2024 Annual Open Meeting Transcript

Producer: Welcome, and thank you for joining today's OGIS Annual 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 things over to Jay Bosanko, Deputy Archivist of the United States.

Jay Bosanko: Good morning. I'm Jay Bosanko, Deputy Archivist of the United States. Thank you for joining us today for the eighth Annual Open Meeting of the Office of Government Information Services or OGIS. Today, we will hear about OGIS's work providing a range of services to the American public and federal civil servants to improve the Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] process for all of us.

OGIS's work as the federal FOIA ombudsman is an important part of the work we do here at the National Archives, striving to strengthen our nation's democracy for all through equitable access to our nation's records. Sixty years ago this week, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary reported to the Senate a bill to clarify and protect the public's right to information. The late Missouri Senator Edward V. Long noted in the July 22, 1964 report that, "Although the theory of an informed electorate is so vital to the proper operation of a democracy, there is nowhere in our present law a statute which affirmatively provides for a policy of disclosure."

Senator Long concluded his report to the Senate by noting that. "Government by secrecy benefits no one." Government by secrecy benefits no one, think about that. The bill would not become law until two years later. Nearly 12 years after the late California representative John Moss, the father of FOIA began advocating for such a law. Senator Long's and Representative Moss's legacies are reflected today in the millions of pages of records that are released each and every year in response to more than a 1 million FOIA requests processed by nearly 5,000 FOIA professionals government-wide.

Since 2009, OGIS has played a fundamental role in the administration of FOIA. OGIS assists requesters at every stage of the process, assesses agency FOIA compliance and identifies new issues or opportunities for systemic change. OGIS, quite simply, advocates for the FOIA process, work that we think Senator Long and Representative Moss would greatly appreciate, were they with us today. Thank you for joining us today and I will now turn the virtual floor over to OGIS director, Alina Semo. Thanks, Alina.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you J. Really appreciate that. Good morning, everyone. My name is Alina Semo and as the Director of the Office of Government Information Services, it is my pleasure to welcome all of you to our Annual Open Meeting today. I hope everyone who is joining us today has been staying safe, healthy, and well.

First, I want to cover some basic housekeeping rules and set expectations for today's meeting. The powerpoint for today's presentation is accessible on the OGIS website at archives.gov/ogis. Look for the outreach-events/annual-open-meeting link. Throughout this meeting, we will be monitoring the chat function on Webex. We are also simultaneously live-streaming on the NARA YouTube channel with a slight delay, so welcome to those of you who are watching us on the NARA YouTube channel.

Following my summary of OGIS activities in fiscal year 2023, we are very happy to welcome two members of the 2022-2024 term of the FOIA Advisory Committee, Patricia Weth and Jason R. Baron, who will be led by my colleague and committee Designated Federal Officer Kirsten Mitchell in a Q&A regarding their recent experiences.

At the conclusion of the panel, we will have a public comment period. We will open our telephone lines during the public comment period to give attendees the opportunity to comment orally. Each caller will be limited to three minutes each. You can only provide oral comments via telephone if you have registered in advance via Webex [Eventbrite]. If you are watching us on the NARA YouTube channel, you'll not be able to provide oral comments during our public comments section. However, you are welcome to submit written comments or statements at any time. We are accepting public written submissions for 30 days through August 24th [23rd]. While we're happy to have all points of view shared, please respect your fellow attendees and keep the conversation civil and on topic.

We are recording today's session and we will post a transcript of this event on the OGIS website as soon as it becomes available. The video of the meeting will also be accessible for later viewing on the NARA YouTube channel.

And Candice next slide, please. On May 20th, 2024, we were very pleased to be able to publish our 2024 OGIS Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2023. Briefly, some background on why we're holding this virtual meeting today. When Congress passed the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016, among the mandates was that OGIS not less frequently than annually conduct a meeting that is open to the public on the review and reports by the office, and that OGIS shall allow interested persons to appear and present oral written statements at the meeting. We are holding this meeting today to discuss OGIS's activities during the past fiscal year, 2023.

Next slide, please. A few words about who we are and what we do. And as you can see, we were pretty busy last year. OGIS hears from requesters and agency FOIA professionals who seek our assistance with the FOIA process in a variety of ways. In our mediation work, we do not dictate solutions or tell agencies they have to turn over records. Our mediation services are completely voluntary. We serve as a facilitator to help agencies and requesters better understand the issues and the other party's positions and interests.

We are a non-exclusive alternative to litigation. We try to prevent litigation. However, a requester is still free to file a lawsuit if they're not satisfied with OGIS's services. We have found that even if we cannot resolve a dispute entirely, we can help the requester and the agency narrow the issues that remain in dispute. Both our mediation and compliance programs, which I'll discuss shortly, are guided by the principle of neutrality. We advocate for neither the requester nor the agency, but for the FOIA process to work as it should.

Next slide, please. I'm particularly proud of the great results that our mediation team has achieved. The team was able to keep up with the increased demand for our services in fiscal year 2023. We received 5,536 requests for assistance, a nearly 28% increase over the year before, and we closed 5,470 requests for assistance, a nearly 21% increase over the year before. OGIS also received funding to add our first Government Information Specialist [GIS] to the mediation team and we onboarded our new GIS in January of 2024.

Next slide, please. As this graph demonstrates, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, we have seen a significant increase of cases related to delays. These include instances in which a requester is not even able to get an estimated date of completion [EDC] for their request from the agency. We have also observed that some agency's backlogs have grown significantly in the last several years and are now counted in years, not months, but that is not a great surprise, considering that the federal government overall received a record high total of over 1.1 million FOIA requests last year. That's nearly a 29% increase in the prior year, and the government also processed an astounding 1.12 million requests in fiscal year 2023, an increase of nearly 28% from the previous year.

Next slide, please. OGIS recognizes the importance of communicating with our stakeholders. In particular, we value hearing from stakeholders through written public comments, which are an important way for OGIS to better understand the experiences of FOIA requesters. In fiscal year 2023, OGIS created a new tool to aid the public in submitting comments. The public comments portal that we launched in early January 2023 allows the public to submit their comments while streamlining our internal processes. The new comments portal, which receives comments in text format, ensures that all comments comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and are posted in a format accessible to people with disabilities. We also have worked to increase engagement with our stakeholders through our social media presence. In FY2023, OGIS published 45 blog posts, averaging almost one a week. We hope that if you're not already a subscriber, you'll sign up after today's meeting.

