year. although they're all late. so it seems like we have to be on top of every single thing at the same time. and we don't want that person waiti waiting five years who maybe didn't call today to be disadvantaged at the same time. so we have our little world of problems. we want to do everything we can. we want to stop and help and we should be doing everything. we should be getting it out. you know, being in the middle of this means i'm trying to get at least moving as much as i can. and the harder times have been if someone is like i'm going to sue. well, you know, sometimes what can you say to that? you can say we can try mediation. i mean, we can try doing something with ogis. but if someone is that upset at this month, you can't talk them out of something that they have the money to go ahead and file a lawsuit and do it. they're in their right to do that. so one thing, you know, i have learned doing this, i've known

it before, it is how much work we have had on our side to do. we are trying our best. one of the things when you talk about like all the sort of the white collar and people doing things that are wrong, government side of things, at least from what i have seen with how much we have to do, i don't know that we have the time to think of doing that something that crazy. i mean, we're just kind of busy. if we're messing up your file -- if you've sued us 20 times, and we messed up your other case, we didn't intentionally do that. so i think that discovering where we mess up and trying to fix that and trying -- one of the things i have been trying to do beyond this is just improve our foia processes in general from the foia program manager standpoint and looking at what we're messing up on and trying to fix these things. learning from obviously all these mistakes that we do make. but also trying to fix it as much as we can. and so -- but ogis is very nice

when they call and it's nice having them as well to talk to the requesters. especially to be able to send them to ogis as well. so that way that can get the help that they need and in the end, i think whether you're coming directly to me and calling, i will do my best to get the case moving and getting it done and if there are disputes or problems, we will do everything we can do fix that. i think ogis does the same thing. and i also i'm always aware of how understaffed they are as well with six people and so there are times where i'm thinking what can ogis be doing in the future, beyond just working sort of as a public liaison in the sense too? there's so much that it would be nice for them to look at all the things that we need from the government's standpoint to succeed, to look at our processes, to say okay, you know, they're not getting any of

this done in time, what could be changed within that? and getting that advice would be really helpful as well. because i mean, if you're in a job, you don't know always see what you can do to fix it. but if you have someone who comes out and in a sense you're set up to come and have this fresh view of it, you're in a better position to actually assist us to get there. so that's something that i would like to see more of, i think. and so -- i guess -- i don't think -- i'm good. you can ask me questions afterwards. not case specific, please. >> you mean you don't welcome questions about where is my request in the queue? when is it going to get out? >> i'd have to say which queue? >> gavin? we will -- we actually

envisioned this as being a great opportunity to have some give and take with those of you who are here. so i'm certain that you will get some questions. gavin? >> thank you, miriam. and thank you, dan and american university for having me. mariam said that i would tell you how government is doing and where it should be going and that is exactly what i would like to do. and i'm going to split the difference here between the topic that dan wants and the topic that miriam wants and we'll talk about both ogis and foia or i suppose the role of ogis and foia. so ogis today i think plays a very important and valuable role in our foia system. i want to highlight the three activities in particular.

the first are the requester services or the facilitation that you have been hearing about and before i go on, i'd like to get an idea of who's in the audience here. there's always such a diverse group of people at the collaboration of government secre secrecy events. raise your hand if you've ever filed a foia request. >> and you're willing to self-identify. >> raise your hand if you have used ogis' requester services. okay. a few. raise your hand if you are a foia professional. also a good bit. raise your hand if you have been on the other end of ogis' request for services. okay. so a good number of folks with some first-hand experience here. for the rest of you, i think it's important to recognize that the requester service have a real value at both an individual and a macro level.

there were somewhere around half a million foia requests filed across the government last year. i can tell you with absolute certainty that not every one of those requests received helpful and friendly customer service. this is not by any means to impugn the folks who have to do this day to day, but i think that the fact is that in not all cases the customer service message is getting out. that's despite the 2007 amendments where congress clearly indicated that they wanted an increased emphasis on customer service. so i see ogis as a sheepdog. in a sense, that congress is driving the herd and has said we want to go here. and ogis is the sheepdog that has to go and catch the straggler and bring it back to

the crowd. the stubborn sheep that doesn't want to move, ogis has to convince it to move and the idea is to bring everybody along and keep us moving and pick up the pace to go in the direction that congress has said we need to go. so at a macro level i think that's very important. at an individual level, it is -- i don't think this is too strong a word, infuriating to not know what is going on with your foia request. you know that it's an odds game no matter what in terms of whether you'll get the information that you want. but you shouldn't have to wait and wonder even whether your request is going to get an answer. so ogis i think does an excellent job and i can say that i am a satisfied cust never --

customer in that regard. ogis does an excellent job of facilitating a conversation between the requesters and the agencies, getting requests unstuck and helping folks understand where they are in the process. the second activity that i want to highlight are the best practices that ogis has developed. if you're a foia geek and you haven't read the best practices, you have to. these hit on so many of the long standing requests of the open government community. and most of these once you read them, they sound so obvious. i think -- and you can correct me if i'm wrong, every single one of the best practices i would wager is implemented by someone, some where in government. they are just not implemented consistently across all of the agencies. so these are all things that people have done and it's a matter of surfacing these best

