first merriam nesbit, known to everyone here in the audience, i'm sure, and hopefully more and more people out in the viewing audience. as the -- i can't say new director. our the founding director of the office of information services, been in existence since september of 2009. so it's been two-and-a-half years. and it either feels like it's been ten years or only four weeks. depending upon probably one day to the next. within the office of government information services. ogis for short, just like foya for short. and merriam is someone who came back from paris, to her husband's, dismay, to accept that senior executive service position. >> he was with me. >> oh, i'm not implying a break-up. as a matter of fact, i saw him back here in washington. but my -- made it very clear to me that had you turned that job

down and allowed him to stay as a kept man in paris, france for the near future, that would have been fine with him. fair characterization. >> quite. >> anything beyond that is -- if i go a half step further, it will become 7c investigation, because merriam will come after me and there will be a law enforcement investigation involved. okay. enough of that. merriam has probably more varied experience in the openness and government related area than just about anyone else. because prior to being the director of the information services division at unesco in paris, she was at the archives where she was the right hand person to soveralhe years. she was also legislative council for the american library associati association. and back early in life, 30 years ago, miriam was the best darn

deputy director that the office ever had by far. a position she held for about a dozen years from 1982 to 1994. so with that, i'm going to just let miriam go on for the res the panel and we're going to be able to talk about very interesting investments, i would think, not only about ogis in general, but perhaps during thank you very much, dan. good morning, everybody. i know this is a little late in sunshine week to be mentioning this, but you do have a little bit of time left. downtown, the national archives building for the first time ever this week has been on display the original freedom of information act.

and if you -- i know some people in the room have made it by this week. if approximate you haven't and you have a chance to, and i'm not suggesting anybody would want to leave this program early. but if you find yourselves downtown somewhere around pennsylvania and 7th streets this afternoon, stop in, in the rotunda of the national archives and take a look at the display. we are really hoping that this will become an annual sunshine week event. but we were very proud to have the original law displayed there for the first time. >> does it show president johnson's signature in a shaking hand or a firm hand? because we gather he was a little bit shaky about signing that. >> well, we understand from historians that there was a bit of kicking and screaming involved. but the signature is there quite firmly. and it did become law. and there we go. i wanted to express appreciation

for being able to have the benefit of sue long's historical perspective this morning. it really does make you realize how far -- how far we've come with changes in the law over the last 45 years. and certainly to the good, even though we still have some enforcement issues, as sue points out. i don't want to spend much time talking about ogis, even though dan very kindly made it the subject of this particular panel. we really would like to focus more on the part of the subject matter that deals with the future. not so much the ogis vision of the future, but also some of the ideas that those of you in the room have in starting with our panelists who can talk about

what they see and what they would like to see. although a little bit of caution. one of my favorite yogi berra quotes is the future ain't what it used to be. so you can think about that as we go through the next minutes. ogis is a very new part of the freedom of information act, a very welcome part, i think, for many of us because we feel like it does -- it does embody some congressional expression of strong interest in having foya work. and a little bit different way. perhaps more collaborative. certainly for the first time in the -- in the freedom of information act, congress was saying that it wanted to see

alternative dispute resolution methods, mediation brought to the process as an alternative to litigation. and that certainly, which is only part of the ogis mission, is -- i think a really strong, significant statement about what congress saw the future of foya being. at least a hope that we would be moving beyond and moving to tha sue talked ge of disclosure, about this morning. we approach that part of our mission mediating disputes, trying to find resolution to some of the problems that ore importantly, trying to prevent or avoid disputes before they r

part of what we do. we see that as part of what we would like to believe is cultur expectation that things will be. we have a little bit of a tough time with that and also with carrying out the other part of our mission, which is agency policies, procedures and compliance. part of it office, trying to figure out the best ways to do that. certainly we do -- we work with agencies every day. we get a strong sense of what they're doing, where there are trouble spots. but, frankly, being able to do compliance government-wide with a small staff is bit of an expectation that we cannot

meet. that leads me to another just sort of a challenge that we have, and that is expectations. what we can do and what we can't do. certainly a lot of what we do every day with our facilitators is just to open up communications. but there is i think an expectation that we can do more than we can do. we do not have enforcement mechanisms ourselves. we really have to use communication persuasion, and we rely upon the very strong professional attitude of most of the foya professionals with whom we work in the agencies. and that is something that we depend upon. we also have a hard time

measuring our success. we've -- it will be may before we come up on our second anniversary of even -- we have professionals and a staff assistant. we're a bit challenged in that respect, but we also know that we have to make the most of what we have, because in this budgetary environment, you know, we're -- we can't expect anything different. so we have to try and figure out how to be smarter about the way that we work. but we really are looking forward to suggestions from our customers as to how we can measure what we're doing. the effectiveness of what we're doing. so if you have ideas, please let us know. our customers, who are both requesters and agencies to do a ot of the oversight, we're little bit with one of our

panelists, gavin baker, who is a federal information policy analyst at omb watch. omb watch those organizations that i think the government really must depend upon to give us a sense of how we're doing and it better. the last thing i'm going to just mention is technology. i think we in the federal government are looking always for how we can do disclosure and do it smarter and doing it in a way that does not depend upon people making requests. that -- i've actually heard people suggest that foya is going to become obsolete. i just don't think that's going to happen. you really must depend upon people coming up with new things to ask for.

