Transcript

FOIA Advisory Committee Meeting

Thursday, March 6, 2025

10:00 a.m. (ET)

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

Alina M. Semo: Thank you, Silas. Good morning, everyone and welcome. As the Director of the Office of Government Information Services, OGIS, the FOIA Ombuds, and this committee's chair, it is my pleasure to welcome all of you to the fourth meeting of the sixth term of the FOIA Advisory Committee. Welcome to all of you who are watching us either via Webex or with a slight delay on the National Archives YouTube channel.

The committee is convening today, again, after three very productive public meetings in 2024, two in September and one in December. If you missed those meetings, you can visit our National Archives YouTube channel at any time to catch up on all three meetings. All of our meeting materials are available on our OGIS website, www.archives.gov/OGIS. A quick note about the committee's current term, members have hit the ground running since September 2024 and have formed three subcommittees.

We will hear reports from each of the three subcommittees today. Those subcommittees are working to increase the adoption and implementation of past FOIA Advisory Committee recommendations, develop concrete recommendations for statutory reform of FOIA, and examine the challenges arising from the increasing volume and frequency of FOIA requests. I am very grateful to all of the work the committee members have done thus far. All three subcommittees have gotten off to a terrific start, and all the members have been working very diligently to meet, plan, and deliberate. 

I have a few housekeeping items that I want to go through and then we'll launch into our meeting. The meeting is public in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which requires open access to committee meetings and operations.

In accordance with FACA. We have already posted both minutes and transcripts from our December meeting. Thank you to our terrific OGIS staff for doing that. For today's agenda and meeting materials, please visit our website, again, www.archives.gov/OGIS. There you'll also find committee members' biographies. Please also visit and follow our blog, The FOIA Ombuds. We have run a series of posts featuring our committee members.

Most recently, Ryan Mulvey from the Americans Prosperity Foundation was featured. Thank you, Ryan. I also want to note that since we last met publicly, we now have one vacancy on the committee. Kevin Bell of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) submitted his resignation effective February 28, 2025 as he has departed government service.

I just want to say to Kevin, if you're watching us today, we very much appreciate all of your contributions during your time on the committee and know your contributions will be incorporated into the committee's work going forward. We also wish you the very best in your post-government service and hope you will continue to tune in to the committee's meetings. I'm going to pause at this time and ask Kirsten, our Designated Federal Officer, if you have taken a virtual roll call and if you could please confirm that we have a quorum.

Kirsten Mitchell: I have indeed taken a visual roll call and we do have a quorum. In fact, we have all 19 members in attendance. Thanks.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, terrific. Thanks everyone for being here today. During today's meeting, I want to encourage committee members to use the raise hand icon at the bottom of your screen when you wish to speak or ask a question. The raise hand option is even better than using the all-panelist chat option, but that's also available to you. You can use the all-panelist chat option when you want to make a comment or ask a question, and you can also chat me or Kirsten directly.

We do try to pay attention to everyone's screens and make sure that no one is jumping up and down too vigorously. But if we miss you, we definitely appreciate you pointing it out to us. An important note to both committee members and all of our Webex attendees today, in order to comply with the spirit and intent of the FACA, please use the WebEx chat for housekeeping and procedural matters only.

Please do not enter any substantive comments in the chat function as they will not be recorded in the transcript of the meeting. Also, if any committee member needs to take a break during the course of the meeting, please do not disconnect from the web event. Instead, mute your microphone by using the microphone icon and turn off your camera by using the camera icon.

And please send a quick chat to me and Kirsten to let us know if you'll be gone for more than a few seconds or minutes and join us again as soon as you can. We are not planning to take a break today, but if it seems like we need one, I will certainly use my chair prerogative to give us a break. An important reminder to all committee members, including me, I always forget this, please identify yourself by name and affiliation each time you speak.

It helps make the transcript more clear as well as our minutes. Members of the public who wish to submit written public comments to the committee may do so using our public comments form, which is available at www.archives.gov/OGIS/public-comments. We review all public comments. And if they comply with our public comments posting policy, we post them as soon as we are able.

We have received one set of comments already for today's meeting and we have posted them in advance of today's meeting. They're available on our website. As I mentioned earlier, we're going to remain a little bit flexible with our agenda today. I'm not certain how long committee members will be discussing their work. So if we need to take a 15-minute break, we can. If not, we will just continue to push through. I'll check in with everyone.

And if we end early, I am happy to give committee members some time back today. And we will, as always, have a public comment period at the end of our meeting today. As we noted in our Federal Register Notice announcing this meeting, public comments will be limited to three minutes per individual. So almost ready to start our agenda. I just want to note that we have allocated the bulk of our time today to hear from each of our three subcommittees to share their mission statements and what they have been discussing so far.

Our hope is that the presentations will spark conversation, questions, and discussion among our committee members. And first up, thank you, Silas, for changing the slide. We're going to hear from the Implementation Subcommittee co-chaired by Jason Baron and Marianne Manheim. Jason and Marianne, you have the floor.

Jason R. Baron: Thanks, Alina. So Jason Baron, University of Maryland. I guess you have the next slide that has a mission statement on it and we could put that up. We as a subcommittee are continuing the work of the Implementation Subcommittee of last term where there were recommendations for a further look at how agencies have implemented the past number of recommendations coming out of a number of terms of this FOIA Advisory Committee.

What we've done so far has been summarized in a progress report, and I'm going to turn this over to Shelley Kimball and then Deborah Moore to talk about the work of the subcommittee so far. So Shelly, go right ahead.

Shelley Kimball: If Deborah's prepared, then I think she has some talking points if she's able to connect. Deborah?

Deborah Moore: Thanks. Hi, this is Deborah Moore from the Department of Education. So what we did was in late November, we formed a Barrier Analysis Working Group with the goal of uncovering what barriers are preventing federal agencies from implementing the FOIA Advisory Committee recommendations directed to them for action. When we went about this, we figured the best approach to derive this information would be through a series of focus groups held with agency FOIA professionals.

We started by clearly defining our desired outcomes from focus groups and drafting a set of questions likely to elicit robust conversation and useful information. We also wanted to have an agreed upon list of recommendations that we considered in scope for the effort. To formulate the list, we began with the full complement of all of the FOIA Advisory Committee recommendations from all terms regardless of their status of open or closed on the OGIS dashboard.

We began with this full list because as the prior term’s Implementation Subcommittee noted in its final report, when a recommendation is framed for action to be taken by an agency like OIP [Office of Information Policy] or OGIS to advise federal agencies to take some particular action, that recommendation can be considered closed once the advising has taken place, even if the implied underlying action for agencies to take has not yet occurred. So we wanted to keep all of them under consideration.

