Transcript

FOIA Advisory Committee Meeting

Thursday, December 5, 2024

10:00 a.m. (ET)

Producer: Welcome and thank you for joining today's FOIA Advisory Committee meeting. 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 Jay Bosanko, Deputy Archivist of the United States.

Jay Bosanko: Good morning and thank you. I'm Jay Bosanko, Deputy Archivist of the United States. It is my sincere pleasure to welcome you on behalf of the Archivist of the United States, Dr. Colleen Shogan, who is unable to join us today.

Welcome to the third meeting of the sixth term of the Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee. A decade ago, I was not using glasses, at least 20 pounds lighter, and I had less gray hair, but we at the National Archives established the Federal FOIA Advisory Committee. And I had the true privilege to speak at its inaugural meeting, and I noted then, that FOIA administration and its processes are not something that is nor should be entirely government run. FOIA is a partnership between government agencies that implement the law and policies and the requesters, who use the law and policies. That partnership is crucial to informing the government where we can make improvements is embodied so well in this FOIA Advisory Committee.

As the National Archives worked to establish the committee in fiscal year 2013, agencies across the government reported processing more than 678,000 FOIA requests. A decade later, that number has climbed to more than one million requests. The challenges with volume alone are immense. But the interaction between requesters and agencies on this committee makes a rich environment for discussing and addressing FOIA's toughest challenges. Committee members, thank you for all that you do and will do on these issues.

Before turning the meeting over to Committee Chair Alina M. Semo, I want to note that two weeks ago marked the 50th anniversary of the 1974 amendments to FOIA. Legislative history is long and winding, but in a nutshell, as Congress worked to amend FOIA, negotiations between Congress and the Ford administration stalled. Congress passed the amendments, President Ford vetoed the amendments, and Congress promptly overrode the veto. Today, there are timeframes for agency action on FOIA requests, appeals and litigation and agencies must report annually on the administration of FOIA, both first established in the 1974 amendments. The amendments also established the U.S. District Court in D.C. as a universal venue for FOIA lawsuits and gave federal judges the power to review classified documents in camera to determine whether the records were properly classified.

During the debate in the U.S. House Representative Silvio Conte of Massachusetts urged his colleagues to vote to override the presidential veto to "strengthen the public's right to know what its government is doing. When this right to know is bolstered, democracy will work better." Representative Conte's words fit so nicely with the National Archives's new strategic framework announced earlier this fall by Dr. Shogan. The framework, which will guide development of a full strategic plan for 2026 to 2030, includes strengthening democratic participation and inspiring civic engagement. FOIA can and should very much play a role in both.

So, with that, happy 50th anniversary to the 1974 FOIA amendments. And thank you to all of you who participate in the Advisory Committee. I now turn the meeting over to Alina. Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you, Jay. Really appreciate your opening remarks and we appreciate your continued support of the FOIA Advisory Committee and the great work that the committee has been doing. Good morning and welcome. I just got a very panicked message from my computer that it needs to restart, so I'm just putting that out there in case I need to be offline and Kirsten will cover for me. But it is my pleasure to welcome you to the third meeting of the sixth term of the FOIA Advisory Committee as this committee's chairperson. I'm the Director of the Office of Government Information Services, OGIS. 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.

We are convening again today after two productive September meetings, September 9 and September 13, that we held to kick off this term. If you missed our first two meetings, you may visit our NARA YouTube channel and catch up on both our in person and virtual September meetings. Meeting materials are available on our OGIS website, www.archives.gov/ogis.

A few housekeeping notes that I just want to go through before we launch into our meeting today. Thank you Candice for flipping the slide. I have a few items I just want to cover for the meeting. As we know it is public in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, FACA, which requires open access to committee meetings and operations. In accordance with FACA, we have already posted both minutes and transcripts from our two September meetings.

For today's agenda and meeting materials, please visit our website, www.archives.gov/ogis. There you will also find committee members' biographies. Please also visit and follow our blog, The FOIA Ombuds. We have just kicked off what will be a series of posts featuring our committee members. First up is Richard Peltz-Steele, professor of law at the University of Massachusetts School of Law. I invite all of you to read that.

I am advised that we have a couple of absentees this morning. Nieva Brock is unable to join us. Bobby Talebian will be joining us a bit late. He had also indicated he needed to step out of the meeting between 11:00 and 11:30 AM. And I also understand Shelly Kimball will need to leave by 11:20 AM. So, everyone talk really fast.

Kirsten, I'm going to turn it over to you. Have you taken a visual roll call and can we confirm that we have a quorum?

Kirsten Mitchell: Indeed we do have a quorum. I understand that Liz Hempowicz is having some trouble accessing, so I'm…Candice and I are working with her on that. But we do have a quorum.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, terrific. Perhaps she can call in in the interim, in the meantime.

Again, as Candice indicated to our committee members earlier, I want to encourage you to use the raised hand icon at the bottom of your screen when you wish to speak or ask questions. The raised hand option is even better than using the all panelists option from the dropdown menu in the chat function. But we also encourage you to use that as well if you want to chat at some point or intercede, chat me or Kirsten directly.

Also if you need 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, turn off your camera by using the camera icon, and just send a quick chat to me and Kirsten so we know you'll be gone, especially if you're going to be gone for more than a few minutes and join us again as soon as you can.

A reminder to all of our committee members and me, in order to comply with the spirit and intent of the FACA, please use the Webex chat for housekeeping and procedural matters only. Do not enter any substantive comments in the chat function as they will not be recorded in the transcript of the meeting. And an important reminder to all committee members, please identify yourself by name and affiliation each time you speak today. Members of the public who wish to submit written public comments to the committee may do so using our public comments form. We view all public comments and, if they comply with our public comments posting policy, we post them as soon as we are able.

We are going to remain flexible with our agenda today as I am not certain how long committee members will be discussing their work so far. If it appears it is needed, we will take a 15-minute break at a logical place during our discussions. If we end early, I am happy to give committee members back some time today. We will have a public comment period at the end of our meeting today. And, as we noted in our Federal Register Notice announcing this meeting, public comments will be limited to three minutes per individual.