Next slide, please. We also posted 214 tweets on X, formerly Twitter, in fiscal year 2023. As a trusted neutral resource for FOIA stakeholders, OGIS uses public engagement avenues to continue important conversations about FOIA and please also follow us on our X account if you are not already doing so.

Next slide, please. We held a very successful 2023 Sunshine Week event, which consisted of a panel of representatives from multiple National Archives offices, who discussed Making Access Happen: FOIA at the National Archives. NARA staff answer questions about how we make access happen throughout the National Archives. NARA General Counsel and Chief FOIA officer Gary M. Stern moderated the program. If you missed the event, feel free to tune in at your convenience on NARA's YouTube channel and a link is included on this slide.

Next slide, please. In passing the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016, Congress mandated that the Directors of OGIS and the Office of Information Policy, OIP, at the US Department of Justice convene and co-chair the Chief FOIA Officers Council. We convened this council, its two committees, the Technology Committee and the Committee on Cross-Agency Collaboration and Innovation or COCACI and their working groups numerous times throughout fiscal year 2023, including hosting two public council meetings November 3, 2022 and April 25, 2023. Bobby [Bobak Talebian] and I also issued a joint memo on August 21, 2023 to all Chief FOIA Officers highlighting two items, FOIA.gov interoperability and the sunsetting of FOIAonline at the end of fiscal year 2023.

Next slide, please. I also chaired the FOIA Advisory Committee, which is made up of 20 members representing both the requester community and FOIA government professionals, all appointed by the archivist to study the FOIA landscape and make recommendations for improvements. You'll be hearing more about the committee's work shortly from our panel that's coming up. The fifth term of the committee began meeting in September 2022 and by June of 2023 had already passed one recommendation by a 15 to zero vote with one abstention - that OIP issued guidance that whenever an agency withholds information pursuant to Exemption 5, the agency should identify corresponding privileges and vote. The Archivist has accepted this recommendation along with 15 others earlier this month.

Next slide, please. Several years ago we created a terrific recommendations dashboard in order to keep track of the great work the committee has done since its inception in 2014. I have included a link on this slide as well as an image of the radio button you can find on our front web page, archives.gov/OGIS on the lower right-hand side.

Next slide, please. We have recently updated our dashboard to reflect the newest recommendations advanced during the 2022-2024 term. We have also reorganized the table itself to reflect the “pending” and “in progress” recommendations at the top and be sure to click on the accordion tabs further below where we have now housed “completed” FOIA Advisory Committee recommendations and “rejected” FOIA Advisory Committee recommendations.

Next slide, please. Prior to the COVID pandemic, we hosted several in-person training sessions each year that were very popular and highly successful on negotiation skills training for professionals. In the last couple of years, we have pivoted from in-person training to a virtual training option focusing on negotiation skills with requesters, particularly when communicating by telephone. In fiscal year 2023, we provided virtual negotiation training to six different federal agencies. I'm pleased to report that we're seeing increased demand for this training. If your agency is interested in this OGIS training, please contact us and let us know. We're currently trying to fill up our dance card for fiscal year 2025.

Next slide, please. OGIS published in fiscal year 2023 two FOIA Ombuds Observers, with the goal of increasing awareness of and transparency in the FOIA process. Although Ombuds Observers are designed to help primarily requesters, the publications are beneficial to both agencies and requesters as they address questions and issues frequently seen in our request for dispute resolution assistance. OGIS published a Decommissioning of FOIAonline on May 19, 2023 and Using FOIA to Access Immigration Records on September 18, 2023. Links to both are available on this slide.

Next slide, please. OGIS periodically reviews particular FOIA issues that cut across many or all agencies. To date, we have conducted 11 such issue assessments, all available in the compliance tab of our website. In fiscal year 2023, we decided to collect and catalog nearly 50 recommendations we have made in the past to aid federal agencies with FOIA compliance and customer service. We organized our recommendations and best practices in three tables, communication, management, and technology. Please visit the link on the slide for further details.

Next slide, please. OGIS published one issue assessment in fiscal year 2023 on Agency FOIA Websites. Specifically, we looked at agency FOIA websites to determine the clarity and availability of information about filing a FOIA request. Unfortunately, at the time, almost all agency FOIA websites OGIS visited had deficiencies in the information they included about FOIA, and some information was often difficult for us to find. We recommended that agencies update their websites by following FOIA Advisory Committee recommendation 2022-07, which listed 16 elements that agencies should include on their FOIA websites, including links to descriptions of the records maintained by the agencies and those that do not exist at agencies, agency records schedules, a FOIA request submission form, and contact information for agency FOIA personnel.

Also, for the eighth consecutive year, we partnered with our NARA colleagues in the Office of the Chief Records Officer to ask six FOIA related questions on the Records Management Self-Assessment or RMSA. One question which we repeated from the 2021 RMSA sought to assess how Agency Records Officers work with Chief FOIA Officers across the government. Another question asked directly about the COVID-19 pandemic's continued impact on FOIA operations, and three of the remaining questions assessed use of e-discovery in FOIA searches, while the final question asked about frequency of proactive disclosures under FOIA. I invite you all to visit our report to learn more about the agency's responses to these questions.

Next slide, please. I never want to miss the opportunity to acknowledge the extraordinary work of the OGIS staff. I am extremely grateful to the terrific OGIS team, whose work facilitating greater access and transparency to federal records and assisting the FOIA process has continued to further two of NARA's four strategic goals, Making Access Happen and Connecting with Customers. At this point, I am now going to turn the program over to my colleague Kirsten Mitchell for the next segment of our presentation today. Next slide, please.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Thank you Alina, and again, welcome everyone. The FOIA statute tasks OGIS with, “identifying procedures and methods for improving FOIA compliance." We see the work of the FOIA advisory as dovetailing very nicely with the statutory mandate. So today we're going to talk about the latest term of the FOIA Advisory Committee.

First, I'll quickly introduce Jason and Patricia and then I'll jump into questions for our panelists. Jason R. Baron has had a long and distinguished career as an expert in electronic record keeping and e-discovery, for which he is nationally and indeed internationally known. Summarizing Jason's illustrious career would take more time than we have today, but know this, Jason's legal career has spanned the evolution from computer punch cards to artificial intelligence [AI]. If the term computer punch card is foreign, Google it.

A few highlights of Jason's career. Jason was the first appointed Director of Litigation for the National Archives and Records administration, a post he held for 13 years. Before that, Jason served as a trial lawyer and senior counsel of the US Department of Justice, where he acted as lead counsel and senior counsel and trial lawyer, and he acted as lead counsel on a number of complex federal FOIA lawsuits. Jason is currently a professor of the practice at the University of Maryland's College of Information Studies. Skim the course catalog and you'll find my favorite course that Jason teaches, Record Scandals and Data Vandals: Public and Private Sector Controversies, Ripped from the Headlines.