serious demands about what the government should be disclosing and the way of information and data. we heard some good ideas from sue about that. and is -- is our friend. but we're -- i think that's one of our big challenges, is figuring out how to work smarter and how to work better and using technology to make -- particularly databases, more accessible, more easily usable and user-friendly. part of the future of foya too is the change that congress made in putting in a position, statute foory position. one of panelists who is a foya publicly

a son, and we're going to hear from her about the vision is working. but certainly the foya publ public liaisons is a way that ogis works because we depend on working with them in resolving disputes and as i said, avoiding disputes in the first place. so that leaves our third panelist that i have not introduced yet. and then i'm going to turn to first and that is kirsten mitchell who is an ogis facilitator. kirsten is one of the stalwart ogis staff members who works day in and day out to make our work as broad and accessible as possible dealing with requesters and with agencies every day to

resolve disputes and also to help particularly agency professionals figure out better ways to disclose smart. so i'm going to stop there. i know we're going to have some q & a at the end of this. but i'd like to turn it over to kirsten, then we'll ask mary ann to speak, and then gavin we're going to turn to you as third. >> good morning. so mary talked about a culture changet to see happen in foya and that is the future of foya. i'm going to talk a little bit about what we mean by a culture change. certainly sue pointed to severa couple. but we have four specific things

that ogis has come up with for improving the administration of foya. and these aren't things that would require amending foya or changing foya, but just improve the administration. and they're in no particular order. the first would be to professionalize the foya career track. and we're very pleased the office of committed to creating a job series. they've taken concrete steps. and help fulfill the statutory mission and intent and enhance the visibility of foya professionals. and i think it would also go a long way in increasgod that age retain foya professionals. sort of moving beyond. we would love to see a certification program for foya

professionals. we have seen a lot of foya professionals who sort of end up in that job by default. either as other duties as assigned or they just -- someone leaves and they get into that position. and we would really like to see some -- where they have more training, where the job is professionalized and is where it's a real career track for foya professionals. and another thing along this vein is incorporating foya performance standards into performance plans for agency leadership as well as foya professionals. so the second thing is top-down agency support. agency leadership should actively support foya programs, policies and initiatives. certainly we have some of that. but we think it could go much

broader, government-wide, things like senior remind all employee their duty to assist hopely, accurately and completely with the foya process. i think that happens in some agencies and others not so much. so things like that cut across the government. improving the administration of foya is standardizing agency web pages. i don't know how many of you have spent time on agency web pages, but they can be dramatically different. they can be -- difficult to find things. and e-government act of 2002 requires every agency's website to include information made public under foya. and one can find those things, but sometimes they can be extremely confusing.

it takes many -- many, many clicks to find things. so we think that standardizing agency foya websites would be a customer-friendly and efficient way to ensure the public can find foya resources. so we were -- when we were coming up with this idea, we thought, wouldn't it be great to have an easy to use template, a design template, with shareholder input from both agencies and requesters for agencies to customize? wouldn't standardized and indexed online foya reading rooms be a great resource? and this one is pretty basic. wouldn't it be great to have full contact information for designated foya professionals on every foya web page? sometimes that's not easy to find. sometimes when you find contact information, there's no -- there are no names to go with it's j

number. we think the standardization of this government-wide would really go a long foya easier, not just for requesters, but for agencies. >> excuse me. are you suggesting that if you had had full contact information, as you say, that might hold the potential for making the foya truly contact sport? >> well, no. i'm suggesting that there would be greater communication. so maybe not full concati,. and, of course, we just think that goes a long way toward preventing disputes. and finally, the last bit is training. i know you all know that attorney general holder in his march 2009 memo suggested that foya is everybody's responsibility. and what we would like to see is regular training to ensure that all agency employees, including

those in the senior executive service and political appointees, are up to date on the basics of foya. one thing we would love to see is day one training. every person who becomes a federal employee goes through an orientation service during their first day or so. we would love to see ten, fifteen minutes spent on foya. because it is everybody's responsibility, whether you are a foya professional or not, it's your responsibility and we would really love to see that. because so many government employees don't -- don't know that. we would love to see refresher training that all employees would receive annual refresher training. and then finally, foya professionals training, specific training to help people like chief foya officers and foya

