Chief FOIA Officers Council Meeting - October 14, 2020

ladies and gentlemen welcome and thank you for joining today's chief foyer officers council annual meeting before we begin please ensure you have opened the chat panel by using the associated icon located at the bottom of your screen please note all audio lines have been muted until the q a portion of the meeting you are welcome to submit written questions throughout the meeting which will be addressed at the q and a session of the meeting to submit a written question select all panelists from the drop down menu in the chat panel then enter your message in the message box provided and sent as a reminder this conference is being recorded if you require technical assistance please send a chat to the event producer with that i will turn the meeting over to alina seema director office of government and information services helena please go ahead all right thanks michelle good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today for our very first uh ever virtual chief boy officers council meeting and possibly not our last i hope everyone has been staying healthy safe and well i am alina simo director of the office of government information services and co-chair of the council let me introduce my co-chair bobby toledian director of the office of information policy at the department of justice thank you elena uh it's a pleasure to be here with everyone today uh welcome and thank you for joining us we will be hearing again from bobby shortly with some opening remarks on behalf of the principal deputy associate attorney general who unfortunately could not join us today we have a full agenda today in a minute you will hear welcoming remarks from archivist of the united states david fario bobby will provide a brief introduction on behalf of the principal deputy associate attorney general claire murray and he will provide a few updates followed by a presentation from me about some updates on the boy advisory committee and we will be soliciting volunteers among our federal audience for the formation of a new committee so please stay tuned for that uh we will also be inviting questions and discussion uh at the midpoint of our of our presentation today and you will definitely want to stay tuned in for a lively presentation from the co-chairs of the technology committee eric stein and michael cerec we have reserved time at the end of today's session to receive public comments we will be opening the telephone lines at the end of our meeting for any oral questions and comments from our non-government uh friends and colleagues we are monitoring the chat on webex and we will read out loud any substantive questions or comments and we are also simultaneously live-streaming today's meeting on the nara youtube channel and we'll also read out loud any substantive questions or comments so with that i would like to introduce archivist to the united states david perrio first and welcome remarks david over to you thanks elena good morning and welcomed um from one 700 pennsylvania avenue where we would ordinarily be meeting and i look forward to the time when we do actually welcome you to this building again i'm proud of the role that the national archives plays in this important government-wide council of senior official tasks with ensuring foia compliance as many of you in attendance know the federal foia ombudsman's office is housed right here in the national archives where every day oge's staff works to make access happen and connect with customers the timing and agenda for today's meeting form a nice confluence 55 years ago this week the us senate passed a bill to amend the administrative procedure act by clarifying and protecting the right of the public to information as senator mike mansfield of montana noted on the senate floor on october 13 1965 the balance between disclosing and withholding government information is not easy success he said lies in providing a workable formula which encompasses balances and protects all interests yet places emphasis on the fullest responsible disclosure the bill would go on to pass the house in june 1966 and the next month foyo was signed into law 55 years after the senate passed the original foia the challenge of balancing openness and secrecy continues added to the mix are the unprecedented challenges of covet 19 and the telework environment in which many of you and your agency's foia processing staff members have been operating no doubt many of you have not been to your government offices since early march later this morning we will hear an interagency discussion about success and challenges to foia processing during the covet pandemic challenges that certainly weren't foreseen when the council last met in 2019. i look forward to a discussion by the chief foia officers council regarding one of the 22 recommendations that the foia advisory committee sent to me earlier this year the advisory committee now in its fourth term is composed of government professionals and members of the requester community who may appoint to study the federal foia landscape and advise me on improvements to foia administration recommendation 16 which i support is for the chief foia officers council to create a committee of cross-agency collaboration in innovation i look forward to the committee's creation today and collaborative and innovative work in the coming months collaboration and innovation are key to giving senior leaders and their staffs the tools they need to meet senator mansfield's definition of success balancing all interests while emphasizing responsible disclosure please take care and stay safe and i i turn the meeting back to bobby to libyan thank you ms fario very much appreciate that and um thank you all again for joining and uh congratulations to all the agencies on closing out fiscal year 20. i wanted to pass along other regards of the principal deputy attorney general principal deputy associate attorney general of the united states uh miss claire murray who very much wanted to be here to kick off our first meeting in the new fiscal year the department of justice as you know takes very seriously our role in encouraging government white compliance with the foia and the chief and as the chief boy officer of the department the principal deputy associate attorney general appreciates the challenges chief 4 officers face managing high volumes of requests that have become increasingly complex while also managing new workplace precautions and realities the department's voice guidelines stress and experience has proven the important leadership role chiefly officers play in the success of hawaii administration that is why the work of this council is so important to help us ensure that agencies are making use of all available resources to improve foreign administration and that we together find new ways to enhance our ability to provide this vital service to our democracy ms murray would like to thank all agencies for joining us for today and for your continued efforts in advancing government wifi administration and i just want to thank ms murray for her message and her continued support with that uh i had some updates that i wanted to provide from oip um on some of the work that we're doing and the resources available to agencies so let me start with the next slide i thought i'd just highlight some reporting updates initiatives of foia.gov and make sure to highlight the resources available to your agencies from oip to help in your foia administration next slide so starting off before your reporting next slide just this uh just uh just this past summer we issued as we concluded the 2020 uh reporting season by issuing our summary and assessment of the 2020 chief poi officer reports uh the sumner assessment reflects a number of key milestones that agencies should and have been focusing on in their foia administration and i encourage agencies to review the summary uh and references to many of the agencies work in that summary as well as the agency's individual reports next slide accompanying the summary we issued guidance based off our review of the reports on areas for agencies to continue to focus on for uh improvement uh we emphasized uh timeliness reducing backlogs um and expedited pro responding to expert property requests especially in light of challenges that uh unique challenges that agencies have faced in 2020 and now are facing uh in 2020 and 2021 going into 2021. um uh in particular during this reporting proc the 2020 cfr reporting uh process agencies have faced a long government shutdown which impacted processing time so we did account for that and agencies explained some of the a lot of successful reasons how uh they were able to overcome some of those challenges uh in 2021 and now obviously uh um with the the recent pandemic a lot of um in the new workplace precautions agencies have had to adjust and re-emphasizing the guidance that we issued in may regarding agencies and administrations in light of kobe 19 many different ways agencies can mitigate some of the challenges that they face uh working in a telework environment and so encourage you to continuously to take a look at that guidance and reach out to us if you have any questions or if we can give any assistance in the unique challenges that your agency might face um as your as we all work through uh the new realities of the workplace next slide so as uh that reporting season has concluded we have now issued the chief warranty report guidelines for the 2020 cfo report we wanted to highlight a number of key dates uh as the empire years all right just similar to last year we have divided the reporting requirements between large volume agencies namely those agencies that receive more than 50 requests or medium to large volume agencies and agencies that was received 50 requests or less those agencies that receive more than 50 requests are required to provide their report to oip by january 11th and those agencies receiving less than 50 are not required to report but are encouraged to report if there are efforts that they have undertaken that they would uh like to discuss or challenges they're not reflected in their annual foia report all agencies and then we will work with your agency to review um review and finalize the report and all ages cfr reports are to be posted by march 15 2021 uh sunshine week next slide so we continue that from the beginning of the cfo report to continue to focus on five key areas of foia administration the new guidelines do the same and so we're focusing on uh toy administration and applying the presumption of openness in court administration ensuring that your agency has effective systems in place to respond to foia requests improving and increasing proactive disclosures increasing the utilization of technology and improving timeliness and reducing backlogs next slide while the main areas of focus uh remain the same we have as you have throughout the years adjusted the questions to reflect uh uh maturation of agency spoiler programs our interactions with the public as well as with agencies and obviously new challenges in the reality that have occurred since the last reporting or new issues that have occurred since the last recording period so for the 2020 fixed island just to highlight some of the new questions that we're asking agencies to include in their report more a little bit more focus on way of training and its chief boy officer's role in providing that uh training to their agency foia professionals and agency uh questions focusing on standard having standard operating procedures and reviewing those standard operating procedures a survey question on agencies that have a large volume of first-party requests and whether some of those requests can be handled or have we've explored handling them through alternative needs or access updates uh on agencies uh review and updates of their foyer regulation and of course this year we're very much interested in continuing to hear from you the impacts of coven how you've adjusted challenges and success stories that we can leverage across agencies next one the counterpart to the the chief warrior officer report is obviously the annual report that has all the detailed statistics uh of your agency's spoil administration during a fiscal year uh the deadline for agency annual four reports to the department of justice is november 16th um and then as we receive your reports we will work with you um to do that at validation and uh finalize them all agency reports are required