Okay. Next slide please, Candice. So, we have allocated the bulk of our time today to hear from each of our three subcommittees to share their mission statements and what they have been discussing so far. Our hope is that the presentations will spark conversation, discussion, and questions among all committee members. And first up I understand we're going to be hearing from the FOIA Statutory Reform Subcommittee, which is co-chaired by Ryan Mulvey and Whitney Frazier-Jenkins. And I'm not sure if Ryan is on, but I know Whitney is on. So I'm going to turn the floor over to Whitney at least at this point. Is Ryan on?

Kirsten Mitchell: Ryan is on.

Ryan Mulvey: I'm here.

Alina M. Semo: Oh, terrific. Welcome Ryan. Thank you, I know you weren't on earlier. So, the floor is yours, Ryan and Whitney, and over to you.

Whitney Frazier-Jenkins: Good morning everyone. Thank you, Alina. It's my privilege to co-chair the Statutory Reform Subcommittee along with Ryan Mulvey. And at this point we're just going to give a quick overview of our subcommittee and an overview of what we've been working on so far. And I encourage our subcommittee members to join in and add anything that we miss or overlook.

The goal of our subcommittee is to develop and propose recommendations for Congress to amend the FOIA. We are focused on drafting recommendations that not only enhance the requester experience but also address the ongoing challenges faced by agencies when processing the requests that all of the agencies receive.

After some great discussion and several meetings with the subcommittee, we have organized our work into three specialized working groups. With each one of those working groups concentrated on a different aspect of reform. And so the first group is the Transparency Application Working Group, which is examining mandatory disclosures under the FOIA, the FOIA Processing Working Group, which is committed to addressing challenges associated with processing FOIA requests, and lastly, the Enforcement Models Working Group, which is focused on enhancing mechanisms to enforce FOIA beyond the current judicial review process.

My co-chair, Ryan Mulvey, will go into a detailed overview of the Transparency and Enforcement Model Working Groups after I give a brief update on the FOIA Processing Working Group. And I encourage my fellow Processing Working Group members, Scott Hodes and Melissa Pickworth, to chime in and share any additional comments or thoughts they may have.

As I said earlier, the FOIA Processing [Working] Group is focused on challenges experienced by the requesters and agencies when processing FOIA requests. This working group is still in the exploratory phase, but we are exploring issues such as how litigation affects agency resources, the administration and management of requester fees, funding for reading rooms, which impacts mandatory disclosures and proactive disclosures, and the application of statutory exemptions. Our goal is to develop recommendations that, again, improve processing issues for agencies and requesters. So, at this time I'll ask Scott or Melissa if they would like to add anything regarding the FOIA Processing [Working] Group.

Scott Hodes: Scott Hodes, U.S. CIS [Citizenship and Immigration Services], Chief Counsel's Office. The only thing I have to add is on the issues that we are looking at, we are in the next couple months going to look at our timeline to have a much more narrow and specific answer on when we will propose things and also the manner in which we will be looking at these issues and who will. Obviously we're not in a vacuum, so we will be consulting with others and other sources and how we'll be doing that. That's our next steps.

Whitney Frazier-Jenkins: Thanks, Scott.

Melissa Pickworth: This is Melissa Pickworth from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And the only thing I had to add to that is we're also considering the potential overlap with some of the other subcommittees and making sure that we coordinate our efforts while we explore these issues. In particular there are some sub-categories here where we may need to work with the other committees to make sure we're tracking with each other and not overlapping or contradicting.

Whitney Frazier-Jenkins: Thanks, Melissa. At this time I will turn it over to Ryan to discuss in more detail the other two working groups.

Ryan Mulvey: Thanks, Whitney. So, our other two working groups are the Transparency Obligation [Working] Group and the Enforcement Models [Working] Group, which are being led by Dave Cuillier and Margaret Kwoka, respectively. I'll work backwards and start with the Enforcement Models [Working] Group. This Group is basically trying to look at what ideas can we bring to change the statute to change how review and enforcement are going on. And review not just in the sense of the current system of judicial review but kind of looking forward to how we might imagine new ways of enforcing the FOIA, including things like overhauling OGIS or coming up with [an] independent information commission, identifying new ways of dispute resolution, a FOIA court, and how we might even equip Inspectors General to get involved in FOIA enforcement.

The Group has been very active and has, I think thanks to Dave's leadership, a very clear timeline for deliverables. As it stands, we're working on initial drafts of what will ultimately become part of the subcommittee report and the sets of recommendations and justifications, which will be brought to the full committee eventually. I think it's fair to say that there's three general buckets that we're working on at the moment in the Working Group. One is looking at an independent information commission or an independent agency or a revamped OGIS, that sort of approach. The second is looking at reforms to the current system of judicial review and how that process might be streamlined, made more effective. And then last we have we're kind of looking at adjacent aspects of government oversight that touch on FOIA. So, things like the OSC [Office of Special Counsel] referral provision, and how there might be already enforcement mechanisms that exist in the federal government outside the FOIA space that can be drawn upon so that we're not reinventing the wheel.

And I think that's also just a theme generally. We're trying not to reinvent the wheel but to draw on excellent scholarship and thoughts that have come from FOIA thinkers and past Advisory Committee terms of the Advisory Committee. So, I think, as I said, we're working on initial drafts now, and our hope is that in the spring the subcommittee will be able to bring recommendations to the full committee.

In addition to all of that, we have an eye to later in the term doing feasibility studies on all of the recommendations that we're going to end up coming up with, and also thinking about speakers who might be useful to bring to the full committee meeting so that everybody can have the benefit of hearing their expertise and thoughts on reform. Before I jump to transparency obligations, was there anything else, Dave, that you'd like to add that I might have missed?

David Cuillier: No, you did a great job. Good job, Ryan, thanks.

Ryan Mulvey: Thank you for leading our working group. So, the other working group, the third of our subcommittee that I'll talk about is transparency obligations. And this is kind of, we're covering a lot of ground in this subcommittee. We're looking at the substantive obligations regarding disclosure and how that whole process might be changed. So, that would include not only perhaps the scope of the statutory exemptions, but A1 and A2 and affirmative proactive disclosure obligations of agencies.

We have kind of a similar timeline for this group, which is, I think I mentioned, led by Margaret. And our buckets here, we're looking for the most part at a foreseeable harm standard and public interest balancing, proposal for a public interest balancing test is our first big bucket. We're going to be looking at definitional questions in the FOIA, things like the definition of a record, the definition of... Well, it's not definition but the concept of agency control and these sorts of issues as well as continuing the work of the last term in considering the extent to which FOIA or FOIA-like processes should be expanded to administrative agencies in the legislative and judicial branches of the federal government.

