The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Advisory Committee, serving the National Archives, held a public meeting yesterday via WebEx, and the recording is available on YouTube.
The 2024-26 committee has organized into three subcommittees: Statutory Reform, Volume and Frequency, and Implementation. I serve on the latter; yesterday, I contributed to our report on efforts to prioritize past committee recommendations and develop strategies to facilitate their implementation.
The Implementation Subcommittee grouped 18 of 64 past recommendations into priority categories of technology, for example, the implementation of AI to manage large volumes of records; workflow, for example, the implementation of strategies to manage voluminous first-person requests apart from other FOIA processing; training, for example, raising awareness about FOIA among all agency employees, not just FOIA officers; and engagement, for example, facilitating agency-requester dialog to improve efficiency and responsiveness for both parties.
The subcommittee listed 10 more recommendations as "not zero," meaning that the committee recognized them as higher than minimum priority, and doable, but they did not fall into one of the four priority categories. One such recommendation involves improving online agency instructions for FOIA requesters.
The Statutory Reform Subcommittee reported on its constitution of three working groups, focusing on processing, enforcement models, and transparency obligations. The latter is looking at the clarity of FOIA definitions, including "agency control" of records. That inquiry includes consideration of the private-prison problem, which interests me, when the federal government might have access to the records of a prison contractor.
The next public meeting of the committee is scheduled for March 6, 2025, and there will (again) be a public comment period.
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