to be completed on your uh posted on your website and employee.gov by march 1 2021 we have updated the department of justice anal four report handbook uh that was posted just earlier last week um with uh addressing some of the addressing some elements of new questions as well as uh streamlining it so it's it it's more accessible and um covering the new department of justice tool employee.gov that agencies are going to be using this year to submit their annual foia report which will hopefully provide which is designed to provide a more efficient way of producing the report as well as additional data validation in fact tomorrow uh tomorrow morning we are having a training on the annual foyer report um so if your agency uh uh point of contact for the annual four report has not registered or needs to have that training please let us know it is at capacity but we will add on any agency pocs that we uh that that need this uh training in order to complete your agency's annual hoi report and of course if needed we can schedule another session as well next slide some just re updates on foia.gov um as many of you know 40. launcher 2010 as a central website for agency toy administration for the public to know how the foia works and access all the nfl report data in next slide and in 2018 we launched the national foia portal which allows requesters to make requests to any of the agencies from 40.gov but in addition to that provides a wealth of knowledge particularly to each agency and on how the foia works including agency your agency's foia regulations a standardized template for response providing requests uh links to your foia library uh and so on since that launch we were excited to continue to get user feedback both from the public and agencies and i've been enhancing the site based off that feedback uh there are some examples of those uh enhancements here i won't go through all of them um but i would like to highlight some of the new things that we've been doing next slide so upcoming enhancement we're excited about is a revamp of the annual report data pages of the quarry.gov we are combining uh the basic and advanced reporting functions and just in a very much more streamlined way where you can more easily access and compare and search the annual report data that each of your agencies report each year by against your agency or against other agencies the results can be viewed in troy.gov or downloaded in an open format on the csv uh it'll also be much more it'll be mobile friendly next slide so here's just a preview um you can see the old old format on the left and the new format on on the right and so hopefully we will have this deployed soon for both agencies and the public to be able to use next slide we're also excited to implement and start using uh new tools that are going to permit us to gather more information more detailed information about agencies and the public's use of floyd.gov as you know the site's dynamic in that the public side has a lot of information about the foia how to make a request and then uh the the ability to submit the request but on the agency side um agencies are able to update their information um directly uh and now provide their annual report data through there as well so we're interested to see how the public images are using the system and using that information to be able to further improve the site next slide so one thing we're really excited about is the big project that we're going to be working on this year is improving the search ability on toy.com of the foia libraries um and the idea being here we want there we want the public to be able to find access and locate records that they're interested in easily without a four-year request wherever they are on the fourier website but particularly in foia libraries so that it's very simple just to search across all into foia libraries for any type of records that may already be publicly available this is a is a very popular both on the public on agency side initiative and we're excited that we recently were awarded phase one funding from gs's 10x project uh to start working on this idea um in the first two quarters of this fiscal year uh as we're working on this we welcome suggestions from all the g4 officers here today and the public on um ways to make best ways to do this best user experience as well as um any other enhancements uh we'd like to see the floyd.gov next slide we are continuing to work with you um your agencies on interoperability so i want to thank agencies for their interoperability plans as you know agencies with automated case management systems are required to implement the api by fiscal year 21 agencies with non-automated solutions have already achieved their interoperability um but if your agency is is not working with us directly please do contact us and connect with us on implementing the api uh and we'll continue to reach out as well next slide so then lastly i just wanted to highlight uh given that it's our first meeting of the year uh the resources available to your agencies making sure that your agencies are taking advantage of them um next slide first of course is the department of justice guide to the foia uh it's a comprehensive legal treaties on all aspects of the foia uh detailed discussions of uh of the case law on foia's procedural requirements exemptions and litigation considerations um next slide we did complete a full update of the slide of the the guide every chapter of it in 2019 and we've continued that momentum in updating and rolling fashion the chapters uh to make sure that they're continuously being updated um and having a full update happen every two years recently we've already published new chapters for proactive disclosure exemption two fees and fee waivers and we'll continue to be doing that so please keep an eye out for that but in addition to the department of justice guide to the foia next slide you uh to have the most up to date um uh on to be most up to date on the case law uh encourages to use the guide as well as their foot score edition summaries which are regularly being updated on the newest spoiler decisions in the state of case law next slide for a self-assessment toolkit i think we have stressed um that in order for us to be able to improve our foreign administration uh continuously it's important that we continuously assess each aspect of the foia administration uh in this integral in creating short and long-term improvement plans uh we issued a foia assessment toolkit a number of years ago that breaks down each part of the foia process from intake to search to responding to requesters and provide a format that agency can make an objective assessment of where they are and and how they can improve and compiling guidance and resources related to those areas we're excited to hopefully soon have new modules uh in a revamp for the self-assessment toolkit that includes and embeds in it the use of technology and has new modules on appeals the administrative appeal process and crafty disclosures so that'll be something to keep an eye out this year next slide and these are just some of the the many areas the toolkit already covers next slide so in addition we are continuing to do best practices workshop uh the best practices workshop series um focusing on various topics employee uh such as backward reduction technology customer service point of training proactive disclosures where we would like to hear from some of the agencies that have had particular success in this area so that other agencies can benefit from uh the their strategies and the way they've been able to achieve their accomplishments uh we are hoping to have a best practices workshop um on another perspective on technology soon particularly with the use of e-discovery tools but wanted to uh take a moment here to ask agencies uh you can see chief boy officers to let us know what best practices workshops they would find beneficial for us to and if their agency would like to participate in such workshops and then finally of course um oip continues its training program uh we've switched over to virtual training uh in in providing more regular training on discrete topics exploit training i think is essential to agency for foia professional agency success employee administration um and so uh if you're we encourage you i encourage you to uh let your uh encourage you to encourage your agency for professionals to attend training our training or oh and if uh if there are topics that we have not covered in our regular schedule training please let us know um and also we continue to and look forward to providing tailored training to program which agency uh to agencies um that would find that beneficial as well so with that just want to thank again everyone for uh for joining and um i'd be happy to take any questions from agencies on the on the webex um online about any of these initiatives or resources sure we have a couple of questions on the webex this is limpy before i get to those one reminder to all of our attendees we do ask that members of the public please hold your question until our public comment session towards the end of the presentation i did receive one public comment which i have noted and we'll read out at the end so if you have if you're a member of the public we do kindly ask that you hold your input until the end we do have a couple of questions from agencies the first one is are foia libraries the same as foia reading rooms yes um so that was a name change that we made a while ago um as you know uh the the idea of the foia reading room goes back way back in the statute and um years ago or decades ago um if you wanted to to view the records in an agency that the ichi is required to provide proactively you would physically go to a reading room in in their in their building to view those uh in light of the reality and the fact that now all of these are online we call them toy libraries so you can see the term used interchangeably but they are the same thing and we had one other question which um is asking about the chief boy officer report guidelines uh from mr lover um i would like to clarify that the link that you provided actually is linking to our 2020 guidelines which would have been last year's guidelines so we're now on to the 2021 guidelines which are based on fy19 data so just wanted to clarify that thank you lindsey no other questions from the webex at this time all right well thank you with that i'll uh i'll turn it over to uh alina hey thanks so much bobby really appreciate that a lot of information that's great and uh we're planning to post uh the powerpoint slide deck that you presented on our website i believe you guys are going to do the same thing on the oip website so anyone who missed all of that great content you will see it soon so um if i could ask our event producer to turn over to the next volley deck there we go okay so we're back to the theme and uh next slide please so one of several ways that um our office tries to improve the administration of goya is through our work on the play advisory committee which i chair the oit director bobby most recently has been a continuous member of that committee the committee brings together members of the floyd community from inside and outside of government to collaboratively identify the greatest challenges in the administration of voya and develop recommendations for the archivists of the united states as of today the committee has made a total of 30 recommendations if you can believe that that's incredible to the archivist and has advanced over 35 best practices they cover a broad range of topics all designed to improve the floyd process and access to government documents some of these recommendations are already complete some are in progress then some are just starting to roll our sleeves up to get started on we will soon be adding a dashboard feature on our ogis website that will track the status of each of the committee's recommendations so please look for that next slide please earlier this year on june 4th of 2020 the 2018-2020 term of the floyd advisory committee held its final meeting and concluded its work on the final report and recommendations i am incredibly grateful to the 2018-2020 committee members who continue to work through to the finish line despite the challenges of the global pandemic telework and remote meetings the committee's final report and recommendations dated july 9th 2020 was transmitted to the archivist of the united states and contains an unprecedented 22 separate