Transcript

FOIA Advisory Committee Meeting  

Thursday, April 2, 2026

10 a.m. (ET)

Kirsten Mitchell: Okay, let's go ahead and get started. Good morning and welcome to the April 2nd, 2026 federal Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee meeting. I’m Kirsten Mitchell, this committee's designated federal officer. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and is a virtual meeting. This meeting is public  in accordance with the federal advisory committee act which requires open access to committee meetings and operations.

I am confirming that we have a quorum with 15 members present in accordance with the committee's bylaws. I'm advised that Nick, I mean, Liz, Hempowicz of American Oversight is expected to join us a few minutes late. And Maranne Manheim of the National Institutes of Health will have to leave about one hour into the meeting. Because this is a public meeting, we ask members to keep their cameras on. However, Nieva Brock is unable to have her camera on today.

Whether you are watching on Zoom or on the National Archives YouTube channel, welcome. Thank you to our audio visual team at the National Archives for live streaming this meeting on YouTube and for all their behind the scenes support. Thank you also to Dan Levenson, an alternate designated federal officer who is also joining us today.

And I now turn the meeting over to Alina Semo, Director of the Office of Government Information Services, the FOIA ombuds and this committee's chairperson, Alina over to you.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Kristen. I appreciate it. We should also mention Nick Wittenberg has not chimed in yet, so hopefully he will join us later, but as of now he's not here.

Good morning, welcome everyone. I am Alina Semo, both director of OGIS and this committee's chairperson. It is also my pleasure to welcome you to the 8th meeting of the sixth term of the FOIA Advisory Committee. Meeting materials including the agenda and slides are available on the FOIA Advisory Committee page of our OGIS website, archives dot gov forward slash ogis. 

The committee last met on March 5, 2026. And as a reminder, we have three subcommittees who have been very hard at work. Statutory Reform Subcommittee, Volume and Frequency Subcommittee, and Implementation Subcommittee. You will hear report outs from each of the three subcommittees today. Thank you for flipping the slide.

So we have a few housekeeping items. You hear me go through every time, but, before we launch into our meeting agenda today, let me remind everyone that we are meeting in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, FACA. And in accordance with FACA we have posted the minutes for our March 5th meeting on our website. The transcript of that meeting will be posted as soon as it is ready. On our website, you will also find committee members' biographies.

Please also visit and follow our blog, the FOIA Ombuds. 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 host and panelists option from the dropdown menu in the chat function when you want to speak or ask a question, but you certainly are welcome to do that as well and chat me or Kirsten directly.

An important note to both committee members and all Zoom participants in order to comply with the spirit and intent of the FACA, please use the Zoom chat function 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 this meeting.

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. 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 minutes. And join us again as soon as you're able. 

An important reminder to myself and to all committee members, please identify yourself by name and affiliation each time you speak. It helps us a lot by making the transcript more clear and it helps us with our minutes as well. 

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 archives dot gov forward slash ogis forward slash public dash 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. And we will have a public comment period at the end of our meeting today. 

I plan to remain flexible as I do not necessarily expect the meeting to last a full three hours. But we do have a number of items to talk about today. So we want to provide ample opportunity for the subcommittees to give their report outs and have a fulsome discussion among committee members. But if we finish early, it would be my absolute pleasure to give everyone back the gift of time. 

As we noted in our federal register notice announcing this meeting, public comments will be limited to three minutes per individual. Okay, any questions before we launch into our meeting? Just looking around. Don't see any. Next slide, please.

Oh, maybe we didn't mean to do that. Let's go, let's go back a slide. Yeah. Let's leave it at housekeeping for the time being. Okay, so we have allocated the bulk of our meeting time today to hear from each of our three subcommittees. To share their work since the March meeting. Our hope is that the presentations will spark conversation, questions and discussion among all committee members.

And just a reminder, we have come to the point in the committee term where we are having monthly meetings. After this meeting, we have meetings scheduled for May 7th, June 11th and our final one on July 16th. And we are asking that subcommittee reports be largely written by the June 11th meeting. Kirsten, does that sound correct?

Kirsten Mitchell: Sounds correct although May 7th would be wonderful.

Alina M. Semo: Yeah, May 7th, even better. Aspirational. May 7. So before I turn the meeting over to the Statutory Reform Subcommittee who is going to present first I am going to ask Kirsten our DFO to remind us about committee voting processes. As we do anticipate taking votes today on three separate recommendations. Next slide, please.

Kirsten Mitchell: Great, thank you, Alina. So since it's been a while since you all have voted, I thought we'd go over the voting procedures, just as a reminder. The committee's bylaws say that any committee member, including the chairperson, may move that the committee vote on a particular recommendation or action. No second is required by the bylaws, but it is habit for someone to chime in and second.

There are three types of passing votes. Unanimous, which is every member except any abstentions. General consensus, which is at least two-thirds of total votes cast which is all 16 of you who are here cast votes that is 11. And then general majority, that's easy, a majority of the total votes cast.

During voting procedures I may or during the votes I may ask for roll call vote. In the event that a vote is not unanimous or it's not clear who is voting which way. So back over to you, Alina .

Alina M. Semo: Okay, let's pause for a second. Does anyone have any questions? And I want to welcome Nick Wittenberg. And Liz, have a quick so are both joining us now. Welcome. Okay, no questions on the voting procedures. All right. So, let's launch into our meeting. First up, we're going to hear from the FOIA Statutory Reform Subcommittee co chaired by Ryan Mulvey and Whitney Frazier-Jenkins. Ryan and Whitney I'm going to turn the floor over to you.

Ryan Mulvey: Thank you, Alina. Our report can be rather quick, I suppose. I know some of our working groups are still working on future recommendations that the subcommittee hopes to have. You know, reviewed in advance of the next full committee meeting, but the real meat of today's update has to do with the recommendations which we introduced at the last meeting. 

All three have been updated based on conversation with other members of the committee, especially the members of the Implementation Subcommittee. So a special thanks to Marianne and Jason for helping put together that subcommittee's comments and pass them on to us. 

There were just minor changes…to quickly go over two of the 3 recommendations…in the recommendation to make this advisory committee permanent or non-discretionary. There was just some spelling correction, which, thank you to Kirsten for incorporating into the recommendation. On FOIA logs there was some clarification made to our past reference to a 2016-2018 term of the committee. We had referred to a recommendation of that committee. In fact, it was not a recommendation in the formal sense of the term. It was a best practice recommendation is how it was termed. I know that's somewhat confusing, but I think again thank you Kirsten for helping us to clarify the language there. I think it's…we wanted to be very precise in referring to what was done in the 2016-2018 term in the 2020-2022 term, which did have an actual recommendation of FOIA logs. Whitney, unless you had anything you wanted to add, I think we could probably turn it to Deborah to discuss the changes to the funding recommendation.

Whitney Frazier-Jenkins: I just wanted to mention for the FOIA log recommendation we also added language that said that the 13 categories were just at minimum of the categories that agencies could report. So that was the only addition, but I think we can hand it over to Deborah to talk about the funding recommendation.

Deborah Moore: Okay, thank you. And I am Deborah Moore, Department of Education. So the updated version of the funding recommendation reflects as Ryan said feedback from committee members but also reflects feedback that we gathered from those who attended the listening session at Sunshine Fest, that discussion was also very helpful. So in general, this draft tries to use clear language to explain the concept. It also states explicitly that Congress would give FOIA funding direction to agencies in the annual appropriation language it provides to them. And it also sort of lays out more clearly the steps and considerations that Congress would use to arrive at the funding figures that will be included in agency appropriation language.

So kind of to dig into that a little bit. Specifically, the recommendation explains that Congress would begin with the average of the agency's past five year personnel allocation, then it would take a fixed percentage of that number to use as a starting point for consideration. And then that starting point would adjust up or down considering a variety of factors to include; use of contract staff agency backlog, and agency structure and probably others as well, but those would be the three that the recommendation highlights.

What the draft doesn't do and there was quite a bit of discussion around this, but it doesn't spell out a mathematical formula or specify what percentage Congress would use. And I believe there's just too many variables and different factors that affect each agency to make a one size fits all solution make sense. Instead, the funding model, what it's striving to do is recommend that Congress begin with the consideration of personnel allocation as its starting point and then use that to move forward to determine funding level for agencies. 

In general, what the recommendation is trying to do is really advocate for Congress to give more specific direction to agencies regarding FOIA funding. So that this super important agency function doesn't get left behind in the wake of mission driven funding decisions that agencies have to make. 

The last thing is, it's worth noting that the model really does, it's going to require congressional staff to do some work. It's not a plug and play by any means. It will require them to really collaborate with agencies, collaborate with OMB [Office of Management and Budget] to arrive at an appropriate funding level to allow agencies to meet their FOIA requirements. And last I just wanna again thank committee members for all the feedback and also the attendees at the Sunshine Fest session. It was very helpful to me to clarify my thoughts and also clarify the draft. So appreciate that.

