies. And it may be that a shared service is helpful for some agencies, but for other agencies that there's other technology that best fits their needs. I think the idea should be, regardless of what you pick, there's interoperability that provides for a central experience, and that's what we're really working towards. But I think the business case really will help shed light on the need and how a potential shared service could help certain groups of agencies and how that will work within the ecosystem with all the other technology.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks Bobby. Michael, you were next I believe? And then after that-

Michael Heise: Thank you. Michael Heise with the EEOC. So I'll just say this recommendation, I support it, but all I can tell you is I would love to be a fly on the wall of, if this passes, of the working group because I think it's going to be a fascinating two-year saga. And I just want to point out, I think that there's nothing in this recommendation that would necessarily suggest that there would be interest or at least sufficient interest or that there would be a need. I mean, I'm not saying that there isn't or there shouldn't be, but that's why, I mean that's what the group would do is to figure it out. I think Alex made a really good point though, and I think that at first blush, I think it's not unreasonable for someone reading this quickly to just say, "Hey, wait a second, shared FOIA, case management system, didn’t they already do that? Didn't they already like abandoned that?"

So without trying to dictate from a transcript what the working group ought to do, in my own opinion, I think that if this does pass and there is a working group, that they ought to be very laser focused on an after action review of sorts of FOIAonline and its reasons for abandonment because I think that if it does happen again, I think, it needs to happen once and for all, the right way for good rather than, and I don't know if this is how it went down, but rather than a kind of rolling on this shared case management system, and then at some point someone decides to just throw up their hands and then maybe there's a bit of chaos. What there would need to be, I think, I'm guessing from the requester community is kind of an understood reliance that this is here to stay. Maybe there'll be some changes, adjustments on fire on how things are doing, but never again, a throwing up of hands and just abandoning.

So I hope that if this moves forward and is approved, the working group thinks about the intention to make this long-lasting so that 20 years from now there's still a shared case management system, if there is a business case, if there is an interest, if there is a need.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Michael. Alex, do you have your hand up again? Yes?

Alex Howard: Yeah. I'm very grateful that we're having a really good public discussion about this because I know that it's been a subject of concern throughout the entire term. I'm very grateful for the past considerable efforts of OGIS to bring the EPA to the table and talk with the committee about this. We had a whole public meeting about it before it happened, and I want to say that there was a great memorandum that went out about this going offline that encouraged agencies to adopt great practices. And I want to recognize that OIP and OGIS were supportive of that. That being said, I want to be careful here. The Freedom of Information Act is upholding a right to access information. It is one of the core values that our country has, and when we think about it in terms of a business case for it, I want to make clear, I think that improving the administration through public goods, through the public sector of building public tools with the public is desirable. And saying that if there isn't a good business case for doing it this certain way, I would love to see the cost-benefit analysis that the EPA created when it made this decision and had that be public, including the past work of the FOIA Advisory Council, the very same one, which formed a working group to study FOIAonline. I think the next term should keep pushing on this, and we should keep having a really good public discussion about the best way to do this, that which could be done by government, that should be done working with the private sector, that which could be provided by the private sector using an API [Application Programming Interface] through foia.gov and the kind of structured data approach that we've seen approached in many different aspects of digital governance. And I would just say in response to your comments, Bobby … If this gets built again, I hope you all co-create it with the requester community. I hope that our government carves out first-party requests like the ones made for immigration records and veterans records into secure dedicated services. And that FOIA is made a priority, and to Michael's point, it's funded through the Justice Department, and instead of leaving FOIAonline, which the Justice Department did, it's something that you all commit to funding and sustaining so that requesters can trust it and so the American people can get a sense that the ministry entrusted with upholding this law is firmly committed to any of the technological innovations that it's putting out there because right now it looks a lot to the country, to the requester community, to the press, to other nations looking to us for leadership. We did a smart thing, we walked away from it when it got complicated and expensive and the legacy tech became more and more difficult to support for dozens of agencies. And now we're coming back to study whether it's a good idea or not. 

One thing I know is a good idea is that when you all build forward, that you do it with the requester community and not just for the needs of the federal FOIA professionals. I think we'll get to a much better outcome for everyone involved. And I'm very grateful for your collegiality and openness to comment and hopefully to engage around that as the administration continues to reinvest in open government writ large. So thank you Bobby for that and thank you Alina, for continuing to create the space to discuss it.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks Alex. Paul Chalmers is up next and then Dave Cuillier.

Paul Chalmers: Just real quick, I want to support some of the points that Michael and Alex just both made. Just from my perspective as a former user of the EPA system, towards the end, you could see it was getting, there were some issues and I know why, I can understand why EPA didn't want to continue to offer it. It's offering a shared government system and entails a lot of burden, and I think I and a lot of members of the subcommittee would like to do a more forceful recommendation, but this is kind of where we came out given the realities of how much work has to go into building a new one. And some people were soured on EPA at the very end, and I think they're starting to realize that the grass is not always greener. And so I think over the timeframe that the study is going to take, there'll be more willingness by different agencies to rejoin into a unified system again, once one's up and running and it will take some planning. Building government IT is always slow, much slower than any of us want it to be but I think Michael's right, that this has to be done right and we want it to be done correctly and right and be something that the requester community and the agencies are all able to use and glad to have. So I'll be voting for this, but I would like to be voting for something stronger, but for now, this will do.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thanks Paul. Dave Cuillier.

David Cuillier: Thanks Alina. Yeah. Dave Cuillier on the requester side. So yeah, Paul, what you said, I totally agree with because I share Tom's concerns, but I think what I heard from the subcommittee makes me feel a little better. When I looked at the past 51 recommendations that have been passed by this committee over the years, 10 of them have addressed various needs that this sort of thing could solve, including one of the recommendations last term that said agencies should do this, right? Basically. And not to mention a recommendation saying agencies should have FOIA logs, online structured data in a central place, but easy to get to, which hasn't happened. Only 8% of agencies provide them online and structured data in any decent timing. Posting data that's machine-readable, that should be incorporated in this, in whatever technology is created out of this.

Recommendation OGIS to assess methods for posting to reading rooms. We have all these recommendations that this committee has forwarded that have to do with this. I hope this working group looks at those recommendations that have been studied over and over for years now and recommended and incorporate that in their recommendations. Because there's a lot of different elements that are part of this that should be part of a system that's consistent across the government that works for everybody, the agencies and the requesters.

I really, really like this. This is my favorite recommendation of the term, frankly. I do wish it were stronger, but I think they're right that this committee has had so many recommendations to fix these problems and they haven't really made headway. We need a really strong study white paper. I hate studies. They just drag on in the thing. But maybe that's what this is going to take. Maybe it's going to have to take something that just lays it out starkly so that action moves forward. Because frankly I'm a little embarrassed by our nation's system for dealing with public records at the federal level. So many other countries do it better, and it's really frankly embarrassing. We need to fix that for everybody involved. Thanks for the subcommittee for doing this. Hopefully five years from now we see something that comes out of it that everybody's happy with.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks David. Any other comments? Patricia, I see your hand up again.

Patricia Weth: Yes. David, I do understand what you mean about studies lingering. That was one of the reasons why the subcommittee put a two-year marker on requiring the working group to complete its paper within two years. Just so there was a deadline of sorts.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Patricia. Anyone else on the committee want to comment or have a question for Patricia? I don't see any other hands up. Patricia, do you think your-

Patricia Weth: Yes.

Alina M. Semo: ready to move forward to take a vote, or do you want to reserve it to the May meeting? I defer to you and your-

Patricia Weth: Yes. Patricia Weth with the EPA. I would like to move that we vote on this recommendation.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Do I have a second?

Gbemende Johnson: Second.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye.

Group: Aye.

Alina M. Semo: Anyone opposed? Please say no. Any abstentions?

Bobby Talebian: Bobby is abstained.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you, everyone. Kirsten?

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Okay, this is Kirsten. I was having trouble hearing, I think it was everyone voted yay except Bobby, but I'm not clear. I want to make sure I hear from Jason.