recommendations the final report is available on the oge's website the link is there on the slide and since i only have a short time with you today i will share an overview of the report and where we go from here next slide please some of you may recall my presentation a couple of years ago in which i used colorful buckets to illustrate recommendations and best practices advanced by the 2016-2018 floyd advisory committee i decided to continue with that bucket theme today but i'm relying on some pictures from the national archives catalog so i give proper source information at the bottom in case everyone anyone wants to check in with us next slide please so the first bucket is the largest one uh that has recommendations that total 15 to the national archives to ogis to oip and to federal agencies the categories are broken down into the five areas you see listed there i'm not going to repeat them uh several recommendations will require collaboration between ogs and oip and we have already started our discussions and obsessed ways to move forward some of the recommendations look to oip to issue further guidance to agencies on such topics as improving online descriptions of the foia process inclusion of records management related materials and foia handbooks on the agency website and the use of the discovery tools to assist agencies in searches of electronic records other recommendations rely on ogens to conduct assessments and work with its nara colleagues to advance the idea of public access to federal records as part of nara's federal electronic records modernization initiative burme and liaison with nara colleagues and oip to develop records management training for floyd professionals as well as briefings for incoming senior leaders following changes in administration or leadership federal agencies also have some to-do's on their list collect describe and give access to records in one or more central repository and on agency websites release voya documents on websites in open legible machine readable machine actionable formats make commonly requested documents available outside the void process for more details please uh look at the report next slide please that's it three uh you'll notice i've skipped bucket two i will come back to that at the end bucket three has the smallest amount of recommendations only one but it's a good one for the council of the expected inspectors general on integrity and efficiency or sigi we will be asking the siggi chair to initiate a cross-cutting project that will examine how successful agency foia programs are in providing access to agency records in electronic and digital form so please stay tuned for that next slide please bucket four has two recommendations for congress to engage in regular and robust oversight of foia and i know a lot of agency professionals will be pleased to hear the second one is to address funding for agency-boy programs always very important topic for all of us lay professionals next slide please method five looking to the future uh that uh set of recommendations actually asks the archivist to guide ongoing and future federal data strategies to include foia and promote research into the use of ai artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve voice searches and processing of requests and the archivist is excited to pursue both of those and so uh we will be working with him to to continue that work uh and this is a good opportunity for me to address where the current term of the committee is headed you've heard the archivist mention that the 2020-2022 term kicked off already we had our first virtual meeting on september 10th 2020. we have some returning and some new members following a robust discussion the fourth term of the committee has decided to form four subcommittees classification legislation process and technology we will be asking each of the subcommittees to help out with certain of the 2018-2020 recommendations for example the legislation subcommittee can help with more specific details we can provide to congress regarding those two recommendations the subcommittees are currently working on their mission statement or objective which we will post as soon as they are complete the committee's next meeting will take place virtually on thursday december 10 2020 so we hope you will be able to join us on this same webex channel and different colors online next slide please you may have figured out by now that i saved the best for last bucket number two that contains two recommendations specifically directed to our meeting today the cfo council one recommendation asks the council to work with agency leadership to issue an annual memorandum on the importance of foia a continuation of the foia is everyone's responsibility theme that we've all known for years so agency leadership if you're hearing this please stay tuned we'll be in touch you'll be hearing from me and bobby the second recommendation asks the council to create a new committee that new committee will research and propose cross-agency grant programs and other foia funding sources create career paths for foia professionals and promote models to align agency resources with agency transparency next slide please so uh let's form the council's second committee the first one is the technology committee we'll be hearing from those co-chairs shortly would like to suggest the name of the committee for cross-agency collaboration and innovation would be a great starting point bobby and i are actively seeking volunteer government boy professionals to help us stand up and share this committee so our email addresses are up on the website right now on on the slide right now so please email us both if you are interested in volunteering and uh the more the merrier so we welcome any and all folks who are interested in in this effort um the good news is that the boy advisory committee has given the committee a road map for how to proceed that will help guide the members as they move forward so you're not starting completely from scratch um also if anyone is monitoring where are monitoring the chat sorry and if anyone is interested in volunteering even as of right now on the chat please don't be shy throw your name out and we'll be happy to follow up next slide please so father bobby and i have both covered a lot of information up until now um we want to take this opportunity to see if there are any questions from from our agency colleagues um this is a bit more challenging to do in this virtual environment as opposed to when we're in the mcallen theater and asking folks to come up to the mic but we'll definitely try our best if any questions have come in via chat we will cover those or if you have any questions right now chat them to us right now we will also ask our event producer to open up telephone lines to our federal colleagues who want to raise any issues and we particularly want to hear from agency folks who have been facing challenges uh and the challenges they've been encountering in their 4a programs during this very difficult pandemic period so um we'd be happy to hear from folks on that i'm going to ask lindsay if she sees anything on the chat from our agency friends yes so we have one more logistical question on the chat from mr osumi about the annual report training tomorrow um you're correct that the eventbrite registration has ended but please you can email oip directly and ask to be added to that registration please email us at doj.oip.foia.usdoj.gov and we'll get you signed up but no other questions you're going to chat at this time okay don't be shy please continue to chat uh and i'm going to turn to my colleague martha murphy as though if you have any chats questions on from the youtube side nope nothing yet okay while people maybe are taking some time they may uh to think if this is something they may want to talk about i do but we now did want to to mention that we do plan to have these meetings more regularly uh and so we really would welcome not just uh you know either now or uh anytime shoot us an email some of the topics that you you that agencies would like us to address or cover in these meetings um i think that as i said as uh echoing the message from the principal deputy associate attorney general the the leadership of the cfos and the work of this council is very important and our success depends on each other yes thanks bobby and we haven't set any dates yet but we will plan to do so soon so please check both of our websites for additional information on that and as bobby mentioned earlier we are very open to any topics for the next council meeting agendas if there are particular issues that agencies would like to discuss we're very open to that as well so i see um lindsay are there any other chat questions i just want to make sure we we haven't missed anything before we move on no other questions although we did have our first volunteer for the new committee so putting that out there as a way to encourage any other participation and volunteers feel free to put your name in the chat and i'll make note of those okay terrific all right so bobby and i are very happy to end this meeting early um and we are a little bit ahead of our agenda schedule which is just fine either that or our next presenters are going to take up the entire time they've been allotted which is also perfectly fine with us as well um so um next i'm very excited to turn the floor over to the co-chairs of the cfl council's first forum committee the technology committee they are joining us today to tell us about the exciting work uh the committee has already accomplished and the work they are taking on in this upcoming year that technology committee was formed in september 2018 as a result of the past boy advisory committee recommendation and although they were originally stood up as a subcommittee we have elevated their status to a full committee uh and up until today they were the only one now they will always always be the first one as well so i'm very pleased to welcome the co-chairs of the technology committee eric stein and michael sarrich a brief introduction of both um eric is the director of the office of information programs and services at the state department his office is responsible for the department's records management foia privacy act classification declassification library and other records and information access programs mike is the veteran's health administration's voya director and leads a program with over 300 foia and privacy act officers who handle over 25 000 requests across 151 facilities worldwide so lots of great experience from both so i'm going to turn it over to you now michael and eric great well good morning this is eric stein first can you hear me uh great well good morning everyone good morning to all the chief boy officers to all of our members of the public joining us uh my name is eric stein and i'm joined with mike sarich mike say hello good morning everyone thanks so much for joining a real pleasure to be here and we are the co-chairs the chief boy officer council technology committee next slide please uh we've mike and i have worked throughout the year with our committee to make really good progress from where we were about a year ago when we were just starting to figure out our charter our mission and our mandate please so we were created by the foia advisory committee in a recommendation as mentioned previously and we've spent the past almost two years developing a governance structure and just really trying to understand the technology issues the foia community faces and one of the biggest changes we've had over the past year is that this year right in the throes of the pandemic we had an increase in our membership by about 25 people so despite the challenges of remote work for many agencies it was the first time they were working remotely ever we were able to create a new group and body with about 40 members now and we've created a governing structure with eight different groups working on focused technology issues with the intention of uh working and to improve foia whether it be employee case processing at agencies sharing best practices and increasing uh confidence and awareness and technology in general um it's just a couple things to walk through where we've been in the past year uh in february we released our report and it's on the ogre's website uh best practices and recommendations and michael will be talking about those recommendations in a moment in april mike michael and i co-chaired a best practices