Ryan Mulvey: And I just wanna, this is Ryan Mulvey, AFP Foundation. I want to…Deborah is being humble and not talking about the strong effort that she put into the panel that the Advisory Committee sort of coordinated at Sunshine Fest. At this listening session where these proposals and other updates about the committee were shared with the public, including both requesters and members of the requester community and government employees who happened to be in attendance. So I think we all owe it to Deborah for helping facilitate that session and get us some helpful feedback on our recommendations.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Any questions from committee members on everything we've just discussed? Oh, Sean, I'm sorry, have your hand up. And Dave Cuillier has his hand up. So who who wants to go first? 

Sean Glendening: I'll start off. Sean Glendening with OIP [Office of Information Policy]. So on the recommendation for the FOIA logs, I understand the intent there and I think it's I think it's a good forward looking approach. At present, that'd be very labor intensive for our staff to pull that data and to proactively post it. So what I would recommend with that suggestion is a phased-in approach. In other words, it would not take effect now, but with some of the technology systems that we are implementing. I understand that recommendation is probably driving at the technology requirement that those systems generate that data automatically. And so as those systems are implemented I think that data will become easier to pull out and post but at present it will be something that is very burdensome and difficult for our staff to comply with.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks Sean. I appreciate that. David Cuillier, go ahead please and Nick I see your hand up as well as Jason.

David Cuillier: I do. I'm sorry, this is Dave Cuillier, University of Florida. I had a question about the funding proposal. If people want to talk about the logs, I'll stand back.

Alina M. Semo: Nick or Jason, are you on logs or on something else?

Nick Wittenberg: I was gonna quickly comment to compliment Sean's thing and also give a highlight or a shout out to our 3.0 tech showcase because I think the logs are going to be pretty much plug and play for most of the systems that are out there. Obviously we have a wonderful nine exemptions that may require some of them to be redacted or withheld, but I think definitely it's one for folks, government, private side to take a look at the tech showcase and really push vendors to find this solution so that way if there's something been already requested, you can look for that and pinpoint plug and play but definitely should be an efficient accurate use and I think AI FOIA is a low hanging fruit of that place. So definitely tune in for the tech showcase 3.0.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks Nick. Jason on logs.

Jason R. Baron: Yes. Jason Baron, University of Maryland. Is there another slide beyond this one that is on the screen that continues what the recommendation says?

Kirsten Mitchell: This is Kirsten, the DFO. We don't have, that we could not fit all of those on the slide. However, if you'd like, I could share my screen and show all the 13 fields if you would like for that. You can also look at the meeting materials that have been posted online and go to that there.

Jason Baron: Well, I think for the benefit of a public record, I'm… I've never voted on anything that hasn't been the complete language of a recommendation that is put up on the screen. I understand that this is filled with subparts but it would be useful. I have a question to the committee about the subparts. So Kirsten, it probably would be a good thing. for you to put up what the 13 are.

Kirsten Mitchell: okay, I'm gonna defer to Ryan and Whitney about the order of this. Do you and and the votes I thought we were you all would take these one at a time.

Ryan Mulvey: I mean, I don't have any strong preference. I'm okay with you sharing. Can you share your screen to put the, like, pull up the PDF? And Jason can see.

Kirsten Mitchell: Yes, I can do that. Keep, keep talking amongst yourselves.

Jason R. Baron: The question that I want to ask the government representatives on the committee is whether they're in line with what Sean mentioned? Whether your agency is currently doing what this recommendation would statutory require and whether any concerns at all about the burden or the question of compliance. I don't have a stand in this. I'm an outsider to the government. But I'd like to hear whether this would harness any anticipated objections on the part of your agency or what you think. That won't determine our vote here as a committee. We can still vote that Congress should amend the statute to do this but I'm interested in your views.

Kirsten Mitchell: This is Kirsten. Can you all see the screen that I'm sharing? 

Alina M. Semo: Yes.

Kirsten Mitchell: Okay, great because I cannot but I trust that you all can

Jason R. Baron: We see a part of it. We see the first 3 of the 13.

Kirsten Mitchell: okay. I will scroll down then.

Ryan Mulvey: Kirsten, this is Ryan. It might be easier if you open the website so that or can you just zoom out? I know the font is kind of big here and we don't want to make it too small. But you might be able to fit it all on one page. Either making it a little smaller or going to the website.

Kirsten Mitchell: Is that, does that do it?

Jason R. Baron: Keep, keep going, Kirsten. You're doing a good job there.

Kirsten Mitchell: Does that do it or not quite?

Jason R. Baron: It's okay. I guess.

Kirsten Mitchell: I don't want to make it too small.

Alina M. Semo: Yeah, we can see all 13 in the view that you just provided.

Kirsten Mitchell: Okay, I'll jump down a little more. I'm just concerned that people won't be able to read it.

Alina M. Semo: Stop, this is good.

Jason R. Baron: So my question is on the floor for the committee to respond to.

Nieva Brock: Can you repeat the question, Jason? I think I lost it in the, putting up the screen and stuff.

Jason R. Baron: The question is to the government representatives on the committee whether you believe your agency is in compliance or would have any issues with compliance with these? The recommendation is to Congress I understand, but I was interested to know what current practices.

Alina M. Semo: So Deborah Moore has her hand up.

Deborah Moore: Sure, I will jump in. Deborah Moore, Department of Education. So, we largely do this already, these fields and the cadence quarterly is also doable for us. I will say that it is an effort. There is effort that's involved. It's not simple. So well some of it is, but going through as I talked about in the subcommittee going through the subject matter, you know, pulling from the description field, we have to go through and make sure there's no PII and so forth. So there's effort. But it's doable.

Kirsten Mitchell: Margaret has her hand raised.

Alina M. Semo: Oh, I'm sorry. Margaret.

Margaret Kwoka: Hi, Margaret Kwoka, Ohio State. I just wanted to say that at least from my perspective and as someone who was on the working group that was working on this recommendation. I wanted to offer that perhaps, you know, I think the, you know, one of the principal concerns about sort of feasibility of implementation that's been raised now about this. I think from my perspective, it would be a friendly amendment, potentially, something sort of to address Sean's concern about implementation date to add a line that said you know, with an implementation deadline commensurate with, you know, technology advances or something like that, not necessarily to set a date here because obviously we have no idea when Congress would take this up and it may be by the time Congress takes this up, all of these technology advances have sort of spread throughout government and we no longer need a lag time.

So I would say, with an appropriate implementation date to allow agency compliance or to obtain technology to facilitate compliance. And I think for me, and I don't want to speak for anybody else, so I welcome others to weigh in. For me, that would be a friendly amendment to this and I'd be. I'm certainly a, you know, sympathetic to the fact that there's sort of a, a real, sort of technology forcing aspect to this recommendation that sort of would I think urge or require agencies to obtain, sort of more advanced technology to, to make sure that this was feasible. So, of more advanced technology to make sure that this was feasible. So I just wanted to offer that thought.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks so much, Margaret. Ryan, I see your hand up, but Kirsten also has her hand up. Was that all? 

Kirsten Mitchell: Go ahead, go ahead, Ryan.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, Ryan, go ahead, please.

Ryan Mulvey: Okay, Ryan Mulvey, AFP Foundation. Yeah, I would echo Margaret's comment and I think that that sort of addition in my view would be better in the explanation section of the recommendation rather than the recommendation itself. Precisely because this is not unlike the 2020-2022 term’s recommendation which upon approval of the archivist would become an immediate recommendation. This is something that's being directed to Congress and Congress would need to take time to act. So, I mean, realistically speaking, this is a bit out timeline wise if there were ever to be a reform of FOIA that this would be incorporated into. But explanatory language that is, you know, attends to the current efforts to implement new technology and the need that there may need to be phased in some agencies I think is entirely fair. 

The only other thing I would like to stress which I think we discussed last time and which is reflected in the explanation, but these categories and the frequency and a lot of the language here is not completely new. There is a lot of repetition, you know, and, and reiteration of what we had in the 2020-2022 term recommendation as well as in the much older, 2016-2018, best practices recommendation. In fact, I think there were even more categories in that best practice recommendation that the committee published in its final report in 2018. So this is in that sense at least relatively more moderated. That, 2016-2018 also had a frequency publication recommendation of every month. So I think we have the changes reflect a different world in 2026 versus 2018 but I think this is a very fair legislative proposal that we've come up on as a subcommittee.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks Ryan. Kirsten, did you want to go ahead?

Kirsten Mitchell: Yeah, I did. Thank you Kirsten Mitchell, designated federal officer. I just wanted to note that during the deliberations on this there was some concern raised about exempt information, Ryan, that is in FOIA logs, particularly with regard to Exemption 1, which exempts national security information as you know. And I wondered if you could address that concern.