Jason R. Baron: I vote yes.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Okay. I'm having a little trouble hearing you, but I think what I heard you say, Jason, is that you vote yes. And once again, I'm just-

Jason R. Baron: That's correct.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Okay, thank you. Heard you loud and clear. Are there any nays? I just want to triple check that. Okay, so not hearing any nays. It looks like the motion carries 17 to zero with Bobby abstaining.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks, Kirsten. I'm just going to double check that was Ben Tingo supposed to join us after 11:00. I still don't see him here. We're still at 17 to zero, correct? In terms of-

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Correct. I do not see him.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. All right, sounds great. All right, thank you so much. Resources Subcommittee, any other recommendations?

Gbemende Johnson: No, this is all of them.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. All right. Well, thank you so much. I know a lot of hard work went into all of this and I very, very much appreciate all the thoughtful commentary and all the thoughtful work that went into all these recommendations. Thank you. I think you could pat yourselves on the back. Congratulations. Good job.

Gbemende Johnson: Thank you, Alina.

Alina M. Semo: Sure. Okay, so we're at 11:15. How do folks feel about moving on to  Implementation Subcommittee, at least to get the dialogue started? David and Michael, how do you guys feel about that?

David Cuillier: Sure. This shouldn't take long.

Alina M. Semo: Yeah, so Candice we're not going to take a break yet. Let's go to Implementation, thank you. David and Michael, I'm going to turn it over to you.

David Cuillier: Thank you and thanks everybody for working on this. Again, we're still working on our product, which we'll have in time for the next meeting ahead of time. We still have two recommendations in the works, the first one being on this slide here. Well, both I guess. That we're basically going to recommend follow up on key past recommendations. We'll provide background on what's been accomplished so far and what needs more work. And so just like in the last meeting we had, we're going to proceed with that. 

Since the last meeting, we've as a subcommittee ranked our individual priorities of which recommendations need further work by future committees, by NARA, OIP, Congress, et cetera. Tomorrow we'll meet and start going through those. I can tell you, just as a little preview, I've clustered…there are really three main categories of recommendations that are subcommittees likely to want to focus on.

One is what we just talked about. Of the 26 recommendations that at least one subcommittee member valued as a future priority, a third of those had to do with the websites, the online platforms that agencies use and how they could be improved. Yeah, that's definitely probably going to be something that we highlight in our report for the next meeting. Obviously priority as we talked about just now.

Also, the whole first party request issue shows up prominently. That's still an issue, and that too is related to websites in a way, as Alex said. And then technology will probably be high as well. The use of AI [Artificial Intelligence], eDiscovery tools. That ranked high among our subcommittee members and there's some other things as well. But those seem to be the recommendations from the past that I think folks wish we would see more progress in the future on.

I think we acknowledge there's been a lot of progress and work done by OGIS, by OIP, by agencies. We'll document that progress where things have improved in some ways and that's great, but I think there's a lot to be done. That's what we'll try to distill into our final report that the committee can look at in May.

I think that's the update of where we're at. Excited to finally try to get this thing done and welcome anybody if they want to provide additional comments.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thanks, David. Alex, go ahead, please.

Alex Howard: I'd like to affirm everything that David pointed out. I'd like to thank him and Michael for leading a really useful and constructive and I think informative path through more than 50 different recommendations.

Something we heard about early in the committee is that this meeting of the committee rather is that there's sometimes been a disconnect between the recommendations made in the institutions that they're focused on. But I would like to commend past members of the committee, I've been to just about all of the public meetings since 2014 and the ones currently, for continuing to recommend that the people and institutions who are stewards of the FOIA and of the systems and policies around it, of training and leadership funding for it, we continue to recommend that they be accountable for using those powers well. And to be thoughtfully, helpfully, constructively critical when they don't.

I think that this committee in its best instantiation has been one of the most meaningful commitments on open government the country has made because it's created a forum for that. The biggest challenge that I've seen as an outside observer and now coming back to be part of it is that those parts of our government, which are entrusted with us powers with statutory authority, aren't necessarily following the recommendations.

Which is to say sometimes they smell like an unfunded mandate, sometimes they're simply things they don't want to do or don't have to do. Sometimes the committee's been put in an unfortunate position where we're literally recommending that agencies do what the law says, like adding a link to FOIA.gov to their FOIA pages, or publishing government information as structured data online. Something that David had just referred to.

I think it is sometimes hard from the outside to see whether the recommendations will matter as much if they don't go big. I think it's great to have a mix of both, and I'm very grateful to all of the subcommittee members who've taken a lot of time to go through all of them, to Bobby to talk with us through all of these. I hope that the knowledge that comes out of that will give people outside of government some trust that there really are some great public servants and civil servants who are doing their best with limited resources and increasing demand. That while we'd like to them do better, I think what we found is that there's a tremendous amount of good faith, too.

As someone who is often very critical of government and how it's doing, I wanted to make sure we put a pin in that and that that was one of the takeaways from this work.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thank you, Alex. Luke, go ahead please.

Luke A. Nichter: Hi, Luke Nichter, Chapman University. I just want to make a comment representing the requester community. Of the two subcommittees that I'm on, this is clearly the one that I've contributed less to in the last couple years. But I say that because it's been the most valuable part of my experience on this committee. I feel almost like I have learned an incredible amount about the past history of this committee and what it's been able to achieve and not achieve. I almost feel like for new members, especially for people in me who are not feds and have never been feds before, it almost should be part of an orientation to the work of this committee because it really shows you the whole landscape of where we've been. I'm just absolutely in awe at the work by David and by Jason and others on the subcommittee to navigate a path through all of this past work and figure out how do we prioritize going forward. I just want to say this was just an incredibly rewarding experience working through all these. Not always understanding all the issues as a requester, but having a much fuller appreciation for the entire process. I just want to tip my hat to everyone on the subcommittee.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Luke. I appreciate that. Tom, go ahead, please.

Tom Susman: Yeah, Tom Susman, public member. I want to second that last comment. But also from time to time I thought in future advisory committees there ought to be a standing Implementation Subcommittee. I mean as having been a member of three of these, four, however many already, it is very frustrating. It's the discussion earlier about recommending to the Chief FOIA Officers Council because OMB won't do anything. Yeah, that's right. The first advisory committee recommended OMB issue revised fee guidance, which they partially did but didn't finish.

I keep going back. It's not such an important one other than the fact that it should be an easy one. Why should they be ignoring it? I'm a big fan of implementation, and David has really spent a lot of time pulling this stuff together, so the rest of the subcommittee inputs, there's been a lot of surveys. I think that we have a meeting like twice a week or something like that it seems. Lots of committee meetings.

But I'm looking forward to a final set of recommendations that we will then maybe put together a SWAT team to go after the agencies and entities and Congress and everybody else to implement these things.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thanks, Tom. Dave, I know you've raised your hand. I don't know about a SWAT team, but I wonder if the Implementation Subcommittee would consider making an additional recommendation that there should be a standing Implementation Subcommittee for future terms. Just a thought throwing that out there. Following up on Tom, David, go ahead, please.

David Cuillier: Well yeah, I appreciate all that and I thought that exact thing, Alina. At least if not a standing subcommittee, some kind of information to pass along that people can read. Because it is hard when you come in fresh and you can't read through 51 recommendations, and plus whatever we approve this term, and all the reports with the background information for all that. That's really hard. Maybe our final report will have an appendix that lists them all, summarizes them where they stand, et cetera. At minimum that might be helpful to future committees.

I also want to recognize Jason Baron from the University of Maryland. He's put a lot of time into this and has really made this happen in a lot of ways, so we appreciate that because it is important.

I mean here, does this sound familiar? This is recommendation 2020-05. We recommend that the Office of Information Policy issue guidance requesting agencies to provide annual mandatory FOIA training to all agency employees. So does that sound familiar at all? And when we look at a lot of the recommendations over the terms, some of them basically repeat some previous recommendations. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, maybe we have to do that every term. Hey folks it’s not done, keep at it.

But definitely I think we're getting so many recommendations here and we're getting to where they're repeating, which tells us there are issues that needs some work. That's what this committee is all about, I think. And so everybody deserves some credit, for whether you're on the committee or you're listening or you're an agency person or requester, this matters. Thanks to everyone for being involved.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thanks, David. Any other comments? I'm looking for hands. I don't see any. David, just to follow up. Your subcommittee is going to be circulating a white paper supporting your recommendations between now and our next meeting, May 9th, which we will post online and of course share with all committee members to thoughtfully absorb before we take votes in May. Is that the mission here?

