air force records retention, there is a schedule for foia associated records, and that schedule says that if a record is granted in full, the schedule for retention is two years. if it's redacted, it's six years. and so air force has an e-foia reading room, and we are holding to the schedule. so no matter how significant a record, if it's released in full, after two years it will come down, and if it's been redacted it would stay up six year, and then it would come down, because these are not the record copies of the documents, and this schedule, the tables and rules, have been approved by nara. so i'm wondering, what the solution would be to this situation? we are demonstrating transparencies, at least for two years or six year, but then according to what is mandated, we take the records out of the electronic reading room.

>> want me to take a shot at that one? >> sure. >> well, it is true that not long after the enactment of the 1996 foia amendments that created the whole concept of electronic reading room, and also the concept of frequently requested records on to subsection a2-d of the foia, that the government had could trch f confront for the first time. something in the reading room. the reading voom electronic in nature, therefore, talking about have itting posted. ration natural, far better make it available for the public if requested more than once and it's disposable. people don't have to make foia requests. then the question is, how long do we keep them up? and back in the day, we said, oh, the answer is 4.726 years.

and no one knew. no one knows. i'm not sure an era which can -- sometimes make -- no one really knows for sure. it's an individual judgment. i'm not trying to usurp the authority under the federal records act to say that. but i know for foia purposes, we've gotten guidance from the justice department back then was given the underlying ration natural of having something still up, so as to achieve the result of a foia request that would otherwise be made, not being made, if in your judgment it can still serve that purpose, it ought to stay up. that's at a minimum. a starting point. if it can't serve that purpose, then maybe come down, but you have to talk to nara about that. that's my take. and i'm sticking to it. >> yeah. and i'm not -- i'm not the

records officer. so i can't really give you certainly a definitive view, but i think dan's right. in my reaction, michael 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 record s something that people seem to continue to have an interest in. as you said what we're talking about is a copy of records released. not the record copy. it is one copy that's available. the beauty of the web, of course sshs th , that you can have those copies available in lots of different places and able to be reached in lots of different ways now, and fortunately, one would think the reading -- the reading room on the foia web page is not the only place that one could encounter those records. >> a lot it is. where do you suggest i turn to

do rectify the situation? >> well, to drop it down and blow a whistle at nara, the federal record folks and say, hey, i think something might be happening you folks might disagree with and think ought not to be happening as a matter of federal records act. also consider the possibility, maybe you'll tell me it's unrealistic. i'm not sure. seeing if you could have a tech person check for the hits. how many hits on there on that document? and i would say, just as a matter of ordinary common sense practicality, if there ain't be a hit on that document in x numbers of months or year, how much sense does it make to have it up there? i would like to think nara would accept that judgment. >> gavin has a comment on that. >> three quick responses to this question. for me, i think, the priority is getting more release documents posted in the first place. i can't speak to the air force in particular, but i know in

general the practices across agencies is not what everybody proposed. so to me that's the top priority. is first to get posting. the second, without giving a definitive response on this, i would just like to suggest that in general we need to rehi records schedule and records retention for websites. so that the paradigm we're working with doesn't necessarily make sense. including for released foia records, but generally for the web. >> uh-huh. >> and the third is to note that there's -- there's a responsibility for folks outside government here as well. or at least that there may be an important role that traditionally it's our libraries and our archives that ensure that there is long-term access and permanent preservation. important government information. and i think that there is --

there's certainly some interesting things going on now in terms of libraries and archives and the way they are sharing that government information is available over the long term. and we're in the midst of a transition as to how that role is played in the digital age. and i think that this particular example is one where there's probably some room for new initiatives and improvements in the way that both government and the library and archives community is playing their role to ensure that there is transparency, not just in the short term but over the long haul. >> okay. marianne? >> yes. >> just one more thing to say. recently i had talked to someone at justice for one of the reports, and they started thinking that we were all going to start calling them libraries, on our things. so if they're going to start telling us in a sense to change

things, this might about good time to also let them know about this, since they seem to be telling us to change how we're keeping our libraries online. so i would recommend getting that to the department of justice as well. >> i just had a quick comment. i work for a defense department agency as well, and we maintain those records as reference copies. so they're not subject to the same disposition as the others, in that the records copies are kept for a period of time, a as long as they're needed for retention. >> i'm going to give you pushback on that, because if you're talking about something that is required by law to be maintained by the agency, i think that nara would have a hard time viewing that as merely record copies. it's a federal records and has to be disposition record. simply because of the mandatory requirement, subsection a2-d.