We have affirmative disclosure. I think I mentioned A1 and A1 and how that can be expanded and some of the adjacent issues, which I know have come up in the past, like the Rehabilitation Act. And then we also are looking at, as I mentioned, the scope of some of the exemptions and how they might be changed. In particular I think we've targeted Exemption 4, Exemption 5, and Exemption 7 as areas that we'd really like to take a look at. And as with Dave's working group, we are considering speakers and other possible feasibility studies down the line once recommendations are finalized. Margaret, is there anything you'd like to add there?

Margaret Kwoka: No, that was great. Thanks.

Ryan Mulvey: And thank you for your leadership as well. I think that's everything that I have. Whitney, back to you.

Whitney Frazier-Jenkins: I think that's it for our summary for the Statutory Reform Subcommittee. We're off to a great start and a lot of great ideas are going forth, so I will turn it back over to Alina or Kirsten.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you so much, Whitney. I just want to invite any other committee members if they have questions for the subcommittee that just presented, please speak up. Any thoughts, comments? Ryan has his hand up already. Okay.

Ryan Mulvey: I'm sorry, I forgot something. This is Ryan again from AFPF [Americans for Prosperity Foundation]. One question that we wanted to just put out there that Whitney and I were talking about yesterday, is if in the other subcommittees, if you come across anything that you think touches on a need for reform of the statute, please let us know. That way we can kind of have cross-fertilization of ideas and be thinking about that.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Sounds good. Any other committee ... Oh, Jason has his hand up. Jason Baron, go ahead please.

Jason R. Baron: Hi, Jason Baron. Ryan and Whitney, have you given any thought to when you're developing these reform proposals to ask for public input? In the last term, this committee went out and asked for comments on an implementation letter. But I'm just wondering whether the subcommittee might consider asking the public, the FOIA community at large, with respect to any kind of drafts of recommendations you have for statutory reform?

Ryan Mulvey: This is Ryan. We did, in fact, talk about that and putting out a request for public comment. I think we decided to defer finalizing a request for OGIS to put that up on the website, but it's something that I think we might still end up doing. A lot of the ideas that have been circulating among the working groups have been drawn from the public in other fora. And then obviously from past terms. But we're definitely aware that it might be useful to open things up to the public again. If not at the ideation stage, then once we have kind of our initial list before we send anything out to the committee. At that point it might be worth getting feedback as well.

Alina M. Semo: So, I see three hands up, and I'm not sure who's hand up was first. I see Marianne, Rick, and Margaret. Who wants to go first? Rick, go ahead.

Richard Peltz-Steele: I was going to suggest Margaret actually.

Alina M. Semo: Oh, Margaret.

Richard Peltz-Steele: Since she's leading the group.

Margaret Kwoka: Sure. I was just going to briefly add on to what Ryan said in response to the public comment question, which was that in both of the working groups I'm involved in, at least as part of this subcommittee, we're really, I think, trying very hard to draw on especially past recommendations of this Advisory Committee, of previous terms of this Advisory Committee. Which are usually based on previous public comment, public input, and agency consultation. And so trying not to duplicate that work both so that we aren't engaged in, obviously duplication, but also not going back and asking agency folks to kind of redo input on the very same questions over and over again, et cetera. And so the goal is really to use as much of that past work as possible.

And then once we're sort of getting to the point of crystallizing what the proposed recommendations might look like, figuring out where gaps in that might exist where we want further consultation and then thinking about how to frame public comments about that. So, I just wanted to sort of just add in that I think that there's a good amount of public input that's already baked into a lot of the recommendations we're basing our work on. Thanks.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Rick, would you like to go next?

Richard Peltz-Steele: I have a selfish curiosity question. With no judgment either way, but I was just curious about the mention of agency control within the obligations working group and wondered if that might be fleshed out what it means. In particular I was wondering if agency control implicates privatization or quasi-privatization or if it means something else. Thanks.

Ryan Mulvey: This is Ryan. So, what we mean by agency control or control questions generally are records that are in the ... When you file a request, whether a record that's in the ... I don't want to say just physical possession because it's more than just that, but a record that an agency has whether it's subject to the control of the agency such that the agency can process it under the FOIA, right? So, very often this comes up in the context of if an agency has records that the President claims are presidential records or that Congress claims are congressional records, the agency can't process it.

With regard to your mention of privatization, one of the things that we are going to look at are... Because it's been a subject in FOIA reform in the past and of interest to certainly the requester community but also members of Congress, are the question of records created by privately run prisons or detention centers that have contracts with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or with the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Bureau of Prisons. The extent to which and what records are subject to control of DOJ or DHS and how they can be released, that would be something that we would be looking at.

Also, just for regular run of the mill records, there's, different jurisdictions have developed different tests for how to determine whether or not something is subject to the control of the agency. So, I think we might be looking at whether it's better to just have a statutory definitional approach to the control question rather than leaving it up to courts.

Alina M. Semo: Right, thank you so much, Ryan, for that. Rick, great question. Marianne, you've been so patient, thank you, over to you.

Marianne Manheim: Hi, I'm Marianne Manheim from NIH [National Institutes of Health]. And I just wanted to say as the only government person that's on this transparency obligation working group, I just want to add that it's been fascinating because actually at the first meeting we ever had, I was thinking we never hear from the public and these guys are the public. And they have a lot of specific things, like Ryan just talked about, and a lot of things that, as the only government person there, I just kind of tend to think I'm like, "No, but this, no, but that, no, but this."

So, I just want to throw in that I feel a little bit outnumbered but I'm also glad to be in the room on these things because I get to hear their take on it. I do, Jason, agree it would be good to get more public comment. I also think it would probably be good to get more government involvement on some of these ideas because a lot of my reactions, I'm like, "Whoa, where are you going with this?" So, I'm just going to throw that out there for my own committee, and I am really glad to be on it because I'm learning a lot.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, great. Thanks, Marianne. That's actually a great reminder to everyone that it's not too late to join any of these three working groups. I'm sure they're going to invite you in with open arms. So, even if you're serving on another subcommittee, it doesn't mean that you're precluded from serving on one of these working groups in this subcommittee. So, think about that, and things can shift around very easily.