David Cuillier: It's the goal.

Alina M. Semo: That's the goal. Everyone hopefully will accept that mission. Thank you. All right. Well, we're almost at 11:30. This probably would be a great time to take a break unless I hear any objections from anyone. Tom is excited about a break. Yes. Okay, so, Candice, let's go to the break slide now. And how does everyone feel about a 15-minute break this time? I'm being a little more generous. It's 11:28. Can we try to come back at 11:43 AM? That would be possible, that would be great. Let's take a break. Thanks, everyone.

Candice [Producer]: Welcome back, everyone. Alina, please go ahead.

Alina M. Semo: Hope everyone had a great break. I think we're almost all back, so I am just looking around. I think we're just missing Tom Susman. Hopefully he'll join us shortly and just... Oh, Tom is back. Thank you, Tom. I believe Ben Tingo has still not joined us, so his name will come up several times in the transcript from this meeting. But perhaps he had something else that took him away from this very important meeting.

Okay, so we have made it through two subcommittee reports. We're on to our third subcommittee, the Modernization Subcommittee. We've got our co-chairs, Jason Baron and Gorka Garcia-Malene both calling in on the telephone, but Gorka is CONUS [in the continental United States] so I'm going to have him go ahead and report out.

Gorka, over to you, please.

Gorka Garcia-Malene: Thank you, Alina. As you mentioned, my name is Gorka Garcia-Malene. I'm the FOIA officer at the National Institutes of Health [NIH]. Before I begin, I want to thank Jason Baron of the University of Maryland for co-chairing the Modernization Subcommittee with me. I also want to thank every member of our subcommittee for their work over these last two years. It's because of this work that this advisory committee has already approved two of our recommendations: one last year regarding exemption five designations, and another one during our last advisory committee meeting. That was our recommendation for a draft model determination letter. As we see it, both efforts improved and modernized FOIA and are big wins for transparency.

At our last meeting, our subcommittee also introduced five other recommendations, and at that time we opened the floor for questions and discussions. We had a good conversation on each. Today, we bring these same recommendations to the floor once more. This time we hope to bring them to a vote. I should mention our recommendations are…they're part of today's meeting materials. They're publicly posted on NARA's FOIA advisory committee website. But I say this because importantly they're accompanied by our Modernization Subcommittee report. The report provides added context to the thinking behind each of today's recommendations, so I encourage anyone interested in learning more about our work to review our carefully crafted report.

With that, I'll turn to our first recommendation, which is already on-screen. Our first recommendation is that OIP issue guidance to federal agencies stating that agencies should proactively offer requesters the opportunity to discuss their requests with an agency representative. I should mention OIP has done a wonderful job over the years of encouraging that agencies consider proactively communicating with individual requesters to, for instance, to clarify requests. Our first recommendation seeks to improve what we see as a current state, specifically growing backlogs mean some requesters experience significant delays in receiving a substantive response. It's also true that some requests are just not crafted in a manner that clearly conveys the record sought, right?

As we describe in our report, what we're suggesting here is some language from agencies to requesters, either in acknowledgement letters or in some other communication as the request makes its way up the queue, to the effect of, and this is from our report. Some language that reads something like, "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." It doesn't have to be that language at all, but it's just in our report should agencies choose to use it.

I want to highlight that in our judgment, few requesters will actually choose to engage the agency in response to this message, right? The communication should not prove overly burdensome. Importantly too, it is simply a recommendation, right? If we all agree to pass it on vote, it's something that agencies can try out and then recalibrate depending on how the requesters respond.

Ultimately this form of outreach we're hoping will help a subset of requesters to narrow their requests, increase public engagement, that's for sure. Importantly, we are hoping that this would improve their relationship with requesters because they see the agency reaching out in an effort to help. Overall it'll just maximize agency transparency, all of this without significantly increasing burden to agencies. I suppose with that, I'll open the floor for questions or comments.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you, Gorka. Jason, anything else you want to add? Oh, I see Luke's hand. Let me give the co-chair [inaudible] take Luke's comment. Okay, do we still have Jason with us? All right, Luke, go ahead, please.

Luke A. Nichter: Sure. Thanks, Alina. Luke Nichter, Chapman University. As a member of the subcommittee I've said this before in subcommittee, so I guess I'll say it for everyone else now. I speak in favor of this also for another reason because I still find occasionally with FOIA requests, or especially referrals from other agencies, too often requesters are still given things like no-reply email addresses, unclear contact information, phone numbers to voicemail boxes that are sometimes full and you're not able to leave a message.

I like this because it also solves the other issue that it clarifies good contact information for a request. Which seems like such an easy thing to achieve, but it's not always so easy. There is variation with other agencies. I agree as a frequent requester, I'm not likely to use this a whole lot. But there are times usually when the times that I need it, I really need it. It's often times because there's something missing in the communication from the agency. It's still common these days to get a letter that says something like, "Our agency has received your referral from some other agency," and it doesn't tell me what that request was, or it might only say the date of the original referral to the original agency. And so oftentimes I'm missing something to know, what was this again. Or how do I follow up and just kind of make a mental note this is still out there for me to follow up sometime? I like it for the reasons stated, and I really like that language that Gorka actually read from the report. If it said something like that, as a requester, that would be perfect in my opinion. But it also solves this other issue of providing good contact information from the agency, so I like it for that reason, too. Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you, Luke. Tom Susman, I see your hand up.

Tom Susman: Yeah, this is terrific. I'm not sure how much more discussion it needs. Most of you have heard my stories about when I was doing a lot of requesting. I've always publicly excoriated NIH because they didn't answer emails, their phone went to voicemail, et cetera for literally weeks after the request was filed. By contrast, I praised the FBI, although it took two years for them to answer a request, because they were in touch constantly about what was going on, why they were having problems, asking me if I had other ideas about where they might find the documents, which I knew existed. This should be a no-brainer. It's the gold standard of customer relations.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thank you. Michael Heise, I see your hand up.

Michael Heise: Thank you. Michael from the EEOC. I guess I'll give a little bit of, at least from where I sit on the federal side at a very small agency, or a small agency I should say. I like this recommendation. I do want to at least have it in the transcript, I suppose, that it's going to be interesting to see if this recommendation passes how agencies internalize this. For example, an agency representative could be that agency's FOIA public liaison, which every agency would have, right?

The way I read it, and this is just me reading it, is that, for example, as part of an agency workflow from the birth to death as it were of a FOIA request, is that this proactive offer comes maybe in the acknowledgement letter, which is going to be sent out pretty quickly. That includes the FOIA public liaison is great, but it could be something that agencies want to consider, if they do have the resources and the kind of bandwidth to do it, to have that proactive offer be to speak with the person that is actually processing the request because that's an agency representative, too.

It's going to be very interesting to see how that pans out across different agencies. Again, we're a small agency. Certainly not perfect, but we do tend to provide that offer to requesters already to reach out to the person that's actually processing the request.

And the word discuss, too. I just want to just say from where I sit even though we're moving into an ever-increasing digital and AI world, I read discuss as two human beings on the phone talking about the request if it's possible. Sometimes there's more ability with smaller agencies to maybe do that or that have less requests than maybe larger ones. But this reminds me of how important the human element to FOIA is and will always be no matter how much AI and everything else electronic gets into this as we move forward in the future.

That's it for me, thanks.

Alina Semo: Okay. Thanks, Michael. Alex Howard, I see your hand up.

Alex Howard: Thank you so much. I want to share Gorka's praise for Jason's hard work and everyone else in the subcommittee. I also want to make sure that we recognize Gorka who has been an extraordinary colleague and has helped lead us through a lot of complicated discussions.

Modernization as you can see in this recommendation isn't just about technology. It's also about how people look at the statute and interpret it in the work they do every day. I think that this is important in the sense that it fulfills part of this committee's charter, where we're trying to improve dialogue between the requester community and agencies.