publicly liaisons carry out their statutory duty. and in the 2007 amendments that created our office, in that office -- i mean, in that bill, the role of the foya publ public liaison was put into -- well, it had been created in a previous executive order. that person really is mandated with helping resolve disputes, helping prevent disputes, helping do a lot of the things that we at ogis do. and we would really like to see those professionals more fully trained and better equipped to do their jobs. i think with that i'm going to turn it over to mary ann

manheim. she's the foya public liaison. the first person us at ojiz turn to when we have a case involving the state department. mary ann, i'm going to let you take it away and talk about what you do. >> good morning. what i do started in august last year. within about a couple of weeks i got to know everybody at ojis so that i learned my job pretty quickly. at least the initial part about that. and then over time i learned the extent of how much there was to do within this position. so pretty much what happens asl probably know, i get phone calls and i get e-mails. and there are thousands of cases at the state department because we process in a centralized way. we don't have decentralized processing. and everything is sort of like a

puzzle. and so my job is to listen. i think that is the key to so much of this. i've taken their training about three times now for alternative dispute resolution. and i've only had a few disputes, i think. but the key is just staying quiet, at least initially, and listening and hearing. because sometimes our requestors have talked to so many different people already over years. because there's a 20 or 30 working day requirement. which by the time it getso's lo. so trying to maybe calm someone down by listening is very important. and just listening they know that i'm listening. and then once i have the facts, it's also figuring out really what's been happening within the department. and going through the file and talking to the people who are

processing and finding out what is going on because it's never -- i wish it were as simple as just looking at it and figuring out what's going on sometimes. but it isn't. and so i want to make sure when i go back to the i'm able to help them and explain to them what's happening, it's really what's happening. because i've -- you know, there's so many different sides even within our own world that we need to make sure that we are getting our facts straight. so everyone sort of gets trained in a sense every time we get one of these coming in as well. because they have to go back and look at their case really closely, possibly for the first time. because there's a cue. obviously something that's been sitting around for five years really does need to have that attention versus the one 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 waiting five years who maybe didn't call today to be

disadvantaged at the same time. so we have our own little world of problems every time since like this comes in because 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, it being in the middle of this a little bit means i'm trying to at least get everything moving as much as i can. and the harder times have been if someone's like, well, i'm just going to sue. i'm like, well, you know, sometimes what can you say to that. you can say we could try mediation. we can try doing something with ojis. if someone's that upset at that point you can't really talk them out of something that they have the money to -- you know, to go ahead, file a lawsuit and do it. and they're in their right to do that. so one thing i've learned doing this as well, i knew it before, but it's just how much work we all have on our side to do. and 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, a

government side of things, at least from what i've seen with how much we have to do, i don't know that we have the time to think of doing something that crazy. i busy. if we're messing up your file because you already -- if you've sued us, like, 20 times and we've messed up your oth c intentionally do that. so i think that discovering where we mess up and trying to fix trying -- one of the things i've been trying to also 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 ke it much as we can. and so -- but ojis is very nice when they call. it's nice having them as well to talk to the requestors, especially to be able to send

them to ojis as well so that way they can get the help that they need. and in the end i think whether you're coming directly to me and calm i calling, i will do myself best to get the case moving and getting it done. if there are disputes or problems we will do everything we can to fix that. i think ojis does the same thing. i also amwa of sort of how understaffed they are as well with six people. so there are times where i'm thinking, what could ojis be doing in the future beyond this, beyond just working as sort of a public liaison in a 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 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? getting that advice would be really helpful as well. because, i mean, if you're in a job, you don't always see what you can do to fix it. but if you have someone who kind

of comes out and -- and in a sense you're set up to come in and have that fresh view of it and have seen others, 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 -- i'm good. you can ask me questions afterwards. not case specific, please. but just -- >> you mean you don't welcome questions about where is my request in the cue? when is it going to get out? >> i'd have to say which cue. >> gavin? and we will -- we actually envisioned this as being a great opportunity to have some give and take with those of you who are here.

i'm certain that you will get >> thank yo marianne. it should be going. that is exactly what i would like to do. 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 ojis and foia or i suppose the role of ojis and foia. ojis today i think plays a very important and valuable role in our foia system. i want to highlight three activities in particular. the first are the requestor services or the facilitation that you've been hearing about. and before i go on, i guess i'd like to get a bit of an idea of who's in the audience here. there's always such a diverse group of people at the

collaboration of government secrecy events. can i ask, raise your hand if you've ever filed a foia request. >> and you're willing to self-identify. youaise your hand if used ojis's requestor services. okay. a few. raise your hand if you are a foia professional. also a good bit. raise your hand if you've been on the other end of ojis's requestor services. okay. so a good number of folks with some firsthand experience here. for the rest of you, i think it's important to recognize that the requestor services have a real value at both macro level. there were somewhere around half a million fioa requests filed across the government last year, and i can tell you with absolute certainty that not every one