Patricia Weth is also an attorney and has had a long and distinguished career at seven federal agencies, most recently as Deputy Disclosure Officer at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Prior to joining PBGC, Patricia has worked at the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as the Export-Import Bank, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Environmental Protection Agency. That employment history gives Patricia a leg up on what I call FOIA exemption bingo. She has applied each of FOIA's nine exemptions at one point or another during her career.

So four years ago, Jason and Patricia were on the final report working group that compiled and wrote the final report for the third term of the FOIA Advisory Committee. They both reprised the role for this most recent term, the fifth, joining David Cuillier of the University of Florida and Paul Chalmers of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation in the effort.

So before we delve into the recommendations, Patricia and Jason, I'd like to ask each of you to talk about your experience on the Committee. Patricia, you served three consecutive terms between 2018 and 2024, and Jason, you have served two non-consecutive terms from 2018 to 2020, and from 2022 to 2024. I'm particularly interested in hearing from each of you how the Committee has evolved in the years since 2018 when you were both first appointed to serve. Let's start with you, Patricia.

Patricia Weth: Thank you, Kirsten. So I think a big positive change that I've seen in the committee really is a credit to my fellow panelist and friend, Jason R. Baron. My first term on the committee as well as Jason's first term, he co-chaired the Record Management subcommittee and every time he submitted a recommendation to the full committee, he drafted a white paper to go with it, and this white paper helped the full committee members be able to mull over the recommendation and understand it further.

Additionally, Jason, at the conclusion of the term, drafted a final subcommittee report, which was really helpful, and when Jason started doing that, the other subcommittees followed suit, and so I felt like he really helped raise the bar. I feel that the white papers for each recommendation really provides insight into the creation of the recommendation. It gives the legal authority for why the recommendation was created, and it provides guidance and ideas on how to implement. And now that subcommittees are creating final reports, that's also super helpful because you have everything in a nice tidy package. The full committee report is great because it gives a succinct comment for each recommendation, but if you delve into the subcommittee reports, that's where the juicy details reside.

Some other items, I just thought that I would share lessons learned over the last three terms. We've come up with some great recommendations, really great ones that unfortunately, because of who they're directed to, they're not going to go any further. We have a couple of recommendations directed to Congress. One is to address the issue of funding for FOIA offices. Another is to expand public access to federal records in congressional support offices by creating a similar disclosure modeled after the FOIA. These haven't gone anywhere. I unfortunately don't see them going anywhere. But when we make recommendations, and then there's other recommendations that we have made to federal agencies, a committee can't require the agencies to implement these recommendations, and we can just suggest that they do. But what we do know is, when we write a recommendation, and it's directed to the Chief FOIA Officers Council or to OGIS or OIP or the Archivist, these recommendations are going to happen. They're absolutely going to happen.

Another item, positive I believe, that came out of the pandemic is our meetings are virtual. And because of this, we've been able to have some really tremendous speakers come and participate in our full committee meetings, and it's also allowed committee members to participate throughout the country. And that's all I have.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Jason, how about you?

Jason R. Baron: Well, thanks, Kirsten, for your introduction. I'm delighted to be here. Kirsten, I don't know whether you're implying that I'm very, very old in knowing about punch cards. And Patricia, you were my favorite colleague on the Advisory Committee even before your kind remarks. I would take you to dinner, but you won't accept it under the ethics rules.

The evolution of the FOIA Advisory Committee has been evident to me from the third to the fifth term for not only the reasons that the subcommittees are doing extensive written reports with commentaries on recommendations that I really urge everyone here listening and watching to look at beyond the final report, the subcommittee reports are important, but the process has been in just wonderfully organized and controlled by Alina as OGIS Director and Chair of the Committee and Kirsten as the DFO, the Designated Federal Officer, and her colleagues in urging that their structure to the two years on the term. And so, whereas, I don't know, six years ago, we might meet once a month as a subcommittee, we've been meeting, my experience was that on two subcommittees I was on, it was virtually the case that every two weeks there'd be a meeting. And then, there would be ad hoc groups within the subcommittees that were meeting even more frequently than that. So it is a commitment on the part of members of the Advisory Committee to step up and participate really actively during the two years. That's been important.

The other, we are going to talk about implementation, and I'll save what I have to say for that, except that the fact that we've reached the point in the fifth term that the Advisory Committee is looking back and evaluating how well it's been doing in terms of the impact of its recommendations, I think, is an important step in the evolution of the Committee. The last thing I'd say is that we did something important during this term, which is we went out for public comment on a model determination letter, and you'll hear more about that. And I think that's a good step forward in terms of outreach and engagement with the FOIA community and civil society generally.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Great. Thank you so much to both of you. Let's talk a little bit about the sausage making, if you will, of coming up with the recommendations in the committee subcommittees. And let me pause here with an aside for those wondering about the term sausage making. Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian statesman who oversaw the 19th century reunification of Germany, reportedly said that, quote, “if you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.” For our purposes today, laws are akin to recommendations. Patricia, how do the subcommittees work, and where do these recommendations come from?

Patricia Weth: Yes, thank you for that question. So the full committee will vote on the different subcommittees for each term. And this last term, we had an Implementation Subcommittee... Oh, excuse me, and I should also point out that, for each subcommittee, we will have two co-chairs. One is a member of the federal government, and the other is a member of the requester community. So this particular term, we had three subcommittees, Implementation Subcommittee, and the co-chairs were David Cuillier, [a] professor from University of Florida, Michael Heise from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. We had the Modernization Subcommittee co-chaired by Jason R. Barron, professor at University of Maryland, and Gorka Garcia-Malene from Department of Health and Human Services. And then, we had the Resources Subcommittee, which was co-chaired by Paul Chalmers from the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and Gbemende Johnson, a professor from the University of Georgia.

And so, once we get into our subcommittees, we work on a mission statement, and that mission statement really guides us into forming the various working groups. And different members in the subcommittee will choose a working group to work on that may be of particular interest to them, or they have expertise in certain areas. And these working groups is where the heavy lift comes in and a lot of the work comes in because the working groups are conducting research, they are doing surveys. And I do want to give a shout-out regarding the surveys. Over the last several terms, ASAP, Claire Shanley from the American Society of Access Professionals has been incredibly helpful getting the surveys out to their membership. But the working group also conducts interviews and reviews Chief FOIA Officer reports for further research.