I'm hopeful that someday that might include not just the FOIA officers, but the principals in question, asking what people are looking for and if they can help them get it. I do hope that the federal government will see this recommendation as part of a renewed commitment around experience. The experience of the requesters have, and thinking through how that can be improved and thinking through when and how having these kinds of conversations human to human, as Michael just described, can improve the FOIA process, can speed up requests, can improve the quality of the requests, and can frankly save the government money.

I consistently hear from groups and individuals who go on to file appeals and then lawsuits that not hearing from agencies is one of the reasons they do so. Therefore, this guidance would be very specifically focused on trying to avoid that because everyone knows that government lawyers cost money. What they might not be thinking about is those are taxpayer dollars that could be spent elsewhere.

I think the more that we can nudge everyone involved to talk before you end up suing, the better off you'll be. I have to note at this point that OGIS has that kind of responsibility and remit, but is I would say dramatically underfunded to do those kinds of conversations at scale across the federal government. I'd love to see you have another 100 full-time staff, Alina, but that's a different recommendation for Congress.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks Alex. Hold up, I just wanted to recognize that Ben Tingo has finally been able to join us. Ben, welcome. Just in time for another round of votes. Okay. Dave Cuillier, go ahead please. David, you're on mute. If you've said anything important, please repeat it.

David Cuillier: Darn. Rookie mistake.

Alina M. Semo: Hate when that happens.

David Cuillier: Sorry. Yeah, I agree with everything Alex said and I'd like to urge OIP perhaps to... And more study in this because I think it would save a lot of hassle, money and consternation if this proactive offer was actually before someone submitted a request. And I think that's where problems come in. So some requesters, they don't know really what's there exactly. They know what they want, maybe a lot of them do, and they just put in the request, simple, straightforward, boom. But a lot of them, they're not quite sure they have a question and so they submit a request and it's overly broad and it's off-target and so they get a response. Well, the growing responses in this country are either ghosting, no response, that's less of an issue at the federal level. But a growing response is we don't have records responsive to your request. And that keeps going up every year according to the DOJ statistics.

So obviously there's a disconnect between the requester and the agency of what's there and what is wanted. And so then the requester gets this response saying, sorry, go away. And then the person gets mad, whether it's a journalist or an average person or whatever. And there we go, on the road to disgruntlement. And then maybe they call or they try to talk with them or whatever, and maybe something could be worked out then, but they're already ticked off a little and it becomes the system's already you're off to a bad note. And that sort of thing is what really frustrates requesters and leads to litigation ultimately.

So I do think this could save a lot of money. I'd love to see an experiment and more studies to really see the impact on flipping this around. Let's flip the process around, let's help people from the front end find what they want. Now the FOIA wizard that OIP is working on, great. Maybe that could help someone hone their request, find out what they're really after that actually exists in record form. But this is a whole shift of thinking in the process, not only at the federal level, but state and local particularly. And I do think it's critical to changing how the records and information system works in the United States, and this is just the start. But I'm hoping that perhaps we can dig deeper into this maybe in a future term with OIP and with agencies and maybe some pilot projects that, hey, you want to submit a request, reach out to this person before we even craft it and we'll talk through it with you and help you hone it and perfect it so you aren't frustrated later.

So anyway, great recommendation. I hope to see more down the road with this because it has a lot of promise.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks David. Bobby Talebian, and then I see Ben Tingo. So in that order, please. Bobby, go ahead.

Bobby Talebian: Yes. Hi. So I just wanted to clarify about this recommendation. Part of it is already things that we're doing. So we already are encouraging agencies to work with requesters, reach out to requesters and discuss scope of the request, use interim responses, and we already in our guidance and FOIA public liaisons address this kind of proactive working with requesters even before they make a request. But the difference with this recommendation, when I talked to Jason about it, is that it's offering additional guidance that's specifically lays out like a step-by-step more detailed approach of how agencies could implement this goal. And so I think that's good, but I just want to clarify that we're not starting at ground zero.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Bobby. Ben, go ahead please.

Ben Tingo: Yeah, thank you very much. Ben Tingo from OPEXUS. I just wanted to make the finer point from what everybody's been saying, that this type of guidance that there should actually be discussion with requesters in order to clarify the request in order to get to the information that they're seeking is not just a matter of better customer experience, but is also actually a matter of equitable access to the records that FOIA guarantees access to. Because we have a very broad and diverse nation of people who are more tech-savvy, less tech-savvy, more familiar with regulations, less familiar, and having this type of proactive engagement can only help to make sure that everybody has a fair chance and an equitable chance in order to take advantage of the guarantees of the FOIA.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks Ben. Luke, is that a hand from earlier or is that a new hand?

Luke A. Nichter: It's a new hand. Just a quick line. I just want to respond to Bobby's point, which is, as a requester too often it's easy to focus on bad actors or those who aren't doing the kinds of things or acting in the spirit of the things that the proposals like this. But there are an awful lot of agencies and good folks who are doing this already, either on their own initiative. I can't tell you how many times I've spoken to agencies who talk to me about how they construct search terms and kind of the way that they process requests, which is incredibly helpful, and some have been doing this for a decade or more in my experience.

So I just want to certainly give credit that this is not starting at ground zero, to use that term. There are folks who are doing this every single day and are doing it very well. So I often criticize those who are not, but I want to be clear that there are a lot of good folks out there.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks. Really appreciate that comment on my behalf and on Bobby's behalf. And all agencies who are doing a great job out there, keep up the great work. Okay, any other comments on this recommendation or are we ready to vote? Don't see any other hands up? Do I have a motion to move this recommendation forward to a vote?

Tom Susman: Moved.

Alina M. Semo: Seconded?

Patricia Weth: I second.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, several seconds. All those in favor, please say aye.

Group: Aye.

Alina M. Semo: All right. Anyone opposed? Please say nay. Any abstentions?

Bobby Talebian: Hi, this is Bobby and I'm abstaining.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Kirsten?

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Okay, I am just confirming that I heard no, no vote to this and I also wanted to note that since we have Ben with us, the vote is 18 to 0 with Bobby abstaining.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, terrific. Thank you so much, Gorka back over to you for the next recommendation.

Gorka Garcia-Malene: Thanks Alina, and thank you all for your valuable comments and response to our first recommendation. Our second recommendation... If we might move to the next slide please, our second recommendation, that's right. Yeah, there you go. Our second recommendation addresses some of the earlier comments too. Specifically, this second recommendation seeks that OIP issue guidance to federal agencies encouraging the option of providing requesters with an interim response consisting of a small sample of documents found as a result of searches conducted and subsequently reviewed for partial or full withholding.

And what animates this request, or this recommendation rather, is the growing volume of records responsive to large requests, which already pose a massive challenge to agencies. I have requests on my end here at NIH that span millions of pages that have to be reviewed by humans word for word. So the thinking behind this recommendation is to provide requesters with a sample of the records early on so that requesters have a clear understanding of what records are being returned by their requests, and to use that opportunity to fine-tune and maybe narrow their requests, thereby saving agency agencies and requesters months of work and months of waiting, all of it unnecessary.

Importantly, if you take a look at our report, we propose a workflow that agencies may borrow should this recommendation be adopted. As we discussed at our last meeting, we appreciate all that OIP already does to encourage sampling to requesters. So as Bobby just put it a few minutes ago, we're not starting from ground zero here either. The value of this recommendation is to suggest a more proactive stance by agencies, as well as a protocol for how to approach the provision of the sample of records.

So briefly, the agency could provide a sample of documents, you could do 100 pages, 100 documents, anything with appropriate redactions, and then have a conversation with the requester to determine whether the records satisfy the request or whether narrowing needs to take place. I know from personal experience that this approach can spare agencies a great deal of absolutely unnecessary work. And we should mention that this approach may not work for every request. Some requests are crystal clear and easy to complete and we should do so. However, anytime you can reduce the scope of a broad request, it's a big win for everyone involved, requesters and the agencies alike.