Ryan Mulvey: Ryan Mulvey, AFP Foundation. Yes, we had discussed this before we approved this recommendation as a subcommittee. It's my view at least and I know I speak for some of the other people on the subcommittee at least that it's pretty well established. In fact, I think it's in the statute that FOIA exemptions apply to the affirmative disclosure subsections of FOIA. So if there is exempt information in logs, then it's… the agency has the authority to withhold it and it's my understanding based on our conversations that's already happening in agencies that post FOIA logs. I mean, Deborah mentioned what we have as category 5, which is subject matter of the request. Obviously different agencies record the subject matter differently, or at least that's my understanding. If there’s exempt material in the subject matter description, that would be withheld. And I understand that along with the name of the requester is part of you know, the sensitivity of that information in the possibility of an applicable exemption is the reason why agencies have to put a little bit of work into these logs before they get posted. So that's all to say I don't see the possible use of Exemptions 1 or 3 really being a reason to change the language here. At least that's my view.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thanks for that, Ryan. Kirsten, any other follow up or does that answer your question? Okay. Jason, back to you. Do you feel that you've heard from committee members?

Jason R. Baron: I certainly have. Not to put Sean on the spot, but you know my practice as a co-chair, and this is the third term that I've been privileged to serve on the committee is to work with DOJ [Department of Justice] to ensure that they are supportive and committed to carrying out at least recommendations that are for agencies. I haven't, I don't recall talking to DOJ about statutory reforms in the past and I haven't been directly involved. But I would hope that with the friendly amendment that Margaret had brought up that this would not merit an objection from DOJ at a time when, if Congress took it up and there was an interagency request for comments from OMB. So I guess I wish to hear from Sean whether that is Margaret's additions and with Ryan's further amendment that they be in a common section rather than a recommendation are sufficient to meet your concerns.

Sean Glendening: Sure, this is Sean, OIP. Look, I bring up the issue because I think the implementation date needs to be addressed and Margaret’s amendment, the one I think that gets at what we're trying to achieve here. And the point is well taken that by the time this gets looked at by Congress that may be a moot point. The technology at the time may already encapsulate what this amendment is trying to do. So absolutely open to Marget’s amendment on the side. 

Alina M. Semo: Okay, and I just want to clarify, we're talking about not a substantive amendment to the language of the recommendation itself but rather this would go into the explanation section. Is that correct, Ryan? That's what I heard you say.

Ryan Mulvey: That's what I had suggested. I don't know whether Margaret had a particular thing in mind in proposing a friendly amendment or Sean whether you had a strong view either way of where we actually stuck it.

Alina M. Semo: Margaret, go ahead please.

Margaret Kwoka: I'm not sure it matters much either way to me, but I would say it probably is seems adequate to me in the comments section only because I think Congress in enacting statutes almost always considers effective dates and so I'm not sure it needs to be part of the language of the recommendation. But of course, saying that Congress should consider an appropriate effective date does not rule out Congress considering an immediate appropriate effective date and so I also don't have a problem if it's more appropriate to include that in the language. So for me this is where it goes doesn't matter much to me, but I think it's probably more than adequate in the comments given that that's something that Congress would normally do anyway.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks. I don't know which order…

Kirsten Mitchell: Sean, showing him his hand up.

Alina M. Semo: Sean had his hand up first and then Liz, go ahead, Sean, please.

Sean Glendening: Okay, yeah, so I would prefer to see it in the language itself. As long as there's not a strong objective to that, I would prefer to see it in the actual language.

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

Liz Hempowicz: Hi, Liz Hempowicz for American Oversight. I don't have strong objections to it going in the text, but I would underscore what Margaret said earlier about how we word it in there. Not being too prescriptive knowing that when this, when this, is ultimately adopted by Congress, things that transparency, the technology landscape may have changed. And so just, a little bit of and how it's worded, but object to it being worded in the text itself.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks, Liz. Jason.

Jason R. Baron: Well, just to, Jason Baron, University of Maryland, just as a procedural point and Alina, you can weigh in on this, Kirsten. If the additional language that Margaret proposed is only in a comment then it can be put in a comment and be subject to whatever we say in the final report. We often revise comments. If it's going to be in a recommendation itself - in the past, the committee has either spent time during a committee meeting to actually pen the amendment to the recommendation before a vote. So the choice here is doing that right now during this meeting or holding over the recommendations so that the vote would be on the final text.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Jason. I was actually gonna let Ryan and Whitney drive this part of it and let them make a decision. Ryan, you have your hand up already. Go ahead.

Ryan Mulvey: Yes, Ryan Mulvey, AFP Foundation. I'm okay if we stick it in the substantive section that's fine. I agree with Liz and with Margaret though about the nature of the terminology used. The only thing I want to add and honestly, I don't have a strong view on this either way, but I'm not sure that this is the… I think there's a line missing from the recommendation. My understanding is that the sentence that the log should be posted in Excel or CSV format and posted online at FOIA.gov in addition to the reading rooms was part of the recommendation. If that's going to be…I don't know, Kirsten, if something got cut off, I think.

Kirsten Mitchell: I think it did get cut off. Let me find it and put it in there and keep talking.

Ryan Mulvey: Okay, yeah, because that precedes the explanation section. It's not bolded in the thing that's posted, but I'm pretty sure that had been part of it. If we need to revisit that because I think that that in the past has been an issue when it's come before the full committee and past terms then I suppose we can discuss that. But my understanding was that was part of the, that last sentence was part of the recommendation unless I'm entirely mistaken and have a false memory.

Alina M. Semo: So while Kirsten is looking for that language, Whitney, go ahead, please.

Whitney Frazier-Jenkins: I would kinda agree with Ryan that that was part of the recommendation and I was gonna suggest that we just move forward with adding the amendment in this meeting so as to not push it back to the subcommittee so that we can keep the momentum of going forward with it.

Jason R. Baron: That means writing it out right now with agreed upon language with.

Whitney Frazier-Jenkins: I understand and I think we kind of, I think we anticipated this was going to happen and I think that's why Kirsten has the recommendation up for us to discuss that and it sounded like there was the consensus of what Margaret mentioned. So if Kirsten would be so kind to maybe start typing that into the recommendation. I think we could move forward with adding it, with amending it during this session.

Kirsten Mitchell: Yes, and I was just going to say that I wrote down the language that Margaret read out so I can start typing it in here and thank you Ryan. I've added the last line of the recommendation and so the log should be posted in Excel or CSV format. And transmitted the DOJ for additional posting on FOIA.gov. I'm going to go ahead and start typing. You all keep deliberating. Tell me if things need to be moved, whatever, I'll try to help you as much as I can. Okay.

Ryan Mulvey: Does somebody want to? Do we have actual draft language yet or you're just going to come up with something Kirsten and will…

Kirsten Mitchell: I'm typing what Margaret said. When she and and then we can tweak it. You all can tweak it.

Ryan Mulvey: Oh, okay.

Kirsten Mitchell: from that. So I think someone had their hand up too.

Ryan Mulvey: I think Margaret had her hand.

Alina M. Semo: I don't see her hand up, but I didn't want to ask Sean. Any thoughts about DOJ's posting on FOIA.gov? I know that we have talked about that before. Thoughts on that.

Sean Glendening: Yeah, I mean, it would be thoughts on the format, the Excel or CSV and I'm not sure what format the future technology we're going to use going to generate these and how that plugs into FOIA.gov. And, I’m probably one of least confident people on technology when it comes to this. But, my understanding or hope would it an API or a function that this data being automatically posted through us. Again, I'm just not as clear and confident on the technical side of how this would work. And so to that end is there a strong reason that the recommendation would specify Excel or CSV or just that it'd be posted on FOIA.gov. And that may well be using Excel or CSV format. I'm just…I wouldn't wanna tie our hands in this recommendation if there's a better way to transmit that data from the software we're using on to FOIA.gov.

Alina M. Semo: Alright, I'm looking for some folks who are tech savvy because that's not me either. So Sean, thank you for pointing that out. Ryan. Maybe that's you.

Ryan Mulvey: Ryan Mulvey. No, it is not me. I am not tech savvy. However, I was just going…I was going to say I as I recall and others can correct me and I'm trying to pull up the 2016-2018 report and the 2020-2022 final report to see whether this language is contained in either of those already. I think part of the reason why Excel CSV format was chosen here is a; because that's already how data from agency FOIA reports is being posted on FOIA.gov and it's manipulable by users in a way that a PDF isn't. So that if somebody wants to just pull down a FOIA log for research purposes like when Margaret writes her next academic, you know, law review article on affirmative disclosure of FOIA logs and she wants to pull down (sorry to use you as an example, Margaret) but to pull down the report and, you know, to sort and be able to, to manipulate the data, you can't do that with a PDF. So if there's like, a way to convey…I don't know what the best wording is without having to spell everything out in the explanation section like user-friendly, research-friendly format or something like that. I mean I'm okay with changing Excel CSV because I think the point is well taken that in five years who knows what…you know, we might be able to…what format could be posted electronically onto the internet. I think the important part is that it's easily used. And maybe on that point, our FOIA researchers on the committee would have particular thoughts. On how to accomplish this.

