The Right to Know: Protecting and Expanding Access to Public Records

Hey everyone. Um, well, I think we should go ahead and get started because this is going to be a really great webinar. Um, I see that we still have a lot of folks coming in. Um, but I want to welcome you. Um, thank you so much everyone for coming today. My name is Kate Tolman. I'm the head of library liaison services at Illinois State University. I'm also the outgoing chair of the help I'm an accidental government information library webinar series. Um this webinar series is sponsored by the American Library Association and the government documents roundtable or go door for short. Uh the series has been offered um since at least 2015 probably longer and we have offered up helpful resources and timely webinars since that time. Um you will see on the screen here there's a QR code to our YouTube page where you can see over 76 videos uh similar to today's panel and today's webinar um is timely uh indeed and I'm extremely grateful to go program committee and the god door education commi committee for pulling this together. Um please stay tuned at the very end of the presentation for a link to a survey um so we can gather feedback on today's panel. And now it's my pleasure to introduce uh Julia Ezo. Julia is the chair elect of God and is the current chair of God's program committee. She is the government information and political science librarian at Michigan State University. So Julia, take it away. Thank you, Kate, and thank you everyone for attending today's fantastic Sunshine Week panel discussion. It's my pleasure to introduce our two moderators from the goer education committee, Patty Tekk and Anna Shong. Patty is the political science librarian at the University of Florida and Anna is the government information coordinator and federal depository library program representative at Rice University. All right. Uh thank you Kate and Julia uh for your nice introduction and uh thank you Kate for all the support your team has provided for this event. Uh I'm Anna from Rice University, one of the two moderators today. Uh now it's my pleasure to introduce our first panelist today, Dr. Kenneth M. Evans. Dr. Evans, can you please unmute and say hi to everyone? Hi, good morning. Thank you. Dr. Evans is a scholar in science and technology policy at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and assistant director for innovation policy at Rice University's Office of Innovation. He serves as the program manager and co-founder of the White House Scientist Archive, a digital heritage collection housed in Rice University's Woodson Research Center, Special Collections and Archives, which preserves materials related to US presidential science advisors. Dr. Evans also leads the Baker Institute research security program and is a member of the forum for responsible internationalization and research security at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the contemporary history of US science policy, the governance of uh the global research and enterprise and the politics of scientific um expertise. He has extensive experience of using fu granted uh right to request and access a variety of restricted public records to conduct the research. We are very honored to have him join our panelist group today. Now I will let Patricia take over and introduce other two panelists. Good morning guys. Well almost afternoon. Okay. So my introduction is much shorter. Mr. Frank Monte is an instructor at the University of Georgia School of Law and serves as legal counsel at the cable news network where he advises and trains the global media's journalists on a variety of legal compliance issues emerging legal risk areas and best legal practices for their careers and we were lucky to have had him previously at UF. So welcome uh Mr. Lamonte and then uh Dr. Dr. David Coulier is director at the Breckner Freedom of Information Center here at the University of Florida. Or I should say that's the first amendment. Uh I messed it all up. Messed it all up. Dr. Pier recctor center and the first amendment um center for advancement at the University of Florida. Uh before joining University of Florida last year, Dr. Kier taught across uh access to public records um data journalism and other courses at the University of Arizona for the last 17 years where he also served as the director of the school and um the director of graduate studies. So we are excited to have him here at UF and excited to have him on our panel today and um with that I think we'd like to start our first questions uh or question uh you're all right with that everybody good? Okay. Uh Mr. based on your experience uh advertise advising CNN journalists, what are the most pressing legal risks and challenges journalists are facing when attempting to access government records? Well, thanks so much for this opportunity. It's wonderful to be with you. I didn't put it in my bio, but I'm also the proud recipient of the American Library Association's Freedom to Read uh honor roll award. uh hangs in a prominent place in my office and uh it's a treasured uh memory of my past work uh when I ran the student press law center, a nonprofit legal aid service up in DC. Um but yeah, now I work here at CNN working with journalists around the globe and um I will say so so just by way of introduction right for people who don't work with these laws every day public records laws there's the federal freedom of information act and there's 50 comparable ones at states around the country that apply to state and local government and when they work they work amazingly well you know if you think of any investigative reporting that you have read or watched over the past couple of decades chances are somewhere beneath that investigative report was a Freedom of Information Act request where somebody got documents or got data that shed light on the operations of government and using records. You know, people have been able to expose police misconduct. They've been able to expose abusive disciplinary practices in schools. All manners of secrets have been brought to light by the use of these public records acts. Um, so when they work, they work great. But the I would say if I had to pinpoint one point of frustration that journalists most regularly report to me, it is the exemptions to these acts. Both the way that they are written on paper and the way that they are applied in practice, which is sometimes even broader than the way that they are written on paper. Um so you know the starting point is always that records generated