FOIA Advisory Committee Meeting Livestream - March 5, 2021

good morning and welcome back I'm David Ferriero the archivist of the United States if you haven't met me before so welcome back to my house for this meeting of the Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee whether you're here in the theater the Maga authority here at the National Archives are joining us on our YouTube channel we're pleased to have you with us since September 2018 the committee's 20 members who I appointed for their considerable FOIA expertise both inside and outside the government have worked hard to study the federal FOIA landscape by collecting and delving into data and hearing from other experts I understand that the three subcommittees time volume vision and records management have nearly 20 proposed recommendations for actions to improve the FOIA process committee members I look forward to your continued deliberations and discussion as you work toward the final two meetings of this term on May 1st and June 4th in the final package of recommendations are coming to me before turning the meeting over to the communities chair Lena Simo I would like to invite everyone back to the McGowan theater for several upcoming events one week from today on Thursday March 12th starting at 10:00 a.m. the National Archives national declassification Center will celebrate 10 years of public service with a discussion titled reflecting on our beginnings forecasting our future I'm proud that during the last decade the National declassification Center has examined a backlog of more than 350 million pages of classified material and streamlined processing for declassification later on March 12th starting at 1:30 p.m. the NDC is teaming with two other National Archives offices ojas and I sue the information security oversight office for a multi-agency forum on using FOIA to access intelligence community records we're pleased that representatives of the FOIA offices from several intelligence committee community agencies will join us for that session and the following week Monday March 16th beginning at 1:00 o'clock the National Archive celebrates Sunshine Week an annual nationwide celebration of access to public information please join us for a conversation with my hero senior US District Court Judge Royce C Lamberth whose rulings are well known in the FOIA community following that a panel of experts on FOIA and access issues will discuss the current transparency landscape go to our calendar on archives.gov for information about how to register for any of these events and we hope to see you here and I'll turn the meeting over to Alena thank you David good morning everyone as the director of the office of government information services ojas and this committee's chairperson it is my pleasure to welcome you all to the William G McGowan theater and the National Archives and Records Administration for the seventh meeting of the 2018 2020 term of the Floyd Weiser II committee whether you're here in person thank you for coming in first then via telephone or via livestream shortly I will go through some housekeeping roles we actually have more of them today so they're with me review our general agenda and set some expectations for today's meeting first I want to take the opportunity to introduce our committee members who are participating in our meeting today we have close to seven folks on the phone so we're going to have to remember to pause after we speak and make sure that we check in with the folks on the phone will you guys remind me because I always forget so let me do the folks on the phone first Kevin Goldberg are you here can you introduce yourself and your professional affiliation all right Kevin we can barely hear you can you speak up a little bit yeah this better work better okay Kevin Gover and the vice-president of the legal of the digital media with you okay good morning Chris knocks morning good morning Chris knots on managing director of forensic with Deloitte risk and financial advisory service good morning Chris Sarah Cutler do we have you on the phone yes good morning mr. Cutler on the director of the division of freedom of information that's US Food and Drug Administration all right good morning Sarah Suzanne Piotrowski yep I'm here good morning everyone good morning hi this is Michael Moorthy I'm the chief executive and founder of buzz ba hey good morning Michael Lissette catelleya s-- hi everybody good morning was that completed from trittyes an exchange commission and I work in the boy office for this all right good morning Lisette do we have by any chance Tom Sussman going once going twice he might join us later he was not a hundred percent sure you could call in so our loss let's hear from everyone who's here in person I'm going to start with the end of the table to my right which means Jason Baron please introduce yourself remind everyone of your professional affiliation I'm Jason Baron I'm of counsel to beggary drinker law firm here in Washington good morning everyone my name is Emily Creighton and I'm the legal director transparency at the American Immigration Council good morning I'm a boa Moshe I'm assistant general counsel at the US Consumer Product Safety Commission good morning I'm James Jacobs I'm a librarian at Stanford University Libraries hello I'm Sean Moulton senior policy analyst at the Project on Government Oversight good morning I'm Bobby - Libyan director of the office of admission policy at the Department of Justice good morning I'm Kirsten Mitchell and I'm the designated federal officer for the FOIA Advisory Committee meeting good morning I'm James Stoker I'm associate professor of international affairs at Trinity Washington University good morning I'm Joan kaminer attorney advisor at and the Environmental Protection Agency for information law good morning I'm Ryan law I'm the deputy assistant secretary for privacy transparency and records at the Department of Treasury I'm lief Stephen senior policy counsel at COS of an action institute i'm patricia woth I'm deputy assistant general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board and good morning I'm Bradley white I'm the senior director of FOIA litigation appeals and policy at the Department of Homeland Security all right great thank you very much everyone so at our last meeting on December 6 I introduced to my right Bobby to Le'Veon is the acting director of the Office of Information policy at the Department of Justice and I am now pleased to announce Bobby has been selected as the permanent director of oh I pee so congratulations Bobby a round of applause ok so I promised a few housekeeping notes an important reminder to everyone just make sure please to identify yourself when you're speaking your name and affiliation if you can try to remember each time this helps tremendously with our transcript and the minutes of the meeting which are required by the Federal Advisory Committee Act also again just keep in mind there's a delay between the time the mics come off from the stage age and the folks on the phone come on so we just have to be patient and as I said earlier I'll work to check in frequently with folks on the phone and if I forget someone will nudge me so as most of you know the flow Advisory Committee which reports to the archivist of the United States provides a forum for public discussion of FOIA issues and offers members and the public the opportunity to provide their feedback and ideas for improving the FOIA process we encourage public comments suggestions and feedback that you may submit at any time by emailing FOIA - advisory - committee at Nara gov although we have a very ambitious agenda today I am hopeful that at the end of today's meeting we will have a few minutes for public comments I always leave time for that we do look forward to hearing from any non committee members who have thoughts or comments to share Jessie Kratz the National Archives historian who is assisting ojas with many administrative responsibilities with the committee has been monitoring and will continue to monitor the live stream on the National Archives YouTube channel and at the end will read outloud any questions that come up meeting materials are available on the committee's web page and we will make the video and transcript available on the web page as soon as possible information about the committee including members biographies committee documents especially the ones that we're talking about today are available in the FOIA Advisory Committee web page on our website at archives.gov /o Jos to promote openness transparency and public engagement we post committee updates and information to our website blog and on twitter at foia underscore Ombuds please stay up to date on the latest Otis and FOIA Advisory Committee news activities and events by following us on social media thank you I'm going to think again in advance to the following members who have agreed to serve on the working group to pull together the committee's final report and recommendations if you've changed your mind let me know that as well but I've got Jason Baron I've got Sean Moulton I've got a Beamish I'm and I have Patricia wet okay they're still nodding so this is good did I miss anyone anyone on the phone if anyone else is interested in serving on the working group please see me at the break I'm happy to take other cultures I see everyone jumping up so between now and the May first meeting which is our next meeting the working group will be hard at work compiling the recommendations that receive approval at today's meeting into a final report our goal is to be able to circulate a fairly final draft in advance of our next meeting on May 1st and I would like to use the May 1st meeting to iron out any outstanding issues and take any final votes on outstanding recommendations as needed so next we're going to need to approve the minutes from the last meeting Kirstin circulated those by email earlier this week later today she and I will certify the minutes to be accurate and complete which were required to do under the Federal Advisory Committee act within 90 days of our last meeting so do I have a motion to approve the minutes so move so move thank you do I have a second Thank You Patricia all present and per in person in favour of the meeting of minutes all right okay those in telephone in favor of the meeting minutes I okay I sort of heard mostly eyes I heard a grunt okay or is anyone opposed either in person or on the phone okay the minutes are approved we will post them on our website so next I'm going to invite Kirsten Mitchell to the podium I have asked Kirsten it's all my fault to provide an abbreviated version of a presentation she gave earlier this month to federal records managers that I thought would actually be of interest to the committee to save time Kirsten will also update you on past FOIA Advisory Committee recommendations which is normally a topic covered by our deputy director Martha Murphy but she is very graciously ceding or dime to Kirsten and we promise to keep it short because we know we have a lot of work to do so Kirsten over to you thank you Alena I'm Kirsten Mitchell and in addition to being the designated federal officer for the FOIA Advisory Committee I'm also compliance team at the office of government information services the FOIA Ombudsman's office Alena asked me to give you this very quick overview of the 2018 records management self-assessment which was conducted in 2019 two of the questions relate directly to recommendations from the 2016 to 2018 term of the FOIA Advisory Committee since 2016 Oh jeeze has collaborated with the chief records officer for the US government on the RMSA it's a great marriage if you will between two Nara programs CRO chief records officer has particular expertise in collecting self-reported compliance information through the our MSA ojas of course has particular expertise in FOIA it's a great partnership given that strong records management program is essential to a successful for you program one of the side benefits of the our MSA is it is the it encourages coordination and collaboration between FOIA officers and agency records officers I'm going to go briefly through the results of the our MSA but I want to point you to our report which is based on our analysis and observations it's at archives.gov /o gist and it's just 11 pages there are some nice graphics in it that didn't translate well to slide so I encourage you to have a look now onto the results two questions we asked for a second year in a row we asked for a second year in a row and the results show an encouraging uptick we asked records needed to respond to a FOIA requests are readily accessible and located by staff responsible for FOIA always most of the time some of the time never or do not know we found a 13% increase between 2007 and 2018 in agencies that say they can access and locate records necessary to respond to FOIA requests always or most of the time during that same period between 2017 and 2018 the percentage of respondents who said that they can access and locate records needed to respond to a FOIA request some of the time dropped from 18% to 11% so that's certainly encouraging news for three years in a row we have asked requesters questions about agency communication with FOIA requesters although the wording was tweaked a bit after Congress amended FOIA in 2016 the RMSA asked at what point in the FOIA process does your agency inform requesters of ojas dispute resolution services respondents could check various options we're very happy to see that the number of respondents who said that they alert requesters to urges services in all cases in all responses increased 22% from 2017 to 2018 and we can certainly attest that our caseload and oh just reflects that the eight 2018 our MSA asked three new FOIA topics including on performance management we know from our assessments of individual agency FOIA programs that well-managed FOIA programs use metrics to help manage the resources they have and that they regularly report to agency leaders on the metrics agencies are all over the map in terms of their reporting but the good news is that just three percent said that they never report and a note about that 19 percent that's in the other category those folks responded that they have less formal methods for reporting such as verbally during regular meetings posting to the agency's FOIA website or informing leadership when necessary or upon request so our final two areas of questioning IVA directly from the 2016 2018 FOIA Advisory Committee which asks the archivist to task urges with assessing the methods agencies used to prepare documents for posting on agency FOIA reading rooms the good news is 83% said yes they do have procedures for preparing documents for posting on FOIA reading rooms and for you math Wizards out there this is not archival map the percentages are rounded up and we recognize that's more than 100 we asked a follow-up question and that is who is responsible for preparing documents for posting and this is a particularly important question because we have heard from agency FOIA professionals who are challenged by this Duty in the face of reduced resources and an increased number of requests so this information is important to us because it forms the foundation for our assessment which we officially launched earlier this month my Nara colleague Meredith Dovie ak is assisting ojas with this assessment which we hope to publish later this year finally the RMSA asked do your agency's employee performance work plans and appraisals include FOIA performance measures for non FOIA professionals to ensure compliance with the requirements of FOIA this also grew out of the 2016 18 term of the FOIA Advisory Committee which recommended in 2018 that the archivist direct ojas to examine the use of FOIA performance standards and submit the results of its assessment and any recommendations to Congress and the president we are not surprised that agency employee performance work plans and appraisals generally do not include for a performance measure for non FOIA professionals but we're very happy to have this baseline data and it again forms the foundation for another assessment that urges is officially kicking off later this spring so real quickly the 2019 our MSA which is currently going on right now asks five FOIA questions they deal with FOIA training who at agencies reviews FOIA responses before they go out deduplication of Records availability of records on FOIA websites and section 508 compliance providing access to records with people with disabilities I want to quickly mention one other recommendation from the 2016 18 FOIA Advisory Committee and that is regarding the chief FOIA officers counsel technology subcommittee which was formed in 2018 in response to a committee recommendation the chief FOIA officers counsel technology subcommittee has been promoted if you will to a committee it is no longer a subcommittee and it will continue please stay tuned to our justice blog for more information about that in the coming weeks so I'm happy to take any questions if anyone has anyone on the phone have any questions for Kirsten okay thank you I urge you to read the report yes read the report okay as we get started today I want to point everyone to the flu Advisory Committee webpage where all of our draft recommendations are can be found but they're also in your folders for the folks who are here and the folks on the phone I believe Kirsten has emailed all of them to you including a last-minute revision by Suzanne Piotrowski Susie and I'm not calling you out I'm just calling attention to the fact that you proposed a revised recommendation 3a B I can't remember I'm sorry C okay 3c yes so I was gonna ask the AV folks to bring up the website but they did so thank you great so a few comments before we move to the discussion of the draft recommendations first I want to remind the entire committee and each of the three subcommittees that our Charter specifically states that our objective is to study the federal FOIA landscape and make recommendations to the archivist of the United States so any recommendations that the committee ultimately submits to the archivist have to be ones that the archivist has the legal authority to act on so for example the archivist has the ability to instruct agencies how to run their records management programs he is statutorily tasked with that but he does not have jurisdiction to tell other agencies how to run their FOIA programs so we're gonna need to talk a little bit more about how some of the recommendations are cast today and look at them a little more carefully I can tell you from my personal experience during the 2016 2018 term of the committee several recommendations that were advanced by the subcommittee such as agencies should do XYZ with regard to FOIA which are fantastic by the way unfortunately or fortunately ended up as best practices or in some limited cases tasks for ojas to do under the director direction of the archivist so you've heard Kirsten talk about the