Alina M. Semo: See lots of hands. Nick, I believe you’re first and then I saw Deborah and then Sarah. So Nick, go ahead, please.

Nick Wittenberg: Yeah, yeah, no, just to compliment Ryan. I know he didn't mean manipulate the data, but I think our good friends at DOJ, the old law firm, they do a wonderful job of giving options, but I think the challenges to we don't have standard technology, so some folks will have the CSV and having to do an annual or just FOIA officer report and the agency doesn't that can be they can be very troubling but again I think it's one where you know, if you're at University of Michigan, you want to see the sweet 16s and Margaret from the Ohio State University doesn't have that. I think it shows the disconnect between the technology but definitely pushes so how can we easily you know, not making me, the perfect enemy the good, but definitely I think the tech is out there and I think there's a lot of folks who are pushing the envelope and not just saying you know here is the PDF or whatever thing that's out there but it's really not helpful if

you want to really dig down and dissect the data. And so it's definitely one. I think OIP and NARA and a lot of folks have been trying to figure out how we help agencies plug and play use technology so requesters can really be satisfied.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Nick. Deborah. You're next and then Sarah.

Deborah Moore: Well, yeah, thanks, Deborah Moore, Department of Education. I think instead of the recommendation language spelling out Excel which is a product right we should say in machine readable format because that's essentially what I think people want, machine readable, so that it can be pulled down and and then that gives us flexibility, whatever the technology du jour is it's still meeting the qualification that we want, which is that the data be machine readable.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, great. Great suggestion, Deborah. People can think about that. Sarah, go ahead, please.

Sarah Weicksel: Sarah Weicksel, American Historical Association, I was going to suggest a similar revision for machine readability since that is, I think, what we are really focusing on. Also thinking about this from our accessibility standpoint in terms of both longer term preservation of the material as well as ability for all of the documents to be able to be read by screen readers and that sort of technology as well.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thank you, Sarah. Ryan, did I see your hand up earlier or was that an old hand?

Ryan Mulvey: Old.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, got it. So I invite everyone to look at the screen. And the line edits that Kirsten has been making. Thank you Kirsten. How does everyone feel about the way it looks now? Jason has his hand up. Jason, go ahead, please. Oh, did we lose Jason? Jason, you're on mute.

Jason R. Baron: I apologize everybody, Jason. I don't believe this last sentence reflects Margaret's friendly amendment. So I'm going to defer to Margaret on this, but first of all, it should be advances in technology or technological advances. I like advances in technology. But besides from that point, that grammar point. There will always be technological advances and so this reads as if. Yeah. The sentence reads as if this can't be done until there are technological advances that somehow there's an appropriate date in the future that allows time for the technology to catch up. That can't be what Margaret you were saying. You were saying something different about that at some point when Congress deliberates on this, there may be changes in what the proposal is. Now if I've got that wrong, please let me know.

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

Margaret Kwoka: I think maybe I meant something in between those two things, which was to say that. Don't write this…

Kirsten Mitchell: Yeah.

Margaret Kwoka: …because I'm not, I'm not trying to draft out loud right now, but something like, that Congress should consider an appropriate implementation date that allows for time, you know any required time for agency compliance. Right, now, you know, given technological advances, that is to say, allows agencies to acquire the technology that they would need in order to do this if they have not already done so. Not sort of like, oh, I'll give you 10 years so that one day someone might make a product that this, that does this. So I think I'm assuming that Congress should consider an appropriate implementation deadline that allows any, you know, necessary as a reasonable necessary time for agencies aid for agency compliance. Yeah, which could be 0, right? It could be 0. Yeah.

Jason R. Baron: Well, let me let me say Margaret. Let me say, Margaret, that you know what you meant and I would propose that we and you take your pen out and put a sentence together for us. But while we perhaps vote on the other proposal one of which I think is really non-controversial. And maybe both are. So I didn't hear much in the way of coming so you know, benefit from your exact language that I don't think you need to do on the fly here. You could spend a minute.

Alina M. Semo: Yeah, Jason, I think that's a great idea. Margaret, are you okay with that homework assignment that you just got from Professor Baron.

Margaret Kwoka: I'm working on it right now. I'll hop to it.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thank you. So Ryan and Whitney, can I turn back to you? And I believe Dave Cuillier had his hand up earlier about non-FOIA log recommendation. So I want to make sure we didn't skip you David. 

David Cuillier: Oh, okay. Thanks, Alina. If we want to vote on the one item, Dave Cuillier, University of Florida, on the one I think everybody would just vote on right now we can… on the making the committee an established thing by law.

Kirsten Mitchell: Non-discretionary federal advisory committee.

David Cuillier: Yeah, do you wanna do that just to get that out of the way and then I do have a question or thought on the funding proposal.

Alina M. Semo: Okay.

Kirsten Mitchell: Okay, I am going this is Kirsten the designated federal officer I'm gonna stop sharing my screen for now. We can come back to it and then ask that we go back to…slide 6, please.

Alina M. Semo: Great, thank you. All right, Whitney and Ryan, do you want to go ahead and move forward on the vote for Congress making the FOIA Advisory Committee a non-discretionary federal advisory committee. Do I have a motion for that?

Ryan Mulvey: So moved.

Alina M. Semo: A second would be great.

Whitney Frazier-Jenkins: And I'll second it.

Nieva Brock: Second.

Alina M. Semo: Oh, we have lots, lots of seconds. Kirsten, did you catch that? Okay. Let's take a vote. All in favor, please say aye.

Group: aye

Alina M. Semo: All those opposed? Nay? Kirsten, I didn't hear any nays. Any abstentions?

Sean Glendening: I’ll abstain.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, Sean is abstaining. Alright, I'm just pausing for a second. I'm gonna give Kirsten a chance to make sure she's gotten everything.

Kirsten Mitchell: Okay, so the vote passes. By a 15 to 0 vote we had one abstention. Sean Glendening and I'll just note that Marianne had to depart, so she was not here for the vote.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, great. Thank you. So, let's go on to the funding recommendation. Is that another slide, I believe? Thanks. Yeah. 

Kirsten Mitchell: Yeah, that's the next slide. There it is.

Alina M. Semo: There we go. Okay, and Dave, you said you had a question about this. For a comment.

David Cuillier: Yeah, just a quick thing and kudos, I think I'm totally supportive of this. I think you know, this has come up many terms and I think it's essential. And thanks to Deborah for all our work, especially at Sunshine Fest. That was that was great. So thank you. 

My only thought was in, and I always hate when people come at the last minute with a thought. So, you know, bear with me. It's only because I was going through data this morning, looking a deep dive at agency stats based on their annual FOIA reports. Assuming the reports are accurate and assuming that agencies are relatively consistent in how they report their data. I think our recommendation assumes that size of agency is tied to workload. You know, FTE, total FTE. And when I look at the data closely, I'm not really seeing that of course in a lot of cases. But I think if it's tied mostly to FTE it could actually create a lot more problems for a lot of agencies from what I see. [For] example, EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission], they only have 2,000 employees, but 20,000 requests a year. Department of War (DOW) has 700,000 employees and 77,000 requests. So if we tie it to the FTEs of the agency it's gonna exacerbate some disparities quite hugely based on just the number of requests they get a year. And EEOC, for example, is very efficient; each FOIA staffer processes 450 requests a year. Whereas DOW, 82 a year. So and I'm looking and this is kind of throughout the data. And so the proposal has really tying to the size of the agency and including other types of factors like contract staff, which I've looked at, backlogs and by the way, EEOC is very low backlogs; Department of War high backlog. So again, they would get rewarded disproportionately. And so I guess what I'm getting at is I didn't realize this when I saw the original proposals I made sense. You know, funding should be tied to size of agency. But as I look at the data really closely, I see that it actually probably [could] cause a lot of problems and penalize the agencies that have been pretty efficient in dealing with a lot of requests effectively. They're the ones who would actually suffer more. 

So I guess my recommendation is - and I'm not all into rewriting recommendations at the vote - but maybe just add a bullet point and, you know, consider the number of requests received per year. Which to me seems pretty tied to workload, right? And of course, different types of requests that agencies get have different workload levels but, or we just add that to the text, you know, before it gets into the final report. And I don't want to cause any workload here but it was just something I thought I would raise because if the whole focus is on size of agency from what I'm seeing, that could lead to some problems down the road. Just my thoughts and again, thanks to everybody who's worked on this. I think it's important. I'll vote for it regardless of what we do.