And there's also, as Jason had mentioned earlier, the working groups meet regularly, and there's lots of discussion and collaboration. As each working group comes up with a recommendation, it goes to the subcommittee for vote. If it makes it through the subcommittee, then the recommendation will go to the full committee to be voted. And if the full committee approves it, then it makes its way into the final report.

I did want to give, and I should say, all of these full subcommittee reports for every term are located on the OGIS website, and all of the subcommittee final reports are also located on the OGIS website. I did want to give one example of sausage making that I thought is a cool story to illustrate it. One term, I was on the Time Management Subcommittee, and we had a working group where we were researching international, looking at other countries and researching their models to see if there was something that we could do to lower the time, reduce the time in responding to FOIA requests, and perhaps reduce the volume of FOIA requests. And we had a couple of members, one member on the working group who was fluent in Spanish, so they could research Spanish-speaking countries. Another was fluent in German, and he researched the German-speaking countries.

The research was fun, but at the end of the day, we ended up veering to research really that was conducted by Dr. Margaret Kwoka, articles about first-party requesters, and this was before she had written her book. So at the end of all this research, we came up with the recommendation where we recommended the agencies utilize their current statutory provisions to allow for the dissemination of records outside of the FOIA, as well as to come up with methods to provide records to first-party requesters, again, outside of the FOIA. So it was a winding journey, but it was really cool where we landed.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Great. Thank you so much for that, Patricia. And I just wanted to add that I'm so glad you brought up the co-chair structure in that each subcommittee has a government member and a non-government member. That is written into the bylaws, and it's designed to provide equal representation and fair representation of both government members and non-government members. So Jason, do you have anything to add to that, or are you ready to move on to the next question?

Jason R. Baron: I think Patricia has done a great job in summarizing this. I want to add my own metaphor here to sausage making. I would say that the secret sauce of the process is the expertise of the members. Going back to the very origin of this FOIA Advisory Committee, it was an open government National Action Plan recommendation in the Second National Action Plan. And the point of this advisory committee was to bring outside experts from the FOIA community and civil society to be engaged with representatives from government agencies.

And so, the mix that one gets on these committees results in what I think inside the beltway is called candid conversations. And that means that not everybody agrees as to what priorities there should be for recommendations, but emerging out of a process is a consensus for each subcommittee to work on during the term, a set of recommendations that make sense. And Patricia has outlined various strategies for doing that. I found most helpful interviewing individuals in positions where they're responsible for FOIA programs to get their candid take on the problems they have, delays and backlogs and resource issues, and then talking about how progress can be made. So that's my contribution, Kirsten.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Great. Thanks for that. So this question is for you, Jason. Four of the 16 recommendations fall into the category of process improvements and call on the Office of Information Policy over at the Department of Justice to issue guidance to agencies on a variety of topics. These center on actions that agencies would be urged to take on a range of FOIA topics. Please, if you would, briefly describe them, and I'm curious what agencies can do to help implement them.

Jason R. Baron: Sure. Well, you already put one of these up. It was a recommendation done in 2023, which is OIP should issue guidance urging identification of privileges invoked in redaction labels. And this particularly with respect to (b)(5), it hasn't been the case that all agencies identify in the place in the documents where the redactions are made or in a cover letter, whether redactions under (b)(5) are deliberative process or attorney client or work product or some other privilege. And so, what we recommended is to just do that, to identify what essentially the subpart of Exemption 5 that an agency is invoking. I think that's an important step forward in terms of clarifying for requesters.

The next recommendation, which we also might come back to, which is that OIP should publish the committee's model determination letter as a best practices reference to agencies. And we put out a model letter for agencies to follow, and hopefully OIP will issue some form of guidance with an attachment with that letter. It can be found as an appendix to the final report. The letter was basically constructed to standardize the process of what determination letter should be and to provide more information to requesters on such topics as the search method used by agencies, by keywords or who were contacted the custodians, and of interest, particularly to me, is when documents are fully withheld, some kind of rationale for why, what the volume is and what the reasons were. For example, an agency could say that 10 pages were fully withheld because it's an options paper of a certain component or between certain individuals rather than just say fully withheld. That gives a basis for a requester knowing why something was fully withheld and for a possible appeal. And also, the model letter encourages agencies to include some kind of express language on foreseeable harm, which is a separate independent test and certainly recognized by recent precedent in the D.C. Circuit. So that's the second of the four recommendations that, Kirsten, you wanted me to talk about.

The third one is that OIP should issue guidance encouraging agencies to proactively offer requesters the opportunity to discuss their request with an agency representative. I think DOJ has done a great job over the past years in suggesting to agencies that they reach out to requesters if there's a way to clarify requests. But this recommendation goes a step further in recommending that agencies proactively, simply say to all requesters in response, either in an acknowledgement letter or somewhere early in the process where agencies reach the FOIA request in a queue or whatever, to suggest that if a requester wishes to have a conversation with an agency, here is the person and the contact information for doing so. Some individuals are intimidated by agencies and by the process, but there are really good people at every agency who can engage and do wish to try to clarify and narrow requests so that the request can be dealt with in a more timely manner. So this would be proactive on the agency's part to say to everybody, "Please contact us." And not everybody will, but some will, and that's great.

And the last of the four recommendations that you wanted me to talk about was one that says OIP should issue guidance encouraging agencies to provide requesters an interim response consisting of a small sample of documents. So we live in a world of greater and greater volume of records and a complexity of requests. And for those requests that might involve a huge number of documents, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, the question is, what kind of strategy can be employed?

And what this recommendation says is that it encourages agencies to work with requesters on interim responses where the requester is suggesting a search methodology, the agency and the requester agree to that. There's a search done, there's a sample of documents, a small sample, maybe just a hundred or hundreds of documents out of what might be 50,000 hits or more. And the agency fully review that sample, provide the requester with whatever documents can be released, or a reason for partially withholding or full withholding. And that way, a requester has an earlier look at what a request is, and there could be a further conversation about narrowing the request further, closing it out, or whether the agency provides appeal rights at that point in an interim response or not. But the protocol would be sampling and some early look at what has really been requested. And I think that's a really good step forward for agencies dealing with complex requests. Kirsten?