We ended up with a list of 20 in-scope recommendations, including both those that are directly worded for agency action as well as those recommendations that include implied agency action. Another important step we took then was defining our target audience and determining how best to reach them. We knew we wanted to include FOIA professionals who have visibility on agency decision-making on operational matters so that they would be able to speak knowledgeably about their agency's efforts to implement recommendations.

We also really wanted to include representatives from the broadest cross-section of agencies possible so we could gain the different perspectives of participants from large, medium and small agencies with both centralized and decentralized FOIA operations. We were mindful that past committees have received feedback that uncoordinated outreach efforts from different subcommittees have overtaxed potential participants.

So we worked with the other subcommittee that we knew was considering outreach to potential participants, the Volume and Frequency Subcommittee, to make sure that our efforts wouldn't be duplicative. So then we determined our way forward would be to conduct as broad as possible outreach by using contacts from FOIA.gov, as well as asking subcommittee members to add any contacts they may have to our running list.

Our initial approach to these potential participants will be an email describing our goal to understand the barriers preventing agencies from recommendation implementation, along with a list of FOIA Advisory Committee recommendations we consider in scope. We'll also inform them of the expected time commitment for participation and then give them an assurance that reporting on our findings will be non-attributional.

Finally, in this initial communication, we will encourage them to pass on the invitation to other participants both inside and outside their agencies who might be suited to this effort. And then to those who respond positively to this initial outreach, we will share the list of questions as well as logistical information. In terms of the design of the focus group, we determined some parameters.

First, we want to limit it to four to five participants per group to encourage good conversation, and we'll have one moderator and one notetaker per group. Moderators and notetakers will receive training and written protocols for how to conduct the focus group. The groups will last approximately 60 minutes to no more than 90 minutes, and we'll make sure that all of our findings are reported in a non-attributional manner.

In terms of analyzing the outcomes, we plan to review our results for trends and areas that give rise to possible FOIA Advisory Committee recommendations. We'll also review and analyze agencies reporting on recommendation implementations that will appear in this year's Chief FOIA Officer Report. This information may further inform draft recommendations that we prepare for Implementation Subcommittee consideration.

And finally, we strongly believe that our positive indirect outcomes of this effort separate from any potential recommendations the FOIA Advisory Committee may issue, including raised awareness of these important recommendations at agencies and implementation strategies and best practices that we anticipate will be shared during the focus group discussions.

And just to wrap up, I'd like to thank the Barrier Analysis Working Group members, Shelley Kimball, Joan Moumbleaux, Sarah Weicksel, for their excellent work on this effort. I'm very pleased with what we've been able to accomplish so far and looking forward to working with them in the future. Thanks.

Jason R. Baron: Thank you, Deborah. At this time, I'd like to invite anyone on our subcommittee to add whatever remarks they have about the work so far, and don't be shy. So if anyone wishes to say something, please go ahead. Marianne, would you like to say what are your thoughts about going forward from here?

Marianne Manheim: My thoughts on going forward, well, I hope we do go forward. And no, I've been really impressed with what the Barriers Subcommittee or the committee within the subcommittee has done. And honestly, they've put together a really great plan. I think it's going to get a lot of information that has gone between the cracks over the years where these things have gotten pushed from year to year.

So I think this is really a great idea. I also just want to bring up, we tried a few other things within this time as well. Kevin actually worked on getting Bobby, thank you, you provided previous award winners to see, we were trying to be optimistic, best practices and who's actually doing things. And so we looked at that as well to see if we could leverage some of that information.

I know, Jason, you're always ready to talk about AI [artificial intelligence], but AI was actually at the top of our list at the very beginning of this as well. And I think we definitely went a deeper dive with this, which I think is important to maybe get out of the loop of what hasn't been implemented from year to year. So I think it's been really a great experience and we have a great subcommittee.

Jason R. Baron: Thanks. The only thing that I wish to add is that last week as a subcommittee, we directed that OGIS take steps to preserve the work of our subcommittee as records of the FOIA Advisory Committee, and we've done that to make sure that there's a record of what we've done this term. With that, hearing no further words, but I, again, invite people to say anything they wish, I'll turn it over to Alina.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thank you. I just want to make sure, Shelley, did you have anything you wanted to add or it was Deborah's show today?

Shelley Kimball: The one other section that I wanted to add that actually Marianne's comments reminded me of were the new questions on the Chief FOIA Officers Reports in regards to our Advisory Committee and their understanding of what we do and our recommendations. So we'll be analyzing those Chief FOIA Officers Reports and looking at it in a holistic way with what we're hearing from the focus groups.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, sounds good. Thank you. And Bobby, we hope those CFO Reports will be out at some point in the next couple of months.

Bobby Talebian: Yeah, the agency will start posting them the week of Sunshine Week.

Alina M. Semo: Terrific. Thank you for that news. I appreciate that. And I just also want to note, Deborah was having technical difficulties today, so she was unable to be on camera. I'm sure she looks lovely. And if you want to see what she looks like, you can tune into a past meeting so she's not a disembodied voice. But Deborah, thank you for all those talking points. It was actually very helpful.

Anyone else want to comment on anything the Implementation Subcommittee is undertaking? So with that, thank you so much, Jason, Marianne, and the subcommittee on Implementation. I am going to turn things over to the FOIA Statutory Reform Subcommittee co-chaired by Ryan Mulvey and Whitney Frazier-Jenkins. So Ryan and Whitney, you have the floor. Go ahead, please.

Ryan Mulvey: Thanks, Alina. We have a progress report that has not yet been posted, which we intend to submit to OGIS today so that it can be added to the progress reports for the two other subcommittees. But we'll still provide an oral report now going over what we're doing. If we could move to the next slide, please.

So for the past several months, our subcommittee and our three working groups have been trying to explore and develop recommendations to Congress for how the FOIA could be amended to make a better experience for requesters to address agency processing challenges, and really just to make our federal government more open and more transparent in the digital world. If we could see the next slide, please.

Our three working groups focus on transparency obligations, so reform of (a)1, (a)2 and the statutory exemptions, the nine FOIA exemptions, enforcement models, which looks at OGIS, looks at the possibility of independent information commissions as well as reform of the current judicial review process. And then the Processing Working Group, which deals with the mechanics of how requests are actually being processed in related issues such as fees. I'll hand things off to Whitney to kick things off in terms of our substantive report and what the Processing Working Group has done.

Whitney Frazier-Jenkins: Good morning, everyone. So the Processing Working Group has met several times since our last meeting, and we have been evaluating potential statutory changes to the administration of FOIA fees to enhance resources for FOIA processing and training, which we know agencies continuously report have been problems for agencies. And so far we are still in the process of evaluating potential recommendations, but three areas of focus have been allowing agencies to retain FOIA fees collected and charging a de minimis fee to fund their FOIA programs.