yes, sir? >> cal. security counsels. i have -- first of all, before i get into my question when we're 3:00ing out titles that display what ogis does, ogis put a blog out about a month ago that i think perfectly exhibits what they can do for requesters, and the title of the blog was five words "how to invite a foia lawsuit." and this was basically in effect their mission statement as far as their helping requesters. they were telling agencies, if you want to be sued, do these things. these are the things that most annoy requester into tiling suit. i advised everybody to read that. that being said in a slightly related vein in response to what you were saying about how to measure it, i have a question.

how to measure your success. i would view that success is not measured by getting agencies or requesters to do something that they were already doing. but to get them to change their position. that's where the mediation would come in. mediation doesn't accomplish anything if both parties proceed to do exactly what they were doing anyway. and so i would ask you how often do you see that a requester has come to you asking for help with an agency position that they've taken, and the agency has changed that position or an agency has come to you asking for help getting a requester to change their position, where the request hear changed their position. >> well, i think that is, could

be one measure, and we certainly try and have a sense of that as we assess our doing. we can throw that into the mix of actually, you're giving me a good idea for another roundtable, which is, to get, to really get some concrete and creative see what's looking before this morning. she talked about finding creative ways to improve the foia process that don't require an act of congress or going to the courts, and serm anything that we can do to improve the way we're working, we are looking for that every day. so we will pursue that, and we will throw your idea there. >> let me ask a question. if you have a -- they do change the position. most times they don't change their position? >> oh, boy. it's all over the place.

i mean, i have to tell you, i mean, we do get -- we certainly do get requesters coming to us who are unabout happy with the response they've gotten, and, you know, it looks like the response was entirely in accord with the law, but maybe there is something more we can give the requester in terms of why, or what the underlying records look like, or even if they can't get everything they want. that, to us is providing some help, but it's not necessarily changing a position. >> be careful how you define that, merriam, because, of course, you don't want to be in the position of someone saying that you defined that so shall i say loosely, that it's almost like they might define in a backlog, rendering those statistics highly suspect of -- i'm sure without any question.

>> yes, thank you. >> question over here? nevertheless, that's what these conferences are all about. can't you feel synergy flowing through the room? >> mentioned a problem searching to have a document released that at the agency, particularly averse to this idea that even if you get an order to release it they might change the label on the document and, therefore, say they are, there's a search for a document. i was wondering, in the era of now big data and the cloud and so forth and so on, there's a lot of talk within the hearing of documentology, universal identifiers. if the documents had a universal identifier, you wouldn't be able to do that. would you comment on that problem? if you see it as a problem, of hiding documents by changing labels on them? >> don't look at me. >> i'm -- >> i'm retired.

>> no. >> one of you two will handle that one. >> no. i -- i'm wondering if any of my fellow panelists would like to address that? >> we'd like to hear what you have to say. >> i -- i think that's -- i'm going to speak in a very general matter, because that's all i can really speak to, and i actually can't think of a recent example that's come to us where that's necessarily been the case. but hiding behind a label is simply not good customer service. particularly if you combined that with the directive to agencies to be making proactive disclosures. if they know that there are records they have that are repeatedly asked for but also are, they know that are of great interest, they shouldn't be waiting until they get a request that asks for it exactly the

right way, but they should be trying to make a proactive disclosure to the greatest extent possible, and that's not -- that's not our -- that's not our interpretation of things. that's actually part of the government directive. >> this is probably your comment, about the information commissioner, what comment with a little more teeth, but avoid -- such issue. >> i can tell you, sir, it's a serious question, and it arose in a number, a few instances. i don't want to overstate it. at the very, very end of the bush 43 administration, the last year or two. i know there were some foia requesters recognizing this and concerned about it went to extra lengths to broaden the phrasing of their foia requests to guard against that happening. although it's a general rule. you want to make your request as specific as possible. so people can find the records. you sometimes have to broaden them self-defensively for that