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Great. Thank you so much, Jason. I'm so glad too that you brought up the earlier seeking public comment on the model determination letter. We had some really great comments from the public, and I knew the subcommittee took those very seriously in making the final recommendation, so I thought that was a really great process for the committee. So this next question is for you, Patricia. Four of the recommendations revolve around staffing, and more specifically, making hiring easier in the FOIA world. That's a fresh area for the [FOIA] Advisory Committee, which I found to be quite interesting. Briefly, what are the recommendations, and how did they evolve?

Patricia Weth: Well, I think real credit goes to the co-chairs of the Resource Subcommittee, Paul Chalmers and Gbemende Johnson. Research was done, and looking at FOIA.gov, they saw that the backlog for FOIA requests had gone over 200,000 FOIA requests. And after conducting a survey, it was noted that really staffing was the resource that federal government offices needed. Also, after conducting interviews with FOIA officials throughout the government, it was found that a lot of the concerns for FOIA offices was staff retention, employee expertise, and filling open positions. So the Resource Subcommittee got really creative, and there is four staffing recommendations that came out of the Resource Subcommittee. And the first was to have the Office of Personnel Management add an 0306 Government Information Specialist job series to the direct hiring list, and that is within OPM's authority. And if they do this, this will allow agencies to hire qualified applicants quicker because currently the process takes very long, and often the different offices lose the applicants to other positions, sometimes in the private sector because they can hire a lot quicker.

The second staffing recommendation was that the Chief FOIA Officers Council, through COCACI, the Committee on Cross-Agency Collaboration and Innovation, should organize agencies to participate in a talent pool posting through OPM. In conducting the research the subcommittee came to find that there was a new recommendation allowing agencies to pool hiring efforts for open positions, and this is through OPM. They will organize the pool hiring effort, but for it to work, they need at least five agencies to participate in it, and they have done this in the past with data scientists and they were quite successful. So keeping fingers crossed, [we] hope this is something we can do in the future.

The third staffing recommendation is [that] the Chief FOIA Officers Council through COCACI, the Committee on Cross Collaboration and Innovation, should create and maintain a database on its website of position descriptions in the Government Information Specialist, GIS, job series at various grades. For COCACI to have this kitty or treasure trove, if you will, of various agencies position descriptions, it would be extraordinarily helpful for federal government agencies. Most of the time, we have to ask through our network to get examples. I know I have pinged you a couple of times, Kirsten, to get these and other colleagues. So to have a one-stop shop where we can go and utilize this and also be able to make an argument with our HR [Human Resources] to get GIS higher grades.

And then the last recommendation is that the General Services Administration [GSA] should create a labor category on the GSA schedule for FOIA contractors to facilitate efficient procurement for agencies, if an agency determines it needs contractor support. So I've been down this route before and the GSA has various categories for FOIA support contracts and you really have to go through all of these. Sometimes the various contract series don't have the staff that you're looking for to help with a FOIA backlog. So if there was one description for FOIA contract support, that would be helpful as well as for FOIA IT [information technology] systems and software. In the Resources Subcommittee final report, you will see those very descriptions.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Great. Thank you so much for outlining those for us. So two of the recommendations center on technology and recommend action for the Chief FOIA Officers Council, which is another body in the FOIA landscape. Unlike the FOIA Advisory Committee, which has representatives from both government and non-government, the council comprises all government members. So I'd like for you to talk about these two recommendations. And Patricia, I'm going to start with you. There is a recommendation on a shared FOIA case management system/repository. What does that recommendation seek to do and why is it directed at the Chief FOIA Officers Council?

Patricia Weth: The Resources Subcommittee, while conducting research, had heard from various agencies that they were not happy with their FOIA case management system, that there were significant inefficiencies, that agency labor hours…it was costing agency labor hours due to the implementation and maintaining the system as well as work stoppage issues. There was this financial cost also with the decommission of FOIAonline, the central record repository, that requesters relied upon was no longer available. We heard from the requester community on that note as well. So the Resources Subcommittee decided to make a recommendation that the Chief FOIA Officers form a working group to analyze the interest and need for a shared FOIA case management system and a central record repository for use by agencies and the public, and the reason that this recommendation goes to the Chief FOIA Officers Council is because we know that the Chief FOIA Officers Council will follow through on it.

Initially, the Resources Subcommittee was looking at drafting a recommendation directly to OMB [Office of Management and Budget] to have OMB create the system. But as we deliberated and discussed, it was decided that we needed to create a business case for the shared federal agency FOIA case management system and central record repository. And by having a working group study it, we would have a white paper that could be provided to the Chief FOIA Officers Council that, depending upon what the working group comes out with in their white paper, could perhaps convince OMB to create this shared FOIA case management system and record repository.

We directed it to the Chief FOIA Officers Council because looking under the FOIA, we noted that one of the duties for the Chief FOIA Officers Council is to develop recommendations for increasing compliance and efficiency under the FOIA, as well as identify, develop, and coordinate initiatives to increase transparency. Along with that recommendation, the working group is required to complete its white paper within two years of its creation and deliver it to the Chief FOIA Officers Council.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Great. Well, thank you for that, Patricia. Jason, I'm going to turn to you now for the second of the recommendations on that center on technology. What does the recommendation on requests for information, also known as RFIs, seek to do and why is that one also directed at the Chief FOIA Officers Council?

Jason R. Baron: So this recommendation says the Chief FOIA Officers Council Technology Committee and interested agencies should publish requests for information, RFIs, on the subject of artificial intelligence tools and techniques as an aid to FOIA processing. Well, this is a subject that I've been evangelizing on for close to two decades. The use of AI, use of machine learning in e-discovery is a well-known process for searching through large volumes of records. What is different in the FOIA world, it makes it interesting and something that's a challenge is to use these techniques, not only to search but to filter, to find documents that are subject to the various exemptions within the FOIA.

There's been research work done on Exemption 5 and there are tools that are out there in the private sector, and so there for that and other exemptions. The [FOIA Advisory] Committee thought that it would be useful to have the Technology Committee look at what might be a standardized way of going out with a request for information on the part of the government to the private sector to industry and to have an engagement where they can showcase their various software and services that would help greatly expedite searching through large volumes of records.