FOIA fees currently are paid to the General Fund of the Treasury and we're exploring options that would allow FOIA fees collected to be retained by the agency to fund their FOIA programs. And there is an example I believe of one agency that's currently following that model, and we look to further explore how that is impacting their processing metrics. 

Another option that we've also been exploring is revising FOIA to allow agencies to charge fees for requests that are backlogged. Most agencies are experiencing huge backlogs as we process more and more complex and high-volume requests. And again, this would just be another initiative that would support resources for agencies in their FOIA programs. 

And lastly, the current statute does not really account for the processing of electronic material and most agencies are now seeing a significant increase in requests for electronic requests and data. And there's a significant decrease in responding to requests in the paper form, so amending the statute to account for the cost that agencies are experiencing in responding to these high-value electronic file size requests. 

So we're continuing to evaluate these recommendations and ideas and we'll develop further processes to evaluate how FOIA programs are addressing the need for resources and how the administration of fees can support those efforts. Ryan, I'll turn it over to you to discuss the transparency and enforcement models.

Ryan Mulvey: Thanks, Whitney. Before I get to those, I do want to... With respect to the draft report, which we will have posted later today, I wanted to give a special shout out to Frank LoMonte. The bulk of the report focuses on the work today of the Transparency Obligation Working Group, and Frank has done a great job at providing a very detailed summary compiling the work of the working group members. So I do want to recognize that since our report doesn't have any authors listed on it. So thanks, Frank. 

But in terms of the Transparency Obligations Working Group, as I had mentioned, that has been focusing on possible reforms to the substantive obligations regarding materials subject to the FOIA's mandatory disclosure provisions, as well as the scope of the nine exemptions and possible modifications to that.

Another way to look at it is whereas our two other working groups are looking at the mechanics of disclosure and the related issue of fees or the enforcement to disclosure obligations, the Transparency Obligations Working Group is all about what is supposed to be disclosed or withheld. There are two big buckets of issues. I should also say at the outset, all of our working groups, we have not yet...and I think this applies for all subcommittees in the nature of the progress reports being provided today. To the extent it hasn't been said, I'll just reiterate that we haven't made findings or proposed findings, let alone proposed recommendations. So this is truly what we're looking at and what we're thinking about, and nothing that we're reporting should be taken as the final position of the subcommittee, let alone the full committee. So these are really just the ideas that we're playing with at the moment and exploring.

Back to the working group, the first big bucket of possible reforms that we've been looking at all deal with process. The first of these would be the scope of an agency's affirmative disclosure obligations, particularly the types of materials that would be subject to reading room publication. We've considered that there are certain types of frequently requested records that are not uniformly hosted in reading rooms that many requesters are interested in. And if they were made available would likely impact agencies’ backlogs in a good way.

It would result in fewer requests. Some of the types of records that we've been looking at in this respect would be organizational charts, FOIA logs, certain interagency or intergovernmental agreements or MOUs [memorandums of understanding], reports or other materials provided to Congress that are not already required under the mandatory reporting and disclosure laws that otherwise exist. And then also information about the largest contracts or grants at each agency.

And this bleeds over to our Enforcement Model Working Group, but we've also looked at the need to statutorily resolve the circuit split that exists right now between the D.C. Circuit [of the U.S. Court of Appeals] on one side and the Ninth Circuit and the Second Circuit on the other with respect to the power of a court to oblige an agency to comply with the reading room provision and to post material subject to (a)1 and (a)2 either in the Federal Register or on the reading room.

We've been considering alternatives to FOIA for certain high-demand requests, particularly materials that could be the subject to first-person requests. We've considered the example of the IRS's standalone system for accessing your own tax records as a good model, as well as the VA's VHA [Veterans Affairs Veterans Health Administration] system for accessing veterans' medical records. There's also I think the question of the access to immigration records, which was addressed in part in the last administration's AG [Attorney General] memo on FOIA.

Providing an alternative to FOIA for these types of records could help with processing burdens at agencies. As I mentioned, we've looked at the possible proactive disclosure of FOIA logs in a standardized format across all agencies. Many requesters have expressed an ongoing interest in seeing these logs which could prove useful for them and ultimately, again, make life easier for FOIA officers.

We are also considering adding sunsetting provisions to other exemptions and whether the current sunsetting provision for the deliberative process privilege is in the right place or would need to be reformed. We are considering whether the statutory definition of a record at 552(f)2 needs to be tweaked in light of the D.C. Circuit’s decision in American Immigration Lawyers Association versus EOIR [Executive Office for Immigration Review].

That's an issue that continues to come up in the courts as to when an agency receives a request and starts processing records, how does it understand a record to mean? What is the record? We are looking at extending the application of FOIA to non-executive branch agencies or other entities within the federal government. This builds on work that was started in I believe the last term of the committee where there was a proposal to extend FOIA-like laws to Congress or at least to certain types of legislative records.

In particular, what we've been considering is the feasibility of FOIA or the prudence of FOIA as applied to administrative agencies within the legislative branch or the judicial branch. So these would include things like the Administrative Office of the Courts or the Congressional Budget Office.

And we're also exploring FOIA as applied to things like government funded or operated nonprofits such as agency foundations, government sponsored enterprises such as Fannie or Freddie, self-regulatory organizations that are part of agency enforcement or rulemaking such as FINRA [Financial Industry Regulatory Authority] or the Horseracing Integrity Authority, and possibly consensus standard bodies, at least in so far as they are involved in the development of regulations. And that touches also on just the broader question of agency control as it extends to records in the physical possession of non-government entities. 

The second big bucket that this working group is looking at is exemption reform. I think there is a general desire to explore the need for better guidance for the application of exemptions, particularly the distinction between discretionary and non-discretionary exemptions.

We're exploring the need for further guidance on the application of the foreseeable harm standard. We're also considering whether there are any exemptions that no longer should exist or possibly exemptions, I suppose, that need to be added. Two that we're highlighting for particular investigation are Exemption 2, which post the Supreme Court's decision in Milner covers possibly material that's otherwise protected by other exemptions. And then Exemption 5, which certainly for the requester community is a topic of much discussion for reform. We also are looking at Exemption 3 and the variety of withholding statutes that currently exist. 

Finally, moving to our last working group, Enforcement Models. This working group is examining the different ways that we could possibly reform enforcement of the FOIA beyond our current system of judicial review, or I should say, both in terms of our current system of judicial review and alternatives. So not only are we looking at the way review can be changed and the court process are arguably improved, but are there other alternatives, and not just in terms of OGIS. What's the feasibility of an independent information commission like other countries have of a truly independent ombuds office that has authority to settle in a definitive way disputes between requesters and agencies. And then we're also looking at executive branch self-enforcement, again, apart from OGIS.