Alina M. Semo: Nick, I know you have your hand up, but I'm just going to turn to Deborah for a second. Any thoughts and reactions to what David just said.

Deborah Moore: Thanks, Alina. And Deborah Moore, Department of Education. Thanks, David. You know, it's never too late, I welcome more input, more comments. So I appreciate it. Couple things. I agree for sure that number of requests is an important data point and I'm not against adding that as another bullet to the list of considerations. I do think that it's as we talked about this some in the listening session too. I do think that it's not the only and definitely probably not the most important concern, largely because what you said, all requests are not very equal.

You can have requests come in that are very easy, quick, you know, one and done kind of thing and you don't need a lot of people to process them and another request that's extremely complex, more people throughout the department and much work and so forth. So that's not….it wouldn't work to consider that alone. Adding it in is not a problem. I think the backlog bullet, I decided to go with that one because I think that's a better measure of the work that an agency is doing like how are basically that shows how is an agency doing with the allocation it currently has the amount of FOIA people they have now and the resources they have now, how is that fairing against their workload? That's what the backlog kind of tells us. 

In terms of starting with you know, using the number of people, the FTE allocation we're not, I don't think that it would work to just use that and I think you're right some agencies would be big winners and others would be big losers. And that's why that's just the starting point. And then adjustments have to get made. There's not good… in my mind there's no perfect way to go about this. There's no perfect formulas, no perfect measure. So whatever it is as a starting point just has to be the starting point. Then smart adjustments have to get made to that number, which is, and I just feel largely and you're right, there's actually going to be exceptions. But in general I feel that starting with size of the agency, the number of people who are creating the records, that's generally starts to be a good measure. 

Ultimately though, I think the most important aspect of this recommendation is that it's asking Congress to take a look at this and give agencies affirmative direction about funding their FOIA offices. If it's a different approach, a different formula or whatever, that's okay, but I just feel like it's important that we signal to Congress that considering this and giving agencies direction and appropriations language is really important.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks, Deborah. Nick, I'm sorry. I delayed you, but your hand has been up.

Nick Wittenberg: No, you're fine. I was just gonna say like big fan of Dave's last minute data, but that's a good point. Cause if you have 10,000 people doing one page files or one piece of data versus a hundred people doing 1 million pages of data. It'd be nice, kinda like a scorecard like instead of law firm profit or partner FOIA professional have some ways we compare apples to oranges across federal families so when you're filling out annual, quarterly reports or themed like Alina testifying in front of Congress you could have to say how are you not just using technology to use technology, how are you not just using technology to use technology to say the word 42 times but how are you really getting your teams at training and advancing and motivating and looking at FOIA is regardless of the size and I think the agency thing too that could be sometimes a red flag but then you're like well we have this many FOIAs and they they go multiple pages for training too to say hey we're gonna put you in one that's ranked three which is the most challenging versus say we're take you and put you in one that your not going to come out. And I definitely love that type of metric that Dave’s bringing up and I know he hates last minute recommendations but I know, just something, because I know the backlog is always a challenging one. I think that starts from beginning to end. I love Deborah's point about it, but just how do we make it equal down Pennsylvania Avenue?

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks Nick. Jason, your hand is up. Go ahead, please. You're on mute. So whatever wisdom you just shared with us, you'll have to reshare.

Jason R. Baron: My apologies. Jason Baron. Everyone on this committee and everyone watching this committee's meeting believes that FOIA staff should have greater funding. That's not in dispute. The interesting point David's bringing up is that there are a number of factors that might be considered, in addition to simply a direct I know the rank foundation says commensurate but yeah simply a direct high in between funding and size of workforce. There are other factors. Now in fact in the commentary there are bullets that give some factors. And Dave also I believe you referenced what would be an unfortunate result, which is to penalize an agency for its efficiency if it had zero backlog. Because it's so efficient that might be a factor that in the commentary at least is saying would be taken into consideration. I think the recommendation, I think the intent, Deborah and Ryan is for you to say that there are adjustments here that should be fact, you know, reasonably factored in by Congress. And so that the recommendation really means implicitly, I'm not lobbying for it, but with the size of their workforce and other factors. But of course the devil's in the details as to what other factors there would be in terms of at least in commentary what this advisory committee is suggesting. I think I'll leave it there. You all know that comments coming out of the Implementation Subcommittee were that it's difficult to kind of get an estimate or get your arms around exactly what the increase in size would be based on, increase in the amount of funding for offices based on size of workforce and other factors that we have put in. But in any event there is this question in David's raising it about whether we want to go on record as a direct correlation with size of workforce and funding in the bold print of the recommendation itself. I'll stop there.

Alina M. Semo: Alright, thoughts everyone? Nieva, go ahead please.

Nieva Brock: Hi, Nieva Brock, Defense Intelligence Agency. I just want to say that Dave, you make great points. And Deborah, you made great points. And what I wanted to say was I think this is a great opportunity to just start somewhere. And I think that sort of goes on with what Jason is saying that we can just, you know, there are details to follow. But if we keep waiting for the analysis and this committee doesn't have a research group really that we can hire to do the analysis for us. It is nice to just start somewhere and I think this is a great proposal to do that.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Nieva. Is anyone recommending language changes to the recommendation itself or the discussion we're having would actually appear in the rationale for the funding model. Frank, go ahead, please.

Frank LoMonte: Yeah, Frank LoMonte with CNN. I'm just wondering whether the language of the recommendation as I'm looking at it on the screen in big bold phase type captures the nuance of the supporting recommendation, right? Because as we were crafting the language of the report we refer to size of the workforce as among the factors that Congress should look to, but not necessarily the only or the decisive one, right? I think the report is a lot more nuanced in acknowledging that there are going to be times when you need to vary up or down based on exactly the factors that Dave, Jason, and others have introduced into this conversation. So I wonder whether there is a way without turning the recommendation into an essay question answer to make that, make the boldface heading recommendation a little more reflective of the nuance in the narrative that follows. And Deborah has primary authorship on this so I would first look to her about word choice there, but that would be my comment.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thank you. Deborah while you’re taking that in. Jason has his hand up and then I see Ryan. Jason, go ahead, please.

Jason R. Baron: Well, I suggested not very articulately what I thought the drafters we're getting at is that it would say commensurate with the size of their workforce and other factors and in the comment you're giving the other factors that this committee would have a consensus on. But I'm not sure we have a consensus on what those other factors are. So you could do a generic fix that's very easy with the size of their workforce and other factors. As I said, the details here are worthy of perhaps further discussion.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks Jason. Ryan.

Ryan Mulvey: Ryan Mulvey, AFP Foundation. I think building on what Jason is saying we could actually pull…include some language that leaves wiggle room but also enumerate some examples of what those other factors are based on the three bullet points that are in the actual recommendation. So it could be something like Congress should require federal agencies to fund their FOIA function at a minimum, at a level commensurate with the size of the workforce while also taking into such considerations as: use of contract staff, size of backlog, and agency operational structure, period. So that we're kind of saying what I've always understood, which is the baseline is kind of size of workforce. We've given in the recommendation that we're going to talk about these three other things: backlog, operational structure, contractor staff but then we also leave that wiggle room that maybe there's other things that Congress would want to direct agencies to consider in their formula. Or that Congress should consider in making its formula to give to the agencies to implement.

Alina M. Semo: The “at a minimum language” would be the phrase that would address that, right?

Ryan Mulvey: No, no, no, no, I meant at a…maybe it doesn't make sense grammatically to have it where I said…

Alina M. Semo: Oh, okay.

Ryan Mulvey:  but I mean, we should, the at a minimum was meant to say that the baseline of the funding formula is size of workforce. And I think the way we describe it in the recommendation is adjusted up or down or something like that. Wait. Yeah. Adjusted up or down to address. Oh, I see it then it says at a minimum. I didn't mean that at a minimum. At a minimum, these other considerations. I think I said and such factors as…but something that gets those 3 factors in there, but while saying they're not exclusive, but also trying to emphasize that size of workforce is the baseline.

Alina M. Semo: Kirsten, can I turn to you for a minute, I think we're back to trying to wordsmith a little bit of this recommendation as well. Maybe you could pull that up on your screen. So we could just wrap this up. Oh, and Deborah in the meantime, go ahead, please.

Deborah Moore: Yeah, I guess I just have a question about how this works. I have a description of what is the role of the recommendation language itself. It sounds like it's pretty divorced from the description. And I guess I need to understand how it works is why is it I'm not against amending. But I just want a little bit more clarity. About what needs to go specifically in the recommendation and then what you know, what is the role of the explanatory piece that follows.