workshop cola the best oip best practices workshop on foia and technology with about 500 participants and april's significance the pandemic was just underway at that time uh and we did it virtually it was i think the first time we did that ever virtually also as april's when we added those 25 members and in june and july we started these working groups i mentioned we'll go into detail on those today and we've been spending uh the past few months working on charters which we'll also be talking about so with that said i'd like to turn it over to mike to talk about uh the best practices report and recommendation and then also uh we're going to go into detail about the working group so mike over to thank you so much and the real strength of the committee as eric mentioned is the diversity of panels that we have we have members from from a really huge a hugely diverse group of federal agencies some very big some very small and kind of everyone in between february 14th we issued what we call it kind of our valentine's day community in this report with a number of best practices again drawn from the strength of the different members of the committee working on very large agencies very small agencies we really want to make sure that the recommendations are scalable and appropriate for the different size for operations but specifically talking about the recommendations that we that we made the first one and the number of these are largely uh implemented or underway can you join up um and the first one was to maintain the technology committee and we were and we were um upgraded from a subcommittee to to a full committee we're very appreciative of that and have maintained the momentum there the second and third recommendations that we made were to put on the gsa schedule records and then foia case management and what this enables the smaller agencies the agencies that don't have that ability to scale up and get these larger contracts the same access that the big players have in the floyd space so one second okay um and then in addition the uh the fourth and fifth recommendations we're having um rolling events uh opportunities for engagement and we'll talk more about these um in just a second when we move to uh the working groups and their charters and and the jobs that they're going to be uh to be doing and finally the flight committee serves as a body that can assist a group uh to go to um sorry for foia programs they're looking for some some technology assistance where they have questions about how can they implement these best practices in their agency so we're as a standing body a group that agencies chief poi officers can come to and ask questions in a very safe uh safe environment as they as they look to add technology to their to the programs and move forward there and so as i mentioned so many of these recommendations are completed or actively moving forward again one of the great strengths of this committee is that it's a very action-oriented group and we're looking forward to not just having these reports but to actually taking that taking the actions indicated in the report and moving the field forward mike if i may i just want to add here you know we've heard a lot about working groups and committees so far at this meeting and there's a lot of committees a lot of working groups we're very uh sensitive to uh the fact that we don't want to duplicate efforts so under bobby and elena's leadership we carefully coordinate with these other bodies that would be very clear the foia advisory committee for example has is a public private partnership and its membership is wonderful because we get perspectives we wouldn't just necessarily get from having a government only group so we take those recommendations and find the best forum in which to to take action but our committee here the technology committee we're talking about today we our primary focus is improving uh awareness training development for foia professionals including understanding the resources that are already out there in the government so we're not asking for things if they don't if they already exist and we may be able to get them uh providing means of discussing how to get access to those tools uh technology and focus on technology and how to share best practices through the various communities and so as you heard there are other working groups looking at technology and and different areas uh we we actually are in touch with them we're working with them and i'm remiss because i didn't mention uh last month we did brief the floyd advisory committee and got some really good feedback and perspective uh that they were ideas that uh that have been discussed in one way or another possibly in the past but coming from the public members of the public and others helps to really improve our thinking about how do we resolve these issues so mike back over to you thank you yeah absolutely and one of the the keys to kind of thinking back and thinking back you know what eric's kind of expressing here is that we want to make sure that the tech the lessons that we're learning from this diverse group of people that we're able to share them as widely as possible in the foyer community so as eric mentioned being able to do the best practice workshop um being able to uh to present here today and to be able to work with the floyd advisory committee who's also um you know has technology has a technology piece we were able to talk with them just last week on some kind of initiatives that they're working on and making sure that we're working you know collaboratively in this in this space which is so critical to moving the poi uh latoya practice forward kind of government-wide the eight working groups again and this is a working this is a working committee this is a committee that is all about putting um putting actions forward it's all about moving the um the foil field forward and we've organized kind of around eight eight pillars and those pillars we're working on um working on finalizing uh charters and we've got some some exciting news coming coming up so let's move to the next slide and we'll we'll share with with you guys what the eight uh working groups are and eric and i kind of divided these up so i'll talk about a couple then eric we'll talk about a couple and you'll have a full briefing and full kind of overview of where we're at right now and more importantly where we're going together so first off is collaborative tools which i'm very which i'm very fortunate to be able to work with and what collaborative tools is all about in in many ways is as we as agencies continue to embrace new technology so for example um at the veterans health administration where we've moved from from skype to microsoft teams what are kind of the implications from a foia perspective on using these new collaborative tools so for example where a skype message may not may or may not have been retained just depending on an agency depending on what the sworn says now in microsoft teams all of that information is being captured so for an agency perspective from employer perspective we've kind of trained our personnel you know um the people that work at the veterans health administration and in the veterans administration that hey if you have a skype message maybe it's not going to be captured so you can you know you can talk in this way but now it's not now it's going to be captured so what is our role there toy professionals to make sure that um we are providing all this information to the employees and our teammates across the uh across the administration because the last thing that you'd want to know the last thing you want to hear is well i thought that wasn't going to you know kind of to go out so you want to make sure that there's a wide understanding of what uh what foia roles and responsibilities are as these new collaborative tools come into being everyone's seen the incredible pivot that we've made government-wide to remote work you know in light of the kobe 19 pandemic with that pivot has come a large increase in collaborative tools and understanding that implication in the foia space is critical as we move forward so very happy to work with that with that group and they're doing great work the next group i'm also able to work with his five-way compliance kind of piggybacking on what bobby was talking about to even open this uh this session there's many areas of the floyd where we're looking to make sure that we get information out to the public as much as we can whether it be in foia reading rooms or whether it be on programmatic websites whatever it may be to get the information to the people uh that need it you know and maybe that obvious employee request because the information is there or you can direct a foia request or choose information that's already publicly available well making sure that information is readable by the entire community is critical you know we all have this 508 compliance mandate and it's a good mandate because it enables every citizen and every requester to be able to access this information you don't place people on favorite tiers based on ability so understanding this um understanding this responsibility and understanding how you can achieve you know full kind of 508 compliance as a point program is important it's an issue that comes up every year at asap it comes up over and over again in informal conversations that you have with peers in the um in the foia community and one of the things that the technology committee has certainly um has discovered but certainly highlighted is that agencies are at different locations some agencies are very large and they have robust tools and some agencies are kind of uh they're not just they're not as large and they don't have those same tools so being able to provide you know kind of guide posts and guidelines for folks at agencies of all sizes is going to be critical i think moving forward to ensure that we're posting as much as we can online that we're providing the people with with as much information as as possible and now eric will toss over to you for toy searches great thanks mike uh before i go into foia searches i know we have the chief boy officers uh here with us today uh as well as or or their representatives um in each of these areas we found throughout the year that the practitioners at your agencies have really worked hard to identify either identify the issues and propose solutions or find ways to move forward in some cases they really had to make some changes and pivots to their programs uh so uh all the support that you provide to them is much appreciated it's one of the best things uh it doesn't especially it's one of the best things i think that can be done i just want to say thank you because we do hear positive stories about your employees feeling supported and that does matter and it does help with morale and especially in this remote environment and balancing everything else everything else anything we can do to help improve foia processing matters so just a brief thank you there and now going into foia searches which is a a very hot topic especially in the electronic um in the electronic age so uh searches each of these groups um i hear that my camera has gone fuzzy so one second and may this resolve the issue um moving on um foia searches uh this is a challenge uh in general it used to be agencies couldn't find records uh in the paper environment uh but then we'd move to a situation where we have so much information at agencies uh we're getting overwhelmed and inundated by doing searches add on top of that the challenges of not all records are accessible remotely because of sensitivity or if they're classified and we could talk about that from the classified section in a few minutes this created real challenges for example some agencies have foyer case processing software for the case processing piece that they could work on remotely but they did not have means of accessing some of the search tools for records they would need to get into said systems during the pandemic and so agencies are working really hard to look at these issues and find out the best way to do so in a way that also ensures their safety and the safety of their families everyone's around them and who's coming to the office and how i know it may sound like a very simple issue but it it's a real challenge right now in terms of how to get and how to do the best searches as possible that's something out of the cove in 19 pandemic moving on to kind of the broader mandate of this