Okay, any other thoughts on Statutory Reform? Going once, going twice. I don't see any hands up. I'm looking around. Okay. All right, so next up, Candice, next slide please, we're going to hear from the Volume and Frequency Subcommittee. It is co-chaired by Nick Wittenberg and Nieva Brock. Unfortunately, Nick, you are alone today. Nieva is out. So, I'm going to turn the floor over to you, Nick. Good morning.

Nick Wittenberg: Good morning all, Nick Wittenberg, co-chair of this committee from Armedia. Been really honored to work with Nieva on this committee. We've also had a lot of excellent support from our fellow Advisory Committee members. And we've had some interesting discussions and meetings over the past couple months, seems like just yesterday we were at the National Archives for our first initial kickoff. I'm going to go through a couple of points to just kind of crystallize what we've been discussing in these past couple of weeks.

The first one is we drafted our purpose statement and goal, which can be found on the Archives website for the FOIA Advisory Committee. We had a lot of thought and discussion about the purpose of this, as obviously volume and frequency has gone up as we've seen across many industries in government with data going up, so that is... I think these two statements had a lot of thought and care put in. And had individuals in government as well as private side folks like myself, potentially with government experience, put some thought into it. So, I encourage everyone on the committee as well as our public at large to visit those statements. The success is they're rather brief, which is kind of nice, to crystallize what we're trying to do with our subcommittee.

The second point, we're working on a definition of challenging FOIA requests. So, as Ryan had noted, maybe we could have some... I think he said cross-curtilage, so maybe cross-pollination, whatever the crossover language is. But I think this is something we really tried. I put out an expansive one and Alina encouraged others on our subcommittee to chime up and they did. So, we're working on that, about what is a challenging FOIA request. Some of the points we discussed, what is challenging for me is no trouble for a seasoned pro like Alina or agency size or professionals or technology or staff or the request. So, we definitely have been throwing a lot and we're really excited to hopefully get something...get a little meat on the bones for this definition here.

We have also had some guests appear at our meetings. Big, big thanks to Dave for inviting Colleen Murphy, who's the Executive Director and General Counsel of the Connecticut FOIA Commission. She presented to our subcommittee on how the commission handles vexatious requests, and they also provided us with these very detailed reports of individuals and a lot of information. And I think our subcommittee had some very interesting questions. They note that in a particular situation this involved, if my memory serves, municipalities in the state of Connecticut and obviously the situation is if you're determined in Connecticut, a vexatious requester, are you banned for a year? And other kinds of situations. Is that per agency, per department, at the city or state level or county?

And so we thought that could be a potential area of great discussion that we've had and really cannot thank Colleen Murphy enough for presenting. I had a lot of questions, I think, as for the federal family, how does this... Is it potentially somebody like OGIS or another group could potentially serve a similar situation? Is it agency specific? Timeline, fees, and can you use a potential determination for another agency? So, a lot of great questions were asked. Obviously not an easy issue, as we noted at the beginning of this meeting with our logistics, is transparency is extremely important. And then we also had the logistics of email addresses, IP addresses, and so those things.

So, we have a lot of great discussions which led to our fourth point. I know a number of the other subcommittees are probably working on something similar. We're looking at developing a survey of FOIA professionals on issues and solutions related to volume. And our discussion is how do we get a nice attendance and from across the federal family as well as from the various individuals in the chain of command to identify how big their agency is, how many requests they have. So, the one area we felt would be interesting to explore is ASAP [American Society of Access Professionals]. I had the pleasure of previously serving on the board of ASAP and I'm honored that current president of ASAP is one and only Ryan Mulvey, who's here, so we're probably going to reach out to ASAP because they have a meeting coming up in [Las] Vegas, and we're hoping to get a wonderful attendance where we could potentially put some questions out there to FOIA professionals and get a nice, nice response from the federal family.

We're also considering sessions with the agencies. So, one thing we noticed is sometimes it can be challenging to get honest and frank discussion or at a minimum just people to participate. So, we're looking for areas so we can really get a wonderful response. And we've noticed with the other subcommittees, they potentially have some other surveys. So, I think our kind of thought and recommendation to the FOIA Advisory Committee as a whole is, for example, let's say our subcommittee has three questions, and another one has three others. Potentially we could do this in a one-stop shop to encourage attendance. There's some other thoughts about that. We are really excited, the work we've done in the past couple of weeks, to identify the volume and frequency issues that I think have been challenging our professionals and our agencies across the FOIA and federal government. If any other of my other subcommittee members have some points to add, I'd really welcome that.

Alina M. Semo: Don't be shy.

Nick Wittenberg: I'd like to think we have solved all the challenging issues, but I really can't thank the attendees of the subcommittee meeting who really showed up and I think hearing what state and local officials said, I kind of give my hat tip to Dave for inviting a colleague of his. They provide a lot of material on that. So, this could be helpful because unfortunately as we see, is everything is data and everything is going up. We want to provide a way for our professionals in the FOIA community to be able to make heads or tails of these issues that are being presented.

Alina M. Semo: I have a question, Nick. Have you divided yourselves into working groups like the other subcommittee has or are you still just one subcommittee?

Nick Wittenberg: I wish we could have followed the Ryan Mulvey model to throw off the curve for us, but I think now great artists replicate, so we will probably consider that if we need working groups for some of these issues, such as drafting a survey, but that is a wonderful thing. The beautiful thing about our subcommittee, it's a very decent size. But I think probably the smart thing is once we get more into the weeds of these issues I just brought up, probably that would make the most logical and efficient sense.

Alina M. Semo: Would you be interested in inviting other committee members to comment or offer suggestions about challenging FOIA requests? Is that something you're…

Nick Wittenberg: I have only one answer in a transparency group but, yes, no I think that would be great because we have a lot of expertise in and outside the government. I think that'd be great just to hear. I think that is our goal with the surveys is hearing what is challenging, but respecting, I think the spirit and letter of FOIA because challenging for me could be one FOIA request from Ryan about what my name is. But other people have 100 custodians and somebody may have 10 custodians but they half a person is a shared service. So, I think that'd be nice to get from our committee that experience and expertise to assist us with our mission that we have.