Alina M. Semo: So I'm just going to give the classic it depends answer and that I think it depends on how the committee wants to move forward in terms of how specific they want to be in the recommendation itself versus the explanatory language. I can speak to having had to implement past recommendations. You know to the extent that they're clear and helpful that is just great for the implementers. The explanation though is invaluable. Because it really lends insight into what the committee members were thinking at that time, during that term. So I don't know if that actually helps answer your question, but, those are just my initial thoughts, but Jason, I'm sure has additional thoughts.

Jason R. Baron: Well, there's a very clear answer, Deborah. It's like, for us lawyers, federal Rules of Civil Procedure. They are the rules and there's comments. And the rules are binding. Comments are comments. So, traditionally here, the Archivist has approved recommendations. But along the way in terms of doing the final report there's been changes in the commentary ‘til the final report is issued that results in a consensus for the entire committee. And the drafters of the final report have in the past had license to make reasonable edits. And some have been traumatic and some have been just very modest to the commentary to a recommendation. So we're voting on recommendations. And to Ryan's point and others if you want the Archivist or whomever is signing off on these to you know, to approve, they're approving the recommendation language, not the commentary, which Alina says would be, is very, very helpful in terms of compliance and implementation. So if you, it's very important at least to me to get it right in the recommendation. I do have a trans-substative generic position that recommendations that are overly complex are ones that there's more difficulty implementing. But when we're talking about statutory changes, I suppose it's better to be longer and to give Congress guidance in the recommendation itself. I'm not coming out anywhere on this in terms of what's been added. But it is going to be important going forward that the recommendation is what is being approved by the head of the National Archives, not the commentary. Am I right, Alina?

Alina M. Semo: That sounds right, but I want to give Deborah a chance to also speak. She has her hand up.

Deborah Moore: Okay, thank you. That's all very helpful to me. And so with that and also with the discussion that we've had. I am not a super big fan of drafting on the fly and I would feel more comfortable if I could take back the conversation and things we've talked about here and provide updated language recommendation language, solely. As opposed to trying to do it right now, which I, yeah, I would not prefer that.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, Ryan, you have your hand up. Go ahead, please.

Ryan Mulvey: Ryan Mulvey, AFPF. This is just a… not germane to this recommendation in particular, but just a thought and a rec, my own recommendation for future terms and maybe something that OGIS could do because this issue of what actually constitutes a recommendation is one that came up previously. And I think it's one that at least in our subcommittee and the working groups was not… I think it's fair to say that we did not operate on the assumption that the commentary was not an essential part of the recommendation in the way that Jason had suggested. 

And I understand that that's probably how in the past that the committee has operated but it might be good it probably doesn't make sense to put it in the bylaws but for there to be some sort of policies and practices guide that goes along with the bylaws or maybe it makes sense to put it in the bylaws. But that specifies what it is that the committee actually votes on, what constitutes the formal recommendation? Because this also gets to the 2016-2018 report and the use of the term recommendation and the description of best practice recommendations as recommendations and yet they aren't on the dashboard they weren't highlighted as the bolded recommendations in the final report of that term of the committee. Maybe there needs to be better specification about what it is that is the recommendation. Because at least, and this hasn't been the case really here with our subcommittees recommendations to date - we haven't included proposed statutory text - but you know, if any of the other working group recommendations that the subcommittee is going to consider in the next week or two do get moved forward it's likely they could include statutory text and if that's the case I don't know how we keep things succinct in the way that we have in these three recommendations. I mean, I think I made my point, but there should be like memorialized clarity about what a recommendation is, I think.

Alina M. Semo: Good thanks, Ryan. Jason, go ahead, please.

Jason R. Baron: Ryan, you're raising a good point. I don't object to having clarity in bylaws. The practical effect of what you're saying is that the way that subcommittee reports have been done in all prior terms would change because the subcommittee reports and there would be a problem with the committee doing interim recommendations and voting prior to a final report. So, it would be locking in what the subcommittees full statement of a recommendation and commentary in their report if they're voted on by the full committee that would lock it in to the final report as is without the need, perhaps for drafting a final report, you just copy and paste what the subcommittees are doing. I found it to be very useful to have a further round of editing of what subcommittees have said in commentary because quite candidly, in the past not with respect to the current term, but there have been recommendations that have less than satisfactory commentary supporting them. And the final drafting committee has tried to assist OGIS and the greater community in terms of clarity and whatever. So there is an issue but I've never understood that a subcommittees set of commentary, which by the way is not being put up for the public here I know it's been put up on the website before this meeting. But in any event it's never been the case that it's locked in that the vote of the committee at all for a recommendation is voting for the language of the commentary.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks Jason. Ryan, back to you.

Ryan Mulvey: Oh yeah, Ryan Mulvey the AFP Foundation. I guess I would be curious. Well the only other I will admit, I don't peruse other advisory committees recommendations too frequently. I, but I do read ACUS [Administrative Conference of the United States] recommendations and obviously ACUS isn't an advisory committee in the way that we are but we you know Margaret maybe you can speak to this because I know you're a member of ACUS or have worked on ACUS committees. You know, their recommendations, there was just one recently…in fact, I think you worked on it, Margaret, on disclosure of records by agencies about that are used in agency proceedings. And the recommendation was quite lengthy. I mean, I think it was 8 pages. And my understanding is that whole thing, the central core summary and all of the language that follows constitutes the recommendation. Is that the case or when you have maybe it's not helpful to delve into this now, but you know when there's a recommendation but then also a supporting report like - how do things get voted on and who has final say? Because I think that also gets to what Jason is talking about, about locking in things or to what extent can editors in the final report hear, deviate, or change commentary and I don't know, I'd be interested in to hear your thoughts there, given your experience.

Kirsten Mitchell: Before Margaret goes, I just wanted to jump in. And explain that ACUS is the Administrative Conference of the United States.

Ryan Mulvey: Sorry, I should have said it out loud.

Margaret Kwoka: Margaret Kwoka, Ohio State. Yeah, I mean, ACUS operates a little bit differently, but it is a very formalized process in the sense that, and let me just clarify, I am not an ACUS member, I've been an ACUS consultant. Those are two different statuses. I, uh a consultant is hired to do a research report and submit that report to ACUS. The ACUS staff take that report and sort of come up with some preliminary draft recommendation language. And then that draft recommendation language works its way through a committee process in which the committee with screen sharing and all and it's half government members and half non-government members and much like this body. And they red line it and discuss it and vote on that exact language and then that exactly which goes to the full plenary body and the full plenary body again red lines and marks up any additional wordsmithing changes, but that final language is in fact final. The only changes thereafter being any sort of grammatical or punctuation problems. So that 8-page document that came out of the report that I did is in fact like the specific language that was workshop. It took about two 3-hour committee meetings and an hour, or an hour and a half at the plenary session. So that's about how much time it took to do the wordsmithing on a recommendation of that language. I mean, sorry, recommendation of that length and then the report stands as sort of support for, but not, you know, more like legislative history. The language of the recommendation is the voted on language.

Alina M. Semo: Thanks, Margaret. So I mean, I know we've talked a lot today about what could go into potential bylaw amendments, which would have to be approved by this whole committee right Kirsten.

Kirsten Mitchell: Correct.

Alina M. Semo: So we can certainly revisit that and think about that between this meeting and our next meeting. I will say that traditionally we have voted on the actual language of the recommendation. And I believe that the way we've interpreted the commentary has been as Margaret's adjusted legislative history. Which is very valuable, but the recommendation itself is what the committee has voted on. So hence Jason's desire to want to wordsmith at this point, which you know I certainly appreciate and I think we're all engaged in, but also defer to Deborah to the thought that we want to just take a break on this particular recommendation and hold it over for the May, I'm sorry, the April meeting, not…

Kirsten Mitchell: May.

Alina M. Semo: …today's April, sorry for the May meeting. And give ourselves a chance to think about it some more and deliberate and then we can present it again in May. It sounds like that's the direction we want to go in. That's what I'm hearing. Okay, I'm seeing nods. Thank you, Ryan, Whitney is that copacetic?

Whitney Frazier-Jenkins: Yes.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, Ryan, I'm sorry. You have your hand up.

Ryan Mulvey: Yeah, no, that's okay. Yeah, that works for me if Deborah wants to, work on it a bit more. Just a question, let me lower my hand, a question on the recommendations…do we vote on the final report?

Alina M. Semo: Yes.

Kirsten Mitchell: Yes.

Ryan Mulvey: Yep, okay. Okay, that's it. Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Alright, so it sounds as though we're gonna hold over the funding recommendation to our May meeting, not April, today is April. And if everyone is in agreement, should we move back to the FOIA logs conversation and to look at the language that Margaret has proposed. Kirsten, if you could share your screen again, that would be very helpful. Both Margaret and Nick have proposed a language, to, for us to consider. And I don't know if everyone on the committee has had a chance to look at the chat. But it doesn't matter because Kirsten has captured it as well, right Kirsten?