The Technology Committee, we heard from Eric Stein, who I believe co-chairs the committee or has in recent years. He gave a presentation to our [FOIA] Advisory Committee this year, as the great work that is going on at the State Department, using machine learning to declassify records as well as thinking about moving forward with the FOIA process for there. There certainly could be interested agencies that pursue RFIs as well, but the Technology Committee has the expertise to come together to do a generic RFI for the government. We thought they did and we hope that they'll move forward on the recommendation.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Great. Thank you, Jason. What I love about so many of these recommendations that you all have been talking about is that they are obviously about FOIA, but they're really branching out and touching other genres, if you will, staffing and hiring and technology. So really interesting, interesting stuff. I just wanted to mention for everyone who's tuning in today that all of the FOIA Advisory Committee meetings are available on the National Archives YouTube channel. So if you wish to go back and listen to anything, you may do that and the transcripts are available as well. So Jason, three of the recommendations revolve around implementation of past committee recommendations. So the Implementation [Sub]committee went back and looked at all of the recommendations that had been passed prior to this term. Can you talk a little bit about what challenges you all discovered for the implementation of recommendations and what roles should the advisory committee play in that?

Jason R. Baron: Well, sure. So there are three recommendations from the Implementation Subcommittee, which was chaired by David Cuillier, and the first of which was that OGIS and OIP should follow up with selected agencies and other government entities in an effort to increase compliance with past recommendations of the FOIA Advisory Committee. Well, there were over 50 recommendations at the time, and now we have 67. Certainly, this is a very, very large task and what the Implementation Subcommittee did in its report - which is well worth reading because the final report essentially gives a pointer to the priority recommendations are given in the Implementation Subcommittee report, which has appendices and has explanations about the work of the subcommittee - basically, a pointer to a number of priority items where the subcommittee and ultimately, endorsed by the full committee, thought that there could be progress made. \

The dashboard that OGIS has is a wonderful construct, we'll talk about that a little bit more, it is divided up into actions that are completed, in-progress, pending and with respect to completed items. What was certainly apparent to some of us in starting out on this journey of what we should do with implementation is to look at the actions that OGIS and OIP have completed but may not have been complied with, fully executed on for whatever reasons by a large number of government agencies. For example, some of the priority recommendations that this subcommittee put forward as something for OGIS and OIP to look at would be agencies issuing an annual reminder to employees of FOIA obligations in a survey that the committee did. Very few agencies seemed to be engaged in doing those annual reminders. We noticed mandatory training on the part of agencies on FOIA subjects across the board, not just for FOIA staff, but for others, was something that had not been fully implemented, although there's lots of training done throughout the government for FOIA staff. We actually had a recommendation that we haven't specifically discussed here on that going forward. But the Implementation Subcommittee thought that was an important matter too for OGIS and OIP to really look at, and there are many others [like] FOIA logs in structured data format like .CSV or performance plans incorporating FOIA. But there's a set of what we considered priority items that OGIS and OIP could look at. Obviously, it's too much to expect a continuous review of every recommendation all the time to see what's happening in government, but there could be a focus. So that's the first of the three recommendations. The others, more narrowband. 

The second one is that OIP should include one or more specific questions in Chief FOIA Officer reports requesting agencies to report on their activities that they have implemented consistent with selected FOIA Advisory Committee recommendations. OIP has been very willing to incorporate a number of questions that OGIS has put forward based on recommendations of this Advisory Committee for agencies in the past. We suggested a more robust effort, maybe a section of the OIP annual report could be devoted to asking a series of questions of agencies related to some of our recommendations or pinpoint individual recommendations that come out more recently that haven't been asked before. We have a number of options, but we found that when agencies are on their own responding to the OIP annual report, first of all, they do a great service to the public for being transparent in responding to those questions and they're relatively concrete. So it would be helpful to tie in what this Advisory Committee's recommendations are into the obligation to report by agencies back to DOJ.

So that's the second, and the third, the FOIA advisory committee should create a working group to study the implementation of past recommendations. Essentially for that, what we're proposing is that for the next term of the [FOIA] Advisory Committee, and perhaps after that, as a standing matter, some ad hoc group, not necessarily a subcommittee, but some small group of representative members from the advisory committee continue the work of the implementation subcommittee that was started this year to focus on frankly how well the committee is doing in terms of having an impact on the executive branch in terms of where our recommendations stand, what has been implemented, what agencies can do to make better progress on some of those.

And that should be an ongoing matter. It could also be that that subgroup acts as a clearinghouse to do specific projects research on behalf of other members of the committee as a whole. So if that's adopted for the next term and I hope it would be, then hopefully, there'll be further attention made, not just on making recommendations but actually seeing how they are complied with.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Thank you, Jason. So now a fun question. I'll turn it over to you first, Patricia, and then we'll have Jason answer this question. But of all of these 16 recommendations that the committee made, I'm wondering which one is your favorite and why?

Patricia Weth: My favorite is the last one that Jason just talked about and that's the FOIA Advisory Committee should create a working group to study the implementation of past recommendations. To date, we have 67 recommendations from five different FOIA Advisory Committees. Those are a lot of recommendations. As a lawyer, I give recommendations all day long. Some of my clients may accept them, others will completely ignore them. But there's some really great recommendations here, and I think that the working group during the course of study can come up with ideas for implementation, but also perhaps get the word out more about these recommendations so they'll gain more attention and traction.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Great. Jason?

Jason R. Baron: It's hard to choose which one of these is my favorite. They're like having, which is your favorite child? Let me just say that I spent 33 years in government, but let's be candid here on this webinar. I'm also a FOIA requester, as an academic, I had 25 requests put in two years ago, only half of which have been responded to. So I am speaking on behalf of a public interest group, larger FOIA community, public interest civil society, saying that there is a well-known frustration in dealing with the FOIA process and hopefully the work of this Advisory Committee can help as well as other the work of OGIS and the Technology Committee and whatnot.

What I mentioned before about interim sampling, I think is important to me. I was very much involved with the evolution of Capstone at the National Archives, which has resulted in millions of emails being preserved permanently for senior Capstone officials at agencies across the government. Some 250 entities are now saving high-level officials emails on a permanent basis and everyone else's emails for seven years. For those agencies that have signed up under Capstone and that means millions of documents. It behooves agencies to think about ways to work with requesters to find responsive records, find the needles, the responsive needles in really large haystacks that are growing and will be growing.

Just think about the world five or ten years from now. The idea of an early look at what requests mean and engaging with requesters, having a more active process for those requests that do involve more complex searches, I think, it's very important to me. It models the experience of lawyers in the e-discovery community and potentially in the future, it does involve also using machine learning to combine the RFI recommendation and other recommendations for this committee, and so that I would single out as my favorite.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Great. Thank you. So we have just a few minutes, so I'm just going to ask one last question and that is what...well I guess two questions:  what challenges will the next term of the committee face and do you have any advice for the 2024 to 2026 term of the FOIA Advisory Committee? I'll start with you, Patricia.