What models are there that we can look for as inspiration in the executive branch? And that would be things like how does the Office of Special Counsel function, or what's the role of Inspectors General with respect to FOIA? I would just note that we have... I'll mention a few of the bullet points for the ways to change our current model of judicial review, which we've collected from different sources and their ideas that we're going to explore further.

We have the creation of a specialty Article III FOIA court with non-exclusive jurisdiction. We have the requirement for the lodging of an administrative record as part of a FOIA case, similar to regular litigation under the Administrative Procedure Act. We're interested in exploring the availability of discovery in FOIA. As I mentioned earlier, the remedial authority of a court including the power to enforce compliance with the Federal Register publication and proactive disclosure provisions. The attorney fee and litigation cost provision and any needed reform there. And finally, the employee sanction provision and the role of courts vis-a-vis referral to OSC [Office of Special Counsel]. 

With that, I thank you for your patience. I know that was a long update, but I hope you look at the report once we upload. And I suppose, Whitney or any of our working group leaders or members of the subcommittee, if you have anything to add or anything to correct if I misspoke, please take the time now to jump in. Okay, I guess that was comprehensive enough.

Alina M. Semo: A very quiet group today, Ryan.

Kirsten Mitchell: David…this is Kirsten, the Designated Federal Officer. David Cuillier has his hand raised.

David Cuillier: Thanks, Kirsten. Yeah, Dave Cuillier from the University of Florida Brechner FOI Project. So Ryan, you're doing a heck of a lot of work, all of you. So this is really great stuff. And I love these committee meetings because I get to hear what other groups are doing, keep up to date. I just wanted to...on the fee, the copy fee stuff, and Kirsten and Alina could say, but I think this comes up just about every term and folks look into it and it's a huge issue because agencies need to be better funded. They need the resources to carry out their mission, and they're just not provided that. And so often we turn to copy fees as a solution. And I'd like to say I have a hard time supporting that. We see in the research that copy fees disproportionately dissuade public interest requesters in particular. I've heard that the typical average FOIA request cost about $281 just to be processed, the fee to be processed. Any amount of money over $100 bucks I think is going to have the average person walk away.

I just don't think it's a solution. We also know that copy fees only bring in about 1% of the actual cost of administering FOIA. And so to actually recoup and have enough money to do the job right, we'd be charging huge fees to people and that would exclude a bunch of the public. I totally support looking into different options like we do, but I got to say that's a rabbit hole that I just don't think we're going to find a solution. But please do continue looking into it. That's just my two cents, and I'm happy to provide some of that research.

I know a lot of state and local governments are also looking at fees and have to solve this problem. I just don't think that's the solution. We've talked about other solutions like line item budgets and other things which never come to fruition, right? I understand agencies are caught in a bind. But I just want to bring that up as we're early in the process, as the discussion and research continues. But I certainly support everybody bringing up issues. And I don't want to be David Downer here, but I just feel like I got to raise that point. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, David. Ryan, any thoughts on that or should we just continue? I have a couple other hands up. I see.

Ryan Mulvey: Yeah, I don't have any direct response.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks. I think next and then Jason Baron. Nieva, go ahead, please.

Nieva Brock: Hi, good morning, Nieva Brock from the Department of Defense. I wanted to say that, David, I hear you with the copies piece, but I also am thinking of a happy medium here. Because I know that in the agencies within the Department of Defense for which I've worked, we have never charged copy fees. So if it came to paper copies or even sending disks, there were no charges.

But what's becoming more and more expensive and something that we can't handle are video and digital redactions. And when it comes to that, agencies are starting now to apply fees for the processing for that. And I was wondering if you thought that was a happy medium where if you really want that digital piece right now, that's just something that most agencies don't programmatically have internal systems to do that.

David Cuillier: This is David again. That's a really good point. And I know a lot of police departments are struggling with that, body cam video, and I also know that there have been solutions that folks have worked with technology to help work with that, Seattle PD and others. So I do think there are solutions to that. I think it's important that we adequately fund agencies to improve their technology and records management systems to be able to do this. So I totally get it. I totally think we need to find alternatives.

But I think telling a requester, well, you can have this, but it's going to cost $5,000 or whatever it might be, which is what we're seeing around the country, that's just not a system that's going to work. The other issue here that, of course, I think FOIA officers, custodians worry about are the unduly burdensome requests. The requests are so huge and they suck up all your time. And so that's connected tightly with this issue, right? And that's why this other subcommittee is working on that.

And we have to talk about all that at once because it's not fair to saddle an agency with a huge burden of large requests that are really time-consuming and bog things down, including for other requesters. We've got to figure out how to work that out. There are a lot of solutions that people talk about, and I think we'll continue to talk about that. I don't know, I think a happy medium usually ends up unhappy for requesters, but I look forward to talking through this.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thank you. I believe, oh, Nieva, did you want to...you have your hand up again or was that an old hand?

Nieva Brock: To address a different point that was made so we can finish this one up if somebody wants to continue.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. I know the other hand that was up was Jason Baron's. Jason, did you want to comment on this or something else?

Jason R. Baron: Something else.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. So sit tight. Nieva, go ahead, please.

Nieva Brock: I was just thinking about the review that you were mentioning of the deliberative process exemption and would love to partner I think with that with the Volume and Frequency Subcommittee. Because it seems to me if we start or think about removing the deliberative process exemption, we wind with many, many more records that are going to be responsive.

And just when I say that, it's because at least in my experience, it's been more of the deliberative process is many, many, many, many iterations and versions and track changes documents before the final report or final paper. And so if we lift the deliberative process exemption, now suddenly we'll have say 20 documents where we would've had one. So just something to consider.

Ryan Mulvey: I think having cross-discussion between the subcommittees before anything is brought to the full committee, it's definitely something to explore. And I think that the working group is cognizant that certain of its ideas will be more provocative to government members of the committee than others. And I think that I speak for all of the members of the subcommittee when I say, especially the requester community side, when I say that we're open to having open conversation about all of these ideas.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you. All right, thank you. Okay, Jason, back to you. Go ahead, please.

Jason R. Baron: Thanks, Alina. Jason Baron, University of Maryland. Ryan, Whitney, there, you have presented a very ambitious agenda in terms of statutory reform proposals. Let me make a process point that adds to what was just said, which is that we have a limited time in this term to get to final reports and to vote and to make recommendations. In the past, there have been interim recommendations that have been put forward by subcommittees.