Alina M. Semo: Great. I don't want to put anyone on the spot, but I just want to give everyone food for thought. So, if anyone wants to throw something out today you can, or send an email to Nick and Nieva. Give him some...

Kirsten Mitchell: Melissa has her hand up.

Alina M. Semo: Oh, sorry. Yes, go ahead please. Thank you.

Melissa Pickworth: Yeah, I was just going to say in exploring what it means to have a challenging request, I think that could be the request itself but it also could be the resources the agency has to manage that request because there are times where either technology or the available staff to process these, it may not be truly a burdensome request for most agencies, but for that particular agency, if they don't have the right solution in hand to be able to address it, it could be challenging for them. And so I think kind of separating the two, the request itself from challenging the process, might be interesting to see what kind of answers we get from our survey.

Nick Wittenberg: That's a great point because I think technology, people and then the one that I always harp on is the training. And so I think Alina's and Kirsten's work with COCACI [Committee on Cross-Agency Collaboration and Innovation] that's another one that's been ... And the Technology Committee, and that's been a wonderful, I think, thought discussion. And while I'm a little biased, I'll have to call on my colleague, Joan Moumbleaux here, I thought EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] was a gold standard. We did a lot of great things, we're continuing to improve, and so that's another thing I think is great, Melissa, that you point out is what are the challenges, whether internally, externally, how it's submitted, and what is causing the frustration or challenges for individual groups to respond.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, I don't see any other hands up. I'm still looking though. Jason, go ahead please.

Jason R. Baron: Thanks, Nick, for that. There's a tremendous volume of FOIA requests across the government. More than a million. And most requests may not be voluminous among themselves, but cumulatively they are for agencies. There are some requests that are, however, voluminous by themselves, and you know, Nick, that I've been on a soapbox about AI [artificial intelligence] as a way to manage those most complex requests that involve hundreds of thousands of hits on documents that you get with keywords. And I want to just take the opportunity to say that I put in a comment in response to a GSA [General Services Administration] call for comments on the Sixth National Plan for Open Government, and in that comment I said that the Sixth National Action Plan should commit to a government-wide effort to apply AI techniques to assist agencies in managing FOIA backlogs.

So, I would encourage you and your subcommittee members to maybe have a conversation with our Implementation Subcommittee because, as will be discussed in a few minutes, one of our priorities is to think about AI and e-discovery as techniques. And I think there'd be a lot of overlap going forward in asking agencies questions and developing proposals during this term.

Nick Wittenberg: Jason, that's a wonderful comment and we'll take that up, your offer on that mind you I gave an AI 101 training when I was on the tech committee and happened to attend with Alina when she testified in Congress, and I think the beauty is, as a lawyer, I can't go a week without hearing some type of program on AI or generative AI, but I think how do we in government break down the silo, so it's an IG investigation, congressional investigation, FOIA, litigation, privacy, to manage our limited resources but then make this information more accessible, so that people can get at the information quicker.

So, I really appreciate your comment to the Sixth Open Government Plan that's been put out there. I know the fifth one had a lot of good information responses to it. But this is something I think we can really take on and really help empower through to get that information out there. And I think also for folks to review information that's already out there. So, I think it's a dual win for requesters and for government agencies.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, anyone else on the subcommittee want to chime in on anything or any other committee members have thoughts or comments for Nick? I'm pausing for a second, I don't see any other hands up. Everyone should have a second cup of coffee. Okay. So, Nick, thank you very much. I really appreciate that presentation, and next slide please, Candice.

So, we're really moving along very briskly in our meeting today. I might actually give everyone back a lot of their time, so everyone should be happy about that. And so last but certainly not least, we're going to hear from Implementation Subcommittee co-chaired by Jason Baron and Marianne Manheim. Jason and Marianne, you have the floor.

Jason R. Baron: Hey thanks, and hi Marianne. So, Marianne and I want to divide up a little of the responsibilities here and have a couple of other people speak. I want to thank the subcommittee members that have worked so diligently so far. They consist of Kevin Bell, Shelley Kimball, Deborah Moore, Frank LoMonte, Ryan Mulvey, Liz Hempowicz, Richard Peltz-Steele, Sarah Weicksel, and Joan Moumbleaux. And you'll hear from several of our subcommittee members.

I just want to set the table here in describing how we conceived of the committee. Why don't we have the next slide up for that first slide at the moment and I'll tell you when to go to the next? In the last term of the FOIA Advisory Committee, an Implementation Subcommittee chaired by David Cuillier was set up to evaluate how much progress federal agencies have made in implementing the past recommendations coming out of this FOIA Advisory Committee during what was then four prior terms and now five terms that had been approved by the Archivist.

At the beginning of last term, there were 50 recommendations outstanding that had been approved by the Archivist. That was at the beginning of last term, by the end of last term there were 66 recommendations that have now been collectively approved. And as we noted in the Implementation Subcommittee last term, and the FOIA Advisory Committee in its final report, the committee recognized that at the present rate of accumulating recommendations there would be over 100 in a couple more terms. And this seems to be something that would cause us to pause and perhaps reimagine what the purpose of this subcommittee is. It's not only in taking actions to make more recommendations, but to figure out how the existing set of recommendations can have higher visibility and more impact throughout the executive branch.

So, with this background in mind this term, what I'm calling Implementation Subcommittee 2.0, there are some keywords in this and the next slide. In this slide you'll see that what we're attempting to do is to review, select past recommendations of the five previous terms. Not to do a kind of boil the ocean comprehensive look at every recommendation again and how it's being implemented, but to select and to evaluate those recommendations that have the greatest executive branch impact and are best targeted to specific agencies. So, why don't we go to the next slide? And you'll see that the focus here is what I just said. And we'll talk a little bit more now about the variety of ways that we've been discussing approaching this issue.

I want to say in particular though that I would like to thank Bobby Talebian publicly as head of DOJ's Office of Information Policy for taking up the recommendation of last term, which was 2024-14 that was approved by the Archivist, to have DOJ embed a question in the Chief FOIA Officer's report asking agencies to report on how they have implemented past recommendations coming out of the committee. So, the data collected on those reports that will come out in 2025, in my opinion will greatly aid our subcommittee's work as we analyze how past recommendations have been implemented and what recommendations or other actions we should take going forward to increase the impact of our work.