by any government agency belong to us belong to the public and we get to see them and use them however we want. Um I don't like reading stuff to people but this is such a thing of beauty I want to read a couple lines out of this is and and many of these state statutes have a preamble to them that talks in very soaring aspirational terms about the the power of public records and information. And so like the Indiana Access to Public Records Act, which is a an especially beautifully written one, says a fundamental philosophy of the American constitutional form of representative government is that government is the servant of the people and not their master. Accordingly, it is the policy of this state that all persons are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and official acts of those who represent them. goes on to say, "This chapter shall be liberally construed to implement this policy and place the burden of proof for the non-disclosure of a public record on the public agency that would deny access to the record." And you know, this is beautiful. You can hear, you know, God bless America playing in the background as you're reading this. Um, and it's lovely on the page, but my experience and the experience of journalists is typically that that's not the way that these laws work. that in fact all close judgment calls are made on the side of non-disclosure rather than disclosure and that it is the burden of the requesttor to fight often by expensively going to court uh after years of delay to try to dislodge records that rightfully belong to them. Um, in particular, there are two areas where I think there are habitual problems with the overuse of exemptions in service of government secrecy, and that is in law enforcement and in education. And I'm happy to kind of unpack both of those as we go through Q&A, but uh, you know, law enforcement is one where it's hard to think of any function that government engages in, right? the ability to use deadly force to take your freedom away where we in the public have more of an oversight interest in making sure that that authority is being used in a responsible way and yet it is reliably the most secretive aspect of government. Um, anything and everything that can be categorized as a law enforcement record is withheld. I myself had a case years ago here in Georgia where I'm living now where the state university system, the board of regents tried to say that every document held by the board of regents was a law enforcement record because down at the campus level they employed some police officers. And so we're a law enforcement agency and uh by virtue of the fact that a tiny percentage of our employees um wear police uniforms, everything that we do is a law enforcement secret. And you know it took us years uh uh to go through the appeals process and and overcome that argument and win it. And so those are the kinds of you know again there's the problem of how broadly the exemption is written on paper but then there's the problem of how broadly uh uh the custodians of the records attempt to construe it which is sometimes skating right on the edge of bad faith. Um, and then I mentioned educational institutions. You know, border regents is an example. Um, you know, I think educational institutions tend to not really think of themselves as the government, right? Oh, the government. That's the Pentagon. That's the FBI. That's not us. But, you know, um, to a a 13-year-old, you are the government. You know, you're the most powerful government agency in their life, and you have accountability duties, too. But one of the things that is a headwind for transparency is Furpa, the federal privacy statute. Um, and again, can give chap verse on this. happy to unpack it, but if you go all the way back to first principles and furpa when that was adopted by Congress back in the 1970s, it was certainly not at all about denying access to public records. There's no reference anywhere to be found in it to public records. It was really about one thing and one thing only, which was Congress was concerned that K through2 schools were keeping psychological profiles on students that might fall into the hands of a graduate school or an employer and be used against them in harmful ways without the student or their family being able to inspect them and correct them. That's the purpose of the statute. That's the origin of it. It is not to throw a secrecy blanket over everything that happens at a K through 12 school or a college. But over the years, regrettably, that's what it has grown up to be. So that today, for example, the University of Texas just won a case at the Texas Supreme Court saying they don't have to disclose information about sexual assaults that adult age students commit on college campuses because that's a purpose secret. Even though Congress has has given guidance to the contrary and said, "No, no, no. um um the public has an interest in seeing that you should disclose. Um University of Texas fought that for years and successfully litigated it um to obtain secrecy. So um yeah, those are some of the common uh pain points and frustration areas that journalists not just in my shop but all around the country are encountering. Wow, that's excellent. Um okay, does anybody want to say anything in relation to those remarks or shall I proceed on with the next question? Good. Dr. Collier, uh, having served on the federal advisory committee, the FOIA, what are your biggest gaps in the current FOIA system and what reforms would you prioritize? Well, that's a great question and a big one. And by the way, Frank's currently serving on the committee as well. So, and it's under NAR, National Archives, and it's really been a lot of fun serving on that because I've learned so much. Uh, half the committee are um government employees, FOYA officers, and half are from the requesttor community. And one thing we've seen on the committee and in our research is exactly what Frank talked about, the increased use of exemptions over time, but also the increase in delays. At the federal level, the average time to get something out of the federal government or response basically doubled in the past 10 years from 20 days to 40 days. Um, and it's far worse around the country. uh I would say and at the federal level frankly most people expect 6 months to years to really get what they're after. Um so delays are a problem and then we have the problem of ghosting. You don't even get a chance to get an exemption to argue. They just don't answer your your calls or emails or and we're