I would ask you to consider staggering the work of the different three working groups here and presenting to the full committee earlier rather than later. Any number of these proposals, especially the provocative ones, as you said, they're all worthy of serious consideration. And I, for one, would be very happy to weigh in with comments on an earlier basis than waiting until the spring of 2026 in a public meeting to be presented for the first time with a set of whatever dozen or more proposals. So I just would ask that you consider that in terms of a timeline for your work during the rest of the year.

Ryan Mulvey: Thanks, Jason, and you will be happy to know that that is, in fact, our plan. We had originally hoped... We're a little behind, I think we're... At least speaking for the Transparency Obligation and Enforcement Models Working Groups, we had planned to have something to be a little further along than we are now, precisely because not only do some of our proposals come with the idea to have a bit further study, feasibility study or conversation outside the committee with stakeholders, but precisely to provide opportunity for discussion by both the full subcommittee and the rest of the committee.

So we have anticipated exactly your feedback and I think it's well-taken. And definitely we don't want to rush anything, but we also don't want to wait until next year, spring, to put proposals before the full committee. So I don't have a timeline yet, but we will work to have something done sooner rather than later.

Jason R. Baron: Well, take the weekend, Ryan.

Alina M. Semo: Any other comments? Marianne, you have your hand up. Go ahead, please. Marianne, you're on mute.

Marianne Manheim: It's what happens when you don't speak for a while. So, hi, I'm Marianne at NIH [National Institutes of Health], and I've been on the subcommittee and within the working group. And one of the things that Ryan was just saying, which I think as things are being drafted and thoughts are happening here, the thing that keeps coming back to me is how is this going to affect all these agencies that are not represented here?

And that's one of the pieces that obviously just like we've done with the barrier thing, how are we going to talk to these people and figure this stuff out? But I think there's a lot of representation that isn't here, that when some of these things were thought up, they thought, okay, is it a good idea? How much did they look at that, as well? As we're making these recommendations, these are the thoughts that are going through my head.

Whereas like, okay, if I don't have paper, I'm fine. It doesn't matter about fees on that. But there's somebody else out there that it actually might make a difference to. Same with Exemption 3 statutes. I mean, they're in the FOIA annual report, so I was like, they're there, what's going on? So there are things that we've talked about, but there's more research to this than what we...there's obviously case law that we look at. There's all these other things, but I do think there is the agency perspective.

One of the things that I was looking at, they were like, try to see if there's a way that you can post classified reports. I was like, you want me to go ask an agency about posting classified reports? The answer's going to be, it's not really simple. I guess you can do a mandatory declassification request too. But anyway, I think there's a lot of, to me when we were going through this stuff as well, a lot more questions for agencies and getting their input on some of these things than we've even hit. And I'm not sure that's going to show up in the process as we're doing this because some of those things would take years to do, honestly. I don't know. 

My perspective on this too, Ryan, would be, and maybe it's a question for Bobby, in the past when FOIA statutes, when it's been updated, when these things have been updated in some way, what has been the process in talking to people? Or does someone just come from behind and actually do this? And I think we've heard that that happens, but I'd like to know how has this been done in the past. Is there a process in some way that DOJ [Department of Justice] is involved with?

Bobby Talebian: So typically when Congress is considering a legislative amendment to the FOIA, agencies have been given the opportunity to respond to the interagency process.

Marianne Manheim: Good to know.

Alina M. Semo: And that was Bobby Talebian, director of the Office of Information Policy at the Department of Justice.

Bobby Talebian: Sorry, I forgot to introduce myself.

Alina M. Semo: That's okay. I do it all the time. Liz, I see your hand up.

Liz Hempowicz: Hi. Yes. So I'm jumping on this. Liz Hempowicz from American Oversight. I think, Marianne, we've had these conversations as a subcommittee or we've started having these conversations as a subcommittee, and I appreciate that perspective. But as Bobby said, and certainly as an advocate coming from the outside who spent some time advocating on the reforms to FOIA that some that passed and some that didn't, it certainly felt from the outside requester side that agencies have a lot of say in what is that final text.

And so I do think we are recommending language to be considered by Congress, and there's a lot that happens after that language. And I think one of the strengths of this committee is the combination of folks inside and outside of government settling on an initial proposal. And so it's not to say, I think my bottom line is not to let perfect be the enemy of the good because we can do a lot of good and it's just a starting point for Congress to pick up.

And then the agencies certainly have a lot more say, it feels like they've got a lot more say in what that final text looks like than the outside requester community. But that's just me speaking personally.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Liz. You just used one of Bobby's favorite phrases. Okay, I am just looking to make sure that no one else has hands up. Anyone else have any other thoughts? There's a lot of material that Ryan presented. Thank you. And Whitney, thank you for all of that. I'm just going to pause to make sure no one else has any other thoughts or comments that they want to add in. Okay, I don't see any other hands. Stop me if that's not true. Next slide, please.

So we're just moving very quickly and I appreciate that. So we are now up to Volume and Frequency Subcommittee Report. I do want to note, it's a pretty slim subcommittee that could definitely use a little bit of help. I want to encourage committee members to reconsider perhaps chiming in here and adding strength to numbers and especially our government members. Because as you could see, Nieva is quite outnumbered three to one.

So I hope that government folks will take a minute to think about signing up and volunteering and joining the meetings. They're actually very collegial, as all of the subcommittee meetings are, I should say. But definitely they are the smallest subcommittee. So with that, I am going to turn it over to Nick Wittenberg and Nieva Brock, who co-chair the Volume and Frequency Subcommittee. And Nick and Nieva, you have the floor. Thanks.

Nick Wittenberg: Thanks so much, Alina. And as Alina mentioned, we are looking at applications. It's a very thorough process for our subcommittee membership. So my friend and co-chair Nieva can have a friend and ally in the federal family. Our committee may be small, but we are mighty. We've been very busy right now. And I want to thank our other members, Dave from University of Florida and Shelley Kimball from Johns Hopkins University.

My name for the record is Nick Wittenberg. I'm an attorney at Armedia and came from the federal family. We, I think, have been looking... And I really wanted to thank Shelley for being our liaison with the other subcommittees. Our goal here is looking at volume and frequency and how we can make it more efficient and accurate for individuals to process FOIA as data is growing daily.

So our hope, and I think Shelley will put a little better justification for this with her excellent statistics background, we look forward to doing a survey to folks in the FOIA community from all chains of command. We're also looking from not only the FOIA professionals from the government, but also our requesters. So it's a streamlined approach.

And so right now we've had a number of things that have popped off, and I think the important thing of the survey is what may be challenging for one agency may be different for another agency and type of information requested and how big is the request. And so I think my spin is, what is the data?

And I think deeper in our report, our progress report I should say that is on the website, on NARA's website, is further examination as our good friend Bobby at DOJ Office of Information Policy and his group command, the Chief FOIA Officer Report, the Section 4 focuses specifically on using technology for greater efficiency. And what does that mean? Our favorite flavor of the world right now is AI, particularly generative AI.