reason. it's not the way it ought to be, but it is something that can be done. comment down there? >> gavin. >> i'll just add in general some agencies seem to be better as searching for records than others. this is, i think, an area that deserves more exploration out of the agency annual reports in general in terms of audits, inve investigations and audits performance. for the most part, when people looked at exemption use and withholding by agencies they exclude this category of denials for reasons other than than -- there's a good reason to do that and a good reason not to do that. the reason they are deserve closer exploration, there seems

to be some significant variation in the way that agencies turn down requests for reasons that are not based on statutory exemptions. like fee-related reasons. no record was located, and so on. now, in general, these are sort of things that shouldn't be discretionary, but there's such a difference in the way that some agencies perform compared to others, that it suggests that it is worth looking into. >> we have time for -- first check with respect to the panelists, but we have time for just a very quick question, and usually we have less time, more flexibility in our programs but having one of our panels at the next panel phone it in, so to speak from california. so we have a technical reason we want to start that as close to that time as possible. >> fortunately, i do have a bit of a comment, but -- end with a

question. the comment is more important than the question. >> is it possible i can persuade you to hold that comment until after the next segment? >> sure. >> with the guarantee you will have not just because it's your first amendment right, but because i guarantee you we will have time to cover that. how about that? >> okay. >> okay. well, thank you very much, folks. >> thank you. going on now on c-span2, a day-long discussion on the influence of islam in the middle east and north africa. political party officials from morocco, jordan, egypt, libya and other countries are talking about what it's like in their countries and the political change they see coming. president obama signs the jobs act this afternoon. it eases regulations on small businesses raising capital. whether online or through initial public offerings, c-span will have live coverage at 2:10 eastern. today marks the second anniversary of the worse mining accident in 49 years.

29 mine workers died in big branch mine in west virginia. lessons learned from the accident. we'll have that hearing at 2:20 eastern. then at 5:15 eastern a look at president obama the 2013 budget request for the defense department. defense secretary leon panetta is joined by joint chiefs of staff chairman dempsey in explaining the spending plan to the house budget committee. you can see the hearing here on c-span3. this weekend marks the anniversary of the bloodiest battle to be fought during the civil war. up to that point, the battle of shiloh, with almost 24,000 casualties, and we'll tour the battlefield with chief park ranger stacy allen. saturday at 6:00 p.m. eastern. and sunday night at 7:00, the angel of the battlefield and founder of the red cross clara barton operated the missing soldiers office in a washington, d.c. boarding house until 1868. joining us as we rediscover the third floor office as it's

prepared for renovations. this weekend on c-span3. former national economic council director lawrence lindsey says the establishment "blew it" with respect to the financial crisis. he says his big concern is how to get the country's financial house in order without wrecking the recovery. he spoke at an economic summit hee hosted by the "atlantic" magazine. this is about a half hour. >> thank you, everybody, for joining us here. larry lindsey, former director of the national economic council. we're just going to dive right in. >> great. >> there's been a lot of discussion today about how difficult the last decade has been in global markets, global economies. we don't need to belabor it, but what's your diagnosis of what we've just gone through, the problems that we've been facing? >> well, you know, i think -- the guilt that we should all have, a little bit of hubris in

in order. professionals started talking about how the economy had changed, how we in a new normal, how, you know, we conquered re. we conquered variation. all that tends to do if you have a long period where everything's moving up is people tend to take more and more risks. the longer it guess on, the more they think things will be going up. things go up. we had a huge crash in early 2000. it had a bad economic effect. we pulled the textbooks off the shelf. they said fiscal monetary stimulus, we did it. we started up again. everything worked. that only built our confidence further. that near death experience made us even braver. we all took more risks. i thought we were interested in bob ruben's observation that nobody saw it coming.

we all bought into it. we're all in the establishment. people in this room, tend to be the center right establishment, we blew it. we're the ones who have supposed to be keeping an eye on it. we enjoyed it. and we weren't being skeptical. my message for today is the public out there is mad at us because they hold us collect i havely responsible. if i could leave you with thought today is that we all in the establishment, need a little more stro spex, we did a lousy job and we'd better start focussing on the quality of job we do rather than saying, oh, it was the other guy's fault. [ applause ] >> so that's a already laudable

goal. >> what did the shrink say the first way to solve a problem is to recognize it. so simply talking about it is important. and i think each side has to start holding its own officer holders accountable publicly and privately. we have to do it. we have to hold our own sides accountable. we can talk about them 30 seconds of mental malt will give you an example of how bad it is.