It's worth noting, and this is important, it's worth noting that in our report we discuss how the sample records could be accompanied by language asking the requester to confirm whether in light of the sample records they remain interested in pursuing the request. It's a letter of interest of sorts. Also, our report clarifies that this is not intended to provide requesters with some sort of iterative process where FOIA staff is used by the requester to conduct sort of rolling meandering research into records to suit a requester's evolving questions. Rather, this recommendation seeks to provide a sample to requesters that provides requesters with context for them to actively respond to. So it's sort of a one and done kind of a situation and not, well, this is not what I was looking for. Why don't we try this? Why don't we try that? That is not what we mean by this recommendation.

At its core, this is an effort to ensure that an agency's finite resources are used to maximize both outreach and efficiency while working to avoid that a single large request occupies an entire FOIA shop's resources. With that, I'll open the floor for questions or comments.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thank you, Gorka. I'm looking for hands. Anyone have any comments or questions? Michael Heise, please go ahead,

Michael Heise: Michael with the EEOC. Well, thank you Gorka. I think that was the best presentation of this recommendation, so that was really great. I don't think I can make it sound any better, but the only thing I wanted to say on this, this is a logical extension in my opinion of the previous recommendation. This is a continuation of the conversation. So you talk to the requester perhaps on the front end, maybe not at the very, very beginning pre-request formation, as David was talking about that, that's interesting maybe for another term. But you have that conversation requester and sometimes a request because I get it requesters, they don't necessarily know what they don't know, they don't know necessarily what they're looking for, they have a sense.

As long as everyone's acting in good faith here, I think that this kind of sampling is kind of a great kind of marriage between the human component of talking to the requester over the phone or something and having that relationship, but also leveraged by the technology that the agency might have that is procuring or getting this kind of sample together. So I see this happening maybe with emails, and I like to say that FOIA was enacted before Nintendo, and so it's just one email can... You think about how many emails you generate in a day, and so an email requested for several years across several different targets could be a huge yield.

And being able to have a sample of documents that I guess the processor may be working in conjunction with the requesters as well, ideally, says, this is kind of like what we think based on the request in our conversation with what you are looking for. And as Gorka said, does this work, can we just kind of end the request here or can we narrow it? And if you can't narrow it, then I think this is good because it sets expectations. As Gorka said, if one request is so voluminous that it just is going to take a really long time to process well beyond 20 or 30 working days. I mean, there's always a possibility of a constructive denial, I suppose, litigation on that. But it sets the expectation for the requester. Kind of what David was saying about not getting frustrated. Look, hey, you're asking for a million records, I get it. But you have to understand from our end, we've got a certain amount of bandwidth we can devote to this. It's going to take a certain amount of time, we think.

At the end of the day what this recommendation does, I think is for the requester community is allow agencies to work with requesters, particularly with voluminous requests, to answer this simple question, what is it that you're actually looking for? And sometimes having a sampling will help requesters know it when they see it, and then they can craft a more narrow search rubric so that we do pair down that yield substantially and get the request or what they're looking for and none of the stuff they don't, and allow other requesters in the queue for that agency to get attention from that agency's FOIA office to process their request. And that's it. Thanks.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks Michael. I see Dave and Luke's hands both up. In the interest of time, I'm just noting we've got another three recommendations to go. So if we could wrap up our comment shortly, that would be great. Dave, go ahead please.

David Cuillier: Yeah, thanks. Sorry, I think I've talked more than I should have at this meeting. But I love this recommendation as well. I would take it even further or consider agencies maybe pilot this incorporated in their process. Like, okay, you're applying here, check this box if you'd like a preview sample that we could give you whatever percent of the stuff immediately and you could see if it's good for you. I mean, this is a strategy we use in training requesters. Don't request two years of email. Start low, start with a week, see what they give you. If it's all blacked out, now you can go to battle and fight over that or haggle or whatever, but don't wait three years to get the batch of redacted documents. We call that ratcheting, they even have a term for it.

So I like the idea of agencies actually incorporating this in the process because this will help everybody, requesters and agencies. So that would be my advice that maybe this be piloted even more systematically than just agencies, hey, you should give this option. Maybe we should try putting it in the form.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks. Luke, and then Stefanie.

Luke A. Nichter: Yeah, thanks. So Luke Nichter, Chapman University. Just a quick comment, just want to applaud Gorka's presentation of this recommendation, really clear. I'm not sure you had a single extraneous word during the description there.

I just want to say, look, from the requester's perspective, the requester-agency relationship is very asymmetric. We don't always know what we want. We don't know what agencies have. Sometimes you can speak to an agency and they have good subject knowledge. Sometimes they aren't sure what they have. And I think a lot of times as a requester, we don't want everything. We just want something. Something we can use in whatever our research project is. And it's also, you can go through the time it takes to fully process a request and it's not really what we were looking for.

So if we could hit a checkpoint earlier, we could say, I've seen the sample, that's not it. I think we can administratively close this request. I think this could ultimately actually save labor for a lot of agencies. Like the previous request. This isn't something for me as a requester, I'm likely to use very often, but when I do I think it would be of great benefit to both sides of the request. Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thank you Luke. Stefanie, go ahead please.

Stefanie Jewett: Hi, Stefanie Jewett, HHS OIG. While I'll certainly vote for this one and the previous ones and the others like this. I just want to just go on the record and note, especially coming from the Resources Subcommittee and after all the interviews that we did with agency staff and everyone, that all these things are great and I would certainly be in support always for these, but they all take resources and all agencies are really struggling with having enough resources to be able to do these really great things.

So I would just encourage this committee going forward in the next terms and what to continue to look at resources. Because even though we want to do all these great things, it does take agency staff to do so. Especially coming from an OIG office, most of those we have very limited and small staff. So it is difficult to try to do these things. And none of these account for the 20 days, none of them extend the timeframes for response, none of them extend the appeal, the litigation time, none of that does that. So just a quick acknowledgement from the government side that it is very difficult to try to do these things with the current resources that the government agencies currently have. Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, Alex, is that a new hand?

Alex Howard: Yes. I just wanted to very quickly add one, what was just said about resources and note that when the State Department had a historic backlog of passport applications, they increased resources, they hired more contractors, they surged capacity towards meeting that demand. Our government just got over a million FOIA requests for the first time last year. Are we meeting that demand? Are we surging resources? Are we doing an AI talent surge, but for FOIA? I would say that we should be. I would say that the findings of this committee for the last decade show that, and I want to say that all of the recommendations that depend upon increased capacity and resources, that if there are powers that be that are listening, that appropriate money, that dole let out in budgets, that it would be super important for them to do so. And that I hope that the resources issue is one that the committee continues to highlight and the disconnect between what we suggest and what we recommend and what's actually happening is in part the direct outcome of that capacity issue.

And I just want to salute Stefanie for sharing that because it's an insight that I don't know if the requester community is always aware of or if it's a condition that Congress is willing to accept because I think that neither should be the way forward. So thanks for that extra chance to weigh in, and thank you for that comment about resources because I'm not sure if that came out clearly at the top of the meeting.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Alex. So I see Allyson and Catrina's hands up. Does anyone know who was there first? Or you guys could duke it out? Allyson, go ahead please.

Allyson Deitrick: Thanks. Allyson Deitrick, Department of Commerce. I just wanted to address Stefanie's question about resources. And I did want to let you know that we took that very seriously and we had a lot of discussions in regard to this recommendation as well as our other recommendations during this term about what balance and what trade-off are we making by saying, okay, do outreach here and then taking away from resources, maybe an actual processing, another request. So it was a give and take, and it was a balancing act that we tried to come up with what's the best way to use resources, and this was one of those recommendations. Thanks.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Allyson. Great point. Catrina, go ahead please.

Catrina Pavlik-Keenan: I wanted to just footstamp what Stefanie said about the resources and it takes a lot of resources. Again, I'm Catrina Pavlik-Keenan from the Department of Homeland Security [DHS]. And I have 50% of those 1 million FOIAs that have to be done. Excuse my voice, I actually am getting over being sick. And with what Alex was saying about doing surges and all that kind of stuff, we do all of that, but that takes money and AI and technology, that even takes more money because that’s more expensive than actually hiring people. And so when we're trying to do all of these things to try to get the surge and try to do the technology, it's all coming out of the same pot of money that we get. And the Homeland Security budget was cut this year in the agency as a whole, which of course that trickles down to every other part of the department.