fact that we're already working on some of the items that we've already been tasked with and we're really happy to do that but I also want to remind you we have a limited staff we're already stretched pretty thin doing the work Congress has already tasked us to do so be kind to our as you think about how many things oh just should be doing but again we're very happy to help as much as possible so our goal for today is to ask ourselves is this a recommendation that is actionable by the archivist and or and/or is the recommendation something that someone else can accomplish for example as I mentioned ojas or OMB or Oh Y PE and if they're willing to do it I don't want to put Bobby on the spot so please keep all of that in mind as we move forward today I'm going to ask the records management self committee to go first we have discussed their recommendations at two prior meetings both September and December of 2019 so I thought it'd make more sense to go through them first and try to take votes after some discussion I'm looking at Ryan and Ron has a question yes yes Sean Moulton project of government oversight so I've been thinking a little bit about this issue of the recommendations to the archivists and I wanted to at least raise the possibility that we may be looking at the the mission statement and and taking that a little too far in terms of make recommendations to the archivist because we can make recommendations and we have to obviously give them to the archivist but the at the start of a document I would think we could say for any recommendations that require that we are recommending action by another party we expect the archivist to simply deliver those recommendations and you know I I think it's so limiting if we're looking at FOIA and trying to be an advisory committee on how to improve FOIA to to limit ourselves to actions just the archivist can take or just oh geez can take is very constraining and so if there's a way to re-examine this constraint I would certainly encourage it because certainly we can we can write the recommendations we recommend the archivist say to each time but I think it would just be easier in sort of a drafting or a structural way to have the recommendations be directed at whoever it is we want the action taken and that earlier in the document we just explained that you know we're delivering this to the archivist as required under our statute but we want them conveyed thank God you're on the working group John so you get a chance to craft that any way you want I'm right I'm just I have heightened sensitivity to it only because we inherited the 2016 2018 report and you know we needed to take actions because that's what is expected of us I just want to make sure that there are things really can be done so they're not pie in the sky necessarily but more deliverable Ryan so I was this is Ryan from Treasury so Sean's points well-taken I think as we get into discussion of the record management recommendations I think we have some examples where we've thought about that very problem and considered what the archivists can do in relation to YP in relation to OMB OMB and others okay great thank you Patricia Patricia with NLRB I have a more of a procedural question I've noticed in looking at the records management and time volume recommendations some of them have similar themes in overlap mm-hmm so I'm wondering as we go through the records management do we pull in some of the time volume ones that can be incorporated as is that something that's that's a great question we were actually just talking about that amongst ourselves earlier this week I what I'd like to propose is that to the extent that it strikes anyone that some of them are similar we can certainly bring them up that way it will be reflected in today's meeting but I also felt as though this is something the working group could work through as we pull together the report if we see a lot of overlap I'm looking at my working group members Patricia and I thought that we could try to strike similar themes and not necessarily bucket them by subcommittee and I agree there's definitely overlap and Kirsten actually did a valiant job of trying to put them in buckets earlier this week so thank you for that and we'll definitely be using that as we work through through the draft thank you so thank you for that point all right anyone else have questions I just wanted to quickly go through the voting procedures they are found in your packets briefly any member of the committee can vote on recommendation or can move rather to make a to take a vote it does not need to be seconded but we seem to like that around here so we'll keep that going the vote can pass by unanimous decision which is when every voting member accept abstentions is in favor of or opposed to a particular motion general consensus at least 2/3 of the total votes are cast in favor of or opposed to a particular motion and general majority when a majority of the total votes cast are in favor of or opposed to a particular motion in the event of a tie we will reopen the discussion and the committee will continue to vote until there is a majority or until we're very hungry and we want to go to lunch as a reminder any member can make a motion if you're in favor of recommendation I would like to take a voice vote since we have folks on the phone so please say aye if you are against a recommendation please say nay if you do not wish to vote say upstate and Kirsten will be recording the votes and announcing them not will see we may not need to so today you have may have noticed on the agenda we did not allocate specific time frames for each of the subcommittee's as we have in previous meetings we thought we would just let the discussion be a little more free-flowing if you have time if one subcommittee set of co-chairs has time and wants to see two another subcommittee that's great there's no break in the agenda but I do promise to take one at a logical point and Kirsten is pointing out to me that it's supposed to be 11:20 we'll see where we are at 11:20 so I'm going to ask Jason Baron and Ryan law to please kick us off with the records management subcommittee unless there are any other questions questions folks on the phone are you guys good okay all right thanks okay Thank You Elena Jason Barrett I just want to say some introductory remarks and then Ryan will walk through the nine recommendations of the committee our of the subcommittee our subcommittee wants to emphasize that under the leadership of archivist David Ferriero the archives has a strategic plan that says that the core mission of the archives is to provide public access to federal government records to strengthen our nation's democracy and the strategic plan also supports nara's vision as an agency known for cutting-edge access to extraordinary volumes of government information so naira has six transformational outcomes and it embraces the primacy of electronic information they're a strategic goal in that plan is to make access happen so we see a unified a unified view by the archivist and by Nera of access and preservation of Records and we think that's very important for the final report we also recognize that under archivist Aereo's leadership both for the last decade through the 2012 managing government records directive and the 2019 transition to electronic records memorandum jointly issued by OMB that there's a recognition of a inflection point in 2022 where the archives is looking for to a future of going digital and I think that's very important when it evaluated the recommendations of the subcommittee so we have an eye towards the future I believe many of these recommendations would be characterized as visionary as well as some of them as being more practical and with that I turn it over to Ryan okay great thank you Jason this is Ryan from Treasury so good morning everyone and as Jason mentioned you know the goal of our presentation today at the end is to talk about where we're going from here I wanted to take just a brief moment to talk about where we were and then talk about where we are now and then we will decide as a group where we go from here so today we plan to bring to committee vote nine recommendations from the records management subcommittee we first introduced our recommendations to the full committee in June of last year during the September Fulco meeting committee meeting we discussed our recommendations one through seven at length and we saw it input and feedback from from each of you and and also from the public during the committee meeting in December we discussed two additional recommendations since that December meeting our subcommittee has met twice and we've worked diligently to incorporate your feedback and input at this point all members of this committee and and and the public have had an opportunity to read and provide feedback on our nine recommendations and I want to thank everyone for their kind and candid input your feedback has helped the committee sharpen and focus our recommendations I also want to thank and recognize Jason Barron who has served maybe against his will as our master wordsmith I also want to thank Alena and Bobbie who have made themselves available to the subcommittee throughout this process and then I also want to thank Kyle Douglas in the office of the chief records officer is served as our liaison with that office and has been very helpful in getting us answers that we have sought through this and then finally I want to thank Wendy couch and Ron's whacker who are two records management leaders in federal agencies that helped us engage with the federal records officers Network as part of our engagement with the federal community so our subcommittee work is nearly at an end procedurally for today my plan is to read each recommendation individually and then pause to give members an opportunity to ask questions or provide feedback if we'll then also give subcommittee members an opportunity to respond to this questions and feedback and if those issues are satisfactorily resolved or if there are no questions or comments we will request a full vote on the committee for each recommendation so we repeat that nine times and then we'll be done it'll take about two minutes okay so I'm sorry I just want to point out James Jacobs least even Tom Sussman and Bradley white are the other subcommittee member so ask any pointed questions towards them and Alena I apologize the subcommittee as I should recognize you and thank you for all of your hard work and dedication throughout this process and you know you're you've brought diverse perspectives to this unique problem that we're facing and I think we've come up with a really good set of recommendations I'll let you guys be the judge of that so to kick off our recommendation one do we have the slides right no okay so everyone has the recommendations in their packet I would ask you to search out that bolded words on the page so we're gonna look at recommendation one and that recommendation is we recommend the archivist request that the Department of Justice office of information policy issue guidance to require agencies to include records management related materials as part of agency websites and FOIA handbooks maintained pursuant to the FOIA so I'll pause it now to see if there are any questions or comments from the group and including folks on the phone oh sorry Patricia with NLRB I don't know if this is a good time to point out that the time volume has some recommendations that overlap with this one but I don't know what do you want us to point it out now or wait until time volumes speaks I'm gonna look to Jason and Ryan okay - what do you guys want to do we're open to it Emily Emily create an American immigration council I wonder if if we were to generally support the recommendation and also support a time volume recommendation if we would just then assume that that the spirit of those recommendations would be included in the you know in a combined recommendation at a later date and maybe some of the conversation around how how they're ultimately tailored or or edited you know that could happen a little bit later but I just wanted to say if we're in generally in favor of it I'm not sure we need to worry about the overlap at this point I don't know if others agree Bradley white DHS I want a second one Emily just said there in particular since Elena you mentioned that Kirsten has already been working at creating buckets to kind of see where they kind of fall together so this looks like something that is definitely bucket of bull at a later point we do love buckets in the federal government don't all right can I just also add to what Ryan said in the bull print we request for DOJ to take some action with respect to guidance to agencies on records mansion we do have an alternative or a supplemental point in this recommendation which is that to the archivist and under the federal Records Act and under related authorities under Title 44 the archivist has as I mentioned work jointly with OMB to issue guidance in the past and part of this recommendation is also making the suggestion that through the vehicle of the federal Records Act to the other authorities under title forty-four that the archivist might wish to consider acting to issue guidance directing federal agencies to do two things what is to undertake a review of their existing policies procedures and directives with respect to records management and to publish these materials online in one or more places including on web pages devoted to records management and/or on FOIA pages so that is part and parcel of recommendation one Thank You Joan Joan kaminer EPA and in drafting this recommendation did you consider a carve-out for sensitive intelligence community any file plans because to it I didn't notice there the possibility for an exception for certain categories of information this one it'd be limited to intelligence community agencies but and I think certain categories of Records I think that's a valid point and it certainly we could make a reference in this document or the final document out of the full committee and would would say that of course that would be ultimately how that's framed would be absolutely up to DOJ and to the archivist thank you thanks John all right any other comments on the phone for questions on the phone Brian should we move to vote if there are no other comments we'll move for Ifill who procedurally should I move that the committee vote on recommendation one yes that would be great we have a second all right thank you James all right so all in favor of recommendation one going forward please say aye all opposed say nay folks on the phone I didn't hear an I can I hear you guys say aye hi everyone any one abstaining I'll continue to abstain since given a 'wipeys role okay all right I think that's the phone if there any days any any nays on the phone no I think we have now passed our official first recommendation and we should all be very excited good job everyone I know right okay you want to go on - no - excellent thank you everyone moving along and we're we're past two minutes I'm sorry recommendation - coming out of the records management subcommittee states we recommend that the archivist of the United States direct Nara and requests that DOJ Office of Information policy offer targeted training and selected topics in federal records management to FOIA officers and FOIA public liaisons and federal agencies and otherwise include a FOIA module and selected records management training courses open to all federal employees that will pause and questions or comments about that particular recommendation okay any comments or questions on the phone very quiet so the current sorry this is Michael Voris II are is their current similar analogous training that's the duty archivist offers that this would kind of adapt from or is this would be a different program era offers a great variety of trading increasingly now online I know I I had the experience when I was director of litigation to offer a course in records management to lawyers that took place for many years however as we note in the body of the text accompanying the recommendation that narrow does not however offer a specific course targeted to FOIA staff and we don't have statistics government-wide on how many federal employees engaged in foyer related functions have undertaken the either face-to-face or online records management training and so this would be an add on to what narrow does and what do J offers so that there'd be a cross over again a unified theory that if you're handling government records if you're a FOIA officer or you're in the record space you should really know about both statutes about about FOIA and about the federal Records Act I'll be Consumer Product Safety Commission I'm wondering do you have to have do Jo IP offer the training or could you require the agency records officers and senior agency officials for records management provide targeted training within their agency to FOIA staff on an annual basis you want rather Bradley white DHHS isn't the idea behind this that we kind of wanted something consistent across all of the government so that everybody's receiving the same kind I definitely think it's a great idea that individual agencies records management should do it but I also think that not every agency's records management program is as fully developed as sane aris would be this is Ryan so in our when we looked at this issue we looked at agency chief FOIA officer reports and other sources to determine like what training was made available to FOIA staff the questions currently focused on FOIA training right we couldn't find any evidence that there was specific training for FOIA staff on records management now there is a government-wide requirement I think a130 requires that all agencies provide standard training for records management but we're really looking at here is training targeted for right for FOIA professionals because it's our subcommittee feeling that you know as Jason said there's this cross there's this you know kind of cross-pollination that should happen there Oya FOIA staff can do their jobs better if they understand federal records management processes and we couldn't find any agency that's specifically called out that they were doing records management training for specifically for FOIA staff to help them do their jobs better and so that's what we've targeted here obby consumer product safety again so I guess if you do have DOJ and oh I P offer the training would you incorporate records management into existing DOJ training I just know I wear both hats records and an FOIA and my FOIA staff I require that they attend at least one DOJ training a year um to get them to go to two separate ones I'm not sure about them but maybe in the basic one you could incorporate the records management element yeah this is right so I think how its implemented I think would be up to no jusen Oh IP but I think that would make a lot of sense you know there are some standard training templates that oip provides