every private sector estimate of what was going oto happen on january 1,2014, has the cost of obama care way, way higher. i have a choice of -- i can take the $400 savings and split it. give the employee a $2,000 raise or $2,000 more to my bomb line and shove the rest on my taxpayer. this is very simple. private sector immaterial estimates that will 30% of private plans will fold.

obama care is going to fail on january 1,2014 or shortly thereafter. why aren't we holding him accountable for that fact? or one aspect that i guess this would be more bipartisan, although the guy i worked for pushed it, immigration reform. we all want a path to citizenship. i'm for it. i've got three kids that were adopted from overseas. i'm very much for immigration. part of my family. i went through the naturalization process with them. you want to go to arlington to go through it. doors open at 8:30. you'd better be there at 6:30 and get a line or you don't get a number that's sufficient to get you to the queue the rest of the day. that's what's going on in the ins. we now process 800,000 people a year. let's say we double the capacity

of the ins so we could do another 800,000. if we built the feds, no more illegal immigrants just to process the 11 million who are there, no new additions. it would take us 14 years. how is it that we in a bipartisan way and the establishment are putting forward an immigration proposal that in 30 seconds i've described is mathematically impossible to carry out. we should be ashamed of ourselves. we should get our math right. it's really no different than estimating the cost to have iraq war or what have you. on each and every grounds unless we start holding on our own people accountable for simple basic math, we're going to be digging our hole deeper. i don't care how you solve the deficit problem. i know we're headed there now. we will not solve the deficit problem unless we start making smart decisions. getting quality out of our money and not just warring about a few hundred billion here and there. >> before talking about

deficits, i want to talk about the ability to reach clarity on some of these issues in a presidential election year. you were an economic advisor to george w. bush. you've studied the die namics of campaign promises and actually administration follow through on them. what's your analysis of the current climate dpr realistic economic policy as part of the campaign? >> well, right now neither side has a campaign in place that is realistic. on the republican side, they're preoccupied fight each other and aren't devoting the resources there. i think they should. the president has all the resources in the world plus the whole government and he's not doing it either. so you don't for example, put forward a budget that has a print for one year's economic growth of 4.5%.

that's la la land. no president should do that in a credible way. and the media should be calling them on it. i think both sides could be better than what we're doing. i'm not sure why it was true in that case. we have an internal forecast. it turned out to be closer to the mark dloers the one the cbo is using at the time for the economy. we had a budget. we had to spend money. we imposed it on ourselves. i'm not saying everything is perfect about the campaign. but at least we gave it a good pate effort. and we're ready with -- we predicted a slow down. it was worse when we came to office than what we had thought. but we had a policy in place to deal with it that fit within the budget constraint. i don't think it's that hard for a campaign to do it. particularly if it's insisted that we do it.

now one, one wag suggested to me that the reason we had to do it. there was a lot of skepticism about then governor bush's mathematical skills. so maybe we were being held to the higher standard by the media and have had to counter that. i think that proofs me why each side should start holding its own accountable. if the basically sympathetic media started holding this president accountable for the kind of number he's putting out, those numbers would improve, i guarantee you. then fox news started expecting the same thing of romney and santorum, their numbers would improve as well. so i really think that, you know, we in the collective establishment, if you will, the blame is on us. we're not holding our own guys accountable right now. >> so in a perfect world, what are a few of the key issues that you'd want addressed during this

election year brought to a national discussion, voted on, ultimately. >> well, i do think that the key question we face is how to get our fiscal house in order without wrecking the economy. if you take out the loony arithmetic and you, you know, assume we basically keep doing the same policy that we have been doing, we will have greek level deficit for the the rest of the decade. we're running about 10% of gdp. maybe it dips down do 8%, but basically that's where we are. that's the numbers. that's not sustainable. we often say, you know, if greece could have only printed its way out, it would have been fine. well, we have the printing press