Join Us December 6 for the Next FOIA Advisory Committee Meeting!

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Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) processors and requesters who took a voluntary survey to help the Federal FOIA Advisory Committee better understand the challenges of navigating the FOIA process may wish to attend the next Committee meeting on December 6, 2019.

The meeting, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the William G. McGowan Theater at the National Archives in Washington, DC, will include discussion of the survey, which was conducted between July and September of this year. The Committee will hear updates from its three subcommittees—Records Management, Time/Volume, and Vision—and an update on recommendations from the 2016-2018 FOIA Advisory Committee. There will be a public comment period at the end of the meeting.

If you are interested in attending the December 6, 2019 meeting, you must register online. Please enter via the Special Events entrance on Constitution Avenue—when you enter the building you will need to go through a security screening. For those outside the Washington DC area, the meeting will be live-streamed on the National Archives YouTube channel (registration is not required for online viewing).

This will be the sixth meeting of the 2018-2020 term of the FOIA Advisory Committee, which is tasked with studying FOIA across the government, soliciting public comments, and recommending improvements to the Archivist of the United States. The National Archives established the Committee in 2014 and its members, appointed by the Archivist, come from both inside and outside the government. Alina M. Semo, Director of the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), chairs the Committee, and National Archives staff manages its work.

The FOIA Advisory Committee meets four times a year with additional meetings as necessary. The most recent FOIA Advisory Committee meeting was on September 5, 2019. If you missed it, you can watch it here.