cis spoiler search committee in general where as michael and i mentioned finishing charters and well why are we talking about the charter so much mike and i firmly believe that each of these groups need to have a clearly scoped mission with deliverables so that when we finish that work uh either we sunset the respective committee and move on to a different topic and reshift our resources there or keep moving forward i think searches will be one that we work on for a while and i'll just give you an example for the foia search group their charter right now we're looking at three primary proposed areas one being and we've already started outreach to agencies all of you on the line in our counterparts who aren't with us today looking at their best practices and challenges in just doing electronic record searches for foia in just period we're not really going to distinguish between covet or not because we are where we are right now and so we want to know what challenges do you face right now which would be in this environment and how are you addressing them or what tools resources or support do you need from a technology perspective to address them another one of our deliverables will be taking all of these best practices and issues and similar to what we did as a large committee in february issuing some sort of paper probably more succinct a couple pages we're thinking on here are the issues we found and here are the uh proposals or best practices we've identified in these areas as well and then we're going to look for ways to do different outreach to the foia community to talk about what best practices are working out there and uh have practitioners who are uh champions of those causes similar to bobby and elena said for the other working groups uh to to and propose to oip and to ogis here are some speakers you may want to consider who are willing to do that and we actually have one such that we'll talk about later but the foia is certain searches are not uh searches are here to stay the technology becomes important looking at areas like artificial intelligence technology assisted review how do we leverage and balance out the technology and the people aspect of this work and it's exciting to see it's actually underway and if it's not underway there's an appetite for it so this group is really really interesting and it touches on several of the other groups that we're talking about here today uh but we keep the scope and mandate to each group focus and i'll just close with by saying each of the charters we've talked about the intention is to post them publicly on the og website because this is a transparency group and we do want feedback not just from government agencies but from the public as well whether it be for the freud advisory committee or those of you with us on the line here or in the presentations we make because you you share great ideas uh and including we got ideas on how to go about searches from the full advisory committee uh and real issues from the requester community and hearing those issues uh really helps us uh decide how do we go about providing the best tools and recommendations so i'm going to turn it back over to mike in about one minute uh he's going to do foy express and foia online i'm sure he's about to say the same thing or but i'm about to but we do not endorse any specific product as a committee or the government just to be crystal clear what we found is that foia express and foia online are two of the more prominently used i.t tools for foia case processing and so and there was there are different ways being used at agencies and different tips and best practices and areas for improvement so in part of our work to empower foia professionals and build confidence especially in these remote or hybrid remote and on-site times these are two really important groups and mike's going to talk about them now so mike over to you well thank you yes neither of us are or nor anyone on the committee are our spokes models for any particular product um so for sure and what this kind of highlights is that the foyer this the technology committee rather is a people-driven um group it's we're looking for solutions that will help people every day in in their work and one of the early areas that we kind of coalesced around communities of interest or both foia express and and foil online and so i'll just kind of highlight a few of the things that we're gonna that we're doing um with these two with these two groups in the in the coming months now um again you know as eric as eric mentioned we don't endorse any one of them however these two are also a number of members of the committee use these use these products so it is a natural kind of natural area to to look at and as we look to build these communities of interest the reality hit and the feedback was from the incredible members of our committee um voice for us virginia and gorka great kind of contributions in terms of perspective along with other members of the committee that also use with these these types of tools is sometimes you kind of feel alone when you're using this tool and the reality is that there's many other people in the community doing the same thing that you're doing and probably having the same challenges and if we work together collectively we can find solutions to them for for example something that worked um that maybe my team came up with at vha as a way to move the ball forward using this using a product you can also use it at your agency so building those communities of interest is really important and the poi express group is going to be um starting that process at the end of the month at the boy express users conference so kind of just as a preview have a bit of some words there and kind of an opportunity for people to uh to to come together and again it this wouldn't happen without the um kind of the people driven solutions here that the the members of the committee and and the requests that we have we see the need you know out there for these things and then moving to the floyd online we have some incredible um members there they can help teach what it is to onboard the system so if you're if you're if you're an agency that doesn't have this type of process right it doesn't have a cost product that you're looking to kind of fit into your four-way program we can talk about the lessons of onboarding a process like a solution like this or any kind of cost product because there's going to be commonalities with whatever cost product that you that you use and so understanding kind of the um kind of the four walls of that i was fortunate enough to be able to do to go through that um i'd appreciate another agency and so there's members on the team as well who can that will help provide those lessons learned and those kinds of best practices as we again as we look to build this community of interest because at the end of the day we're all doing foia and if you're using a similar product you're going to probably end up with many similar challenges kind of across the federal family and i think that's one of the real strengths of the the technology committee and indeed this meeting itself so those are just kind of um i want to kind of highlight a couple of things that the floyd express and foil mind groups are doing but again as we look to as we look to finalize our charters in the coming week we'll have that clear mandate in terms of what we want to um what we want to accomplish and we're looking forward to moving forward moving forward in those areas and building that kind of community of interest for folks to be able to share best practices to be able to share lessons learned and in many ways to make sure people understand that they're not alone out there you know doing these things and that this technology is there to assist them and it's something not to be afraid of but something can be embraced that you can really drive positive change in your foia program and and um you know drive down backlogs increase request for satisfaction of course mitigate litigation and all of these things that flow from having a more efficient for a program uh and we're hoping to to uh to leverage that success uh moving forward in the coming fiscal year so back to you eric for foyer and classified information great thanks mike deploying classified information uh this one has been particularly challenging this year because of the pandemic uh and and uh reviewing classified information of course happens uh in certain facilities and not everywhere uh it's uh a challenge but this group is looking at the challenges between spaces in general with classified information um and whether it touches on the areas i mentioned before like search or the tools but also how do we think holistically across the government on other mandates that are out there such as those in executive order one three five two six on the mandatory declassification review request the 25 year review mandates how does technology play a role in what gets declassified and requested how can we leverage technology better and what technology is on the various classified networks which of course we can't go into right now but looking into these discussions here we have representatives from three different agencies um and we are looking to to for additional participation on this group um who work with classified information uh given the pandemic there's concerns about our ability to move forward in certain areas of this work but we have been able to talk generally about the issues that we're facing without getting into classified information for this group we're currently kind of discussing issues that we face among the three participants on that working group right now and we're going to talk to key agencies and stakeholders that deal with declassification i know we've heard this interest in the public there's the pittib group that's out there there are other groups that are talking about declassification issues so we're trying to stay plugged into all overall declassification issues and then channel that and harness and focus that into foia as well um so we're currently uh doing our kind of initial preliminary research of the issues uh that we not just we know about that we but what we've also seen are out there and our next steps would be to hold some sort of uh meeting of the government officials who work with classified information ideally in a secure way because we don't want to have any type of issues of security matters discussing these issues but we're going to go as far as we can remotely and i will say i'm very proud of this technology committee and the various members mike mentioned and uh the ones on the committees that i oversee uh we they've been working really hard remotely in addition to their regular day jobs with floyd taking on these additional responsibilities as well and it's really appreciated there's a lot of good work that goes on it doesn't often get recognized so i'd take this opportunity to say thank you also to all of you at the chief boy officer level who are have your members participating with our group for artificial intelligence we have a working group uh that's doing a great job getting a lay of the land of what is being used out in the government for an ai in general understanding what's being done for artificial intelligence with regard to records management and then for foia as mike has said we are a group committed to action so here's one of the things i'm very excited to talk about we have 10 i think tentatively if not actually scheduled for november 5th a session for foia practitioners for government officials an introduction to ai as with a focus on foia and this will be kind of a foi an ai foia ai 101 and this group uh is going to uh it's uh chaired by uh nick wittenberg he's doing a great job uh we have a wonderful group of uh participants on this committee the ai working group is going to lead this november 5th discussion kind of what is ai go through some key terms about what ai is and is not then look at the foia look at the foia community and how ai either is but more like the the more of a lean toward how it could help with foia searches for your review foia case processing moving forward and it while a lot of this is internal to agencies and how we're processing of course if there are ways we could leverage it to improve the user experience on the other end that's also very important and something we'll have to build to over time but right now we're working just to get people familiar with um the ai session