Patricia Weth: Okay. Well, the challenge I see is with all these recommendations is perhaps they're duplicate recommendations. I think that's why I feel it's so important to have that working group study the past recommendations. I feel it could guide the 2024 to 2026 FOIA Advisory Committee. So advice for the next FOIA Advisory Committee. I would say that the OGIS website is your friend. Before my first term, I went there, I read past committee reports, I looked at committee meetings, and now you also have the recommendations dashboard, which is helpful. I will also say one of the things that came out of my last three terms as well as my career is that your best resources are people. Alina Semo and Kirsten Mitchell are so helpful. They're in all the subcommittee meetings. It's not their first rodeo. They can give suggestions for contacts and really tell you about research that's been conducted in the past, so it will save you from reinventing the wheel. You can also turn to your current committee members. They have been such a great resource for me and also to former members. You can reach out to them and they're always willing to help. I would say when a committee member offers to help you, they really mean it. I know from my white paper, I had assistance from actually my two folks on this panel as well as Alina and other people and it really made the recommendations so much better. Your best resource are people. 

I would also suggest that they'd be open to new ideas. Many of the recommendations never occurred to me before, but boy, there's been some brilliant ideas that come out of here. I think if you're open to new ideas, it does help you develop empathy for federal government agencies and for the requester community, the different struggles that both camps have. I would also suggest that you begin your research or white paper early because two years fly by really, really quickly. I would also say that you're here. You have a common goal. The requesters want their records in a timely manner. As Jason just mentioned, he's been waiting two years, and the agencies really want to provide these records. We just sometimes lack the resources to do so.

I would suggest that committee members work together. People have great ideas and people are very passionate in their opinions, but we are all here for the common goal. Everyone has a voice and everyone has great ideas. I will say it has been a great honor for me to serve on this committee and it is one of the highlights of my career. It has been also an honor to work with the various committee members and I feel I can call them my friend and I include my two panelists, Kirsten and Jason, as well as Alina. Thank you.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Thank you for that, Patricia. Jason, we'll close out with you. Any advice for the upcoming term of the FOIA Advisory Committee?

Jason R. Baron: My first advice is you're going to work hard and Alina will make sure of that. My second thing is that you have to, Alina and Kirsten, make everyone on the next term of the committee watch this webinar so that they listen to what we are saying here. What I will say in addition to Patricia's remarks, which I fully endorse, is first a substantive comment and then a process comment. The substantive is that we are in a world of AI. The hot topic for the past year or so has been gen [generative] AI with ChatGPT and others and we acknowledge that in the modernization subcommittee report at the end observing that this wave is coming for the government. I would suggest that somewhere in the discussions for the next term, the committee confronts that further than what we've just done with an RFI or just making a general recommendation to the archivist to consider AI. That's the first thing, and I'm very much interested in pushing that substantive topic. 

On a process level, I think a reader of the final report at the end with the observations that the full committee makes and the implementation subcommittee has made similar observations in its final part of its report is that we need to reimagine in the next term...the committee needs to reimagine the process of coming up with recommendations. At the current rate... This is like a Malthusian comment about world population or something. At the current rate that we're going, we're going to have 100 recommendations by a few terms from now and that's a lot to process on the part of 300 components of the executive branch.

There are diminishing returns if you get to the hundredth recommendation. We have been churning out recommendations 15 to 20 for the last few terms. We need to think about that. The committee needs to think about that going forward. There are other strategies to employ for making progress in terms of engagement, looking at both past recommendations going forward. One suggestion that's made in the report is that the committee might wish to do further outreach to OMB and to agency heads to think about ways to empower the committee's recommendations for OMB to issue some sort of edict that supports the work of the committee. I would recommend the committee give serious thought to that in thinking about what it wants to accomplish and what the impact is. Lastly, I want to channel something that Alex Howard on our committee was pushing for two years, which is a greater sense of engagement with the public, with the FOIA community and civil society at large.

I think the committee...it's noted here in various of the recommendations as well as at the end of the observations of the final report, that the committee should consider doing a greater degree of outreach to solicit opinions, thoughts, comments on how to improve FOIA. We had some critics of the FOIA process come in. We've done that in terms of our advisory group from the public interest community this year, I would encourage more of that be done. There's outreach in two ways, inside the government to others that are in places, positions that might end up helping the committee have a greater impact as well as looking outside of government with a further engagement. I think those are all doable and I really look forward to keeping up with what the committee does in the future.

Kirsten B. Mitchell: Great. Well, thank you both, Jason and Patricia. We are at time, but I really appreciate you being on this panel and also your service to the FOIA Advisory Committee and to FOIA itself. I've really enjoyed working with both of you this past term. I am going to turn it back over to Alina for the rest of the meeting. Alina, the floor is yours.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Kirsten. What a terrific panel. I hope everyone can join me in thanking Jason and Patricia again, and Kirsten for doing a great moderator job. Really, really appreciate it. We have now reached the public comments portion of our meeting. Congress has instructed us that in conducting our meeting that is open to the public on the review and reports by the office, we shall allow interested persons to appear and present oral or written statements at the meeting. We will open our telephone lines momentarily to give attendees the opportunity to present oral statements. As I noted at the top of our meeting, if you're watching us via NARA YouTube, you will not be able to provide oral comments during our public comment section, but you can certainly always submit written comments which we're going to continue receiving until August 24th [23rd]. As we noted in our federal register notice, each individual caller will be limited to three minutes each.

An important reminder with regard to oral comments, please be aware this is not the right time or venue to ask questions about a specific FOIA request or a specific issue you are experiencing that is unique to you. If you have issues directly related to a FOIA request you are facing, please email us at ogis@nara.gov. While we're happy to have all points of view shared, please respect your fellow attendees. Keep the conversation civil and on topic. I'm first going to turn over to my colleague Dan Levenson, who has been monitoring the Webex chat. I believe we have received a few questions that have come in from our frequent commenter, Mr. Robert Hammond. Dan, do you want to read those questions out loud? Mr. Hammond has asked me to address them.