and and Bobby's staff is really great about coming to federal agencies they're coming in a couple weeks to mine to train our staff one on some topics under the FOIA and I actually have my records management staff providing training to that group of FOIA professionals there so I think that's certainly an opportunity to create a standard template for in-person training but additionally as we move in a more digital you know environment doing developing like a standard training that agencies can provide to staff you know particularly those folks that are not located in the DC area and I think there's a there's a need for that okay thank you anyone else on the phone have any questions or comments and you want to round the table all right should we take a vote on recommendation number two so we can keep two Ryan's two minutes do I have a motion I'll move that we vote on recommendation two so I have a second thank you all right all in favor recommendation number two please say aye that both folks on the phone aye okay anyone against please say nay anyone on the phone I want to say nay it's very quiet anyone upstanding wine abstention don't we noted all right well thank you again we just passed our second recommendation very proud excellent moving along thank you everyone so moving to recommendation three we're on page 6 of our handout here highlighting again on the bolded text in the middle of page and recommendation 3 is we recommend that the archivist of the United States request at the Department of Justice office of information policy provide further best practice guidance on the use of ediscovery tools to assist agencies in meeting their obligations to conduct an adequate search of electronic records including but not limited to email in capstone repositories and maybe I should just say for the greater community that capstone repositories is a policy promulgated by Nara that is voluntary for the federal government but federal agencies in managing their email can elect to preserve email for senior officials permanently and apply general records schedules 6.12 remaining employees for email being preserved for 7 years and the goal of the policy was to make possible the 2016 mandate chained in the 2012 directive and then echoed in the 2019 directive from the archivist that agencies manage both their permanent and temporary email in electronic form are there any questions or comments from folks here or on the phone okay okay so aleena I will move that we vote on recommendation three thank you thank you for the second all right um all in favor recommendation number three please say aye all right folks on the phone I heard one aye anyone anyone else hi anyone against recommendation number three please say nay anyone on the phone nay okay any abstentions okay duly noted thank you well we just passed recommendation number three thank you very much thank you everyone and this Ryan again and this note we're getting a little more efficient each go so that's great so recommendation for we're moving to page eight and recommendation for reads we recommend that as part of the federal electronic records management initiative the archivist of the United States direct Nora to incorporate and further develop the idea of public access to federal records including through the Freedom of Information Act so we'll pause for questions or comments here in on the phone okay anyone on the phone comments or questions all right Lina I will move that we vote on recognition port okay so move do I have a second second thank you all in favor please say aye hi on the phone I heard one I can I hear the others Hey okay any nays on the phone okay any nays on the committee folks around the table any abstentions okay so recommendation number four is passed thank you everyone moving along to recommendation five I'm moving to page nine at the bottom of the page and recommendation five reads we recommend that the archivist of the United States make a formal request to the chair of Council of the inspector general on integrity and efficiency or siggy siggy consider designating a cross-cutting project or prior priority area on the issue of how agencies are doing in providing FOIA access to agency records in electronic or digital form we'll pause for questions and comments did we have someone just join us on the phone hi this is Mike lazzo he dropped off when I was right hello Michael welcome back so we're on recommendation number 5 and we're soliciting questions or comments from folks on the phone all right silence anyone around to the table questions or comments so Lina I'm sorry is that a sneeze okay [Laughter] so lean I'll move to vote on recommendation five okay second do I have a second second thank you broadly all right so let's vote on recommendation number five all in favor please say aye I heard one I on the phone can I hear any others aye aye okay anyone opposed to recommendation number five please say nay no names around the table any one day on the phone okay any abstentions all right recommendation number five is passed we're doing great okay thank you everyone we're almost there moving to recommendation six on page ten and the text of six reads we recommend that the archivist of the United States direct the National Archives and Records Administration and request that the Department of Justice office of information policy each establish a liaison with the newly created chief data officer Council for the purpose of ensuring that chief data officer x' officials understand the importance of federal record-keeping and FOIA requirements and how such laws apply to the maintenance of data within agencies and we'll pause for questions or comments okay anyone on the phone have questions or comments so then I'll move to vote on recommendation six any seconds I'll second thank you for it all right so let's take a vote of recommendation number six all in favor please say aye hi folks on the phone can I hear you say aye I heard three any other eyes on the phone okay any nays on the phone okay any nays around the table okay any abstentions alright recommendation six has passed thank you moving right along excellent so moving to recommendation seven on page 11 and the text reads we recommend that the archivist of the United States work with other governmental components and industry in promoting research into artificial intelligence or AI including machine learning technologies to improve the ability to search through government electronic record repositories for Responsive materials and segregate sensitive material and government records including but not limited to material otherwise within the scope of existing FOIA exemptions and exclusions I'll pause here questions or comments this is Alena Simo I have a question should I be reading ojas in there you mean as as the delegate of the archivist right to work with other governmental components I certainly would hope that ojas could support this in whatever resources you have but I think there are others within era from my experience that might be well placed to make that liaison happen since Nara has historically had a research arm that provides a liaison to the NSF community and to the scientific community and other councils in government and awarding grants and other programs that promote sort of cutting-edge technologies and so the answer is we of course OSHA's should be involved as part of these recommendations but I think we can embrace other parts of Nara to have that liaison thank you I have a quick question in apologies I haven't read all the materials that are cited here in the explanation around the recommendation my question is around subpart 2 where the artificial intelligence where they artificial intelligence that the use of artificial intelligence might be used to segregate sensitive material can you explain a little more how you envision that happening through artificial intelligence I guess my concern is how so an artificial intelligent system would determine what exemption should be applied I guess maybe I just don't fully understand that piece of it short answer is yes with human input of course the the question here is as but us in the legal community we face this with privilege issues as well as responsiveness issues so the first of the two points is that records could be classified as either responsive or not to a FOIA request just like they can be classified by machine learning algorithms as responsive or not to an e-discovery request or any kind of request if involves text classification the point that you're raising is the sensitivity one and part of sensitivities of government are PII that are reflected in exemption 6 & 7 particularly exemption 4 is involves confidential proprietary information and those are only some of the ways that one can tease out sensitivities and records it is cutting-edge to suggest that a machine learning algorithm would successfully be able to determine what is a deliberative process document under exemption 5 but I believe there are strategies to do so and so the exemptions under FOIA are a subset of all of the sensitivities in government records that would be of interest I think to the greater scientific community and said but what I have not experienced any discovery these tools are in the beginning stages of figuring out privilege issues which are subsumed with an exemption five but there are easier tasks for machine learning such as expressions like Social Security numbers and other forms of numeric information that are sensitive that are within FOIA exemptions and they're easily accommodated under existing tools and technologies the thing is though that the greater commercial sector has not really focused on FOIA as a as something that would be of interest and yet I can tell you that there are any number of solution providers in the space that have expressed some interest in FOIA technologies and so to to make this successful I think the government should promote the idea of using machine learning to make more efficient the FOIA process and to use whatever available research and Industry notions there are to advance the cause that's extremely helpful and to the extent that on the requester side we've worked with agencies that do have machine learning available and some do not I think the the piece about how exemptions are going to then be applied would be something where and I don't know what language could be used here but I think even something along the lines of successfully segregating material or something where we're just acknowledging that there there could be that that is to me as someone from the requester community seems like a leap and potentially rife with problems around over redacting and over exempting materials but I'm not as familiar with some of the programs that exist so I just want to put that out there I think that's a valid point but I would say that there's the intent here is to always have a human in the loop we're not suggesting that an algorithm is employed to make the decisions of an agency for FOIA purposes that then need to be defended both by the agency and by lawyers in court I think there's always going to be a need for some kind of quality control check and for humans to be for people Hawaii officers and others too just to be trading the algorithm and to be involved in every step iterative step of the process and I'll just say I think that for those who are not as familiar this background material is helpful and so in the recommendation to the extent that there is an acknowledgement of the human component I think that would be very helpful to those who you know might might be slightly taken aback by just the artificial intelligence piece and the you know suggestion that that that would be housing this is Ryan we can add to Emily thanked for that and at the Jason's point here again the goal is not to outsource FOIA processing to a computer the goal is to explore how tools that are currently being used by the private sector widely can be employed in the public sector to ease FOIA processing and that would have the effect of having FOIA analysts the people that are actually looking at the words on the page and applying the redactions to move from low value to high value work instead of redact increasi information or social security numbers which computer can do easily focusing on deliberative process focusing on classified information focus on other things that require human touch so to speak that's very helpful so again don't want to replace anyone yeah I want to get the best tools for better available yeah and just for the record to the extent that I have seen that working on from the agency it's been very helpful in our FOIA litigation Sean Sean Moulton project with government oversight so I would suggest to reflect this a slight wording change to that sub point to right now it reads segregate sensitive material and government records and maybe would maybe would reflect our conversation of it said identify sensitive material in government records for potential segregation so the machine is identifying this stuff but it has to there has to be some sort of the segregation is going to be done by someone I'm reviewing that so you'd strike so great well obstinate I identify and then I would strike us segregate and then say identify sensitive material government records for potential segregation so I would add those three words after the AC okay without looking at my other subcommittee members really quickly now will have me minutes of this meeting so I didn't write down exactly the words you said so Kirsten's nodding that she will she will ensure that it's that exactly as you've said so with that in mind Alena do you think it'd be appropriate to move for a vote if there are no other questions yeah go ahead this is a James Stoker I just want to be sure I like I like this new wording and I think it's a nice idea but I just want to be sure that I'm reading this correctly this recommend addition correctly as only seeking to promote research it's not add I actively advocating that it be adopted at this point so we're just promoting research with this right so it's a relatively limited recommendation as this that's that's at least how I how I read this my hope would be that over the next decade that the research would have a translate into practical effect for dozens and dozens of agencies that are experiencing long queues and high volume FOIA requests and and I think it could be extraordinarily helpful to Jackson in this recommendation in line with how we handled exploring e-discovery tools over a decade ago and this is very much in line with what we're focusing on at AU IP right now we use so far in my office piloted one tool and want to continue to pilot them to find and build the case for how they can improve efficiencies so that said the ediscovery tools we did a pilot first then when we found the benefits and and the best practices and how to use that and that then we encourage agencies to explore them in something somewhere it could be done here and with that said I've just thrown in that Oh IP and DOJ are working on this and like would it be happy to work with more on this as well thank you other other comments or questions and it's on the phone as well Patricia West from NLRB again I'm supportive of this recommendation at my agency we've been trying to explore artificial intelligence on our own so you know to have it done across different government agencies I think it would be very helpful to all of us thank you so Ryan if you're gonna move for recommendation seven just with the word change so everyone's clear and sub part two we would read identify sensitive material and government records for potential segregation including but not limited to material otherwise within the scope of existing boy exemptions and exclusions so do you want to move so I will move that the committee vote on recommendation seven as amended okay all in favor okay folks on the phone say in favor folks on the phone anyone nay okay folks around the table any one day any abstentions all right recommendation seven is passed excellent thank you everyone thank you so moving to lean are we're doing on time we're doing great okay so since she says optimistically very good we're doing great on both time and volume all right we're gonna try to hold the puns today there okay moving to recommendation 8 so we're on page 12 moving to page 12 recommendation 8 reads we recommend that the archivist of the United States requests that ojas Nara and oh just work together with DOJ oh I pee to encourage agencies to work towards the goal of collecting describing and giving access to FOIA released records in one or more central repositories in standardized ways in addition to providing access on agency websites I'll pause for questions or comments a Joan kaminari PA going back to what I believe Sean said at the beginning of the meeting about opportunities to possibly strengthen some of the recommendations so they're more than let's deep requesting or you know conducting studies such as that something just more active I think that this is one that is definitely primed for more of a you know active potentially effective wording and I wanted to open that up for a conversation possibly directing I'm not really sure how that would work but just taking Sean's point earlier if we might be able to revise to you know strengthen it because I fully support this recommendation so just so I'm clear you would substitute requests for direct but I want to open up for discussion possible rewording content so we have had discussions we didn't our subcommittee and I invite members of the subcommittee to weigh in but my understanding was that the wording was carefully constructed to account for those agencies that might consider it a tremendous burden to move towards both cost and resources to move towards the goal of this at any in any short-term way but having said that Bradley white DHS everything he just said so as a request it is absolutely something that the largest recipient of FOIA requests and the federal government would be willing to look into but as a directive as in telling us to place all of our nearly 500,000 FOIA requests in one spot or all the massive amounts of data we collect for everything in one spot would be incredibly cost prohibitive but if we could look at to you know access to categories of those records or I'm not just the frequently requested ones but just you can tell what people really want to look at the way it's written now is something that would absolutely work for us and that I can vote for I would absolutely have to vote for against it if we strengthen the language it's Jim kaminer again at DHS you uses FOIA online correct but for limited categories of information only for CBP okay so the vast majority of DHS does that good so this is Ryan so these are both important points on bertoni's is something we thought about and one thing we talked about and and the language in the recommendation system post documents in standardized ways and so we looked to existing guidance for agencies and what we