it's on november 5th i believe is the date november 5. um and there will be information about that as well um the november 5th session like i said will be for government officials and i wouldn't be surprised if this is foy ai 101 that we may have a 201 or a 301 series in this moving forward and even in the 101 session i encourage all of you whether you're at the chief boy officer level or your proxies or or your employees to attend um just to become familiar with the conversations that's out there because a lot of the work we do in technology in this group is just getting people comfortable with talking about these issues and topics and there's definitely an appetite and people are generally interested and you hear more and more about ai every day but to then understand what it is and isn't um and that that's important and so our focus is to really provide a primer here's where ai is here's how we think you could help floyd and then the best part of these sessions is the dialogue that happens after the engagement so uh it's not just at these sessions like the the ai session we're gonna hold it's also in the working group meetings so we are very excited about uh this work and i think ai is going to be one thing that's here uh and it'll be an enduring topic working group discussion whatever moving forward is here to stay so with that i turn it back over to mike for video redactions thanks eric again i think we're all very excited about the the ai um yeah presentation on the fifth and you know no one's no one's backing up a truck filled with ftes to help us process and everyone's records regardless of the agency the volume of things that we're producing is increasing you know every day i was rereading ramsey clark's memo 1967 memo for training that i was doing for my folks at the end of the year and some of the same challenges that they had 19 we had in 1967 are the same ones that we have today and hopefully ai is going to help us you know bridge that gap finally and get to that next step so i'm very excited about that and you know in that series of um iterative trainings so we can get all get up to speed on this important and critical uh technology that i think is really going to be the future of our field another uh burgeoning area something that we produce more and more and you know we create these federal records these things that are used in our operation the requesters have a legitimate reason and rationale to request and we have a reasonable obligation to produce comes with video redaction you can't walk into a veterans health administration hospital facility without being under cctv and i think that's kind of the norm in many areas the social security administration office the field office you walk in there and there's going to be a cctv and if an incident happens there's going to be certainly a request for video given the video age that we live in and so again as eric talked about we are a committee of action and so we thought we would share some of the early findings from the video redaction um working group so if we can move to the next slide i want to share five of the early kind of findings that we found and give you some actionable tools to walk away from from this from this presentation okay so again these are five of the early findings we're going to look forward to a full presentation that we're going to provide with this working group as part of their charter but we want to just kind of give you a taste of some of the early findings and give you you know again a few things to take away the video retec tension schedules can vary widely some of these some of the videos that you'll see when you walk into it into a building may have a 30 day loop they have a 14-day loop it's going to vary from system to system to system and a lot of these are age dependent how old is the system what's the capacity of the server to hold this information so if a request isn't received and prop and promptly processed to put a hold on that information say october 14th at uh at 11 20 a.m something happened at this uh social security administration office well if you don't put a hold on that very quickly that tape is going to get get overdubbed or that data is going to be dumped and often times it's not recoverable so a key to process these things early and understanding what your record retention schedules are if you're going to have us you know run a successful and transparent point program another one is that the tools vary in complexity so matching the tool to the job we found in in the foia field so you could get a very robust system that you could basically make you know the next iteration of star wars on or you can get something that does a very simple task and the complexity varies right like you know what level of education do you need to have or felicity with these tools do you need to be able to properly redact these um these moving images because some of them are very complex and labor and time intensive intensive so matching the tool to the job do you get a program that costs five thousand dollars and takes this it takes three weeks to learn how to do the in a rudimentary way or do you have a tool that's maybe more targeted for what you're looking to do which is basically blurred faces and voices you know largely another key another key early finding was that litigation can drive schedules and agency resource allegations everyone who's been in flip for any significant period of time has probably dealt with a litigation and court mandated schedules and you don't want to miss a court mandated schedule so if the court says you must have this by date certain then the agencies are often forced to scramble and allocate resources in a reactionary way so those schedules those production schedules can drive how the agency allocates funding and so the sense is what can we do proactively you know as directors of toya programs or you know as senior folks as chief boy officers as we're making our resource requests for our fiscal years so we don't have to go into kind of unallocated funds and tap into those budgets that the agency may have other priorities for because you know certainly the veterans health administration has plenty of uh use for funding during this covet pandemic so going to them and saying hey i need uh 200 grand to stand up a video redaction team in the midst of that isn't going to be received as well as if i say it you know now um you know prior and say hey this is a ongoing demand we need to have this resource capability or these are the consequences and we need to make a management decision to see you know what the what the business use is there for the for that uh for that resource earmarking funds for 40 contractors with specialized skills that some agencies have done it can be very efficient so rather than taking um someone who may or may not be very proficient with this type of advanced software and hiring that skill out right so you know you could change the brakes on your car but you don't most people anyway right so you take it to a break special someone that can they can change your breaks and likewise if you have an occasional you know very rare foia request that's going to demand video redaction rather than having you know your one or two or three point officers spend three weeks learning this tool and then using it when they could have processed 15 20 you know some number of requests that would then preclude further litigation or preclude other issues popping up backlog increases and the like it may make more sense just to take that off your plate you don't necessarily have to do everything in in a foia um in a foil office if you um are able to allocate some resources earmarks and funds for kind of a surge capability or capacity rather when you get these types of requests in however a really visionary um member of this of this working group and i'm so proud of the work that's that's happened in this uh in the city redaction group is this is the recommendation to consider adding the video redaction skills to your pd's and to performance plans as we all think about succession planning and bringing new talent into our boya programs it's very likely that people in different generations will have more felicity with these tools they'll have they'll have grown up on instagram though growing up videoing things and doing projects over and over in school so building that in could be an entree way for for a professional individual looking to find a foia career that can be the one key differentiator that makes them a great member of your team moving forward so kind of building that into your pd and adding those video reaction skills to performance plans if you're an agency that that has this could be a really useful thing really useful thing moving forward it'll help those folks that are even looking for jobs you know as they do their keyword searches to say oh well i've got this background and now i can take this background and apply it in a really special way in working in transparency for the federal government so just having that there in the usa jobs is a key word for people to search could be useful as we're looking to to strengthen our own benches i know we've got 300 plus boy officers all across the country having a handful of guys or gals that know this technology really well is really useful it really is a force multiplier for our entire entire program it doesn't have to be at every facility but having a handful of folks that know what they're doing in that area is is super useful so again we just felt that it would be important to give you a little taste you know we're very excited about the aips first and then i think next will be the video redaction and we're going to roll these presentations out and this information out as quickly as we can to the foia community to give you the best um the best thoughts of the folks that are doing this you know and again it's an action-oriented group we want to get this information out as quickly as we can so we can help you know be a resource a real go-to resource for folks in the foia community looking to add tech to innovate and streamline and increase efficiency increase efficiencies in their programs so with that uh next slide please okay so we'll give it a toss over to eric for um what our working groups uh next steps are great thanks mike uh we've already talked about finalizing the charter so our target is to be done by next month so uh you can check the ogis website uh and we our targets to have that completes completed and posted they are living documents so they're subject to change but we're really trying to focus on the the target deadlines for each deliverable so that's where we are with the charters uh then of course as mike and i discussed implementation uh the hold some of the sessions including the november fifth uh workshop i believe information about that will come out from oip or oj ogis so state stay tuned or check their websites and they may touch on those points we're going to look at other sessions on potential video redaction and looking at a floyd split express employee online and exploring ideas um mike back over to you sure and complete is a really important word here right because i don't think we'll ever be complete with technology it's always a changing and always an iterative thing but we really want to knock out these recommendations in in the foyer report um i'm sorry in our in our report in terms of we've maintained a technology committee and again you know we've made a ton of progress on a number of these things but you know working on getting those schedules out um you know assisting where we can there's other folks working on these things as well to make sure that operations of all size can have access to the same tools that eric might have or i might have or other large agencies might have you know making sure that we're getting this information out the ai piece is a great first step and then video redaction uh for my point express these things are going to roll out and roll out and roll out and you know serving as that body is the you know first putting the information out on our in our website or just website but then also serving as that go to group where you've got a question you've got it you've got something going on you're not alone in this field you know again a lot of this is about building community there's so many of us out here five thousand plus in this community doing the same thing largely right you know it's not just drawing red boxes around things but