And so examining that further I think is going to be our next evolution for this subcommittee. But right now just a little bit on the survey as we're looking at when we can launch that so we can get a nice response. We've looked at potentially Sunshine Week or just right after that, as well as the American Society of Access Professionals National Training Conference in May.

So we're really, really excited. Fellow committee members and individuals on the meeting today, if they'd like to spread the word and get ready to sharpen their pencil or get their keyboards ready to go, because that will be helpful I think to look at what is challenging. Is it lack of technology, lack of professionals, lack of training? That will help us for our subcommittee as well as working with the Barriers Implementation Working Group, and so talking about some of their challenges that they have been working on as well. I'm going to turn it over to Shelley to fill in the dots as well.

Shelley Kimball: Thanks, Nick. I'm Shelley Kimball from Johns Hopkins University. So I'll just give a little bit more granular detail about what we're working on with this survey idea for our committee. Our original goals are really to understand the landscape so that before we make recommendations, before we push forward, we understand what life really feels like. And so for that reason, we wanted to develop this survey for both FOIA professionals and requesters.

It will be a primarily open-ended survey that considers how requesters define difficult requests, what their experiences are using technology to either file requests or manage them, and any suggested solutions from both sides of the request that might help streamline the process. So we'll ask both about their perceptions of burdensome requests and those ideas for more efficiency.

Just a side note, we have looked at previous work on volume and frequency from earlier terms of the committee just to make sure that we're not being duplicative, and that what we're asking and what we're working on now is current and relevant. And like Nick said, we want to recruit through independent agencies first, and part of that also is because working in parallel with the Implementation [Sub]committee.

So we wanted to consider American Society of Access Professionals and Sunshine Week and those kinds of agencies first before we move in maybe through FOIA.gov. But the results, we plan to use these results to find those requests that those in the FOIA world find especially difficult, frustrating, maybe assess how agencies are managing their FOIA caseloads, identify specific bottlenecks, how FOIA professionals are using technology, and then what kind of best practices may emerge.

And so once we have that better understanding of the landscape, we'll consider next steps as a subcommittee. And as Nick and Deborah both mentioned, we are working closely with the Barriers to Implementation Working Group. And because we're also looking at similar information sources through the Chief FOIA Officers Reports and through FOIA professionals, we want to make sure that we're not duplicating work.

So one other note, if the Implementation Subcommittee decided that focus groups were no longer the best method for data collection, we're prepared to move those questions into our qualitative survey and then do the project all at once if that's the best idea for both subcommittees. And just to reiterate, I hope that the work that we're doing sounds interesting to some of our other committee members. We do welcome new members. But I can't also reiterate enough, we're pretty small and mighty and we're definitely collegial.

Alina M. Semo: Nick, back to you.

Nick Wittenberg: Awesome. No, thank you. That's really exciting. And I think it's something I think as a former member of the Chief Technology Committee, it's definitely something we've been examining and excited to use so, for example, our good friend Ryan Mulvey can have a better experience. So that's something we've really been enjoying the work. I can't thank my fellow subcommittee members enough. Nieva, do you have any comments?

Nieva Brock: Yes, Nick, I wanted to footstomp what you just said about how we want this to be an experience that is going to be helpful, useful, and pleasant for all. So we're not trying to just say, oh, let's reduce requests, therefore we won't have a horrible time in the federal sector trying to respond, or let's just answer willy-nilly from the federal sector so that the requesters can get quick responses.

The idea is, of course, for...just as we said in our progress report, the ultimate goal is to maintain high standards of transparency and accountability in the administration of FOIA. So we are trying to find the best ways so that neither requesters nor responders, FOIA analysts, are in any way not putting their best foot forward in the transparency world.

Nick Wittenberg: I couldn't say it better. And I really appreciate the excellent co-chair from our good friend Nieva. And so again, as I said, we are doing really well. But if any other committee members would like to join us, we really appreciate those applications. I think that's pretty much it. Dave, any comments from you, sir?

Nieva Brock: Dave is being humble. I just want to, just like Nick, thank Shelley and Dave for all the very hard work that you have given to this committee.

Nick Wittenberg: Thank you so much. Alina, I think it's back to you.

Alina M. Semo: All right, thank you so much. Just want to pause for a second to make sure that no other committee members have any questions for this small, but mighty subcommittee. Okay, I'm not seeing anything. No hands up. So at this point, again, I'm just going to pause. I know there's been a lot of information, a lot of content that we've shared today. And Ryan, we look forward to receiving your subcommittee's report so we can post that online.

We have already posted the other two subcommittees' progress reports online as well, and those are available for viewing under today's meeting. So you can click on that and take a look. And I believe I'm going to turn the floor over to... Oh, Margaret has her hand up. Okay. See, I was stalling to make sure no one else had any other thoughts. Margaret, please go ahead.

Margaret Kwoka: Hi, Margaret Kwoka, Ohio State. I had a question if any of our... Well, anyone, but particularly our government members have any comments on... I'm just thinking about the other subcommittees. I'm on the Statutory Reform Subcommittee and we don't currently have as an integral part of our process at this stage any interview or focus group or survey like data gathering step. But the other two subcommittees do have such a step.

And I was just wondering if anyone wanted to comment on whether they think there will be any impact on the participation of folks throughout the federal government in terms of whether people will be available or have the capacity to respond to these sorts of inquiries and requests from this body, given some of the challenges and changes in federal personnel policies and workforce policies that we're seeing across the federal government right now.

Whether there's a concern that we won't be able to get the robust participation that we want, or whether we have strategies around that, or perhaps our government members will tell me that they think that this won't be a big barrier to the work. But I just wanted to ask the question which was occurring to me as folks were speaking these. And let me start by saying, all of these sound like just really, really valuable initiatives.

And so I asked this saying that I really hope that we can accomplish these tasks because I think the kinds of steps that the Implementation and Volume and Frequency Subcommittees are considering are really important. And so I just invite any comments on how we can best facilitate the best participation that we can in the current environment. Thanks.

Alina M. Semo: Great question. And Nieva is prepared to answer it, I hope. Hand up.

Nieva Brock: Well, again, just please remember that my comments are my own and not attributed to the Department of Defense, but what I would say is that, of course, it's a concern, but it's also something that we cannot really be worried about at this point. Remember, the administration is still in a very nascent point and there are changes already from some of the...some of the policies have already been moderately rolled back in certain ways.

I would say we're just trying to stay steady. And at some point, going to conferences will be opened up again, going out and using money to do such things in the federal government will happen again. And so while we still have a whole nother year in our seats, I think I would not panic yet, but of course, at the moment it might seem like a concern.