found was there's guidance from oip agency FOIA websites 2.0 and it talks about agencies posting documents with certain metadata in a uniform style and our recommendation around standardizing the way agencies post materials in a centralized location either on their web site or in a portal of some fashion posting them in a standardized way would allow agencies or in the future you know groups or organizations that are creating standardized libraries doesn't necessarily need to be the federal government to capture that metadata and set up you know a search engine that could troll across multiple agency websites to locate documents that are tagged with certain metadata so our recommendation focuses on that standardizing the way agencies post websites could get us most of the way there but we recognize that requiring agencies to post documents creates a tremendous burden which previous committees here have examined the issues of 508 accessibility it being one of those issues that the committee has looked at so this is Sean Moulton Pogo I am I'm fully aware and sensitive to the the burden of agencies and especially the more medium-sized agencies who don't put a lot of FOIA resources in their office and this might be burdensome but I would point out that the the wording we have right now for this recommendation has sort of two qualifiers to that one is the the DOJ or Nara and and DOJ encouraged agencies and so we're talking about possibly making it direct but right after that it's not it's not that agencies collect and and normalize everything it's work towards so even if it was direct it would simply be directing agencies to work towards a better system and a more comprehensive system it wouldn't be directing them to all immediately come up to a similar standard and spend all of their budget on getting their their systems online so just pointing that out I don't think if we if we strengthen the word from encourage to direct or some other verbage there I still don't think it would be a requirement that the agencies meet some sort of standard Bradley any thoughts on that it's still identifying the angle which again is not something that I can support I'm gonna before you come I'm sorry I just want to give folks on the phone a chance to chime in if anyone is interested in commenting on this very lively dialogue we're having Michael I mean I think their current language is a good starting point and I think seeing if it has an effect and sort of on the fed understand the challenges makes not sitting you know encouraging and understanding that different agencies have different requirements especially what kind of DHS is specific example okay thank you Emily Emily I was just thinking can you talk a little bit about the FOIA Improvement Act language having some of this directive language potentially and maybe they're already being a statutory requirement my understanding is that there's not a statutory requirement for this kind of a vision repository government-wide central repository in the form in format also it's missing from the Improvement Act but but it is in a way saying there has to be a way and so I'm just curious how I mean if this is getting us if that's the framework that we're working with and this is the recommendation that's helping us get to the statutory mandate in a way I don't know that we should be afraid of more emphatic language show us beyond the statutory mandate to post records under exception to a - as in law doesn't describe define how we would post them the standard for posting or where they may be posted so I do think it goes beyond it it's a good recommendation we generally seem to interpret this as requiring the posting of frequently requested records to our FOIA for our for your library or for a reading room which would be agency specific as opposed to like we said here the central repository other comments or questions from the phone as well this is all a consumer product safety commission so you think as far as the central repository across the government would it be something like FOIA portal would everyone put their records there it's that yeah so this is Ryan so we've looked as part of our review look at what agencies are currently doing and we found some agencies have already established centralized portals agencies that utilize the product FOIA online sometimes use the public portal there the state department has a centralized library where their documents are posted in searchable format with metadata associated with it and so we found we found some agencies are doing that and some of these are doing it very well standardizing it could result in future years in either someone someone private or an agency in the public developing a centralized database whether it be on FOIA gov or another place that would allow us to search across agency websites to find documents the key here is that agencies posting them in a standardized format with metadata would allow that Emily I just wanted one last comment is and maybe bradley since you are working with an agency that receives such a large number of FOIA requests if the if it were worded this way can we imagine how the agency would respond and when we talk about encouraging agency i think that i mean speaking for myself only it would it would be helpful to understand how a recommendation like this would actually be received by the agency and what steps might be taken if it had language like encourage so i would read this as something even there could be say a repository and then we could link to our own websites that we're already paying for just make sure that it's linked directly to the documents again with the metadata and attacking and all the things that go with that as opposed to something that would cost my agency a ton of money which is a central repository where we were required to actually store the documents with this recommendation we talked about in the sub team I think there's a lot of questions that need to be answered that's what that's what we'll be doing at the IP is working with agencies to understand what they have what the requirements would be what their impact would be to come up with a set of standards that works uniformly across the government I think everyone is on board with the end result and so we're just gonna be working backwards towards getting there so whether it be a dado or some other solution I think that this recommendations allows us to get that work going and to move towards it being something that is realized across the government yeah and just James Jacobs Stanford University just along those lines I think within the within the subcommittee we talked about an idea sort of like data.gov which is not a central repository per se but is a central metadata repository for data across the government and so something like this for FOIA would be would be really clean yeah and I and I thank you for mentioning that I think it's a great you know obviously we're not going to be here trying to reinvent the wheel so we'd be looking at all existing successful examples such as data gov and seeing what model we can use that this is going to be most efficient and best for both capturing the records and for the burden on agencies okay thank you hi Suzanne I had two questions the first question was these repositories I'm just wasn't clear was the idea to have one for the entire federal government or each agency have their own this is Ryan so Suzanne we've left the language open so one or more central repositories you know we don't want to we want agencies to be able to you know tailor their websites in there and their to their audience there are different groups of folks that regularly access information from particular agencies and we won't we want to be able to be responsive to them and so we leave it open so agencies can establish their own it leaves it open also for there to be a government-wide effort later the FOIA online this is Jason bear boy online gov is a step towards a future vision of many many agencies utilizing one portal I think it is you know the vision of the subcommittee to to promote this but if we are directing agencies to do something in the short term I think this is not going to work in any specific timeframe a year or two years or whatever I James that proposed this and I think it's well supported as a consensus you know by this committee I do think I would stay with the language I would recommend staying with the language as is and asking that Alena and Martha and Kirsten for the next iteration of the FOIA Advisory Committee will report faithfully on how urges and DOJ did in encouraging agencies to comply or to to fully you know build out this kind of a recommendation thank you so much mrs. Sudan just my second question so if there was this option at least in the short term or possibility that multiple agencies would have their own repositories I would say at least to consider should the language and I mean I like the idea of standardizing it but the idea that the standard should be at a minimum so that I wouldn't want to get it to the point where their standards put in place and that somehow reduces creativity of the agencies to put more information or do different things with their repositories so someway changing the language to make it clear that these would be minimum standards thoughts on that anyone have any thoughts on that point from the subcommittee so this is James Stoker I think one danger with encouraging that agencies move in that direction is that if they sort of create a lot of different models they may not be easily standardized but later on and so if we get too specific in sort of encouraging agencies to sort of you know explore to let a thousand flowers bloom and then we could just end up with with many different different repositories that ultimately couldn't lead to this one central online interface which i think is which i think is whatever would ultimately like to see even if we anticipate some challenges along the way would you be in terms of that because we already posed I think a lot of agencies maybe all what seventy agency information in their reading room and there's also also contributes a lot of them analytical information in numbers so when you say describing are you envisioning where they write their report about what their code this is well this is Ryan and and others might be able to speak more intelligently about it than me but this this may include such things as metadata tagging you know coming up with a series of descriptions that when you go to pick on you Bradley to DHS gov and you search there for a library you you can find things by searching a key term and so doing you know describing a record that way by adding metadata by adding a tag to it I think is one part of that you know I think part of our review found that agencies sometimes just throw documents up with link and a very short description that may not actually match what the records are and that makes it difficult for the public to to find those records even though they may be relevant and that leads to more FOIA requests of course so I think that's an important part of our inclusion of the word description they're described this is Jason and I James please feel free to weigh in but I the motivating factor of this recommendation was to make it easier for the general public to find records in one place or in a small set of places rather than going agency by agency and there are hundreds of agencies that might be doing good work on their own websites but there isn't a standardized set of record you know with metadata a set of Records that would be available and and so again you know it it it's to encourage many agencies to come together to help the general public find stuff okay thank you for that explanation that circle I Ryan and Jason I'm just gonna look to you how how would you like to proceed do you want to take a vote on the language as written do you want to tinker with it some more and we can revisit on May first let's uh I and Jason you you shoot me down let's I I move we vote on the language is written and if we if we find we need to revisit this at a future meeting what we'll do so so Alena I move we vote now on recommendation eight okay turn a second good thank you all in favor of recommendation eight the way it is currently written please say Aye folks on the phone all right hi okay I heard four eyes anyone on the phone nay yeah this was that I um I think it's to be clarified because describing is kind of fake in this context and in the narrative to recommendation eight I don't see where it takes goes into you know metadata tagging I mean I understand the spirit of it but I just think it could be a little tighter so Lisette is that an a yeah okay thank you anyone else on the phone an a all right anyone around the table an a a b is an a anyone else okay any abstentions abstain all right so it looks like we passed it with some I will just say go ahead Alina its Jason I think all the comments are good ones and I think they can be accommodated in a the text of the recommendation but I it appears we have a general consensus so we're gonna move forward okay the language is written and we can work perhaps in the working group on finessing the language some more and taking in some of the comments that we've received today I said the explanatory text yes explanatory text yes okay thank you everybody this is Ryan again and these last two recommendations we knew there was gonna be lots of lots of discussion so thank you for for your feedback moving to recommendation 9 on page 13 which is our final recommendation Jason wanted 10 more but we helped him back the text of recommendation 9 reads we recommend that the archivist of the United States requests that Nara ojas work together with DOJ oh IP to encourage agencies to release FOIA documents to the public on their FOIA websites and on their in FOIA portals in open machine readable and machine actual formats to the extent feasible pause now for questions and comments from folks here and on the phone all right it's very quiet anyone have any questions comments and support James is smiling there's no comment yeah Selina hearing none and I'll move that we vote now on recommendation nine okay second thank you all right all in favor oh yes before we vote James I apologize not everyone's eager to get to a break so I'm sorry I'm sorry for interruption but I wondered if you if you all had considered in this encouraging agencies to post the most readable version of documents this is particularly the case and you know agencies of you sort of scan versions of documents and in many cases these and I think in particular some the intelligence agencies that post documents on their on their FOIA sites this is an interest this is a particular interest to to historians and very often the versions that end up being posted are as are incredibly low resolution and this may be due to the use of outdated technology but it just happens to end up with a situation where OCR doesn't really work that well and I can't help thinking that this also is an inhibitor for you know later searches of documents because if the version of the document posted is is not very readable then the OCR is not going to work very well so I wondered if there's a way either in the recommendation or the text itself or maybe this needs to be a separate recommendation to encourage that agency is ensure that the best that they use high quality scans of documents in order to facilitate these processes open it up for people as to whether high quality scans OCR whatever make documents more machine readable machine actionable what the Delta is there in terms of the problem because I see it as easily the point easily incorporated into the narrative of this section I think however the recommendation is looking to the future for you know XML and other new ways to for computers to read documents in a way that then makes them manipulable and unusable by the greater communities out there I James that please comment James Jacob Stanford University yeah the legibility is definitely important for OCR and for other technologies to do bulk analysis and stuff like that but maybe we can as Jason says we can add that to the text of the recommendation or even add something like open legible machine readable and machine actionable formats something to that effect to deal with the legibility issue this is James Stoker I think that sounds like a nice idea and well not this sort of pile on things to include but another another point that is often difficult is for handwriting so there's some OCR technology that only does that only recognizes you know type characters and some of the some is available for handwriting but then it depends on the quality of the handwriting it's not going to be a universally successful so maybe there could be some mention of handwritten document says in there as well although that probably applies more than historical documents than many of the more current ones we do it on page 14 scan textual documents of all types along with handwritten documents images and photographs are all very difficult to search it analyzes so I think we've incorporated that thought I support I have no objection to those adding the word legible in the curb as Ryan's well I could just questions joan kaminer and just to the extent that the the hardcopy original is legible so I at least in my experience a lot of the translation difficulties when you're going from a hardcopy is that the actual hard copy that you're dealing with with the historical documents are on their face not legible and that's not something to incorporate but I just wanted to you know to make that point that it it may have some impact but it also for historical documents may not I know you are aware do you want to move Ryan with the amendment that we add the word legible after open and a four machine readable so Alena I will move that we vote on recommendation nine as amended all right I'm all sorry someone on the phone yeah I'm sorry this is Michael I one of the other things I just wanted to check so I think if if recommendation nine he kind of comes to pass if there was sort of standardized to least metadata available I mean I think having having the machine readable and machine action was great I think especially if there's a few and I think like maybe this is just kind of using the standardized format that boy online uses for its document release I think having standardized metadata to the extent that feasible would be really helpful like if if some places use dates in one format some others in another that causes a lot of problems for people continued building on that set and I think if recommendation nine is is enacted it'll obviate a lot of need for recommendation 8 because agencies are proactively posting all these things on their own website somebody out there is going to start pulling all this together whether it's within government or external to government and kind of make that other other recommendation less challenging but I think having standardized metadata would be really helpful