And so with that as the opening, Marianne and I have asked that several members of our subcommittee say a few words here on the activities that we've been discussing. And Richard Peltz-Steele, Deborah Moore, Frank LoMonte will speak to those. So, why don't you go, Rick? Why don't you be up first?

Richard Peltz-Steele: Thanks, Jason. I'm Rick Peltz-Steele, University of Massachusetts Law School. I'm sorry I forgot to say that last time. When we sat around and were thinking to prioritize the large volume of recommendations that now exist, and figure where can we sort of get the most bang for our buck in terms of if we were to devise some kind of push for making this or these recommendations reality, how would we prioritize them? We took some polling within the committee to figure that out. And we quickly realized that a lot of the recommendations overlap, so that if you made progress on one, you'd make a lot of progress on one right next to it or one that we could group together.

So, I took an initial stab at trying to round the recommendations into priority categories, so we could talk about those priorities rather than the specifics of the recommendations. And these are similar to, if you look on the FOIA dashboard of course, many of you will know there are categories given for the recommendations, but they're more descriptive, and here I think it's fair to say we were aiming for more functional. And then once we took the polling from the committee in terms of what does everybody think are our top priorities, we had an ad hoc working group where we re-worked those categories to group the high priority recommendations that people identified. And those priorities panned out in terms of... Those groupings in terms of really four substantive categories, and they’re engagement, for example requester dialogue with agencies, technology, for example use of AI, training, for example all agency employees, and workflow, for example first person request management. And then there was a fifth category we called more than zero or it's not zero, where there was significant committee interest but these sort of didn't fall into one of those four categories.

And so I do believe that those groupings will be really helpful as we figure out, now we can look at, okay, this is a priority value, here are three to six recommendations associated with that value and how can we work to advance that value. I hope that's helpful to show where we come from and where we're headed.

Jason R. Baron: Thanks, Rick. Deborah, you're up.

Deborah Moore: All right, thank you, Jason. I'm Deborah Moore with the Department of Education. And the working group that I'm leading along with Shelley Kimball and Joan Moumbleaux is the Barrier Analysis Working Group. And the goal we have is to understand at a deeper level the challenges agencies are facing with implementing these different recommendations that have been made in the past four terms.

So, that's the big goal, but we have sort of sub-goals also, and I think they will help the bigger picture as we look towards drafting final recommendations. And those sub-goals are spotlighting for the agency the importance of implementing the open recommendations just by talking about them and asking questions about the open recommendations, kind of has them focus in that direction. Also facilitating agencies' identification of their own barriers just having that discussion, so they can start thinking through what are the things standing in our way. And helping them think creatively about how to overcome those barriers.

Raising the awareness also in agencies of senior leadership of the barriers that they're facing in these recommendations about the recommendations themselves but also the barriers. And then finally knowledge sharing. If one agency has found a good solution, making sure other agencies know about it or if one agency has tried something, making sure agencies know this didn't work because X or whatever we learn.

Our plan is to use focus groups to elicit the information about the barriers. We're still working out details, how that will look exactly, but we think it will be largely modeled in size and structure to what the GAO did in their recent FOIA backlog study.

The number of groups that we hold is really going to be determined by how many volunteer moderators and note takers we can recruit. That's kind of the long pole in the tent there. But we're aiming to have a representative sample of small, medium, and large agencies as measured by numbers of requests annually received.

And in terms of the participants, this is also an important question, who represents each agency? We need that person serving on the group to be both very knowledgeable about FOIA operations. They can't just be a high level person overseeing the CFO [Chief FOIA Officer] of a very large agency. That's an important role, but they're not going to be having that on the ground knowledge necessary about what's happening in the components themselves. So, we need that direct knowledge of FOIA operation organization, but also someone with enough decision making authority or at a minimum insight into the decision making process, so they can understand how resources are being allocated and how decisions are being made about the different recommendations. Yeah, so we need just the right person and figuring out how to identify that person is going to be an important step. So, that's one element we're looking at. In addition to the focus groups themselves, we may do some follow-on interviews with respondents just to get additional clarity on different elements raised during the focus groups.

We also plan to use as another source of information the responses to the Chief FOIA Officer report that Jason was just talking about. What the agencies are saying in those reports about implementation challenges that they have done or not done the different recommendations. And how we use that information is sort of going to depend on the timing. If we're able to get those responses before March when those are published, we may be able to use them in shaping our questions and so forth. Otherwise it will be information that we use in the analysis process.

In terms of our next steps, like I mentioned, first one of the main things we need to do is work with moderators and note takers, which will determine how many we can hold and so forth. We need to, as I mentioned, determine the best way of identifying the right participant at each agency. We've begun working on our questions, but we need more effort towards that, revising them, directing them, getting the right questions, the right number, and the right question wording. We want to define and refine the protocol for focus groups because we'll be having several of them, we want to make sure that they're conducted in the same sort of way generally.

And then possibly exploring some training for moderators and note takers at a minimum to level set that protocol but also if we can get some more training for them on eliciting responses and conducting focus groups in general. We'll look into that as well. I'd also like to see if Shelley or Joan would like to add anything to what I've said.

Joan Moumbleaux: I have nothing at this time.

Shelley Kimball: Neither do I. I think you covered it well. Thanks, Deborah.

Deborah Moore: Thanks, Jason. Back to you.

Jason R. Baron: Okay, and we're going to hear from Frank and then Marianne, whatever additional thoughts you have, go to you. Frank, tell us something that might happen between now and the next public meeting of the FOIA Advisory Committee.

Frank LoMonte: Let me just sort of recap. Thanks. Frank LoMonte with CNN, representing the news media. Let me just recap where we've been since our September meeting. At the September meeting, somebody, maybe me, I don't know, floated the idea of potentially having a ... Seeking a declaration from the new incoming administration not unlike what we saw from the incoming Obama administration on day one in 2009, where a statement was made that FOIA as a priority is important and agency compliance is something that the White House is going to prioritize.

So, the thought was present something that would be worth pursuing, recognizing that our committee typically works on a two-year timeframe, and that by the end of two years you'd already be halfway through a new administration and we want to try to do something on sort of an interim basis that would get FOIA front and center into the conversation with the new administration before the end of our two-year term when we report out.