Alina M. Semo: Marianne, please, go ahead.

Marianne Manheim: I'll just say it depends agency by agency. And in all cases, we are going through our leadership and asking. So that will be what it is at this point, and that's, I think, the best answer we can give on this.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Marianne. That's fair. That was Marianne Manheim from NIH. Okay, any other thoughts or comments? Kirsten Mitchell, our Designated Federal Officer. Go ahead, Kirsten.

Kirsten Mitchell: Yes. Thank you, Alina. Kirsten Mitchell with National Archives, Designated Federal Officer. I just wanted to go back to something that was said earlier about seeking volunteers for the Volume and Frequency Subcommittee. I got a very lovely email from someone who has volunteered, but unfortunately, that person is not a member of the committee. So I just wanted to make a note that subcommittee membership is limited to committee membership. So I just wanted to throw that out there.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks for that, Kirsten. Yes, we need committee members already seated on the committee to please volunteer for the Volume of Frequency Subcommittee. Nieva, go ahead, please.

Nieva Brock: I just want to say for whoever that was that sent you that email, thank you so much for offering your assistance. We did appreciate it.

Alina M. Semo: And there are definitely other ways that individuals can contribute. Dave, go ahead please.

Bobby Talebian: Was the person a FOIA custodian type officer person?

Kirsten Mitchell: Kirsten Mitchell here. The person is a contractor on FOIA issues and obviously is listening, which we greatly appreciate, but I just wanted to clarify that.

David Cuillier: Dave Cuillier, University of Florida. Yeah, I was just thinking, there's nothing that precludes us from inviting people to participate or attend in our discussions, right? I mean, there's no prohibition. If the working group or subcommittee, I mean, decides, hey, why don't we have some other voices in some of our meetings and bounce things off, that would be okay, right?

Kirsten Mitchell: Yes. And you all have had speakers who have come to various subcommittees to speak.

David Cuillier: Yeah, I was just thinking more than just like one-offs. But let's say there's somebody we're not hearing or not having a strong voice of say government side, but there's someone who's willing to help out, but they're not on the committee and attend and give us advice until we get annoyed with them and kick them off, I think that would be really helpful actually too.

So anyway, it's just a thought that occurred to me, and I guess all the subcommittee would have to talk about that. But if you're a FOIA officer out there and you're really frustrated with huge unduly burdensome requests, I think we'd like to hear from you because we're going to knock around potential ideas for mitigating that harm without restricting the flow of information to people. And it's a tough nut to crack, so the more heads the better.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thanks, Dave, I appreciate that. Margaret, do you feel like you have some answers to your very, very well poised question?

Margaret Kwoka: Yes. I really appreciate those thoughts, and I say that recognizing that I asked a question that has no answer. And so I just really did want to hear what people were thinking more than a concrete answer to a somewhat unanswerable question. So I appreciate the discussion and I'm just hoping we can have as much collaboration from the agencies who we're reaching out to as possible to make this, along the lines that Dave was just saying, to make these results as robust and as well as supported as it can be. So thanks.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thank you. I think anonymity definitely helps in the surveying process, so hopefully we can examine that. So at this point, I was actually going to turn the floor over to Frank LoMonte, who was contemplating perhaps making a motion for the committee to consider, but I will leave it to Frank. So Frank, do you want to go ahead please?

Frank LoMonte: Thank you, Madam Chair. Frank LoMonte from CNN representing the news media. As you heard, there's a lot of really meaty and substantive work that has been done in just a few months, and I want to make sure that there is a mechanism to preserve all of that work and memorialize it in some form other than just the transcript of this meeting.

You heard Ryan mention that there is an in-progress version of that committee's report. And this is really just by way of housekeeping to make sure that we have a vehicle to actually receive that report or any other supplemental committee reports that memorialize what we have been hearing about at today's meeting.

So my motion is that I move that the subcommittees be given an additional 30 days to submit more formalized written versions of today's reports as a supplement to the record of this meeting, which are to become a part of the official record and to be shared on the Archives website along with the committee's other work product and preserved and retained in accordance with FACA. That is the motion. And by my count, that would put us on Monday, April the 7th, since 30 days from now is a Saturday.

Alina M. Semo: Frank, thanks for doing that math. That's actually very hopeful. I want to open it up to discussion or a second for that motion.

Nieva Brock: I would second it.

Alina M. Semo: Was that Nieva?

Nieva Brock: Yes, I'm sorry. Nieva Brock, Department of Defense.

Alina M. Semo: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Is anyone interested in discussing or is everyone feeling comfortable and ready to vote? I'm seeing nods. Okay. All those in favor of Frank's motion, please say aye.

All: Aye.

Alina M. Semo: Kirsten, I hope you heard a lot of ayes.

Kirsten Mitchell: I did, yes, but keep going.

Nieva Brock: We can put hands up. We could raise our hands, so then Kirsten can count them.

Alina M. Semo: We can raise our hands too. All those in favor, please raise your hands. Okay. Anyone not in favor of this motion, please say nay. Anyone abstaining? I don't hear any abstentions. Okay. Kirsten, what's the vote?

Kirsten Mitchell: Okay, I hear 19 yays, no nays, and no abstentions. So Frank's motion passes unanimously.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thank you, Frank, for that. We really appreciate it.

Kirsten Mitchell: Please let me know if I missed anyone.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Frank, thanks again. Kirsten, thank you. Any other comments or questions or thoughts before we move on to the next part of our meeting, which is the public comment section? Looking around, making sure there's no hands up. Okay. Don't hear or see anyone jumping up and down, so let's go ahead now and move on to the next part of our meeting. Thank you for advancing the slide, Silas. I appreciate it.

We have now reached the public comments part of our committee meeting. We look forward to hearing from any non-committee participants who have ideas or comments to share particularly about the topics discussed today, and certainly there were a lot of topics that we talked about. All oral comments are captured in the transcript of the meeting, which we will post as soon as it is available.

Oral comments are also captured in the NARA YouTube recording and are available on the NARA YouTube channel. And as a reminder, public comments are limited to three minutes per person. So at this point I'm going to turn things over to our event producer, Silas, to please provide instructions to any of our listeners who wish to make an oral comment via telephone. Silas, over to you.

Producer: As we begin our public comment period, you can please click the raise hand icon located at the bottom of your screen. You are going to be given three minutes to make your remarks. You will first hear a tone when your line is unmuted, at which time you can please state your name and your affiliation and then you can make your comments.

If you are dialed in through telephone audio, you can press pound two on your telephone to join the comment queue. To assist you, there is a timer on the right side of your screen. It will begin counting down as soon as you start your remarks, and then you will hear an audible warning when your time is up.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you so much. Go ahead, please.