practices and scaling them out government wide. the next step for the best practices i think is a matter of compliance. that's what i would like to understand more of -- is what is the impact of the best practices? i think that there are a brilliant set of ideas in terms of helping facilitate the process, making it more efficient. more effective. and the next step for me is to learn more about exactly whether agencies are learning these lessons. so i know that omb watch has suggested that the department of justice and their next chief foia officers ask agencies to report on the steps they have taken to comply with the best practices. how ever it's done i want to hear more about the evidence about what kind of impact these things are having, but they're great ideas and i would like to see them be more widely adopted.

and the third activity that i'll highlight is ogis' role in the foia portal, which is an incredibly important project that is underway now, led by epa and with the commerce department currently participating to build the next generation of technical infrastructure for foia requesters as well as for foia professionals. in a way that scales across the government, has shared services, efficiencies, and improves customer service. we release so much information through the foia process, but in far too many cases it's still on an individual basis. you requested this, you get it and nobody else receives that information. in the 21st century that's silly.

we need to scale up the way that information is released. foia is a hard process. it is time and resource intensive process. if people are going through all of the effort of collecting these documents, clearing them for release, by the time they're actually cleared for release it's silly that we're not making them fully available to the public and in too many cases we are not. in terms of tracking the status of requests, congress has said you need to make it easier for folks to figure out where they are in the process. and in many cases there hasn't been a huge leap in the way that that's done. so bringing that fully online and fully automated is something that the foia portal would do. extremely important. and kirsten talked about the websites of agency foia offices.

in many cases these websites do now have a mechanism for filing a request on line and for tracks a request online. this is great, it's exactly what agencies should be doing. but we shouldn't have to do it 100 different times. in many cases even within a single department there are dozens of components, each of which has a separate foia office. it's outrageous that a requester should have to deal with so many different interfaces in order to seek information from more than one agency. so bringing that together and providing a common interface and a common way for requesters to track where they are, incredibly important things that the foia portal would do, this is not to mention all of the great things that it would do in terms of efficiencies of processing and

ogis i think has played a really important role in helping move that project forward. so now i'll talk a bit about the future and i'm going to counter with another yogi berra quote which is it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future. but i think that within the existing statutory authority, that's some wiggle room for what ogis could be doing. and beyond the existing statute, i think we need to think long term about what we need as a government and as a country to make foia work. within this statute, ogis has been tasked with making policy recommendations to the president and to congress. i'm not going to put anybody on the spot here, but on the table and the foia foyer there is a copy of an article about the recommendations that ogis has prepared and the difficulty that they have faced in publishing

them. so that's unfortunate. it's something that should change. and it's one of the things that i look forward to ogis doing increasingly in the future. the mediation -- mediation is the term that the statute uses in terms of the office responsibility. i think arguably the more accurate term for what ogis currently does is facilitation. so i think that there is room for increase -- increasing move in the direction of mediation and a more active role for ogis. and in addition where mediation doesn't produce the result that ogis thinks it ought to, the statute tasks ogis with issuing advisory opinions which was --

which would essentially give it an opportunity to formally and publicly say we disagree with the way the agency has handled this. so i think that's a way that i look forward to ogis doing more of that in the future. now, in general, aside from the statutory authorities, what my hope for ogis generally in the future is that it will receive increased resources and increased authority. some of the ideas that i just mentioned that are within the existing statutory authority i think are largely an issue of resources and where the office has chosen to prioritize what they were going to to do in first few years of existence. don't take it as a major criticism from me that these things haven't taken place yet as much as it is my hope that that's where we'll go moving in the coming years.

but in general, i think ojgis i sort of an americanish version of the model that exists in other countries and we need to keep moving in that direction. my favorite example is the scottish information commissioner which not only has the authority to issue binding decisions requiring government to disclose information, actually have the ability to raid government agencies and get the information forcibly if necessary and provide it to the public. i'm not suggesting that that is something we should be doing all the time. but it really puts much more teeth into giving people an option other than the very expensive and time consumer and complex option of going to a federal court and making sure that we have a way for the public to enforce the transparency that the foia is supposed to deliver.