aspect of ignite Michael thank you that's something we could work on incorporating into the explanation Ettore part of the recommendation working group members okay there's some overlap between eight and nine so we could consider just combining those two recommendations to one party they had been together Dom so what in the spirit that they're in right now yes okay so we're back to voting so I will I will move to vote on recommendation nine as amended yeah I already have a second I believe yeah so all in favor of recommendation number nine as amended please say aye folks on the phone hi alright I only heard two eyes on the phone are there any nays on the phone okay any nays around the table okay any abstentions abstain okay I'm going to take a 15-minute break now I think we all probably need a comfort break just want to remind everyone no snacks or other food in the auditorium but feel free to go to the Chartres cafe there are restrooms available outside McGowan theater and and let's come back at and I guess close to noon if we can come maybe closer to ten minutes as opposed to 15 that would be great because we have a lot of work to do all right let's take a break thank you you everyone for coming back and hanging in there I do want to point out to everyone I I specifically brought coffee candy because I thought it's gonna be a long meeting today and we should stay awake I found it on Amazon so please feel free to help yourself individually wrapped unfortunately we can't pass those out to the audience that is just for the committee members and sorry for folks on the phone okay so we made it through the first subcommittee I want to now turn to the second subcommittee timing volume that is Emily Creighton and Bradley white and I'm going to ask one of you to present I don't know who's going first sure Bradley white DHS I'll kick things off for us first we fully recognize that our recommendations are not nearly as polished and beautiful as the records management ones were so we're expecting a little more spirited discussion possibly on some of these things one thing just for housekeeping for our subcommittee we're gonna have the folks who wrote who drafted the recommendations talked about the ones they drafted as we go forward which means I get to go first so our our first recommendation which we discussed a little bit at the last full committee meeting is that we recommend that the archivist request that agencies conduct a comprehensive review of their technological and staffing capabilities and requirements within two years to identify the resources needed to respond to their current FOIA needs and the anticipated FOIA demands in the future we further recommend that the archivist request that agencies apply the results of their comprehensive reviews to create agency specific strategic plans to address expected increases in the number of FOIA requests received as well as high-volume ediscovery style document reviews the methodology behind this and I think this is a good time to kind of talk about the survey we did I know we've mentioned it before a few times but over the summer and going into the fall we conducted with a lot of help from Suzanne and from ASAP we conducted surveys of both a federal FOIA professionals and the requester community and I believe we got about a hundred responses back from each of those areas so it was relatively balanced and we got a lot of data back and in using that data we were able to identify areas where we thought that we could reach to reach some sort of consensus on what was needed and what the problems were so with this recommendation we recognize that when we ask for professionals where agencies could improve a large percentage 17.5 referenced improving efficiency half of them referenced resources in their responses in one manner or another and then another group represent referenced technology and so which kind of fits in our entire committee format of you know time or addressing these times volume issues so coming from DHS one of the things that we constantly try to balance are whether we have enough people know and whether we have enough technology also know to get everything we need and to do everything fast or at the very least faster and so what I've realized what our subcommittees realized is that you need to look at both what you have now so you can look back here you can look at your backlog however many request that is and you can look at the type of request and the type of search results you get back and identify what you need to process those records or to duplicate them and how many people you need to get that but you also need to look at trends you need to look at how your FOIA requests have increased by say whatever percentage each year you need to look at certain predictable events like a change in administration and how that or an election and how those things can call to jump in your FOIA request volume and you need to be able to plan for those things in the future so that when either in a year or in five years something changes you're ready for it and you don't wind up in the exact same place you are so that's the that's the impetus behind this first recommendation here and now I'll open it up tentatively well heart discuss it Jason Jason well picking up Alina on the point that you raised early in this meeting I would ask whether the archivist has the authority to request agencies to do something on FOIA and so I would turn to Bobbie at DOJ and whether if this were in the form of you know we recommend that the archivist suggest - oh I pee to do this what would do James position be and I just say that has a subcommittee considered what the authority would be honestly we have none well I can say that Emily we we did go through and alter some of our recommendations to it to provide a role for ojas and in some cases I think acknowledged and and did talk with Kirsten and Alena about the sort of limited role of of the archivist and directing the agencies to do some of the things that we would like them to do I would you know really welcome since we are we have the time here some adjustments to the language before voting if if folks are open to that and have suggestions I guess I would rather that then it it falling into the best practices bucket and moving in that direction if we could find a way to to make it a recommendation so Bobby from IP and as far as my thoughts on this a number of this is at some level asked upon agencies to report on and the chief FOIA officer report so for example plans for backlog reduction every year if agencies have a thousand or more plans if you didn't close your oldest requests actual plans to do that and and so forth every milestone where an agency doesn't meet it statistic milestone for them to provide a plan the encouragement of taking the self-assessment and what kind of self assessments they've taken and also the the resource challenges if you haven't achieved backlog what are those challenges as far as and technology especially recently in addition to asking agencies to showcase what advanced technologies we're using we've been asking what are the challenges that you're facing and implementing the technology you want so it's not just giving the positive examples which are really important so that we can leverage those across government I think we could continue to I could continue to look at the CFR report where we ask these types of questions where we can get more at some of what is being described here I also think this could be a best practice because it is something that agencies it aligns with the guidance it's already out there and it's something that we would promote that agencies should do as the best practice every two year or something some level of this review we are asking agencies to assess every year and it should they should continually assess we all should clearly assess our programs so I recognize that that you ask them to do the self-assessment every year but again that's a that's either what they've just done or what's kind of immediately in front of them and it doesn't least for them as far as I understand it's not a really forward-looking thing it's still because what I've what I found is that we're constantly being reactive we're reacting to the things that just happened are the things that are right in front of us and which leaves us open to new problems and and potentially completely unprepared when these new things come forward which is why I wanted this more we're looking no I agree I think there's probably better there's always gonna be better ways where we may assess our programs and we want to continue to build on how agencies are doing that and so I mean one way this could look is that the best practices show what a full assessment is and then I can incorporate that maybe in our CFR reporting on how agencies are looking at those types of assessments and what they're doing this is Ryan so I agree with Bobby that because as it's written now I think it's a really good best practice of engagements you should look at it strategically their operations and plan for the future it might make sense for the subcommittee to consider the federal budgeting process as complex and convoluted as it is I know enough just to be dangerous but I know that regularly OMB in the White House releases I think it's circular a11 which and I might be wrong on the number which issues guidance to agencies on developing their agent their budgets and requests information on their performance and so it may be worthwhile to look to see if we might for example request the archivist you know ask that oh and be include instructions to agencies and their annual budget documentation that address FOIA resources or something to that effect that is that is kind of the government-wide strategic process for evaluating resources and dedicating funding and staffing and that sort of thing so it might make sense to look at that as the process that FOIA professionals FOIA leadership should be involved in and if perhaps another area and this might be a you know an area that future committees should look at is our FOIA professionals our FOIA leadership leaders in the FOIA community involved in their agency's budget process do they have a seat at that table just a thought if not for this committee for future committees right thank you any other comments and folks on the phone don't be shy okay very quiet Bradley and Emily how do you guys want to proceed I sort of like Bobby's idea of looking at best practices in terms of what would inform a full assessment or a better assessment not being entirely familiar with that process but I think that I think that that might be a direction to go because I think I think what I don't want to miss here is that and I'm familiar with some agencies within DHS backlog reduction plans and frankly it often involves throwing you know FTEs at it for a period of time until the backlog is reduced and then the backlog creeps back up so I don't think that's very visionary honestly and I think that what this is what this really contemplates is a plan of that that looks more years down the road and takes into consideration what has caused backlogs in the past and what we imagine five years from now might be happening around a future Droon of a future presidential administration we can predict that there will be a lot of FOIA requests around a new administration to various agencies so things like that I think it's more about a strategic plan kind of you know approach but but i but I think but I take what you say into consideration and I think maybe a best practices that looks more more carefully at what if what an assessment is so that it can better inform backlog reduction plans and and other ways to improve FOIA I don't know Bradley if you have thoughts I'm certainly open to a best practice I do think this is something agencies need to do I do think they need to be forward-looking I do know exactly what happens when an agency only looks at the problem that's in front of them and solves it piecemeal or attempts to solve a piecemeal only for the problem to come around and come right back at them when circumstances change I know firsthand how incredibly difficult it is to hire FTEs and they get people on board and they get people cleared and I know that when agencies look at their staffing it is again reactive you look at you know oh I lost the person I'm gonna need to hire one more person or we've got 30,000 employee requests to process and it's gonna take a year to bring a new person on board maybe actually get a contractor but then it takes three six months to get a contract or even longer if you don't already have a contract vehicle in place and so I know that these are things that agencies absolutely need to look ahead to and attempt to solve the problem before it is a problem before you're reporting in your chief FOIA officer report that you've got a backlog of some ungodly number before you have to go to Congress before everybody Sue's you on the way you're handling your FOIA requests these are all things you need to look forward to move towards so it is absolutely something that needs to be done and if it's not a recommendation and it's the best practice that's fine but I would seriously hope that Oh ip's assessment and involvement goes beyond hey tell us what you did and what you're gonna do next year this is Sean well with Pogo I mean I I really like this the what you're going for with this recommendation because I have to agree from an outsider's perspective I know agencies are dealing with a lot the dealing with you know varying volume of requests and you know large requests for large documents but every year they do their best and I applaud them for that but if they don't have a sort of a multi-year plan for where they're supposed to be going they at the end of each year they they kind of you know throw off their hands and say we did our best and we're we're gonna plan for next year and that's about it and there's no adjustment if you're you know if you had a goal a five-year goal and what we're supposed to be then a year in two years in you start to realize not only are the years overwhelming us but we are getting widely off-base from where our milestones say we should be and we need to do something differently and right now every year it's just as you're saying reacting reacting what happened last year and trying to do better the following year but never really trying to say you know we're not making enough progress so everyone's just running in place so you know I'm fine with moving forward with the best practice I think it's a good adjustment but I do think this is an important area that needs more work in terms of FOIA strategy so Shawn I mean in terms of deciding that something should be a best practice what is procedurally what should we do are we good I mean I think that we can decide before voting if there's a general consensus we don't have to vote on it I just wondered yeah correct I wouldn't have to vote on a best practice is what my instinct tells me what does everyone else agree and it would just be up to the working group to craft it and make sure we put all these you know great explanations you guys have in here about the impetus behind the we didn't vote yeah I mean last year as I recall we didn't vote on individual best practices yep we got gathered input from members to make sure it reflected the the general consensus of people's thoughts and we did vote at the end on the overall document and recommendations and so there was that vote so so sorry to deny you a vote but and I know you guys want to go in order but can I give you an opportunity to vote on recommendation six just going to the and only because I want to give you a win okay I will read the recommendation recommendation number six on page ten the archivist recommends ojas undertake an assessment of information agencies make publicly available on their website to facilitate the FOIA filing process after the assessment ojas will recommend best practices the assessment will examine how agencies describe the process for filing a FOIA request on their websites the viability of agencies providing expected wait times for complex and simple requests when the best contact information for an agency representative that can answer questions prior to the filing of the FOIA request and I'll say a couple things around this just in case it's not clear expected wait times for simple and complex requests I understand that agencies do provide that in an annual on an annual basis at least one agency provides it in closer to real-time USCIS which is very very helpful in terms of managing expectations of requesters in terms of how it impacts an individual who has is filing something like a first person request an immigration context and that's sort of where my work is focused but I can imagine merit in many other scenarios where it would be very very helpful to have a better idea about you know what you could see as things shipped and changed throughout a year so that's the what that's the one thing I wanted to clarify there and then the agency represented that can answer questions prior to the filing of the FOIA request there obviously is contact information after you file a FOIA request you're able to reach out to the agency and there are public liaisons FOIA liaisons that that you can that you can reach out to at some agencies but I think and and we found from the survey results that people are willing to do research would like to prepare their FOIA in a way that will they'll get a response that they actually want the records that they actually want in a way that the agency will be able to respond quickly so I do think it would be extremely helpful to have an actual point of contact at the agency prior to filing a FOIA request so and questions thanks questions from anyone around the table sure James Jacob Stanford University just one quick question I know from a from a requester standpoint that that line between simple and complex is is often undefined and if if you could say something about that as well I mean I've submitted for requests where they say oh it's gonna be complex and it's gonna take you six months and then when I respond to that and say but they are they've already scanned the document they just need you to release the document and then they then they give me the document so sometimes you know simple versus complex is complex I want to recognize that Kevin Kohlberg drafted this with me so Kevin do you want to speak to that that is going to differ between agencies I agree James I mean this is part of what we will do really talked about night I just think that's kind of where you're going to get into maybe calling or having a conversation first it's gonna be very hard to pin down on every request you know certainly across the agencies and even agency the agency component to component within an agency and even sometimes with regards to request for request it would be very hard to pin down exactly what a complex versus simple request is I'm not sure everything gets there with any