Kirsten Mitchell: I have. You should see it on your screen.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. I do, it's green.

Kirsten Mitchell: It is green and the first short language Congress should consider that's Margaret’s language. The longer Congress should establish is Nick’s language.

Alina M. Semo: Open to comments, thoughts. Nick and in the defense of your version…

Nick Wittenberg: Good. It is a very powerful one, I think it's gonna be sweet, but I just put that in there cuz that’s a little bit of flexibility, but you know the fear….just kicking the can down the road. And obviously there's implementation and government contracting all that but just something to get the federal workers started to be playing on the same page so we don't have somebody with the amazing technology and somebody behind the curve and just something to push it a little bit for it.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Thank you. Any other thoughts? In favor of one version versus another. Jason, go ahead, please.

Jason R. Baron: I support Margaret's version and I support Nick's version with some editing, for the commentary.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. That's an interesting way to go, certainly helpful. Any other thoughts? Okay, how do folks…Ryan, have your hand up. Go on, please.

Ryan Mulvey: Yeah, Ryan AFP Foundation. I mean, I think either of them could work. I would just vote for Margaret for the sake of brevity in the formal recommendation. And perhaps some of…maybe this was what you were getting at Jason, maybe some of this stuff in Nick's recommendation could be added as commentary.

Jason R. Baron: We're in violent agreement.

Alina M. Semo: Okay.

Liz Hempowicz: Liz, American Oversight. I will just join the chorus. I, but also I support Margaret's version, for, and love Nick, I love the so many elements of this, the enforceable, effective date, the interim milestone mandatory progress reporting, but in my experience the more complicated the  language for Congress is, the more, the harder it is to get it through. So for that, for that reason, I support the, the simpler text for inclusion in, in the text itself. But would also be very supportive, maybe also violent agreement on like Jason, to include the longer in the commentary because I think the sentiment is worth very much worth capturing.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, Sarah, go ahead, please

Sarah Weicksel: Sarah Weicksel, American Historical Association. I do wonder if inclusion of just the phrase of clear interim milestones would be useful in adding to Margaret's version, I think that that does help to indicate that this is a process that is going to occur and that there are multiple steps that can be taken in reaching that you know appropriate effective date. So I'm not sure what the best way to include that would be. But something that we might consider. But I am supportive of Margaret's version.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, so Kirsten is live editing as we speak. Adding the phrase that, and includes clear interim milestones. Jason, you're on mute.

Jason R. Baron: Sarah, I understand the reason that you said that I think it's unusual language to put in a recommendation and it's unusual for…in my experience it's unusual for Congress to be setting milestones stated as such. You know, there's…we're all we all understand you know Congress says NARA has two years to issue regulations on x. It's unusual to give milestones along the way. Having said that, I'm not inalterably opposed to that. I just think it's a good idea, but it's unusual.

Sarah Weicksel: I wonder if instead it's more that the agencies would be setting those interim milestones as opposed to Congress. Like tying it to the effective date was more how I was thinking about it so that it's actually in the second clause of the sentence, allowing agencies reasonable time for implementation, including clear interim milestones, while not unduly delaying compliance.

Alina M. Semo: Hmm.

Sarah Weicksel: But that may still pose the same problem.

Jason R. Baron: That's better. That's no, it, no, it does not, Sarah. It's a better amendment anyway.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, Kirsten, thank you for live redlining. Alright, any other thoughts on the Margaret version? Sorry Margaret. It sounds as though the consensus is leaning towards the Margaret version with Nick’s version landing in the commentary part because I think it is helpful. Nick, anything else you want to do to defend your version?

Nick Wittenberg: No, I just wanna make sure Jason is violently still in support of me. But definitely just think he's getting that spirit and I know I think that Liz brought some good points more reporting we make the more but something to kind of get federal family pushing to get the AI, cause I think FOIA is a low hanging fruit is our friends in DOW and a lot are out there really investing but something so we can Just just help our our citizens and requesters out to if they can use the wonderful devices at home they can get that information from government.

Jason R. Baron: Nick, will you allow me to say I just, the word clear, I think could be deleted. I'm including interim milestones. I don't know what a clear interim milestone is as opposed to an unclear one.

Nick Wittenberg: Neither do I. And I really appreciate that. I think the heart of mine is great for the comments or folks can…maybe it's a they hear and they see it in the Chief FOIA Report or something that they're really just pushing the needle not just saying hey to going through it we go to a training but we're still dragging our feet from implementing, printing and copying or that type of stuff, which is 20-years old.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thank you for that exchange. How do folks feel about Sarah's addition… including, now it's become including interim milestones without the word clear. Just wanna get, I'm seeing nods. Okay, thank you Rick for nodding. I appreciate that. Okay, Whitney and Ryan do you want to bring this to a vote at this point - with this added language, the Margaret language?

Whitney Frazier-Jenkins: Yes, I would motion that we submit this for a vote.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, so moved do I have a second?

Liz Hempowicz: Second.

Alina M. Semo: Thank you. Liz. Okay, let's take a vote then. All in favor of this proposed language we now have on the screen along with the 13 criteria that are set forth earlier, please say aye.

Group: aye.

Alina M. Semo: All those opposed, please say nay. Kirsten, I didn't hear any nays. Any abstentions?

Sean Glendening: I'm abstaining.

Nieva Brock: Nieva, I’m abstaining

Alina M. Semo: Oh, hold on a second. I see. Yep.

Kirsten Mitchell: You know, I think we have two who have abstained, Sean Glendening and Nieva, correct?

Alina M. Semo: That's Scott.

Scott Hodes: And Scott.

Kirsten Mitchell: And Scott. Okay, so we have Nieva, Sean and Scott abstaining. And then everyone else voting yes. Marianne has left us. So the motion passes 13 to 0. Unanimous with three abstentions.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Alright, thank you subcommittee on Statutory Reform. Great work. You have some homework to do between now and the next time we meet, which is in May. Deborah, sorry. But, we look forward to entertaining the revised language to the extent that there is any. So thank you for that. I am happy to move on to the next subcommittee report unless Ryan and Whitney have anything else they want to wrap up for your subcommittee. No, okay. So next stop, we're going to hear from the Volume and Frequency Subcommittee co-chaired by Nick Wittenberg and Nieva Brock. Nick and Nieva the floor is yours.

Nick Wittenberg: Yeah, I think going to defer to our good colleague, Shelley's doing an amazing job with the surveys and she's gonna update us. I believe the survey closed yesterday. So Shelley, I'll turn it over to you.

Shelley Kimball: Thanks. Yes, we closed the survey on...

Alina M. Semo: Sorry Shelley, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Can you just introduce yourself, Shelley Kimball…

Shelley Kimball: Oh, I always forget. Thank you. And I even have a sticky telling myself to do it. Shelley Kimball, Johns Hopkins University. We did close our survey on Tuesday. I had a chance yesterday to go through some of the responses and I want to first express my gratitude to those who participated because I can see that we have some really thoughtful, detailed responses in there to work with. Just a quick reminder, the survey focused on vexatious or unduly burdensome requests as well as perceptions on AI generated requests. So I'm going to continue coding in the coming weeks with an eye on the reporting deadlines. May 7th has my heart beating, but I will work toward May and June. We are…our committee on this project is a little later than we originally intended, but we were holding back during shutdowns and also making space for other data collection efforts in other subcommittees. But I am really looking forward to sharing what we find with the committee members soon.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, thanks so much, Shelley by the way, if you need help coding, I think you can call on the rest of us. We're happy to help. So you don't have it, you shouldn't have to do it all by yourself.

Shelley Kimball: Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Anything else from the subcommittee on Volume and Frequency? Oh, Kirsten, I'm sorry, you have your hand up. I just saw it.

Kirsten Mitchell: I do, I do. I thought this would be a good time to mention that during Sunshine Week we published four Ombuds Observers about terms of art and one of them is about the term not reasonably described and unduly overly burdensome, which is why I thought of this now. I just wanted to encourage everyone to check those out at some point after the meeting. Thank you.

Alina M. Semo: Now, please visit the OGIS website and click on Ombuds Observers. Okay, Nieva, Nick, does that wrap up your subcommittee presentation?

Nieva Brock: Yes, thank you. And I….this is Nieva, Defense Intelligence Agency. And I wanted to say also to Kirsten and to Alina, I really loved the Observers and I especially loved the Observer on unduly burdensome. It's been very helpful in training some of the personnel I have here. Thank you.

Kirsten Mitchell: Oh, that's so nice to hear. Thank you, Nieva.

Alina M. Semo: Wonderful. Thank you. That just made my day. Thank you.