so those are my thoughts and now i suppose we'll turn it back to the panel. >> thank you. thank you, everybody, for those ideas. what i'd like to do is maybe just respond to a couple things that came up. i know kirsten has some ideas and let's have a little give and take amongst the panelists and throw it open for everybody else here. just gavin, i appreciate really the -- those kind words and particularly words of encouragement. we do try very hard, and i know that there are people in the room who are maybe not satisfied customers but we very much appreciate the opportunity to tackle -- including some very complex situations and at least

to do our best. the foia portal that gavin is referring to, just -- and i am so sorry i cannot sing along to that. actually, you're probably really glad i cannot sing along to that. the foia portal that gavin is referring to for those of you who don't know, we're happy to provide more information about that and in fact i think we're probably going to be talking about that at a hearing in the house next wednesday, march 21. but this is a project that ogis is part of as -- with our par t parent -- the national under th

leadership of the environmental protection agency. it is the ebeginning of and it's just beginning of building a one stop shop portal for people to make requests and also to easily find the records that are disclosed as a result of those requests. we are hoping the plan is right now actually this would roll out october 1. we're looking for agency partners. obviously the more partners that participate, the better it will work. just version 1. we are already theinking of version 2 and we are thinking about input from both agency foia professionals and also members of the requester community. and we think it's a great idea, but of course it's only one of a

number of efforts that are being made in the government to figure out better ways to use technology, but we're -- we think it's a great idea and we appreciateidea. we appreciate your recognition of that. one other thing i would just the purchase priorities flush flush flush flush flush flush flush flush flush flush flush flush flush. our first priority had to be dealing with people coming in letter, by e-mail, by phonepriority, even can't handle everything really quickly. t handled quickly if it's just a matter of getting people to the right place, but it's a complex case, it can, in fact, take months to

resolve. we're also building the capability of doing -- being able to do miranda rule mediation. we have the capability now. but we had quite a few requests for it. remember this has to be something that both parties agree to do voluntarily. they have cases where the agency won mediation. the requester hasn't. the agency didn't want to do it. everybody has to agree to do it. but we certainly want to have, and we're trying to build the capability to make that possible. so, kirs ten, i'm going to tasz it to you to maybe talk a little bit about the best practices that gavin mentioned and ask if there are other comments from gavin or mary ann.

then we'll have time for a good exchange of information from you all. i want to respond to a few things that first, i don't think aye been called a sheep dog before. i really like the analogy. it's a good one. one thing you mentioned we requester services. i want to make it clear that this exists not just for requesters, but also for agencies. either one is free to come to us at any time. in the first year we had mostly requesters. in the second year now we've had more and more agencies come to us for help with either complex requests, multiagency requests, difficult requesters, that sort of thing. so i just wanted everyone to know that we're not here to

advocate for requesters or for agencies but for the process. the other thing i want to mention is gavin talked about the best practices. we just came up with best practices for data base requests. we have best practices for requesters and also best practices for agencies, and we have handled several cases dealing with data bases and found that they can be pretty difficult for both sides of the requests, so we have those. unfortunately we don't have them among the handouts. but they are on our website. please look them up there, and let us know what you think.

i think i'm going to end it there. >> let me say something more complimentary. if you would like to get the most acute sense of what this is all about, you can do that by simply looking at four words; and this is within publication that was posted under the heading striking the balance. under the heading tips for requesters, the third says, quote, even if you suspect the requested records will be exempt -- confirmed or denied.

make the request anyway. i think those are unpres debited on a government website and government publication. they tell you what this is all about. i can also show the testimony, this is on an issue that we'll be getting into this afternoon when we have our congressional staff panelists for the legislative session. this has dood with a decision that came down more than a year ago. now that the administration appears, finally, after more than a year to have said, yes, you know, we ought to do something about that. then exemption two. miriam's testimony has a very thoughtful and comprehensive and well state d discussion of that

issue. there are some things for which there is no existing protection, as a matter of law. so again, e commend that to you, just the two things in particular. there's a schedule for records. and that schedule says if a record is granted in full, the schedule for retention is two years. so they have a foyer reading room. and we are holding to the

schedule so no matter how significant the record, if it's released in full after two years it will come down and then it would stay of six years and come down. these are not the record copies of the documents. this schedule, the tables and rules have been approved by nara. so i'm wondering what the solution would be to the situation. we are demonstrating transparency, at least for two years or six years. but then according to what is mandated, we take the records out of the electronic reading roo room. >> well, it is true that not long after the enactment of the 1996 amendment that created the whole concept of electronic reading room and also the concept of frequently requested

records, that the government had to confront for the first time something is required to be put in the reading room. it's now electronic in nature. therefore we're talking about having it posted. far better to make it available to the public if it's been requested more than once and it's disposable so people don't have to make the requests. another question is, okay, how long do we keep them up? and back in the day, they said, oh, the answer is clear, 4.726 years. no one knew which can make the stance on the head of the pen, no one knows for sure. i'm not trying to usurp the authority on the federal records act. i can say that but for these purposes, with the justice

department back then was given the underlying rational of having something still up, so as to achieve the result of a request that would otherwise be made, not be made. if in your judgment it can still serve that purpose, it ought to stay up. that's at a minimum, as a starting party. then maybe come down. but you have to talk about that. that's my take. and i'm sticking to it. >> i'm not the records officer. so i can't really give you a definitive view. but i think the answer is right. my reaction is it's an excellent question. but there really is not one good answer on that. and i think it's a matter of determining whether or not the records are something that people seem to continue to have