And so I want to reemphasize what Stefanie said. All of these things are great, and just like anybody else, try to do whatever we can that is recommended. But if we don't have the budget structure, the resources, the funding to do the surges, the funding to do the technology, we can only do what we can do with what we have. And I think that no one in the FOIA field that I know of, and I've been doing this for 30 years, has not tried to do the best they can to give people the information that they're looking for. So someone somewhere has got to start putting money toward these requirements that people want us to do because if there's no money with a recommendation, then the recommendation isn't worth the recommendation as written. And that's one of my feelings.

So I 100% strongly support what Stefanie said is we're all trying to do the best we can. And like I said, my FOIA has increased every single year, and I have 56% of the 1.2 million FOIA requests that come in. And we do everything we can with adding more contractors and all of that and technology. And a matter of fact, I have meetings coming up with more people about technology advances that I'm trying to make huge leaps in that area, but technology actually costs a lot of money. I just want people to know that and keep that in the back of their mind when we make these recommendations. I know every FOIA officer, at least that I've talked to or come in contact with, is trying to do the best they can to meet the demands by the FOIA law itself and the recommendations that come out of DOJ and NARA and OGIS. So keep that all in mind when everybody is telling us what more we can do, because doing a lot as it is right now.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks Catrina. So we've had a lot of discussion on this recommendation. I actually didn't think we were going to engender this much discussion. Let me ask if anyone else has any other comments or can we move to a vote? I don't see any other hands up. Would someone like to make a motion for this recommendation?

Adam Marshall: I'll motion it.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you. Do I have a second?

Alex Howard: Second.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you. Let's take a vote. All those in favor of recommendation M2, please say aye.

Group: Aye.

Alina M. Semo: All those opposed, please say nay. Any abstentions?

Bobby Talebian: I'll be abstaining.

Alina M. Semo: Kirsten.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Okay, great. This is Kirsten, the DFO, the motion to pass M2 passes 18 to 0 with Bobby abstaining. I did not hear any no votes.

Alina M. Semo: I did not either. Okay. Thank you very much and thanks for that lively debate.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Can I go on to M3, please? Gorka, go ahead.

Gorka Garcia-Malene: Absolutely. Thank you, Alina. And I just want to thank everyone for their comments, specifically Stefanie and Catrina. I want to ensure that you feel like we've taken that thinking that you shared into consideration. So a lot of our recommendations have to do with what an agency can accommodate. So if you can provide a sample out of a production, that would be a million pages. You're right, we can't put it on hold. It's counting against your 20 days. But it may save you a lot of time down the road for that one request. And the same goes for this third recommendation.

So this one proposes that federal agencies expand public engagement activities focused on improving all aspects of their FOIA process. And I know that this too takes time. So what we seek to do with this recommendation at the subcommittee level, it was to expand agency engagement both with individual requesters and with the FOIA community and civil society at large. And even busy agencies are already doing this work. So most recently, OIP acknowledged the importance of engagement in its self-assessment tool. In fact, we're mindful that OIP's 2023 Chief FOIA Officer Summary Report already references examples of agencies doing this kind of work. So Michael Heise with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, his FOIA public liaison already reaches out to frequent requesters to learn about how they use FOIA in FOIA proactive disclosures. The Department of Commerce proactively engages with requesters by offering them information that is frequently requested. The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare... I'm sorry, Medicare and Medicaid services, I got that backwards, recently convened various requester groups to a web conference to introduce and demonstrate a new portal for submitting requests. That one I imagine, it took time, but it probably streamlined operations for the foreseeable future. And of course, there are many other examples of how agencies are already proactively reaching out to the requester community.

With respect to individual requesters, we hope that this recommendation will prompt agencies to consider, for instance, asking requesters if they were satisfied with the FOIA process, and maybe more specifically with the agency's response to their request. So if you put this, for example, in your final letter, it wouldn't necessarily take any additional time. It's just part of the template, for example. And then any feedback that comes back, if it comes back, you can review to maybe glean some lessons from that particular process or that particular request.

If you take a look at our accompanying subcommittee report, it also includes several ideas for how agencies can reach out to civil society organizations in the FOIA community at large. So for example, agencies could develop frequently asked questions to respond to common questions or complaints received from requesters. That can also save some time. It's a little bit of work at the front end, but it'll save some time on the back end. Agencies could adopt various channels of communication to promote their FOIA processing efforts and to seek feedback on changes in regulations or policies. So if you're proposing a change in policy, you get to reach out and get as much feedback as possible to avoid headaches down the line, to anticipate some of the problems that can arise with new regulations or policies.

Also, agencies could 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 effectively with the agency. That also takes some time, but it, I think, improves your relationship with requesters and perhaps increases trust. I know that in my personal experience some of that trust has been eroded, I like to think through no fault of our own, and any opportunity you can take to build trust is going to help you narrow requests because the requesters trust that you're really acting on their behalf. They may not think so, but we really are. So anything more that agencies can do to enhance that public engagement will not only fulfill DOJ's benchmarks for a healthy FOIA program, but also advance our collective aspirational goal of providing greater government accountability and transparency. With that, I suppose I'll open the floor for questions.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Gorka. Do I see any hands? I don't see any hands.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Alina, Paul has his hand up.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Paul, go ahead please.

Paul Chalmers: Gorka, was any thought given to providing specific items? I mean I know in your report you've got examples of activities that agencies can engage in to do this, but was any thought given to recommending specific actions as opposed to putting them in the white paper?

My concern is this is a very general aspirational recommendation, and it's to federal agencies. I get the sentiment and I think it's an admirable sentiment, but my concern is that somebody's going to see this and, "Oh, I don't know what that means. I'm busy, I don't really want to bother with this." They might not get to the white paper, so that's my concern with this one.

Gorka Garcia-Malene: Yeah. I think we had to weigh... Because we did have this conversation over several meetings at the subcommittee, and the concern was that, we would, by including very specific examples in the recommendation, we would actually narrow what agencies would consider, right? So what we sought to do was keep it a little bit open-ended and then provide more ideas in the report.

We were also mindful of the fact that we could provide two or three examples within the recommendation to try to really get agencies' attention with those three specific recommendations, for example. But the reality, and this is to respond to Stefanie and Catrina's comments earlier, one size does not fit all. Agencies have different amounts of resources. Sometimes agencies are doing great. I mean, before the pandemic hit, my agency had a very low backlog, very little litigation, and then the pandemic hit and we're swamped. We're just swamped at NIH. It's pretty bad. So it didn't make any sense to not prescribe, but to recommend specific ideas when the reality is, like I said, one size does not fit all.

Alina M. Semo: Paul, thanks for that question. Gorka, thanks for that answer. I'm looking to see if I see any other hands. And while people are thinking about any other comments, I just want to correct the record. Gorka misspoke slightly. Michael Heise is from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, EEOC.

Gorka Garcia-Malene: Sorry, Michael.

Michael Heise: That's okay.

Alina M. Semo: We'll forgive you. Okay, I don't see any other hands. Are we ready to move forward with voting on this recommendation? Do I hear a motion?

Patricia Weth: I motion.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you. Do I hear a second?

Allyson Deitrick: Second.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, let's take a vote on M-3. All those in favor, please say aye.

Group: Aye.

Alina M. Semo: Anyone opposed, please say nay. Any abstentions?

Bobby Talebian: Bobby, abstain.

Alina M. Semo: Kirsten? I have an aye by the way. 

Kirsten B. Mitchell: This is Kirsten…I'm sorry, Alina.

Alina M. Semo: Go ahead please.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Okay, this is Kirsten. You guys are making it real easy on me today. The vote is 18 to zero with Bobby abstaining. Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you. Gorka, back to you for the next recommendation.

Gorka Garcia-Malene: Thank you Alina. Actually, Alex Howard will be introducing our next recommendation.

Alex Howard: Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Alex, over to you.

Alex Howard: Thank you so much. Thank you Alina. Thank you Gorka. I recommend the report which the public can find on the committee website to read a bit more of narrative and background in this, but the recommendation is straightforward. We recommend the Archivist of the United States propose to the White House Office of Management and Budget, Justice Department's Office of Information Policy and other relative stakeholder, agency participants, take a leading role in future United States National Action Plans for open government and in doing so include new and continuing commitments to improve the administration of the FOIA.