And we had some very good volunteers, like Liz Hempowicz, Deborah Moore, Sarah Weicksel, and myself kind of comprise this working group that had several meetings to kick around different approaches to that. And one approach was an Obama-like declaration looking at is there a way to just get in front of the transition team, whichever administration happened to be coming in, and try to get a day one or maybe even in coordination with Sunshine Week, day 55 declaration. Putting down a marker that FOIA is important and will be a priority.

And then the discussion shifted somewhat to rather than something that was kind of aspirational in nature but didn't have a lot of concrete deliverables to it, did it make sense to instead seek something that had actual accountability to it, a checklist, deadlines, and so forth. And we considered both of those approaches, but then subsequent events, to some extent, changed our trajectory.

And Jason has really mentioned the biggest one, which is that in October, after that September meeting, the OIP issued their 2025 Chief FOIA Officer report guidelines. And in those guidelines they already asked the Chief FOIA Officers, "Are you aware of the work of the FOIA Advisory Committee and can you update us on your progress in meeting those recommendations and do you find them useful? And if not, why not?"

So, all those things are going to get gathered by the time that the 2025 Chief FOIA Officer reports are delivered anyway, and so we certainly didn't want to do anything that would seem duplicative work or a confusing message to agencies that were already being asked to do that work by the OIP.

So, I think the sort of consensus has been to tap the brakes a little bit on this idea of seeking a declaration that will come out either on day one or on day 55, but rather to do more along the lines of what Deborah has just suggested, and she was a really valued participant in that working group conversation, to do some more stakeholder information gathering so that we can be doing something that is a value-add to what OIP is doing and not duplicative or repetitive of it. And Jason may have some additional thoughts or comments on sort of a way forward from there or other members of the committee may, but that's my report.

Jason R. Baron: Thanks, Frank. I’ll turn it over to Marianne for your thoughts.

Marianne Manheim: My final thoughts? So, thanks Jason, it's been great working with Jason. I just want to ... Actually I know Kevin's here too, I was going to point out. We've come up with a lot of different ideas even in these few months and one of them, even Kevin brought up, Bobby, I don't know if you're here, but we were trying to do a positive side of this too where it's not just what we're not doing but what we can do.

So, one of the things that Kevin had brought up as well, I’m Marianne, just had to say my name again, and it was to find out the best practices that keep winning awards every year on Sunshine Week. And so we're trying to put out ideas that are out there that people are going to be creative to get these things done as well. So, trying to come up with, not reinvent the wheel but use what's already out there and maybe working on repackaging it.

Another thing we talked about is Sunshine Week in and of itself and trying to get word out about us. Some of these things might not happen, but it's just the idea that we aren't even known out there and there are things that already exist that we can use to implement these ideas that haven't happened.

I'm really glad Deborah is working on what she's working on. And the other thing I will throw out there, Jason, is just the AI part. We started but we haven't gotten far, and it seems like there's also the other committee working on it. There's also COCAI. So, at some point it's probably good if we maybe figure out how we're going to work together because we don't want to keep doing the same things differently. So, that's about it. Thank you.

Jason R. Baron: Thanks. And I think that's it. We may open it up for questions. Question from anybody else on our points made on our subcommittee and then everybody on the committee.

Alina M. Semo: Agreed with Jason, I just want to point out it's not COCACI but it's the Technology Committee of the Chief FOIA Officer's counsel that's looking at AI. They have an AI subgroup that's working on that. So, I think that's what you meant, Marianne.

Marianne Manheim: I know. There's so many out there. If you can find the other committee, that's the one I'm talking about.

Alina M. Semo: Right, the AI working group. Got it. Okay, so I see a hand up from Kevin. Thank you. Kevin, go ahead, please.

Kevin Bell: Yeah, hi, Kevin Bell from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Just to follow up on the much appreciated shout out on looking to talk with OIP about the Sunshine Week information. So, yes, we had asked them, well, I with Alina's assistance had asked for whether they had any information from the prior year Sunshine Week nominees or the presentations themselves. And we're talking with them right now. We exchanged a few emails on the subject and they've provided us with at least the transcripts from the most recent, and we're going to see what else we're able to get, just sort of a narrative description of what has been useful and appreciated as FOIA innovations and significant accomplishments and the extent to which those line up with prior recommendations of the committee.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thanks, Kevin. Any other hands up? Any other thoughts, comments? Melissa, go ahead please.

Melissa Pickworth: Hi, my question was for Deborah on the Barrier Analysis Work Group. You were talking about the focus groups that your working group was going to be doing. I was just noticing the conversation that you guys seem to have had almost completely duplicated some of the conversations that we were having last week. And so I just wondered, since you're talking about doing focus groups and we had talked about doing focus groups in ours, if maybe this is something we could connect on and just make sure that we're not over-burdening the FOIA officers that we're going to be reaching out to.

I do have concerns about the number of surveys and working groups that all the different working groups are discussing, and just trying to make sure that we coordinate and maybe work together to build something in terms of the moderators that we're maybe looking to get, the interviewers that we're looking to get, so that we're not having to go back to the same people over and over.

And I also think, one comment I had, about... Because you were talking about who's the target audience for this because it's that balance of getting someone at the right level who knows enough about the barriers but also knows about the implementation. And one of the conversations that we had had on a working group earlier this week was how each agency, depending on if it's a decentralized or centralized FOIA program, that knowledge may shift. And so it may need to be targeted agency by agency kind of how their FOIA program is designed to operate because you may have differing levels of knowledge depending on whether it's a centralized or decentralized agency. That was just my comment.

Deborah Moore: Hi, this is Deborah Moore from the Department of Education. Thank you. That is absolutely true. The potential both which you flagged that we don't want to overburden the communities and we don't want to be asking the same questions. And so we have, thanks to Shelley, who alerted us to this potential overlap, we've been having discussions about what this might look like, how we can work with the other subcommittee, other working groups interested in doing focus groups and outreach for this.

We do want to make sure that we have a coordinated effort and we're asking the right questions, and I think, to your other point, about finding the right person. We're not going to be able to know the right person, so my thought is we need to ask... We need to sort of describe the kind of role we need to agencies, and sort of maybe an initial outreach request or something like that. Ask them some initial questions and have them come back to us and say, "Yeah, we think this person would be the right person to represent our agency," and so forth.