precision so I understand their problem and I don't think it's that easy to define perhaps up front what a simple versus a complex is going to going to look like when questions made that was one of the concerns that we had so this is Sean Moulton with Pogo I just wanted to point out that you know I know that posting the expected wait times or trying to come up with some way of posting expected wait times might be a burden on agencies but I actually think that if if we can figure out a way to do it that minimizes the burden on them it could actually reduce the level of calls that FOIA officers and FOIA processors are getting asking about their request if they're in the complex queue or the simple queue and they see it's a whatever it is a 30 day wait and it's been 10 days then you know that I probably shouldn't call yet it's you know everyone's waiting this this amount of time and it's probably useless to call too soon on page 12 the second paragraph down I'm not I mean maybe you didn't go into as much detail as as Kevin and I initially discussed but I mean to the extent that the agency's website can provide even an example or some information around what would be considered simple or complex that would be particularly helpful and I also sort of squeezed in here something that requesters hear a lot about from agencies that you know it's not a sufficiently specific request and other tips for narrowing requests to the extent that that kind of guidance can be there I think that that's you know you you're in that territory a lot after you file a FOIA request where you're having those conversations post filing and let's let's you know cut down on that that communication and and expedite the process like Shawn mentioned okay Thank You Emily um anyone else on the phone have any comments questions how about if we put it to a vote does someone want to move move to a vote on our recommendation six okay 90 seconds thank you for the second all right all those in favor of recommendation six moving forward please say aye I heard one I on the phone can I hear any others hi all right okay I heard that's three eyes are there any nays on the phone okay any nays around the table all right any abstentions abstain all right so recommendation six is passed see a win all right um I have deferred to you guys if you want to go in reverse order you want to pick up with two I'm sorry to have messed up your order I just thought it was easier one to hit hi Patricia wet from NLRB our recommendation number two we ask that the archivist request oh IP collect information as a part of each agency's chief FOIA officer report regarding the standard operating procedure for processing FOIA requests and the FOIA webpage and how we came up with this recommendation was we looked at some of the survey responses that we received one survey question that went out to agency person to the requester community was what are your biggest questions about the FOIA process and their biggest question about the FOIA process was the process itself 31% said I have questions about the process okay that's that's a problem next we then asked agency personnel to identify their perception of what was confusion among requesters in agency personnel 36 identified knowledge of the process as a problem lastly the other question that I relied on honor looked to was agency personnel were asked if they had a magic wand to fix FOIA what would they do and agency personnel 20 percent identified fixing eternal processes so the fact that 20 percent of agency personnel identified internal processes as a problem really indicates a need for standard operating procedures so we're recommending that that agencies track these standard operating procedures but what they can use in drafting these is relying on do J's FOIA self-assessment tool kit I mean they can use each of the modules and walk through and that can help them in the drafting of this also it's important to point out that this is kind of twofold one agencies should have an SOP to agencies really need to update their websites and really give requesters an idea of the process and really explain it to them and so module 13 of the toolkit talks about the the FOIA websites and what agencies should be doing with their FOIA websites additionally DOJ is chewed guidance entitled agency for websites 2.0 I think Jason mentioned that earlier today and that gives additional guidance on what agencies should have on their website if you have if an agency has a well drafted for a reference guide it can walk the requester through the process and alleviate this confusion because this really shouldn't be the way and we need to do better for the requester community so so we're suggesting that agencies one create this SOP and to update and I'm happy to answer any questions or take any comments so Patricia this this is Emily I think that we that actually some language around the drafting is not here where we talk about collecting information right so so in order in order for each agency to answer the chief FOIA officer report they actually have to have an SOP so if if there was a question and the chief FOIA officer report asking does your agency have an SOP and do you update it two years I think that would be a red flag to the agency oh I you know I better get on this I better create an SOP and and that was the thought behind that okay I didn't fully understand that piece any other comments or questions alright folks on the phone guys are very quiet try min okay um I'm sorry go ahead leave lift even I have it just a question on is if you take out the parentheticals and so forth you're asking for collect information regarding the FOIA webpage if you take out the SOP stuff so what does that mean collect information regarding the FOIA by page so that to me is not clear enough to understand what information you're allowing them to collect regarding the FOIA webpage so I see what you're saying so what if I put in regarding the standard operating procedure for the processing of FOIA requests and is this a standard operation the SOP for is is it the SOP for the web the web page is that what it is or is it is it or it is the SOP just relating to the FOIA processing of our request yeah I'm sorry it is in my mind it was just for the processing of FOIA requests and secondly regarding updating your webpage and so I see what you're saying the wording is a bit awkward here and Bradley right DHS let me jump in I think what we're trying to get at is we don't just want the SOP to be an internal document that only the agency looks at the public least it needs to understand what the processes are and the website needs to communicate the SOP or portions of it the really really important portions so the public so that they understand what they're getting into and what the agency is doing with their requests yeah that's that's correct and we do have that identified in the last paragraph thanks for pointing that out so perhaps what I would suggest is maybe rewarding this language requests that oh i p collect information as part of each agency's chief FOIA officer report regarding one the standard operating procedure for the processing of FOIA requests and to the FOIA webpage i would i would even strengthen that to to say to the posting of a public version of the SOP on the agency's web page this is ryan i would i would suggest looking to section g of the FOIA also which requires agencies to post to the public a guide for requesting documents from each particular agency our subcommittee looked at those guides and as part of our recommendation one and found varying levels of utility across agencies some had very good examples some did not our recommendation i think there's some synergy obviously between this recommendation and our recommendation one and perhaps if this recommendation were to pass and drafting with it could be combined so i encouraged perhaps we look there and then second to Jason's point earlier you know we need to ensure that the recommendation we have the authority to make the recommendation here as well and so are we asking the archivist of the united states to request that OIP add these questions to the FOIA chief FOIA officer report or re requesting that ojas include these questions in the records management self-assessment that's conducted every year or another vehicle that just may have thanks for bringing that up Brian I was also gonna bring the the formulation of the question up to what everyone's saying I do see the overlap with recommendation one of the records management committee as well as the time volume recommendations six regarding the FOIA website and they I don't want to lose this so maybe what I would suggest is because the FOIA website portion seems to be covered in two other two other recommendations passed by this committee perhaps regarding the standard operating procedure we could suggest that as the best practice I this assembly I'm not opposed to that I did want to clarify though from folks at the table I think we did talk quite a bit about an SOP and how it might differ from a FOIA handbook when went over to sort of discussing this in that an SOP and it is aspirational I think in some cases which is why it's here would actually be not outdated it would be what the agency is actually using which may not exist I mean it may only be outdated guidance I know that Bradley would like that to not be the case and so and I'm I I would I would imagine others at other agencies feel the same way so I just want to throw that out there I'm not I guess maybe it's just a question about again what what Authority we have to really recommend agencies that they develop something that doesn't currently exist and then ask them questions about it it's sort of I think where we're ending up here but I don't know if others have thought well this is Sean from Pogo I I continue to think that as FOIA Advisory Committee that we have the authority to recommend to agencies and that you know we can again we can word this if we want to have it in the actual wording and recommendation of the archivist they there's lots of ways to wear that the archivist doesn't have to have the authority to make it happen so much as we recommend something that the the archivist can can convey or request request that's fine I also think I would I would prefer to keep this as a recommendation rather than the best practice I think it's I think it's important enough and I think it's something new enough from the other recommendations maybe we can figure out a way to put them together but I think today we should discuss whether or not we there is agreement broad agreement on it as a recommendation as a standalone recommendation yes then potentially we may figure out a way to put them together right there's no reason not to vote on this now because it may stay standalone okay Bradley white DHS Thank You Sean I think it's also maybe a place where we kind of split the baby we're having an SOP could be a best practice but we could recommend the archivist request oh IP to ask questions about the existence and the content of the SOP which would then be a red flag to the agencies that don't have SOPs that no you don't want to say no on something that oh IP is gonna ask you about all the time okay how's your recipe Oh No like you're gonna want to fix this eventually just as another option for discussion well this is Jason I I'm supportive of the recognition but the wording here aside from a technical change about the archivist recommending that oip do something is that ORP collect information and that's it and so I think the goal here needs to be something more than that for agencies to change their actual procedures or enhance them make them transparent so I would suggest that this is held in abeyance for a committee vote unless so that the wording can be strengthened an alternative that is to I don't know whether this is procedure but to have a committee vote that the spirit of this is approved at this video very much like our September meeting where there was a the spirit of our proposed recommendations were approved subject to we're changing right right only I would vote in favor of the second okay I saw that we vote in favor of the spirit so can I have a motion for this amended language okay so just so we're all clear at the amended language would read something along the lines of the archivist requests that oh I P collect information as part of each agency's chief with officer report regarding : one that the standard operating procedure SOP for the process to comply or requests colon semicolon rather and to the FOIA webpage is that what everyone's got actually that was only halfway towards what I was suggesting which is that the wording here says that the only thing that the archivist would be requesting of DOJ would be to collect information and I think the spirit of this recommendation goes much further than that so I think there's a need for further wordsmithing okay so do we want to hold this I would vote in voting on the spirit and it's not a safe if that is a thing we can do okay I would all right it seems like we're in agreement that we want to vote on the spirit we can vote again on the wordsmith language on May first so all in favor of the spirit of recommendation - as presently discussed please say aye folks on the phone aye okay I by the way I just want to note Liz that cotillion set to drop out so we're not going to be hearing her votes and any nays on the phone any nays around the table all right any abstentions okay moving right along recommendation three hi this is Joan kaminer EPA and I just want to note that it appears that a older version of recommendation three was included in your packet so I will be reading from the final version and I think there may be there was some miscommunication in the final version but maybe it could be disseminated via email this afternoon or this week okay so I will be reading from my phone so the recommendation that the archivist direct ojas to undertake a study of agency's FOIA training requirements in content including an evaluation of mandatory training onboarding or supplemental training first-line supervisor training and subject specific training for subject matter experts and technology professionals the study should also include an assessment of funding sources and allocations for the identified training the committee further recommends that oh just submit the results of its assessment and any recommendations to Congress and the president in accordance with 5 USC Section 5 v 2h 5 as you can see this is somewhat different from the previous draft that's in front of you I just want to point out in the paper version that you're looking at it actually provides a little more detail on what each of those types of trainings might you know constitute so give us a bit of more flavor to what we were aiming at the idea of having mandatory training I know is something that we we discussed in our subcommittee meetings but I think that the combination of such a mandatory training as well as the specialized training would go a long way to increase transparency and efficiency in the floyd employ responses and additionally help with FOIA backlog reduction in processing times the recommendation is that the archivists direct ojas to undertake a study of agencies FOIA training requirements and content including an evaluation of mandatory training onboarding or supplemental training first-line supervisor training and subject specific training for subject matter experts and technology professionals the study should also include an assessment of funding sources and allocations for the identified training the committee further recommends that oh just submit the results of its assessment and any recommendations to Congress and the president in accordance with 5 USC Section 5 v 2 H 5 at the other thing I note is that I think that as many agency representatives will mention funding sources having the budget to be able to fully train up not just FOIA professionals but individuals who touch on the FOIA process which can be quite extensive it can be limited and understanding our limitations and having the archivist direct certain actions particularly to you know direct Congress to provide funding wonderfullest that would be is rather limited so we were trying to find a way to get to the intent the spirit behind it with it within the the authorities that we have okay sounds great this is Li just to get the so that I'm understanding the exact requests here in this recommendation it is so I'm gonna summarize what I think it is and you can't know if that's wrong you're asking oh just to collect information on existing training programs and then from that assessment of that gathering of information to come up with recommendations that they would ultimately transfer to to Congress and the president correct that's correct and I just want to point out it's not just an assessment of what type of training it's available but also the content of that training okay and is that is that information would that be new information to that is not currently available now or perhaps it hasn't been centralized but by ojas but is that would that be asking for new information that it's not otherwise out there and being collected or being assessed annually so a YP does collect information on training and you will see that in the printout that you have under the rationale that lays out with existing mandatory for u training requirements there are which from my perspective there's no legally enforceable mandatory training requirements but on page five and I walk through the Attorney General memoranda on the Freedom of Information Act as well as the 2015 guidance for further improvement based on the 2015 chief FOIA officer report review and assessment there are certain trained questions that agencies do answer to provide additional information on their training I envision that this assessment that ojas conducts goes well beyond the questions and the information that Scott in the FOIA officers report but if you wanted to take a look at the four questions on page five that's what's currently collected by oip Jason Jason so I have very supportive training we had recommendations about training and I think ultimately the final report this might be a good recommendation to combine I I just want to make a point you said here today and in this document that there's no mandatory a legally enforceable mandatory FOIA training requirement but please tell me and I'm looking to Bobby and Alina the statute at five 5 - J - f you have a typo in here j2f says that the chief FOIA officer for each agency Shack and it uses the word shall subject to the authority of the head of the agency offer trading to agency staff regarding their responsibilities under the FOIA so my understanding is that there is a mandatory requirement however I'm very supportive of having ojas working with a like a to make sure to enhance the training that's going on in various ways that you've set out to study it and to actually take actions to to make suggestions to agency so but