As mentioned earlier in the meeting, this committee itself I think is one of the most substantive, meaningful outcomes of a commitment to a U.S National Action Plan for open government. It came in the second one and the commitment was fulfilled by the then Archivist, the 12th Archivist, chartering and then rechartering and rechartering the committee. And the hope is that this recommendation will bring to the table the relevant institutions in government that have been entrusted with stewardship of the FOIA and that they specifically engage with a multi-stakeholder process that created this committee, which the United States government will be hosting over the course of 2024 and into 2025 with a plan coming at the end of that year, specifically with a mind towards the kind of multi-stakeholder approach the committee itself takes.

And indeed, I would think that the recommendations the committee has made would be the seeds of draft commitments, either ones that'll be added to a new iteration of the current National Action Plan, which the public can find at open.usa.gov or in the next one. And that it'll build upon the success of past commitments and bring more attention, more priority, more robust policymaking, more personnel, more capacity. And based upon these recent comments, perhaps more funding to, towards helping the United States reclaim a leadership role in the world, not just within the Open Government Partnership, which our country is now back in the steering committee of, but in the actual administration of the FOIA.

And that should include really big thinking about reimagining OGIS, which the committee has talked about in the past towards the idea of shared services, towards the use of different technologies to improve it. And indeed towards realizing finally the promise of proactive disclosure, open government data posted online, openly accessible to the public, ideally under a release-to-one release-to-all policy that increases public access to information, which is indeed, as we've mentioned, one of the rights not just on our country, but under the UN [United Nations] universal rights that we are treated to. So I'm hopeful that by this recommendation coming forth, AOTUS [Archivist of the United States] may be voting, signing off on it, that will put FOIA as one of the pillars of the next plan as opposed to something that was added after civil society requesters entreated government to do so. And that the prominence that the Office of Information Policy and its commitments on FOIA took is something that will be a foundation for realizing some of the past ambition from the last decade and moving forward to create, I think, a much more cohesive information policy as a country.

I think the Archives and OMB are the natural stakeholders of that with DOJ under our current statute. My hope is that this meta recommendation results in all of the goals that this committee was chartered for to improve the relationship between the requester community and government through a multi stakeholder process, rebuild some of that interstitial tissue to make it clear that improving the FOIA is a priority of the United States government. And you can see that because of the people who are committed to it and then building back more effective feedback loops between all the different civil society organizations that have been eroded with some of the challenges that I think many people are aware of between our trust in our national government, federal government, and the American people writ large.

And through that kind of deliberative democratic process, people might be able to regain some trust in institutions and have a sense of ownership and improvement to the access to information that is a right of all of us. So thank you for the incredible feedback and assistance from Jason and Gorka and everyone else in the subcommittee and thank you to the committee for hearing us out.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thank you Alex. Really appreciate that. I'm doing a time check. We're at three minutes before what we had planned would be a public comment period. I don't want to deprive committee comment on this recommendation or the next one. We also have one more to vote on. I just need to do a check with the committee members to see, does everyone have a hard stop at one o'clock other than Carmen who has already informed me that she needs to jump off at one. Can everyone, does anyone else have to leave right at one o'clock or could we stick around for a few... Adam. Okay. Anyone else?

Paul Chalmers: I can be for a few minutes after one, but not many.

Alina M. Semo: Okay,

Bobby Talebian: Same here. A few minutes, but I actually have a one o'clock too.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Appreciate that.

Gbemede Johnson: Alina, I have to relocate.

Alina M. Semo: Yes, so Mende is going to jump off for a couple of minutes. She has to relocate for a few minutes. So Mende, whenever you could join us again, that'd be great. Okay. Let me invite any comment on this recommendation at this time. Okay, I guess I've chastened everyone. No one wants to comment anymore. Would we like to move forward and take a vote on this? Do I have a motion to vote on this recommendation, M-4?

Patricia Weth: I motion.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, do I have a second?

Allyson Deitrick: Second.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you. Okay, let's take a vote on M-4. All those in favor, please say aye.

Group: Aye.

Alina M. Semo: Anyone opposed? Please say nay. Anyone abstaining?

Bobby Talebian: Bobby is abstaining.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thank you. Kirsten

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Yes, I just want to confirm Gbemende’s vote. I don't know if she's still on.

Alina M. Semo: She might've stepped away already.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Yeah, she might've stepped away.

Alina M. Semo: Yep. So I don't think you can count her vote at this point.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Yeah.

Gbemede Johnson: Sorry, I'm here. I'm just having to leave a hotel room, but I support it.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Okay, super. Thank you for checking in. I'm also trying to figure out if Jason is still with us.

Jason R. Baron: Yes, I vote yes.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Okay, super. Thanks for that. So it looks like we have a unanimous vote once again, this time, 18 to zero with one abstention and that is Bobby. Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thank you. Gorka, over to you again for the last recommendation that you wanted to propose today for vote.

Gorka Garcia-Malene: Thank you. Alina, if we could move to the next slide please. Thank you. Our last recommendation reads, "We recommend that the Chief Officers Council's Technology Committee and interested agencies publish requests for information, also known as RFIs, on the subject of artificial intelligence tools and techniques as an aid to FOIA processing." And in the interest of transparency, I should mention that I'm a founding member of the Chief FOIA Officers Council's Technology Committee and that I'm excited about the work that body continually generates to advance technology in FOIA.

In fact, the CFO's Technology Committee has already begun to broach the issue of AI and FOIA and we're already participating in various fora to share what we've learned about the application of AI in the context of FOIA. You may also recall that Eric Stein, the State Department's Acting Principal, Deputy Assistant Secretary, I think that title is effective, I think, today. He recently spoke before this very advisory committee to present the cutting edge work that the Department of State is already doing with machine learning in the context of declassification and how this work might eventually translate to FOIA. And so the thinking behind this recommendation is to encourage additional conversation between government and industry about artificial intelligence. RFIs are a pathway of gathering information for future procurement efforts, and in this case, the information gathered would relate to how artificial intelligence can help process FOIA requests more efficiently.

With AI in everyone's mind these days, we see a clear window for the Chief FOIA Officers Technology Committee to take the lead in designing an RFI focus on how AI can assist with searching and with filtering records. And in so doing the CFO Technology Committee would begin a broad conversation with private enterprise in the field of AI to better understand not just the present state, but also the future of AI through the lens of FOIA. So that's the thinking behind this recommendation. And with that, and with the little time we have left, I'll open the floor to questions or comments.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Gorka. Looking for any hands? Anyone care to comment or ask a question or is everyone getting ready to look forward to lunch? That could possibly be it. Okay. I don't see any hands. Are we ready to move forward? Oh, Kirsten, I see your hand.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Yes, I have my hand up. I just want to say to all of the folks attending that we will have the public comment period. We are not cutting that short, so just wanted to make that be known. Thanks.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks. Thanks Kirsten. Okay. Can I have a motion for M-5 to be voted on please?

Gorka Garcia-Malene: I so move.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you, Gorka. Do I have a second?

Alex Howard: Second.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you for the second. Okay. All those in favor of M-5 moving forward, please say aye.

Group: Aye.

Alina M. Semo: Anyone opposed? Please say nay. Any abstentions?

Bobby Talebian: Bobby abstaining.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks everyone.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Wait, this is Kirsten. I didn't hear any no votes, but I just want to check on Mende and Jason please.

Jason R. Baron: This is Jason. I vote yes.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Great, thank you Jason. And Mende might be in transit, so she may have missed this vote. So in which case the vote is 17 to zero with one abstention and that is Bobby. Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: All right, well we've got a lot of work done today everyone, so great job. I think everyone deserves a round of applause to each other. Fantastic. So we have now reached the public comments part of our meeting. We're just about five minutes late. Hopefully folks can stick around for a few minutes. We do look forward to hearing from any non-committee participants who have ideas or comments to share particularly about the topics we've discussed today.