Nieva Brock: Yes, people read it, I promise you. 

Alina M. Semo: We really appreciate that. We hope more people will read it now that you've said that out loud. Nick, I know you said you have to leave at 11:40, so any parting words?

Nick Wittenberg: I would just say, no, it's been, it's been a really wonderful session and huge thanks to Shelley and to Dave for all they've been helping out with Volume and Frequency to really get some good information for us.

Alina M. Semo: Great. Thank you so much. Okay, so last but certainly not least is the Implementation Subcommittee co-chaired by Jason Baron and Marianne Manheim. I understand we've lost Marianne, so I'm gonna give the floor to Jason. Go ahead, please.

Jason R. Baron: Thanks, Alina. Deborah, I'm gonna call on you first, but let me just say my own personal thanks to the members of this committee who have been very creative and have stepped up during all of our time together. And I really have appreciated everyone's efforts. So that said, I think we have two main points to make, but of course I'll open it up to anyone here to report out. First, I'm going to turn it to Deborah to talk about her wonderful efforts at Sunshine Fest and the work that she and others as an ad hoc taskforce have been doing on this subcommittee and then I'm gonna say something about our review of CFO [Chief FOIA Officer] reports. So Deborah, go ahead.

Deborah Moore: Okay, thank you, Jason. Deborah Moore, Department of Education. So to give you a very quick update on where we are with our working group. Last meeting we updated you on our progress, we gave you the findings that we have come from, we've come from the series of focus groups that we held aimed at uncovering barriers that agencies face in implementing FOIA advisory recommendations. And yet I got a lot of good information from there, a lot of, several important findings came up, but there were two in particular that rose up for as like critical gaps. The need for increased awareness of FOIA Advisory Committee recommendations as well as the need for integrated coordination and community building. So we decided to take advantage of the opportunity to gather additional ideas and input from the larger FOIA community highlighting those two areas at the listening session at Sunshine Fest There we gathered a lot of helpful ideas and information. We're continuing to explore existing avenues and mechanisms that might be leveraged to both increase awareness of recommendations and also help FOIA professionals build that interagency communication and collaboration, those networks that we have determined are really needed and wanted. So we're working to craft some concrete recommendations for the subcommittee to consider and working on pulling together a final report from the working group. Thanks.

Jason R. Baron: Great. Thanks so much, Deborah. So on CFO reports, every year the Office of Information Policy conducts an annual survey requiring chief FOIA officers to submit responses to a wide range of questions with respect to FOIA administration at their agency. I believe we have somewhere around 70 CFO reports that are up on the OIP website of the latest reports. Last term the Implementation Subcommittee issued as part of its subcommittee report an appendix where there was some analysis of how the CFO reports, to the extent that the CFO reports mentioned the work of this committee, in terms of its recommendations and we generally looked at how in parallel agencies were reporting out that they were working in compliance, but not necessarily directly attributed to this recommendations of this committee, 

so the initiatives that they've done. So we're going to be doing that again to some extent. The only thing else that I'd like to say is that we've heard from Kirsten Mitchell just in the last week and I want to thank Kirsten for carrying this forward. You and OGIS asked OIP to provide responses to a limited number of recommendations that have been made in the past and that OIP really deserves thanks. Sean, your staff provided great information to our subcommittee and with respect to a number of recommendations that we've done in the past and how they crosswalk into for the this year's batch of OIP reports that will be of substantial help in our own efforts at evaluating the tie in between our recommendations and those reports. So we thank you for that and the work will continue on that score. Does anyone else on our subcommittee wish to say something about our own work or about the state of the world?

Alina M. Semo: I think the latter is a little too broad so we should focus on the work of the committee. Okay. I'm not hearing anything else. I wanted to keep going. I know that maybe some people felt like they needed a comfort break, but I just thought we could soldier through. No pun intended. And try to wrap up and give you back some time. But not knowing how everyone feels I just made a chairperson prerogative determination. So we're gonna move forward.

We have now arrived at the public comment section of our committee. We look forward to hearing from any non-committee participants who have ideas or comments to share particularly about the topics discussed today. All oral comments are captured in the transcript of the meeting which we will post as soon as it is available. Oral comments are also captured in the NARA YouTube recording and are available on the NARA YouTube channel. As a reminder, public comments are limited to three minutes per person. I'm now going to turn things over to Kirsten again.

Kirsten Mitchell: Great. Thank you, Alina. So as Alina mentioned, we have reached the public comments period. I want to remind everyone that written public comments can be made at any time by going to archives dot gov forward slash ogis forward slash public dash comments.

We welcome those again at any time. If you wish to make a public, an oral public comment, please raise your hand so that we can unmute you. And if you are dialed in through telephone audio, you can press star 9 on your telephone to raise your hand and join the comment queue. Once you are unmuted, please state your name and affiliation and you will be given three minutes to speak.

Alina M. Semo: I'm curious to let me just ask if there were no comments in the chat that needed to be read out loud, correct?

Kirsten Mitchell: Correct. Correct. They were all housekeeping types chats, yes. Thank you for checking.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, great. Sure. Anyone waiting to be called on? Via telephone.

Kirsten Mitchell: It doesn't. I don't see any hands raised among our attendees here on Zoom for Government.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, I think we just wowed everyone with our wonderful repartee and deliberations so everyone is left…

Kirsten Mitchell: Yeah. Well. Yeah. And progress was made. I mean, congratulations with two recommendations passed today.

Alina M. Semo: Absolutely, we should definitely be very proud of that. Alright, I'll just pause for one more second to make sure that no one else wants to say anything in the public comments period.

Kirsten Mitchell: It doesn’t look like it.

Alina M. Semo: Okay. All right so let's go to the next slide and mark your calendars for Thursday, May 7th. That is going to be our next meeting. I, as always, thank all the committee members for participating in all of our meetings thus far this term. A really great big thank you for all the great discussions we had not just today but in prior meetings. But the work has been ongoing in subcommittees and at the working group level. I am extremely grateful for all that work. I know everyone is working very hard to improve the FOIA process. So, a particular big thank you to the six co-chairs of our three subcommittees. They've done a great job as well. I want to thank all of you for joining us today. I hope everyone and their families remain safe, healthy and resilient. And our next full committee meeting as I said is Thursday, May 7th. I'm going to ask the committee members if anyone has any outstanding questions or comments before we adjourn. Dave Cuillier has his hand up.

David Cuillier: Yeah sorry, I’ll keep it quick. Do we have an idea of how many recommendations might be on the agenda for the next meeting and/or June and then we pretty much finish our discussion in the next two meetings. Do we have any sense from the subcommittees of how many might be coming forward if I can ask?

Alina M. Semo: Great question. I’m not sure if I’m in a position to answer. Can I turn to the subcommittee co-chairs?

Ryan Mulvey: This is Ryan Mulvey. I think we have a few that might be discussed at our next meeting which we will be…this is Statutory Reform. We’re going to be scheduling , but I don't, I don’t think we have anything like queued up ready to go to the full committee by the next meeting at least not yet. But hopefully we will.  

David Cuillier: Is that the three working enforcement recommendations? 

Ryan Mulvey: yeah, there so yeah, we have some that were forwarded but haven’t been discussed yet in full subcommittee. 

David Cuillier: Okay, well those will take a lot of time I think…

Ryan Mulvey: Yeah I think there were three of them.

David Cuillier: Yeah, and so thanks Ryan. Those are the only three for Statutory though, right?

Deborah Moore: And the funding one.

Ryan Mulvey: And what yes, well the funding one doesn't I mean, we’re not going to have to discuss that in full subcommittee. But yah, it’s either three or four. I don’t remember.

David Cuillier: okay

Alina M. Semo: Jason, Implementation?

Jason R. Baron: We’re not at the stage where we put forward some kind of drafted text of any recommendation. But I expect there'll be one or more.

Alina M. Semo: Okay, and Nieva, I’m sorry Nick is gone but not to put you on the spot, what do you think is coming out of Volume and Frequency…and all of Shelley’s great work.

Nieva Brock: Well, and that’s and that is the point, right? This is Nieva, Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of War. I wanted to say that we’re going to be meeting with Shelley shortly, hopefully. And we’re going to get an idea about what the data shows to see if we have a recommendation. 

Alina M. Semo: Okay, so there could be one coming from your subcommittee.

Nieva Brock: Could be

Alina M. Semo: Okay. Dave, does that help? That was a great question though.

David Cuillier: Thank you for that. That really  helps. And thanks for everybody's work. It’s just awesome.

Alina M. Semo: I second that. Okay any other comments or questions. Great meeting today everyone and everyone should pat themselves on the back. We passed two recommendations that is very exciting. I want to thank everyone for their hard work. We stand adjourned. Thank you.

Kirsten Mitchell: This concludes the meeting.