I wanted to make that legal point I had to act as a lawyer here and I I was focusing on the the term mandatory so um I think that Bobby wanted to say something but um how I my understanding that most agencies apply this requirement it doesn't require mandatory training for all agency employees so it's not identified such as the security compliance training that every agency employee is required to take or their access to information systems are you know restricted that is what I think we're really getting at is you know FOIA is a responsibility of all employees so if you're looking at that high-level mandatory FOIA training for all agency employees I think that's what we'd like to see the additional trainings described in the bullet points I don't see as necessary for a mandatory training it would be up to the discretion of an agency but I think Bobby had something that he wanted to say sorry I fans no I'm just gonna the chief that provision requires and she's for us to offer the training of course and IP is very very very supportive of training it's a key part of our mission and a key part of what we do and that's why we did include in the reporting for a long time now not only is the agency offering training but how what percentage of the agencies for professionals are actually attending substance of FOIA training so that would include new agency for professionals and for professionals that need to continuously up-to-date not here so technical we also ask a technical maybe addition we also ask agencies a report on how what kind of outreach and training they're providing to their non FOIA professionals because we do recognize that four is everyone's responsibility and it's really important and we created a module for that to help agencies provide that training so just wanted to add that technical addition and in there and as director of ojas wearing that hat i just also want to add that I would prefer to see this done in conjunction with oh I pee I think that's a more logical way to proceed so if we could and again adding to the spirit of this recommendation that has only been read out loud twice unfortunately but we will circulate later just want to add that and I can make the revision to added ojas and you know I think similar to the other end or the Noi P yeah i think just um parallel to some of the language that's in some of the other recommendation that had both organizations involved so Joan do you want to move for the spirit oh so we're going with spirit so moving for voting on the spirit of recommendation number three all right thank you thank you second okay can I hear the eyes all right folks on the phone hi I I heard two eyes on the phone any other eyes hi this is Chris not work we hear more than the number of eyes you're saying on the phone I think it just might be a delay on the phone okay that's good thank you Chris thanks for pointing that out and you're an eye right I'm an eye okay all right any nays on the phone okay any nays around the table all right so we were passing the spirit of recommendation three which will be language provided by Joan and/or Bradley and Emily and we will have it in front of us and we'll work it into the draft report and we will look at it again before May 1st okay so we've passed recommendation 3 spirit all right recommendation number 4 this is James Stoker so recommendation number 4 reads as follows and this may be some language that needs to be altered along the pattern as some of the other recommendations that have come out of our committee that agencies identify common categories of documents requested frequently under the FOIA and/or Privacy Act by or on behalf of individuals seeking records about themselves and establish alternate processes for providing access to these documents to requesters in a more efficient manner than the FOIA so this is a recommendation that originated in our international sub subcommittee that the AVI and Patricia and ginger who's no longer I think serving on the committee work work worked on a lot and the goal of the recommendation what basically was Kane came out of an observation that we had that in the United States we have many more times per capita the number of FOIA requests as other countries and so that sort of brought the question of why that is the case and one of the answers we think can be convene from a presentation that we had earlier in in our term by professor Margaret quokka on the issue of first-person FOIA requests which are requests by individuals for information about themselves now the goal of the Freedom of Information Act was originally to increase the transparency of government operations and ultimately to increase accountability accountability of the government by providing information to the people which is not exactly the same thing as providing information to people about themselves right so the goal of this recommendation is ultimately in line with the task of this committee to reduce time and volume of requests and particularly volume by reclassifying these requests it doesn't mean that people all of a sudden stop making requests for information about themselves it just would mean that FOIA would no longer be the primary conduit of that information and would not then then regulated since I lost meeting where we first were we introduced this resolution the languages had changed quite a bit emmalin-- it only worked very closely with me on this and we received a little bit of feedback from Alina and Carsten and then a number of of others made comments on on the recommendation there were a couple of questions that we had and we had to make some decisions in order to move the recommendation forward today one question was that was basically the question of what kind of first person request would be included so the original language only had individuals and we ended up adding the language on behalf of individuals to include lawyers and other representatives of of individuals making making records requests some members of our committee also suggested that we include organizations and businesses as well and there were a couple of people in favor of that but there was also a little bit of opposition we didn't really tease out the issue too much so if any committee members have comments on that it might be worth discussing just discussing now and we also asked questions about the language that we use so we're asking for access to these documents to requesters in a more efficient manner in a more efficient manner than the FOIA the goal of that is not to somehow dilute the rights of first person requesters to information by themselves so I think that that all of us who worked on this recommendation would hate to see a situation where a new process was created that was actually slower or resulted in fewer records being being produced or less information being produced for first person requesters and I think that was important for us as well so so that's the recommendation and I'd look forward to hearing any questions or comments that you may have Bradlee right DHS I would suggest one change there and that will be listen to figure out who's going to make the request and take the action but I would strongly recommend that we would that the agencies would look into establishing these matters rather than just was flat-out requiring or attempting to require that the agencies do that only because there will there will be some categories of records where this may not be feasible okay do you mind if I ask why it may it might not be feasible sure if you look at I'll say the single most commonly requested record in the federal government the alien file there are not just records about the person there are records about the there are case notes from the attorneys handling the removal proceedings the government is already telling them that are in the fault that are in those files there are invest ory records that belonged to either ice or CBP in those files there may be other agency investigatory records in there as well it's one thing to give a give everyone access to their own benefits applications but when you're talking about law enforcement records that brings a whole different wrinkle to it and there is you know it's not we're not talking discovery there is information that could be law enforcement sensitive again attorney-client privilege attorney work product all those things would be in those files and you would really have to separate you know those records from the file if I could just respond spotted that really quickly as James Stoker again and I think the the intention of this first off it's not only about immigration records although obviously immigration records are a major category of records that would fall under this category I don't think the recommendation also is is requiring that they simply be turned over or that there would be no process of review at all there are alternate mechanisms for providing the same this information one example is the encouragement of this idea of administrative discovery which is an issue probably beyond my area of expertise but it would be an alternative way of sort of proactively disclosing information that can be key to to legal legal defense right to meet the purposes of the of the request so I I guess all I won't want to say is that it's not requiring that records be turned over without any consideration that these sensitive issues as you so rightly point to and I I'll reinforce that I think if there was an alternative process and especially on the alien files if you had reviewers looking at it and they knew they weren't going to be looking at privacy information because it's a first person request they didn't have to concern themselves with pretty much any of the other you know exclusions they really were doing a law enforcement or something like that review it could actually speed up that review process for them and there could be parts of the alien file that could almost be automated eventually and so you know we could if a system could be built and and changes made you could get some percentage of the alien file that that's almost automated and then a different approach but I do agree that establish might be a little too bold and it might it might need work before you could establish a system I mean I think that's the real case around the alien files is that there needs to be work done on the record creation and management that that has to be solved that you could even have a system probably that would work and I don't know if you envisioned that as as part of the establishing alternative but I think it's something we should I don't know if it needs to be in the recommendation but it should definitely be in the explanatory text that you almost have to look before it's not just about the request and answer process it's about the record creation and manage so I I think you're completely Bradley whitepages I think you're completely right about the use of technology here I think this is one area where it would where some of these things could easily fall into the bucket that the records management committee the recommendation we passed earlier with looking into AI and machine readable stuff that is an area where this could absolutely streamline and make my life way easier selfishly so I definitely agree with that but so portions of this could absolute absolutely work with the earlier recommendation and again it is something that the agencies do need to look into but yeah I just prefer the the softer language so this is Ryan and all the Greek Sean made my point earlier and I also agree with Bradley too on some of the challenges associated with this I think the language here is carefully constructed there are certain categories of documents not necessarily the entire record might not be available to the individual but certainly certain documents in that file might be available without without you know additional review so as I mentioned several committee meetings ago we had the presentation about about about this I think I brought it up then they're agencies that are doing this now the Internal Revenue Service is one example where we afford access to taxpayers without the need to file a FOIA requests and they're able to contact IRS get access to documents that they need there are certain documents in the file that they they must file for your quest for but for the most part that has had the effect of driving down the demand for the number of FOIA requests but I would caution that particularly in these systems of record that are mixed where you have law enforcement and non non law enforcement records I think this might be the case that DHS and DOJ and others even if you create a separate process - for individuals to gain access to those materials you have to ask the question who is going to do that work right and what's happening now as a matter of practice is that FOIA analysts are doing both FOIA and privacy work across across government it's done differently in some places but DHS I know and in Treasury that work is done by the same same folks so it's a question of who's going to do that work maybe I might propose one thing ojas could do is in addition to this is to identify best practices that agencies have undertaken in this area and encourage agencies to follow suit one last thing as agencies also begin to implement em 1921 which is the requirement to manage records electronically from cradle to grave I think there'll be more opportunities for agencies to leverage that in order to find more efficient processes no longer will files be in paper stored in Lee's Summit Missouri as a lien files are as Bradley notes they'll be digital they'll be portable and available you know and hopefully we can as we've encouraged in the records management subcommittee we were able to increase access to the public as well and to individuals boko I agree that those records mandatorily become more digital there'll be more opportunity but I also think that as we're making that process it really helps to be for a recommendation like this that points out to agencies that as they come up with a digital version or electronic version of it think about disclosure because if you can automatically segregate into an entirely different document all the law enforcement sensitive information so that the the other document can be released and this one is always withheld there's just no question about that that might not be how law enforcement would automatically do it if they're not if someone's not going to them and saying look maybe we can figure out a way to segregate from the start they would just say well we'll put it all together that's helpful to me but it makes it more difficult down the road so I just want to chime in we have now surpassed our one o'clock time period because we're having such robust discussion I really didn't want to step in I really want to leave it to the committee members I'm happy to stay all afternoon I'm serious because as I said we have a lot to get through but I really want to get the sense of everyone how much longer you guys want to hang in there and whether we might even be able to aspirationally get through recommendation four and five and then I feel very badly for the vision subcommittee I I know everyone's been working very hard we can decide whether we want to hear from the vision subcommittee today or table and hear from them on May 1st so what are the what are ever on socks you hear me yes so I think pushing everything to May 1st is a little concerning since we need to get the working group going right myself I can stay on for probably another 20 25 minutes I don't know about everybody for everybody else but if we cannot get through vision today I'd recommend that possibly we schedule a call to follow up in the next week so we can get through it so the working group can do their work I don't think holding them up home a lie so the problem with having a call today I was Kris knocks right the problem with having a call is it violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act we're supposed to be having open discussion in front of the public and I also apologize I know there's always public comment period at the end we're just gonna have to invite public comments online at this point I've already said earlier where you can send your public comments and would very much like to see whether we can at least get through recommendations 4 & 5 all right well so let's just move forward so where are we with recommendation 4 so I would this is Emily picture show did you I'm just speechless all right so for the record that was Alex Howard who is always very happy to join in for public comments what is the sense of the committee what do you guys want to do okay so let's push forward let's allow for five to 10 minutes of public comments at the end and let's see whether we can get through recommendations four and five okay this is Patricia with NLRB I just wanted to comment about recommendation number four and and I do understand the agencies that deal with law enforcement issues because my agency also deals with them too but what we were hoping with this recommendation is that if agencies can come up with a process such as what our Treasury does with IRS to allow taxpayers to obtain their transcripts their tax returns without going through the foil or similar to what the VA does with it allows attorneys and veterans obtain their benefit information through the veteran's benefit management system again without going through FOIA I am very sensitive to law enforcement issues but this is this is for agencies to look at other possible avenues so that information can be can be given that way without having to go through the FOIA process so this is Emily I wonder if this is becoming a trend but I wonder if we could if folks agree that if there were a recommendation that looked like oh just could assess what agencies have done James well along those lines I don't know personally I would find that to be a little bit weak just conducting an assessment because I think there's already been a significant amount of research done and done into this identifying this as a problem so we know the problem the problem exists but I would be happy to include that in addition to what is there so sorry just as a point of clarification I think there has been a lot done to see what problems exist but for example some of the literature around this doesn't involve sort of the operational side right so I think that it would be really helpful for to see for agencies that are doing this what operationally they're doing to inform other agents does that make sense but I just wanna know if that's in addition to to to sort of the the weather or the weather the request or the strong suggestion or the look into that yeah that they establish alternate process I think the and established part I'm in the sense that people I don't know what folks are thinking along those lines you know repeat myself the end establishment part is a no-go for me it is that a feeling that's shared amongst my committee because I understand that you know for a particular