seeing that more and more. Um, we're seeing the use of copy fees to get people to go away. And that's uh in just about every state, if you want a pesky reporter or citizen to go away, just say, "Yeah, that'll cost $5,000 for us to get that for you." And people go away. Uh, in fact, a decade ago, if you asked for a public record in this country, on average, you'd get it about half the time, uh, overall on average. Now we're about down to 30% of the time and it keeps dropping uh steady line down and it's worse at the federal level. I mean anywhere from 13 to 18% of the time you get what you ask for. And in some states it's really bad like Alabama our research shows about 10% of the time you get what you ask for. And that's just ridiculous that and and it continues to slide down and we see that on the committee we see that in research all around the country. Uh it's a huge problem. And so as far as reforms go, of course, a lot of more than 60 recommendations made by the committee over the past, oh, I forget how many years it's been around, more than a decade, I think. Um, and a lot of great recommendations. A lot of it dealing with better technology, records management systems that could solve a lot of problems with just proactively putting information online. People shouldn't even have to ask for it. uh we have solutions in the law and you know according to a lot of research I would say the the thing that could be focused on most is enforcement and punishment because you can have the best law in the world but if there's no enforcement what's the point it won't be followed in fact you might be uh surprised to know what the best boy law is in the world it's Afghanistan they have the strongest law in the world on paper. Of course, if you went to ask the Taliban for their public records, their emails, they would probably shoot you. So, it probably doesn't work very well. Uh, another strong law is Russia 44th it ranks in the world out of 140 countries. Of course, that's just silly. And um and the United States FOYA ranks 78th out of 140. So, we don't have a particularly strong law. Um, but at least historically, at least up until now, we've had a relatively strong following of the law and rule of law. Um, we'll see where that goes in the future here, but uh we need penalties and enforcement. We need stiff fines for government agencies that flaunt the law. We need the ability for people to sue and get their attorney fees paid for if they prevail. in every state mandatory attorney fee shifting. So those are things really important. We need to address the copy fee issue ability for a lot of agencies and states to charge search and redaction time high fees that dissuade people particularly poor people and average folks just trying to find out what's going on or journalists trying to show the public what's happening. they're disproportionately uh affected by by these uh issues. So um so the outlook is not good, I'll be honest. And and that um is unfortunate and the trend is accelerating towards secrecy all across the country, the federal level and across the states. Uh if it continues on this projection, we could have a relatively secret government. if we don't already have that. And um we know where that leads, folks. We see it in history. We've seen it. We see it around the world. And I don't think that's the place we want to be. So in Sunshine Week here this week that we're celebrating the 20th anniversary of Sunshine Week, we'll talk about those issues. Uh and hopefully we'll talk about solutions and re-energize the public for understanding their rights to know and and to um really it's about civic information and civic knowledge and civic engagement. And I think now's a time in our a pivotal time in our nation's history to where uh we have to uh remind people of that and and uh hopefully they'll internalize it and demand that we have accountable transparent government. Thank you Dr. Kier. Uh so Dr. Evans, now I turn the next question to you. You conduct a lot of research on US science policy and governance. In your opinion, how does government transparency impact the science and technology policy decisions? Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Anna, and thank you, God, for organizing and inviting me to this panel. Um, and Patricia, too. Um, I first just wanted to say I I found uh the title of the panel uh really really good because I've found myself acting as a accidental government librarian the past 5 years or so and um you know a clueless scientist uh who never thought I'd really need a lawyer. So, uh David, if you're Frank, if you were available after the call, I could use your help on some things. Uh, but I've been very uh fortunate to have Anna, many other archavists help me navigate um access to federal and state records. Um, and yeah, I've spent some time figuring that system out. Um I saw a comment in the chat about um you know 30k foyer requests in front of like an active uh foyer and I've had a similar experience where you know I I submitted something five years ago and I've moved from 131st in the complex unclassified queue to 130th in the complex unclassified Q right in in about uh 5 years right and so that's just I think part of um understanding and and um how to write foyas um and what to expect when you when you write in for agency. So yeah, thank you all for inviting me. Um to answer your question, Anna, I mean absolutely public access to data is critical for understanding science policy and you know these data are really how we know about our world, right? Um our health, our climate, our environment, uh our economy. It's how we as scientists um policy makers, researchers make decisions about where to live, uh where resources should go and and what might happen in the future. So these data are absolutely vital to the the work that I do. Um I think it might be helpful to first define what what we what we mean by science policy and I like to think of it as as kind of two overlapping ideas. One is this idea of policy for science which broadly refers to um the governance uh of our national international research ecosystem. Um so much of the governance comes down to funding how we allocate money for scientific programs and research efforts. And so, you know, what would an effective policy for science really look like? Um, for one, it's participatory, right? So, this idea that the public gets a say in where resources are allocated. Um, it's inclusive, meaning that it advances the public interest and that it's not just happening in a vacuum, right? Um, it's