So, potentially it would be a two-phase thing. Reaching out and telling them what we're trying to do, asking them if they're interested in participating, and here's what we're looking for, a time commitment, all those types of things. Having them come back to us and name the right person.

But that might be the initial stage where we definitely would want to coordinate with the other working groups even if it means down the road we can't do a combined focus group. We may be able to, I'm not sure. Because of the fact that what your ideal person and role might be different from ours. I don't know. We have to continue to look at that and make sure that... If it is the same right person, then fantastic. If it's not, then we have to do something else.

Melissa Pickworth: So, the committee I was talking about is the Volume and Frequency Subcommittee. I do kind of see a little bit of an overlap in the type of person you described with some of the types of people that we were looking for as well. So, I think that's worth exploring.

Jason R. Baron: I think, Melissa, you make a very good point and I would suggest, Deborah, that we encourage a joint meeting of the working groups between the two subcommittees to coordinate on outreach at least. My two cents on this is that there are on the order of 250, 300 reporting components that are out there, agencies, and I think there's a substantial number of FOIA officers that one could tap. And so there is overlap substantively, but I'm sure we can come up with focus groups that don't overlap. But it's for our subcommittees to work out, and I'd encourage that.

Alina M. Semo: Yes, ditto what Jason said. I agree. Shelley has her hand up. Thank you, Shelley, go ahead please.

Shelley Kimball: [inaudible 01:11:19] outcomes and recruitment and questions. And I think when both sides have that shaped up a little bit more strongly, then we can compare and kind of see if we're working in parallel or if we need to be separate.

One of the other things in the Volume and Frequency Subcommittee that we kind of started to veer toward a survey with focus groups as the secondary data collection. And so there's also that possibility that if there were a question or two that we wanted to push forward and there were space, we could do that. But I think it's really early still to figure out whether it's joint or not when we haven't quite figured out what our ultimate goals are and who we're recruiting.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Shelley. Nick, I see your hand up.

Nick Wittenberg: Yeah, no, I love the conversation from Shelley and Jason and I think, yeah, once we've kind of sharpened our pencil we'd love to get together. I think not reinventing the wheel and if we have similar questions or slightly similar but different subcommittee interests. As Jason mentioned there's 250-some FOIA reporting agencies. We would love if we could get that number. So, anything that we can do to maximize our responses and get some rich information. I think, yeah, once our subcommittee dots the I's and [cross the] T's, we look forward to connecting with the Implementation Subcommittee.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Nick, for that comment. Any other thoughts, comments on what we talked about? Some really great work that the subcommittees are doing. I'm very excited. Marianne, Jason, any other parting words?

Marianne Manheim: No, but Melissa, I think, has a question.

Melissa Pickworth: It's a comment actually, and I really liked the idea that Marianne was talking about in terms of tapping into the Sunshine Week awards. I attended the Sunshine Week awards last year, and I had a similar thought where I was like, "Wow, there are so many great ideas. I wish these were captured and written down so that we could all learn from them." And so I'm really glad that that's something that's happening.

I think if going forward this is something that gets collected and distributed would be great as a resource. Even if it's put on an OGIS website or something where a broad community could see some of these really cool initiatives that some agencies are doing, I think we should spread the word beyond just the people that attend those Sunshine Committee awards.

Alina M. Semo: Kevin, you have your work cut out for you. Thanks, Melissa.

Marianne Manheim: Yeah, I didn't have anything else and thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Sure. Jason?

Jason R. Baron: Yeah, thanks Alina.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. All right. We're just whizzing right along. We're just way over early but that's okay. I promised I would give back time to everyone. Just going to pause one more second, make sure no one else has any other thoughts. I know Shelley has to leave us in five minutes, so Shelley, goodbye and happy holidays.

Okay, so we have now reached the public comments part of our committee meeting. We look forward to hearing from any non-committee participants who have ideas or comments to share, particularly about the topics we have discussed today. All oral comments are captured in the transcript of the meeting, which we will post as soon as it is available. Oral comments are also captured in the NARA YouTube recording and are available on the NARA YouTube channel.

And, as a reminder, public comments are limited to three minutes per person. So, at this time, Candice, can I ask you please to give instructions to any of our listeners for how to make a comment via telephone?

Producer: Absolutely. As we begin the public comment period, please click the raised hand icon located at the bottom of your screen to join the queue. You'll be given three minutes to make your remarks. You will hear a tone when your line is unmuted, at which time please state your name and affiliation, then make your comments. To assist you there is a timer on the right side of your screen. It will begin counting down as soon as you start your remarks, and you will hear a five-second warning when your time is up.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you, Candice. At this time do we have anyone waiting in the queue?

Producer: There are no hands raised at this time.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. That is fine. We'll just pause one more minute to make sure that no one else has joined us on the Webex line has any other thoughts. I see a few attendees. Not our usual crowd, I will say that. Hopefully people will be watching on the NARA YouTube channel later and will catch up on the meeting because it's been a great meeting. Candice, I'll check in with you one more time.

Producer: There are no hands raised at this time.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, all right. So much for the timer. We're so excited to finally get it working and now we can't even use it today. Okay, any other parting thoughts from our committee members? Would anyone else like to share anything before we close out?

Thank you, Kirsten, for reminding me to remind everyone we do accept written public comments at any time, www.archives.gov/ogis/public-comments. Thank you, Kirsten, for that reminder.

Okay, I don't see any other hands up….anyone eagerly waiting to be called on, so I want to thank all of our committee members again today for participating in three meetings so far. Unbelievable. We've had some great discussions, some really creative ideas that are going around in all three subcommittees and working groups. I know everyone is very hard at work in trying to improve the FOIA process, so I'm very grateful for that. I particularly want to thank the six co-chairs of our three subcommittees for all the great work you're doing. You're leading the charge.

And I want to thank all of you for joining us today. I hope everyone and their families remains safe, healthy, and resilient. We will see each other again for our next full committee meeting on March 6, 2025. Hard to believe it's going to be 2025 soon. Do we have any other comments or questions that anyone wants to chime in with? Any announcements or anything else? I see no one.

Okay, well, with that I want to wish everyone happy holidays and a prosperous and healthy beginning of 2025, and we will see each other again on March 6 publicly. We will be hard at work in our subcommittees in the meantime. And with that we stand adjourned. Thank you.