we're all doing important things in terms of moving the transparency of our agencies forward because so many of us indeed all of us have great stories to tell about our agencies the great work that's going on in each of our agencies whether it be state or veterans health or or nih or wherever it may be but you know being able to serve you know to help you get that message out on that tech side is so critical and part of that is what we're doing right here and soliciting right we're getting feedback from the chief boy officers today we're getting feedback um consistently and excellent feedback from molina and bobby and folks on their teams in terms of what directions we should be going on because again alina and bobby have have so many inputs in terms of people kind of going to them and they're able to kind of help steer us and help us go and integrate in a great direction and that um that member driven focus that we have on these working groups each person's self-selecting and bringing their expertise to bear in a critical area of uh management for innovation so with that i think we want to we want to pivot exactly to that solicitation we want to have that active dialogue with you know our fellows in the uh community so next slide please and we'd love to open it up and have you know as robust dialogue as possible in terms of any questions that folks may have anything that you would like to know about the technology committee things that we have coming up in our calendar um areas that were that were that we're working on uh we're very happy to take questions and if we can't answer them we're happy to um to get back to get back to you uh on those on those topics great so i guess alina and bobby is are we going to answer some questions now or yeah that would be great um i'm actually going to turn to lindsay because i think we've had a couple of questions at least come in during chat uh through chat so lindsay yes so we have a couple of we have a couple of questions um we also had one public comment couple public comments come in which i'll hold till the end but some of the questions may be directed to bobby and elena as well so i'll just read out what we have so far but in the meantime if anyone would like to add a question in the chat go ahead and do that okay so one question about foia reporting the question is because many agencies have not had physical access to their foia tracking system does oit have plans to allow agencies to submit an amended annual foia report after the initial submission in november once agencies are able to access their tracking systems so bobby i'll do that for you yeah so um i encourage uh you just reach out to us directly so we can unders better understand the limitations we'll work with each agency to be able to get them uh the final agency anaphor report um reviewed and um uh finalize and post it on on time obviously just knowing a better understanding of what the limitations are will probably help us uh anyone who has any reporting questions please just reach out to us um uh we're we're our compliance team headed by lindsay as standing by the assist agency with both their annual four report data and their chief four officer reports [Music] great thank you we have a couple of questions about info and registration for the ai conference um i can go ahead and answer that we're going to be announcing that information very soon so we don't have registration available yet but it will be within the next week thank you and i believe that is all of the agency questions um we'll just give it one more moment if there are any additional agencies that have questions to enter in the chat otherwise i'll turn it back over to you elena lindsey you said you had a question from one of our agencies in the ic oh yes um so we did receive a question from somebody at odni just asking generally about how agencies are handling classified information during this uh pandemic and max telework situation i don't know if anyone wants to speak to that but i know eric and mike you spoke briefly about your working group um sure this is eric i know um the ic is a uh made up of several different agencies so it's hard to discuss it as one thing i think each has their own respective foyer programs they have their own challenges they're facing uh well from what i've found is that there are often they're offices and during different places but overall the the challenges they face with processing classified information in general technology searching or are similar to those that i've already covered previously and i really don't have anything else to add on that other than to say we do look forward to engaging with more employees in the government to work with classified information including ip agencies on those challenges uh pre-proved during covenant and moving forward i don't know mike do you have anything else to add no i think that's i think that's right and i think this has been a tremendous learning experience for everyone in the floyd community um and not just in the floyd community but you know in terms of having to do this dramatic pivot and being able to access these things remotely i know we've been in we were in a really quick learning curve to to make this work and we were able to with tremendous success this year we're very fortunate due to the hard work of our folks you know all across uh you know our our agency but yeah it's definitely a huge learning curve and an area that we're looking to add um lessons learned and add kind of contributions as we move forward in this process i just want to take a second to give a shout out to some of our attendees who are actually technology committee members uh and uh thank you for joining us if any of you guys want to add anything to the discussion anything that eric and mike should have said that they didn't which i'm sure is not the case um please feel free to chat um and i've also been kind of remiss and i apologize for this any of our um agency friends who want to chime in orally if you press pound two on your telephone line you will be able to come through and uh our event producer michelle can um can let you in so if you prefer not to type anything out and you just want to talk it up that's certainly an option as well try i tried we tried to trust us i think but it's really worth repeating the real strength of the committee is 45 plus members the energy and the direction that they bring eric and i just happen to be the guys that are lucky enough to be able to work with them i mean really the energy coming from from the folks in the working groups is what's going to move the ball forward and what is really transformative in this um i think and what makes the group so um you know kind of indeed powerful in terms of the energy that's bringing and it's real solutions that that the folks on these committees want to want to bring to bear to the larger boy community so yeah a huge thanks to each and every one of the folks on the committee and people that are considering joining the other committees you know kind of your commitment to move the ball forward in this field for all of us is fantastic i mean it really is transformative and we're so we we are foyer right we're the people that decide what happens in this field and if we get together and move the ball forward together then it's gonna be a great field if we don't you know it's gonna be what's gonna be but the people that dedicate their additional time and energy to making it better for everyone in the 40 community is just fantastic and i have a huge gratitude to each and every one of them for uh for that i don't know if they know their comments but alina and bobby uh all the pam all the participants today and everyone thank you for your time i i know we we talked a lot about technology but technology is is we need it now to be successful uh and it is i think worthy of the the time was merited and appreciate all the time taking this opportunity uh so um there's nothing else at least want to say thank you um and uh really appreciate this opportunity today thank you eric and mike we all really appreciate it and i think that uh and everyone on the committee this is really a really great illustration of the success of the council and and the your committee's work has been incredible and couldn't agree more that technology was always important for it but even more so now and mike and eric you promise to stick around in case people think of other questions before we end today so thank you for that an exam um martha tells me there are no questions from agency folks on the youtube channel so far but maybe folks are still thinking about things but i think bobby if you're ready we can now turn to the public comments portion of our program today i know we're running a little bit early but maybe we give everyone a half an hour back today at least but we have now reached the public comments part of our council meeting so with that we look forward to hearing from books from the public who have ideas or comments to share uh we will also be able to knock on the tunnels online so michelle can you please provide the telephone instructions again for everyone absolutely so ladies and gentlemen if you would like to ask a question or comment via phone please press pound two on your telephone keypad to enter the questions or comment cues you will hear a notification when your line is unmuted at that time please state your name in question once again pressing pound two will enter you into the queue thanks michelle uh lindsay i know we have a couple of at least a couple of public chat comments that we were saving till the end and yeah i'm going to turn that over to you first great thank you so the first public comment from mr harrington the comment is it's a bit long but i will read it i will read it all it states that the chief boy officers council is charged with quote developing recommendations for increasing foia compliance and efficiency yet when it comes to compliance with foia it is difficult to understand how many people are processing requests at each agency as director bobby tilly bean of oip claims agencies are receiving more requests but are agencies also not hiring more necessary staff to ensure compliance with rising requests for example recently fda provided me information that due to an increase in the number of incoming requests we may be unable to comply with the 20 day working time limit in this case as well as the 10 additional days provided by the foia but the fda makes no mention that there are sometimes one person or two people processing requests at a specific agency such as fda ora foia or fda cvm foia so fda is not being fully truthful with this information they're putting out further trying to blame the requester community for compliance purposes how can i understand how many government information specialists are processing foia requests at each agency and then this there's another comment that was submitted via youtube that is related to the same one so i'm going to read that as well it continues is there a number of employees an agency should have in comparison to the number of foia requests received for example if fda ora is receiving hundreds of requests a month yet only have two employees is that considered proper in regards to compliance with foia i just don't understand the talk of these meetings and compliance with foia when it seems like there's always understaffing issues but excuses from agencies are that there are quote too many requests in regards to employees processing the requests and the number of requests received per month if there is no such thing how can we all move towards getting this ratio as a top top part of the foia compliance process and then there's another question for the tech committee but i will um pause on that and give maybe bobby a chance to respond to this one thank you lindsey so yes i mean agencies have been working on type type resources and not just in the foyer program so resources is always is always something that um we have to be able to address to be able to meet the floyd demand and i think the a lot of the work that we're doing this council is aimed at that to best use the resources that we have to get the most efficient uh and effective output of information through both foia and proactive disclosures uh there is detailed um statistics in agency's annual four airports on the number of personnel that they uh that they use in their foyer that that have worked on their foia administration both in terms of full-time foia