Daniel Levenson: Sure. Absolutely. Mr. Hammond's first question is, "Is it true that OGIS has conducted no formal mediations in 2023? If not, how many?" He also asked, "What is your oldest open mediation case?" And claims that his are years old and counting. Then, he asks, "OGIS Ombuds reports do not comport with the FOIA statute. Why?" Finally, he advocates for a recommendation. He gives a recommendation for a top level line item budget for FOIA and all agency budgets. Those are Mr. Hammond's questions and comments.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thanks, Dan. Let me just address each in turn, no formal mediation. In giving us the mandates that Congress gave us, specifically to offer mediation services to resolve disputes between persons making requests under FOIA and administrative agencies as a non-exclusive alternative to litigation, Congress didn't define what kind of mediation services we should be providing, whether they should be formal mediation or more informal mediation services, which is what OGIS has gravitated towards over the years. As I've explained in the past, we conduct shuttle-like diplomacy mediation where we engage with the requester hear, what their concerns are. We then go and talk to agency representatives to find out from their perspective what's happening and then try to act as a facilitator to help each side better understand what the other side is experiencing. I cannot say at all that we conducted any formal mediation. We conducted over 5,000 requests for assistance in the last year, as I stated earlier.

The second question, I believe, if not, how many(?) I don't understand that question. I believe I gave the statistic earlier that we had over 5,500 cases that came into OGIS in the last fiscal year. Those involved requests for ombuds services as well as facilitations that I've just described. Our oldest open mediation case actually is nothing prior to fiscal year 2023. The oldest case was logged in on January 5, 2023. We have no open mediation cases prior to that time. Mr. Hammond, if you would like to find out about the status of your cases, you know how to reach us. Please go ahead and do that. I am not sure I also understand the question of [whether] OGIS ombuds reports do not comport with the FOIA statute, if that is a reference to our annual report. Again, I cite to the statute that requires us to provide a report on the findings of information that we have reviewed and identified regarding compliance.

I've described that already in our issue assessments that we covered last year. We have also included in our report, the number of times each agency engaged in dispute resolution with either the assistance of OGIS or the FPL [FOIA Public Liaison]. I refer everyone to Appendix A of our annual report where we list that. This past year, we did not issue any advisory opinions nor any legislative and regulatory recommendations. That certainly doesn't mean that we have not done so in the past and will not do so in the future. In fiscal year 2023, we just did not have those. I believe those are answers to the questions Mr. Hammond has raised. Thank you very much, Mr. Hammond for those questions. We really appreciate that. Dan, any other chat comments in Webex chat?

Daniel Levenson: Mr. Hammond made a follow-up comment about his particular cases, but as he said, he can reach out to us.

Alina M. Semo: Yes, we would appreciate that. Thank you. He knows where to find us. Okay. No other questions from any other attendee?

Daniel Levenson: There was a question about where they could find the model determination letter. I referred people on Webex to the Modernization Subcommittee's final report and the model determination letter is on page 34 of that on our website, as you said earlier.

Alina M. Semo: Great. Thank you so much. Appreciate that. Okay. Let's go ahead and open our telephone lines. I know there's one attendee who's eager to provide comments. Candice, please provide instructions again to our listeners for how to provide oral comments via telephone.

Producer: Absolutely. As we begin the public comment period, please click the raise hand icon located at the bottom of your screen to join the queue. If your audio is not through Webex today, you may press pound two on your telephone keypad to join the queue. You'll be given three minutes to make your remarks. You'll hear a tone when your line is unmuted. At which time, please state your name and affiliation, then make your comments. Again, that's the raise hand icon if your audio is through Webex or pound two on your telephone keypad if your audio is through the teleconference. At this time, we have just one hand in queue. There will be a timer here on the right side of your screen. It will begin counting down as soon as you start your remarks and you'll hear a five-second warning when your time is up. Jackson, please go ahead.

Jackson: This is Jackson. The Archivist and OGIS director impermissibly refused to respond to requests for ADA reasonable accommodation to allow members of the public including hearing and speech-impaired persons to participate contemporaneously in today's discussions through the YouTube chat. Unfiltered and time-stamped comments would be preserved for the thousands who will view the YouTube video of this meeting live and later. OGIS false ombuds reports. Despite numerous prior complaints, OGIS continues to knowingly submit materially false reports that do not comport with the FOIA statute, which mandates that OGIS report “the number of times each agency engaged in dispute resolution with the assistance of the Office of Government Information Services or the FOIA Public Liaison.” OGIS instead impermissibly reports “5,400 requests for assistance.” In U.S.C. section 1001 defines a false official statement as whomever "falsifies, conceals or covers up by any trick, scheme, or divisive material fact." Was 18 U.S.C Section 1001 applied here?

OGIS is also tasked with FOIA oversight compliance, yet OGIS did not conduct any compliance reviews in 2023. Such reviews in prior years were statistically insignificant. The issue of exploding litigation costs and fees, agencies have only themselves to blame for prolonging litigation hoping that litigants will run out of money and other operative bad behavior. Litigation costs should consider DOJ costs of individual employee legal representation related to a case on civilian employee individual legal representation. If you were an agency employee or a DOJ attorney involved in a messy litigation where someone may have helped with or persuaded inaccurate sworn declaration submitted in evidence and relied upon and/or where records were altered or 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. Before a fee petition is submitted to the court where a warrant of attorney fees may trigger referral to a special counsel, should DOJ notify all agency persons and DOJ attorneys who may have been implicated by an agency counsel who obtained separate DOJ legal representation for himself implicating others, thereby creating a conflict of interest?

DOJ OIP, U.S. Associate Attorney General [Benjamin] Mizer, should agency employees when DOJ attorneys endowed, seek to be shown any such correspondence? On the issue of destruction of FOIA records, agency records managers who may have been given and then submitted inaccurate information to NARA regarding complaints of unauthorized destruction or alteration of records may also seek individual legal representation due to conflicts of interest and to correct such falsities. See the America First legal case concerning unauthorized records disposition cases involving the Archivist of the United States. Case number 1:24 CV1092 in the District Court of Columbia. See demands for relief in that case. Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Jackson, thank you for your comments. We appreciate that. Candice, is there anyone else waiting on the telephone to make any comments?

Producer: There's no one else. Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Dan, just double-checking. No other chat comments, correct?

Daniel Levenson: There are no other chat comments.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Well, great. I think we are pretty much able to wrap up on time today then. Next slide, please. Thank you, Candice. You already flipped. A reminder that we will continue to accept written comments through August 24th [23rd]. We invite you to submit those through our public comments portal. Next slide, please. We ask you to keep in touch with us. I want to extend again my thanks to our terrific panelists today, Patricia Weth and Jason R. Baron, as well as to our moderator, Kirsten Mitchell, always doing a terrific job. Thanks again to all of you who have joined us for our annual open meeting today. Please keep in touch... Families remain safe, healthy, and resilient. With that, we are closing our meeting today. Thank you very much for joining us.

Producer: That concludes our conference. Thank you for using Intellor Events. You may now disconnect.