Producer: Our first hand in the queue is from Alexander B. Howard. Alexander, sir, your line is unmuted. You can please go ahead.

Alexander Howard: Hello? Can you hear me now?

Producer: Yes, we can hear you.

Alina M. Semo: Yes. Loud and clear.

Alexander Howard: Thank you so much. My name is Alexander Howard. I'm an open government advocate based here in Washington, DC. It's nice to see many of you again. Thank you for your service to those I know, and thank you to the Archives for continuing to host public meetings of this committee.

I would say in relevance to what you said just before, instead of seeking to fund the FOIA on the backs of requesters from the watchdog and media community with fees, why not charge commercial requesters who do not receive the exemption much more for the records they currently are buying under the FOIA. At present, as Professor Margaret Kwoka's excellent research has shown, at some agencies the majority of requests come from commercial requesters.

It's clear that fees will be used to limit the public's right to know and access records in every level of government based in past decades. I'm concerned the committee is seriously considering recommending raising fees instead of investing in the rapidly improving software that would enable the redaction of video. Instead, maybe canvass local police departments that have adopted body cams and dash cams to see what software they're using to rapidly make redactions and publish video online.

You might also evaluate the prevalence of fees that are used to deny the public's rights to know by interviewing advocates outside of government during your meetings. One obvious cost savings will also be for agencies to disclose the calendars, visitor logs, meeting records, and expense reports that are consistently requested by news media right here in Sunshine Week coming up instead of having to allocate capacity and litigation costs.

The proactive disclosure of such records that are on demand is, of course, mandated under the FOIA Improvement Act's Rule of 3. There's no need to say Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice only to insist on transparency. The committee might evaluate whether agencies are complying with the Rule of 3, bringing Chief FOIA Officers in to discuss what barriers there are to understand how demand is being mapped out to disclosure or not.

Another fruitful area of focus might be on the growing use of the exemption of any records that might be withheld after the Supreme Court decision in the Argus Leader. The evidence suggests to me that this may be overbroad or even abused. The committee-established public knowledge could then inform legislative action. This could become a significantly worse problem should more government functions become privatized as programs, personnel, or policies are shifted out of the boundaries of the FOIA.

Speaking of which, it would be good to hear if the committee and its members have any opinion on whether the operations of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency fall under the purview of the FOIA. And I am curious, what impact does the committee expect from the wide-spread takedowns of proactive disclosure records from agencies have on FOIA demand?

The United States Government was previously making tremendous amounts of data available directly to the public, thus taking away the need for a FOIA request. Is censorship in the best interest of the United States Government or its people? My written comment focused on reductions to FOIA capacity, which clearly fall under this committee's purview. I've been hearing cuts to federal workers have affected FOIA officers. Can you confirm?

Producer: As a reminder to attendees, if you would like to make a public comment, please press the raise hand icon at the bottom of your screen.

Alina M. Semo: Silas, I just want to pause, does anyone on the committee want to address anything that Alex Howard just commented on? Great comments. Margaret, go ahead please.

Margaret Kwoka: Hi, thanks. Margaret Kwoka, Ohio State. Thanks so much, Alex, for these comments, which are characteristically right on point and really useful. I'm not going to speak to all of them. There's others on this committee that I think are better placed to speak to some of them. I wanted to just pick out two points you made and offer a couple of thoughts. One is that on the question of fees for commercial requesters, I appreciate the shout-out to my research about commercial requesters.

I will say this is just me personally and not the committee because I am actually not working on the fees issue on this committee, but me personally, I'm not necessarily opposed to some modest increase in fees for commercial requesters or looking at that issue for sure. The worry that I have about that approach has always been that the more the differential is between what commercial requesters pay and what others pay, the more incentive there may be for folks to try to mask the identity of the requester in some way to game the system and to put agencies...I would say, the worst part of this is when agencies are in the position of trying to figure out who is the real requester behind the request. And if that's happening, then agencies are spending time and resources internally trying to engage in some determination about whether this is truly a commercial requester or not or potentially being in a dispute or litigation over that question, which detracts, of course, from just the real agency processing of records and release to requesters.

And so I just worry that we'll end up increasing the administrative burden to some degree the more these distinctions start to matter. That is not to say that there might not be... Maybe this is a place where happy mediums are possible. Maybe Dave will disagree with me, but maybe there is a possible happy medium here where there is some amount of increase that would not create that kind of negative effect. But I just wanted to raise the concern I've always had about that possibility.

The second point I wanted to quickly address was just the question of website blackouts, information removal, proactive disclosures that have gone dark. We're already seeing litigation over this, as I'm sure you know. And so I think it is something that is going to be playing out in the courts in the coming months. It is something that some of the issues we're setting on this committee could potentially help.

I mean, one thing that the Statutory Reform Subcommittee is looking at is the litigation process over proactive disclosures and whether we can usefully propose any statutory amendments that would improve the way disputes over proactive disclosures are litigated. We're also looking at the scope of those proactive disclosures that should be mandated by the law.

As you well know, FOIA's language on reading room requirements is pretty thin and in some instances difficult to know how to interpret it, and certainly the courts haven't interpreted much. So there's a lot of room there, and a lot of the things we're working on I think actually do go to those issues. And so I just wanted to thank you for your comments and say that I do think these are certainly issues we're studying and issues that we're aware of. So thanks.

Alina M. Semo: All right, thanks, Margaret. Anyone else have thoughts that they want to share? Thank you for that. Producer, do we have any other callers on the line?

Producer: At this time, we do not have any other hands raised either on Webex or the phone audio for public comment.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. All right, I think that that means we can wrap up our public comment section, unless anyone has any other thoughts. Thank you for advancing the slide. I want to thank all of our committee members for participating in our meetings thus far. A big thank you for all the wonderful discussions that have been going on. And thank you, Kirsten, for reminding me to remind everyone before I wrap up that anyone can submit public comments to us at any time using our public comments form. That is on our website. So please, we encourage you and we want to hear from you. All committee members do. 

I want to just thank everyone for working hard. And I know everyone is determined to improve the FOIA process overall. So a big thank you to all committee members and a particular thank you to the six co-chairs of our three subcommittees. And I want to remind everyone that our next meeting is scheduled virtually for Thursday, June 12, and I want to thank all of you for joining us today.

I hope everyone and your families remain safe, healthy, and resilient. And if I have any outstanding questions from any committee members, I am happy to entertain them. Otherwise, we will adjourn our meeting and give back to everyone at least 33 minutes. Okay, I'm not seeing any hands raised or any questions. So hearing none, we stand adjourned. Thank you very much.

Producer: Thank you to all of our speakers and thank you all in the audience for joining us today. With that, our call is concluded and you may now disconnect.