professionals and the equivalent of full-time professionals that support the agency's foyer program and you can get all of that information on toy.gov under the data section or on our our website or the agency's website where they post their annual corey report as far as a ratio i would say it's not necessarily a one-to-one for every agency it'll depend on the complexity of the records they have the volume of the record sometimes um and maybe the complexities of the types of records they have and that can vary by agency so uh it you really need to look at that each agency really needs to look at that individually to see what amount of resources they need to be able to succeed in their foia administration and we have a lot of tools that help us do that and before i saw some toolkit helps as far as making sure agencies have effective systems as they're reviewing where their resources are how they're being used um so i would say that that is out there and we hope people will will uh take advantage of it and and look at um uh all all elements of the fourth of ages four administration um but as far as uh an equation i would say that you know the proper amount of resources needed by agency will necessarily vary by the nature of their forehead program and records thank you all right i'll read the next question from this same member of the public it is it seems to be directed to the technology committee although it's it's possible that others may have input as well the question is would the technology committee ever consider building something for the requester community the public slash citizens that is similar to muckrock where we members of the public can always access already released foia documents so this is eric i think definitely would want to hear more about what was envisioned i know that there's been work by doj this group that take process and how requests are made and i i don't want to make a commitment we're not ready to make right now with regard to the foia libraries because there are a lot of groups looking at this already i i are pretty not focused exclusively on the floyd libraries or online reading rooms but it's definitely something we'd be happy to discuss with oip and ogis if they think that they we should take this on or if it's appropriate for a different fora and a group to discuss yeah just thanks for that eric i just want to add that uh the full advisory committee's last term the third term actually looked at this issue we had some great interest from a particular member of the committee to build this one-stop shopping kind of portal where all documents that have been publicly released by agencies could be posted and unfortunately the technology is just not there yet i think fuel.gov is is definitely trying very hard to meet a lot of those needs by asking agencies to make their of their foia portals interoperable with floyd.gov bobby wright am i speaking that about that correctly well as far as uh the interoperability would be for the request submission as far as uh the giving access to the records already uh or being posted um that's certainly something that we're working on um with regard to the the excessive additional accessibility libraries obviously one of the challenges of getting more information out there is the issue of 508 which is working which is which is a really important working group on this committee so i think as we as we hit this at all angles we're eventually getting to that point where agencies can proactively post more of the foia release record because we have more efficient ways of remediating these records and getting them posted online and on the other hand foia.gov is allowing us to be able to search for and access these uh four-year release records more efficiently it works and having them be more accessible so i think there's actually a number of initiatives now that we have to complement each other that will get us to that point thanks right thank you all right i will move on to the next question from nate jones at the washington post the question is for eric stein secretary of state pompeo has stated that he will soon release more of former secretary clinton's emails as head of state foia and state c-class did you play any role in this upcoming release was it conducted through the typical foia or d-class process well thank you for the question i'm here today in my rules book chair of this technology committee and uh we'll be happy to just provide this response any questions about that matter she should be referred to state public affairs and the phone number is 202-647-2492 again 202-647-2492 or you can send them an email at papressjudystate.gov all this information is publicly available on the state.gov website thanks eric we had just a couple of follow-up comments from mr harrington saying that the technology is there and then also we want all records released to the public or as many as possible always publicly available thanks for your time and that concludes the questions from the webex at this time great lindsay thanks so much um before i turn over to martha i think we have a couple of chat questions from the youtube side i want to ask our event producer michelle is there anyone waiting on the telephone line to ask any questions there are currently no questions on the line and reminds you ladies and gentlemen pound two we'll enter you into the verbal questions okay great thanks so much uh martha over to you uh for any questions um sure so we got one from um mr james walker he says would you talk and this is i think for um eric and michael would you talk about how we in industry can engage so many rpa solutions are available to help take pressure off your foliage mike you want to take this one sure right so rpa robotic process automation you know being able to um take those things that are repetitive and take them off of the foia processors um plates are is critical right you know anything that did um takes floyd officer away from doing a line-by-line analysis of a complex of a complex way request implicating um significant agency records to be released as part of the transparency mission you know is critical right so one of the things that we're looking at and doing and we talked about this and as we talked about in the five recommendations is venues and opportunities for folks in the um in in on the industry side to work with 4a professionals and really we envision the vision there what we envision is an active and robust dialogue because for example industry could go and create things in a silo that may not work for folks on the ground doing foiz you know um 40 hours a week fifteen to two weeks a year but if we have an active dialogue and we work with industry and we tell them exactly what our needs are you know real honest dialogue between foia practitioners you know that are deep in the weeds in this in this field or deep in this field and industry it's incredible the synergy that can be found there and and the solutions that can happen indeed um some of the things we've had some of the dialogue that we've had with our own cops producer for our systems has resulted in some innovations that are coming up in the uh in the next fiscal year in future iterations of that software so yeah exactly having that venue is critical and having that opportunity to um to work with them is critical we're partnering um with lena and bobby and others to make sure that um all the t's are cross and eyes are dotted on something um of that scope and scale but yes that's definitely something to look for in coming to traction and eric anything just want to add or lean on bobby to that as well just two quick points i think we've been working with agencies too to talk about their their program needs and then to speak it speak i see requirements uh to make sure that the mike's point that's being able to list out those requirements that clearly matter and make sure whatever's being laid out matches with the networks the it systems because there are a lot of solutions out there that can do a lot of things but they have to be compatible and that's always a challenge the other one is gsa has a lot of really great things already on its website and then we've worked with ogis and oip just to kind of see what's out there already first different tools and solutions so there are ways we're looking to engage with the private sector and the public and the public on these points more so uh yeah as mike said stay tuned okay i had one more question and it's a little unclear we asked for some clarification we haven't received any back yet but basically what this is meant for oip what area is the most requested for foia action and what is a ballpark percentage of these overall requests so i'm not sure what they meant by what area so i'm not sure either but i i would just uh re-um emphasize the availability of a lot of this data in the anal4 report as well as some helpful information cheaper to report but in the email for report you can see uh the number of requests each agency and each component of the agency is getting and then detailed information about those requests so i'm not sure exactly what the caller is looking for as far as information obviously each agency is responding to a different variety of requests based off the records they have and their program missions um but i think maybe the in-report data would be helpful for the individual asking that question okay thank you and that's all the questions we had from youtube great thanks so much martha i did have one other comment that i just wanted to mention from the odni friend who is asking that we remind everyone and especially members of the public who are watching today that it has not been easy for ic agencies during clovid to be processing documents due to of course the classified nature of their business and that time frames for responses have been impacted greatly i know everyone is working as hard as they can under these constraints i think um the ic is asking for a little bit of patience and understanding from the public during these times what with that message i think i would just echo part of our guidance and just encourage agencies um to to um in any ways you can convey the difficulties to the requesters so they have a better understanding of challenges that your agency might be facing because of the necessary workplace precautions and what you can and can't do um agencies have been doing that on their website but also in um acknowledgement letters and communications and so uh encouraging choose to continue to do that the uh this is going to be as transparent as possible and also work with requesters the best we can yes communication is very very important that's one of the things that oh just always trust us so i want to second that lindsay any other questions that might be lurking out there no additional questions no elena i saw that the the item that might be a question but it's not clear that that person is an attendee so um if anyone does have any questions about annual core report please contact us thank you great that sounds great all right bobby any parting thoughts i think we're at the end of our session now i just wanted to uh thank you let me thank eric and mike um and uh thank all of uh all who are joining us today it's a really great meeting and we look forward to uh the next meeting having another good agenda and work of the technology committee and the new work of our new committee yep i definitely want to echo what bobby said thanks to everyone today for attending our council meeting um thanks in advance to those of you who have already volunteered to work on the new committee or are thinking about it so don't be shy and i hope everyone who's joining us today continues to remain safe healthy and resilient closely among your families uh we will reconvene in 2021 uh with future dates of council meetings to be announced soon so please stay tuned for that and um there are no other comments or questions we can adjourn this council meeting today thank you very much everyone thank you guys thank you everyone that concludes our conference thank you for using event services you may now disconnect

Channel: US National Archives

Views: 921

Rating: 4.6666665 out of 5

Keywords: US National Archives, NARA, FOIA, Chief FOIA Officers Council, CFO Council, Office of Government Information Services, OGIS, DOJ, Office of Information Policy, OIP, Freedom of Information Act

Id: ODg1WJdwdF8

Length: 107min 30sec (6450 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2020