for the immigration file this is this is a sensitive issue and and that I I you know and I'd you know I respect that but I just want to would like to know how how much of a concern that is for others so I guess the question then becomes and establish alternate processes it would be oh just recommending that these processes be established well one suggested the brother Bradley made was to look into establishing right which is a little bit different than actually but I'll just would still be recommending to the agencies to look into establishing right yes okay okay so thinking about who is the after here alright um that I think do people understand that maybe you could repeat it again James and then we could vote on the spirit okay so that so in this scenario the recommendation to read as follows that agencies identified as a would recommend that the archivist that the archivist recommend that ate that ojas requests that agencies identify common categories of documents requested frequently under the FOIA and/or Privacy Act by or on behalf of individuals seeking records about themselves comma and look into establishing alternative processes for providing access to these documents to requesters in a more efficient manner than the FOIA could could it would just recommend that agencies there if oh just were to take on the assessment we've always taken the position that it's really DOJ got a YP in particular who issues guidance to agencies we're not in a position to issue legal guidance that with a we can divorce okay so that's that's the issue so you could once again make it a happy marriage between ojas and OIP right so that's something that we could you know certainly work on but I defer to Bobby as well whether he might not be willing to work on anything with me that's not true at all no I don't see that we have guidance I think that touches on this so I'd like to go back but yeah and I would this is Sean from Pogo I would recommend a small tweak to the tweak we just got instead of look into would it be okay to say seek to establish it's a little bit more and not just research it but try and move towards it yeah to establish new agencies yeah seek to establish alternative okay so Emily what would you like to do Emily Bradley could we vote in this spirit of that recommendation to approve the recommendation number four so that I don't because I don't know do we have the language let me let me let me read what I've got here so so far I've got recommend that the archivist of the United States requests that ojas and oib requests that that agencies identify common categories of documents requested frequently under the FOIA and/or Privacy Act by on behalf of individuals seeking records about themselves , and seek to establish alternative processes for providing access to these documents to requesters in a more efficient manner than the FOIA good so on recommendation on before that's the motion yep motion do I have a second okay let's take a vote all in favor say aye folks on the phone okay anyone opposed please say nay and you went around the table nay and any abstentions abstain okay so recommendation 4 is passed with the wordsmithing that we just discussed let's try to move on to recommendation 5 which is the last one I think that looks like it's Abbey Abbey Consumer Product Safety Commission and I'll read recommendation number 5 recommend that the archivist address agencies needs to need to provide for the dissemination of information outside of the FOIA and ensure that the programs that provide such information dissemination are robust consistent with the National Archives and records administration's M 1921 memorandum which directs agencies to ensure that all federal records are created retained and managed in electronic formats with appropriate metadata by December 31st 2020 to recommend that the archivist address agencies need to provide these records electronically developing online databases where members of the public may access commonly requested types of documents that go to the heart of the agency's mission and providing secure online databases where that information contains personally identifiable information or other sensitive information and so again the goal is to keep as much outside of the FOIA office as possible and just using my current agency as an example we we have a Clearing House division that provides all copies of consumer complaints online and if without that I think the FOIA office we currently get about 554 requests a year without that Clearinghouse data going out it would be triple that and we also have another division that provides injury data related to consumer products without providing that data which is much sought after those those requests would be flooding our FOIA office to and if I can't even imagine how many we would get for that so I'll just leave it open for comments and questions Jason well I'm supportive of the recommendation the recommendation is complicated a B and it in particular in the B section I think it's confusing to mention M 1921 in the body of the recommendation itself I think it could be in the text certainly is consistent with but it is not within the scope of that memorandum to do these actions and the archivist again has it doesn't he doesn't have general authority by himself to direct agencies to do what is being proposed here under FOIA but he certainly in conjunction with OMB as we've suggested in our recommendation one as well as in ojas in conjunction with DOJ can encourage and request and agencies to do this so I think there's a language issue here I think it could be simplified I'm supportive of the recommendation okay thank you any other comments questions folks on the phone I want to invite you to chime in if you have any questions or comments okay Emily and Bradley and Abby what do you guys want to do in terms of moving forward on this recommendation I mean we could this is aa B we could sit here and try to tweak the language to simplify it now and move it forward or vote in the spirit and get back to tweaking it and and put that out there there's a lot of commonality between this and I think the third recommended or fourth records management one so that you know we may need to look at buckets as we go forward with this as well okay so who wants to move for the spirit done of recommendation number five because I'm seeing a lot of nods as to the spirit I have a motion do I have a second okay thank you second so let's vote again we're voting for the spirit we will have some more language that will be tweaked and circulated to everyone so all in favor of the spirit of recommendation number five please say aye hi hi okay thank you oh that's all right um any nays on the phone any nays around the room any abstentions okay Bobby Upstate all right so we have reviewed our bylaws and they do specifically say that unless we stayed in the Federal Register that oral comment from the public is excluded we will now entertain five to ten minutes of public comment and then we'll talk about what to do with the vision committee subcommittee next with apologies to the vision subcommittee so please state your name and affiliation hello my name is Alex Howard and currently at the digital democracy project Adam and progress Education Fund it's a nonprofit dedicated to open government transparency and improving democratic integrity here United States previously a sunlight foundation how are these issues were present for us thank you all of you for your service last time I checked this is a volunteer position people in government and outside of government it's never been more important to have open deliberative discussion of these issues particularly sunshine week comes through as someone who gave comment was participant in the development of the second national action plan it's good to see a commitment in still in force because there are other commitments and past plans that are gone right that were developed they were not something it was mandated and I'd note in terms of vision and your role something specific in this the government will establish a committee comprised the government non-government members the committee to foster dialogue between administrator niversary requester communities solicit public comment develop consensus recommendations for improving administration attractive disclosures that's it that's your mandate now it's not legally binding all right there's no statute that's established that but the scope and clarity of your recommendations who you make them to is not defined here you could write the president a letter you could write the Senate a letter you could ask the Senate why they're not holding a hearing for Sunshine Week you could send out your own independent assessment of the state of FOIA you are not constrained by anything but what you defined yourselves and I would encourage you to take that opportunity to make the most of these discussions I know I am encouraged by how responsive and specific these recommendations are in many senses but I am also dismayed why is it that we are still discussing a centralized repository when we have data gov why is it that we're talking about the difficulties of putting things online 11% aren't using have no procedures for use employee Reading Room's is defined by ePHI Act back in 1996 discuss the difficulties of pushing about machine readable data all publish machine readable data on agency websites make it searchable blue tagging it with metadata and make sure it's accessible and findable not just to Floyd gov or usa.gov or data.gov but through Google's search engine to Bing's search engine any other place I would encourage you all to continue to think big and I'm grateful that you made sure that there's an opportunity for public comment as part of your mandate because it is so important to have a massively disaffected public that does not trust government as you could see in YouTube comments or any discussion of this not shut off eNOS and to never miss that opportunity I'd also encourage you to be a little bit more specific in some of these recommendations and be pointed it's good to see you again as a director the Office of Information policy why hasn't the YP put its response to the Senate online from the questions they asked last year why aren't we seeing the chief FOIA officers council report promulgated and pushed up to Justice Department channels why isn't the committee holding itself to account for promulgating these reports through these channels through engaging the public with these tools recommendation could be pretty straightforward there seems to be a direct correlation between the Riis of lawsuits and the lack of responsiveness from agencies you could tell agencies to make sure to respond to every FOIA request within 20 days now that means acknowledging it doesn't mean given them documents but literally saying you need to do that if you do that you'll save the taxpayers time and money that's the requester community's ask why isn't that in these recommendations why are we recommending that the Office of Management and Budget sets and leads on FOIA why aren't we recommending that the House provides more oversight and resources where capacity is needed I ask these questions not to be intentionally provocative but to suggest that there might be some limit here that you are all setting to your recommendations and their scope and the parties you're addressing them to that are not set by the plan there's no law here that says you have to exist there's no law that says how you have to do it there is a law because you're holding yourself binding with respect to holding a public meeting right and the fact is something that I'm grateful that you observe and really care about here and I would say that the archives continues to be a national leader in making its public meet and accessible to the public through modern technology your your meeting the informations on line your agenda is online you're live streaming you've got someone listening to the chat you're taking questions you are a model for the rest of the US government and I will say that a lot of the US government is not following along which is why I protested immediately when you tried to shut that down because it has never been more important that you lead and I would ask you continue to do so here and I look forward to seeing you again during Sunshine Week thank you Alex thank you very much your comments will be noted in the meeting minutes Jesse I'm going to turn to you to see what's on any comments or questions on livestream No okay okay believe that the commenter is referring to the records management subcommittee proposal number eight okay I'll give you a second to look at that and the question is without explicit wording that the standard is the minimum for access is there a danger of hampering agencies who will assume they are prevented from providing additional public access despite their wish to do so is this not contrary to the public good looking to Jason Orion you want to just take that comment or and think about it or respond it's up to you Jason our our subcommittee certainly would want to encourage agencies to maximize elements of standardized data not minimize it there was a comment earlier and we're gonna take that into account as a subcommittee but I understand the commenter is concerned thank you Jesse anything else okay let's talk for a minute logistics for next time so we do have this meeting on the books Friday May 1st at 10:00 a.m. right here in the Gowland but obviously we did not get to the vision subcommittee with my greatest apologies to Joan and to Chris so let's chocolate just mix about how we want to proceed so we we are actually one suggestion that we've received is to possibly have try to have a virtual meeting I don't know how feasible that is and I don't know what folks schedule is like in April to see whether we have an April meeting yeah I'm getting a thumbs up yeah I could I could certainly do that but I was also wondering if and again I don't understand the limits of what we're but could the subcommittee have a subcommittee call that we we've done before yes and invite as guess anyone who have concerns or input that they want to raise on the materials that circulate or does that run afoul of a virtual meeting this is Kirsten you can do that provided you don't reach a quorum that is when that triggers the public requirement that the meeting be public I believe that is 13 members but I can look it up and and mail it around so this is Emily there are three recommendations from the vision separation how many well they're there Gary but each has sub parts each SM part so I counted nine that's nine total right okay I was I was wondering if maybe we could by email send comments individually to the subcommittee and then have a quicker process with voting at the May meeting I would definitely indifference to Joan and Chris and this upcoming year would definitely have them go first Alena can I ask what what else is on the agenda for the May meeting so forth for May first really to the point where the working group has been able to pull together as much as possible to look at the report and vote we can vote on parts of it we can vote on everything that we've put together up until that point and then division subcommittee so I miss is Joan kaminer and I think I'd be comfortable with that approach with reservation on recommendation number three and I think that we've all noted a need for a more robust conversation that extends you know beyond our subcommittee I mean we could take the approach on all three recommendations to take you know written comments but if we could reserve maybe more than just a minimal time at the main meeting for conversation just in anticipating that's going to be needed you know I think that's fair and the working group certainly would have enough time to incorporate the recommendations of the vision subcommittee that we vote on on May 1st and then we could present that at our last meeting in June I was trying to avoid that last-minute rush that we had in the 2016 2018 term but we're certainly much further along in terms of passing along recommendations and we'll certainly look at buckets so let's agree that we'll meet again on May 1st that's the consensus I'm getting since everyone has that on their calendars already and if the subcommittee wants to pass around any finessed or updated or tweaked recommendations feel free to do that okay one other suggestion would you possibly would be to make the meeting longer yes sure then you could create that yes for the May 1st meeting is what you're suggesting how do folks feel about that all right I mean maybe I need all the time may not need it but maybe make it till 2 o'clock so that way there's plenty of opportunity for public comments as well as any other comments that folks want to make ok seeing some nods okay so let's just adjourn at this point unless there's anything else that anyone wants to bring up I would like to thank everyone again jason has something you would like to bring up uh well I it's Jason I'd like to address what alex has indicated is thinking big that just to put out the public records of the vision committee has been thinking big about proposals for legislation and resources so that's a good thing I we had been talking subsidy about the recommendations what I would have gone at greater lengths to say is that I I do believe that the vision committee should think big about a few more elements that could be part of a set of recommendations for the final document that we're preparing and the one key one that I just want to put on the record is that that I believe the archivist should work with the White House at OMB and DOJ to ensure that Nara is involved in the ongoing federal data strategy discussions at the highest level of government and that FOIA and federal Records Act issues are considered in the mix I think we should as a committee align ourselves with the highest level plans agendas and federal data strategies that are being that are out there in various documents and I it behooves us to think for the next five and 10 years as to how FOIA and how federal record-keeping can be harmonized with an attention paid to open government and open data okay thanks for that comment I know the vision subcommittee will definitely take that under consideration any other thoughts or comments before we stand adjourned anyone on the phone okay hearing nothing else we stand adjourned we'll see everyone back here May first which is a Friday not a Thursday and we will look into the possibility of extending the meeting time which we'll put in the Federal Register notice Andy thanks everyone for all your hard work really appreciate it great job [Applause] [Music]

Channel: US National Archives

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Keywords: US National Archives, NARA, Freedom of Information Act, FOIA, FOIA Advisory Committee, Open Government, Open Meeting

Id: e3C3uFnddgc

Length: 217min 2sec (13022 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 05 2020