All oral comments are captured in the transcript of the meeting, which we will post as soon as it is available. Oral comments are also captured on the NARA YouTube recording and are available on the NARA YouTube channel. And as a reminder, public comments are limited to three minutes per person. Before we open up the phone lines, Kirsten, let me check in with you first. I know there are a few Webex chat comments despite my admonition of not putting any substantive comments in WebEx chat. Not everyone hears my admonition, so I'm going to turn it over to you to see if there's anything we need to read out loud.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Sure. Alina, I just wanted to say that there have been a few comments in the chat from a frequent attendee regarding recommendation R-6. That was the one that pertained to a shared FOIA case management system and centralized repository. As Alina noted at the beginning of this meeting, and indeed at the beginning of all of the FOIA Advisory Committees, the chat is for procedural matters and I just want to remind all participants, even folks who are listening to this recording on the National Archives YouTube channel that the committee welcomes written comments at any time. We have a portal in which one can submit public comments that is archives.gov/ogis/public-comments. So one can use that portal at any time. The portal allows users to select whether they wish to direct their comments to the FOIA Advisory Committee or the Chief FOIA Officers Council.

And just a reminder that the advisory committee is chaired by Alina and the latter, the Chief FOIA Officers Council is a government only body chaired by Alina and Bobby Talibian at DOJ. I just want to let everyone know all comments are reviewed and if they meet our public comments policy, they are posted. And I also want to remind everyone that whether you are calling in on this Webex platform or you are watching on the YouTube channel, you can turn on closed captioning. So that is all I have. There are several attendees who've raised their hands to make public comments and I believe our event producer is aware of those and is ready to open the phone lines. So thanks Alina.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks Kirsten. Candice, go ahead and provide some instructions to our listeners for how to make a comment via telephone. Please.

Candice [producer]: Yes. As we begin the public comment period, please click the raise hand icon located at the bottom of your screen to join the queue. You'll be given three minutes to make your remarks. We hear a tone when your line is unmuted, at which time please state your name, affiliation, then make your comments. If you're not using WebEx audio, you may press pound two on your telephone keypad to join the queue. To assist you, there is a timer on the right side of your screen. It'll begin counting down as soon as you start your remarks and you will hear a five-second warning before your time is up.

Alina M. Semo: All right, Candice, do we have a caller waiting on the line?

Candice [producer]: We do. Jackson, your line is open. Please make sure your line itself isn't muted. I think we've just lost his audio, actually. Jackson probably cannot hear us right now to know that his audio has dropped. I will go onto the second person and try to send him a note in chat.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you.

Candice [producer]: Colin, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Colin Aamot: Name is Colin Aamot, I'm with the Daily Signal. I would just like to express some concern with proactive disclosures looking through these FOIA requests. Basically I went through and tried to audit what agencies were actually tracking proactive disclosures. And the conclusion I've come to is that most agencies are not tracking that. They have no fundamental tracking mechanism to track frequently requested documents under 552, or the Attorney General's guidelines from 2022. So those guidelines read that in making proactive disclosures, agencies should post records online as soon as feasible. Section two says FOIA requires agencies to proactively disclose certain categories of records, including previously released records that have been requested three times or more, or that have become, or likely to become, the subject of subsequent requests. Now given that verbiage, I love what you guys are doing here, but I would also like to see just enforcement of the actual statute, right?

With that being said, I went to every agency and said, "Hey, I would like to see what tracking documents or tracking mechanisms you have." Most agencies came back and said they have zero or they have none with regards to tracking mechanisms. That to me is kind of unacceptable in generality, right? That means that as requests are coming in, you could have 10, 20 different people requesting the same document and the agency doesn't care even though they should be tracking that, tracking that and then actively disclosing it to the reading room.

Most agencies barely update their reading rooms, right? There's several agencies, which CyberCom is probably a prime example, I think they've released less than 10 documents a year. The point being is that, that's written into the statute. Most agencies have no fundamental tracking system to track frequently requested documents that should be already disclosed and there probably needs to be some sort of resolution to that or at least some sort of enforcement mechanism to ensure that that happens. Given the fact that most of these agencies are running out the records' retention timelines or other agencies are simply posting them to their reading rooms and then the links go dead eventually. OSD [Office of Secretary of Defense] is a great example of that. There needs to be some sort of formal enforcement mechanism to ensure that those records are indeed proactively disclosed. Thank you.

Candice [producer]: All right, we're going back to Jackson's line

Jackson: Jackson. The last FOIA Advisory Committee meeting one commenter talked about three things. First, rights of civilian employees to free individual DOJ representation and FOIA litigation gone bad, citing 28 CFR at 50 [inaudible] one five.

Second, unauthorized records disposition complaints to NARA. Third, a Department of Defense Appellate Authority that won a DOJ Sunshine Award, despite six open FOIA litigations. On civilian employee, individual legal representation and FOIA, the commenter said, "Whenever the court orders the production of any agency records improperly withheld from the complainant and assesses against the United States reasonable attorney fees and other litigation costs, the special counsel shall promptly initiate a proceeding to determine whether disciplinary action is warranted." That is 5 USC-552(f)(i). This is true even if the government ultimately produces records during litigation and then prevails on summary judgment, having produced ordered records during litigation. So if you were an agency employee involved in a messy FOIA litigation where someone may have helped you with inaccurate sworn declarations or where records were altered or where records were destroyed, you may seek immediate free individual DOJ legal representation in a closed case before a plaintiff files a fee petition with the court.

Your agency counsel may have already obtained separate DOJ representation. Importantly, FOIA is not exempt from other federal laws with serious consequences. Civilian employees must therefore protect their own interests. Litigation costs. I read that litigation cases are exploding and that attorney and cost fee awards above $100,000 are increasing because of agencies obdurate behavior or bad behavior intentionally prolonging litigation for years, hoping plaintiffs will quit. In one case on Pacer.gov, the agency admitted that a FOIA officer's sworn declaration was false and the FOIA officer admitted under oath that he or she had altered records during litigation. An agency manager admitted that he or she had destroyed records despite the agency being given five legal notices, identifying records, and with notices to preserve records for judicial review. Again, FOIA is not exempt from other federal statutes. Civilian employees must therefore protect their own interests.

In one recently decided case in the District Court of Columbia, Naumes versus Department of Defense, Department of the Army, the court awarded over $111,000 due to Department of Defense's obdurate behavior, which only amounted to withholding documents to force litigation. This is far less than the abhorrent behavior described in the Pacer.gov case cited above and total billable fees were only reduced 18 percent and Naumes versus DOD also Department of Army, did not place its civilian employees at risk of referral to special counsel whose decisions must be executed without recourse. Again, FOIA is not exempt from other federal statutes. Civilian employees must therefore protect their own interests. Thank you.

Candice [producer]: We have no further hands raised in the queue.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Okay, Candice?

Candice [producer]: Yep. Hold on one moment. I see Alina is on the attendee side. Let me move around to the panel. Alina, we have no further questions in the queue.

Alina M. Semo: Yes, I'm sorry I got disconnected from the Webex. I don't know what happened. I apologize, but I'm back. Do we have any other callers waiting in queue?

Candice [producer]: Not at this time.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. All right, Kirsten, anything else I missed while I was gone for a couple of minutes?

Kirsten B. Mitchell: No, I think everything will be captured in the transcript.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Were we able to get Jackson back?

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Yes, we were.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. All right. Sorry that I missed Jackson's comments. Carmen Collins has to sign off. Thank you. But I think we're all going to be signing off. I don't believe we have any other questions or comments. I just want to remind everyone we're meeting again in about a month on May 9th, virtually again. We're also going to meet for our last meeting virtually again on June 13th.

I want to thank everyone for hanging in there today for the entire meeting. I think we got a lot done and I really appreciate all the hard work all the subcommittees have been doing. We will be circulating some additional material between meetings, so please be on the lookout for that. To the subcommittee, so we're going to continue to meet. Thank you in advance for finishing up your work, and the working group we look forward to rolling up our sleeves and getting ourselves started on the final report. Anyone have any other questions or concerns that they want to raise at this time? I'm not seeing anyone. Okay, then I just want to hope that everyone has a safe and healthy and resilient month and we will see everyone again on May 9th. Everyone take care, please. And with that we stand adjourned.

Candice [producer]: That concludes our conference. Thank you for using Inteller Events. You may now disconnect.