Chief FOIA Officers Meeting Recap and Updates to the FOIA Recommendations Dashboard

by Kimberlee N Ried, posted in Chief FOIA Officers Council, Customer service, FOIA Advisory Committee, Government information, Open Government, Uncategorized
Working in Mission-Oriented Protective Posture response level 4 (MOPP-4), STAFF Sergeant (SSGT) Ronald Wesley, (left), USAF, 731st Air Mobility Squadron, (AMS), directs airmen via megaphone as SENIOR AIRMAN (SRA) Robert Woodruff, USAF, prepares to push cargo onto a C-130 Hercules. National Archives Identifier 6606170

The Chief FOIA Officers Council’s November 7th meeting was full of important updates. Below is a brief recap, along with links to the slides and the YouTube recording.

  • Daniel Schuman, Chair of the Open Government Federal Advisory Committee, introduced the work being done by the newly created Committee, which serves as an advisory body to the Administrator of the U.S. General Services Administration. More information can be found on the Committee’s website. 
  • Bobak “Bobby” Talebian, Director of the Office of Information Policy (OIP) at the Department of Justice, shared OIP’s recent work, including guidance for improvements based on 2024 Chief FOIA Officer reports. He also reminded attendees that nominations for the 2025 Sunshine Week FOIA Awards are due by Friday, December 6, 2024. 
  • Martha Murphy, Deputy Director of OGIS, updated attendees on the FOIA Advisory Committee Recommendations Dashboard. More information is below. 
  • Lindsay Steel, OIP’s Chief of FOIA Compliance, reviewed progress on  FOIA business standards for federal agency case management systems. 
  • Last, Michael Sarich, Co-Chair of the Council’s Technology Committee, and Michael Bell, Co-Chair of the Committee on Cross-Agency Collaboration and Innovation, each provided updates on the work of their committees over the past few months. 

The meeting presentation slides can be found here and the full meeting recording here. 

As noted at the Council meeting, the FOIA Advisory Committee Recommendations Dashboard has been updated to reflect several changes.  Earlier this year, we added 15 recommendations from 2024 and one from 2023, passed by the 2022-2024 term of the Committee and approved by the Archivist of the United States. More recently, we moved nine recommendations from Pending to In Progress: 2020-17, 2022-01, 2022-08, 2022-14, 2023-01, 2024-01, 2024-02, 2024-03, and 2024-13. Seven recommendations moved from In Progress to Completed: 2022-02, 2022-09, 2022-12, 2022-13, 2024-04, 2024-14, and 2024-15. Of 67 recommendations made since 2016, 33 have been completed and 18 are in progress. Eleven recommendations are pending while four have been deferred and one was rejected.