transparent and it's also evidence-based, meaning that the distribution of resources are informed by by facts, right? And not just by politics. um the term science for policy on the other hand is really critical towards data because it's it's how we use scientific data and evidence to shape our laws and regulations, right? And so having access to these um sets of government data is absolutely critical for making informed decisions about uh about science policy. So yeah, I mean I I thought I'd at least touch on, you know, the the recent purging of of federal data and dashboards on things like climate justice, right, and reproductive health, right? Or natural disasters or crime, right? is really serious and speaks to what David was talking about is kind of secrecy about you know the the active eraser of data from public access is really really troubling. Um so yeah I I mean you know my I can talk a little bit about my research later but um you know I one thing I will say you know from our from the wonky side of science policy people were um our science policy system was really not set up to involve the public in in a really meaningful way. Um, so that's something we have to work on. Um, there's a famous report that was issued by President Truman, science adviser, this guy Vanavar Bush back in 1945. And this year we're celebrating the 80th anniversary of this this seinal report. And it was really about mobilizing science and scientists to act in the public good. But it was really framed as a way that we as scientists are doing science to the public, not with the public. And so we're really that's part of the work that we do is trying to involve uh the public and non-experts in making these decisions, right? And what that might look like um between that an appropriate interface between between the experts, between publics and between the government. Um so this this week I'm in LA for the first time in in years as part of this American Physical Society conference which is um the largest uh gathering of um of physicists in the world, right? It's like 14,000 people this year in Anaheim. It's huge. And I haven't been since I was a graduate student um in the physics department at Rice. But I've been really heartened because in the 10 years in which I've you know haven't been there's been this massive not just sea change but dramatic change between the interest of the scientist community, the physics community being really involved in part because of what's you know what's happening at the federal level. Um but it's really an opportunity for us as as um scholars um in the policy sector to to reach out and make sure that um the community is very much involved in um shaping the the future of science policy. Anyway, so I'll stop there. Thank you Anna for your question and uh Frank and David for your expertise on this issue. I could really use your help as I uh continue to wrestle government records out of different agencies. So thank you. Thank you. I see we have uh quite a few Q&As's coming in and um we're going to ask just a couple more questions and then we'll open it up to the Q&A section um and see if you guys can answer some of these pressing questions coming from all of these wonderful people hopefully lots of librarians. Um so this is for um Mr. Lante and maybe Dr. Kolier as well. Um clear uh what role do you think the judiciary plays in shaping of these transparency laws? Um the courts are becoming more or less supportive of the open government initiatives and I mean I I think we're seeing a little bit of push back right now but I am curious as to how you guys think this might play out especially right now. Well, I can start. Um, you know, as I mentioned at the outset, the presumption that is baked into all of these laws is when in doubt, disclose. That's a foundational principle that is encompassed within federal Hoya and all of its state analoges is that close judgment calls should always go in favor of access. Another principle that's baked into all these statutes is that the judiciary should rigorously scrutinize the excuses that are given for non-disclosure because these are what are called remedial statutes, right? They're they're meant to kind of remedy a a shortcoming in the way that government does business. We wouldn't need these laws, frankly, if we weren't skeptical that the government will do its job absent being compelled to surrender its records, right? And so that's the that's the way they are supposed to work on paper. But I think it is everybody's experience in practice that courts are highly highly differential to the rationale that are given by these agencies for non-disclosure and in particular if anything at all touches on either national security or law enforcement. Um the federal FOYA case law is replete with cases in which the federal judiciary has said, "Look, as long as somebody from the agency shows up and attests to us that this touches on national security, this touches on diplomacy, this touches on a sensitive law enforcement matter, we the judiciary are not in a position to second guessess that and we will take their representation at face value." And that's really, you know, while it's understandable that judges don't want to be seen as as micromanagers, you know, FOYA is all about micromanagement. It's all about, you know, us looking over the shoulders of people in government and asking whether they're doing their jobs properly. And so to turn it into an honor system where people just get to represent, trust us, we're doing our jobs properly even though you don't get to see it. flies in the face of first principles and why Congress passed FOYA and why every state has passed a lookalike for it. So, no, you know, I don't like to be pessimistic. I I don't like to uh to to be Debbie Downer, but I will say that um I I don't see a lot of encouragement um where trends are suddenly going to break in the judiciary in favor of more transparency if for no other reason than just case load. Right? You request 20,000 documents. No judge wants to sit there and parse through 20,000 documents and say, "Oh, I think you get this one, this one, this one, and this one." And so the the deference is kind of unfortunately baked into the system. Thank you. Uh, do you have anything to add, Dr. Fer, to that? No, he covered it just perfectly. Uh, okay. So, Dr. uh Gier, I have a a follow-up question. Um, can you uh compare a little bit uh state level transparency laws compared to federal FUA? Are there any states leading the way in access and what can we learn from them? Yeah. Yeah. Um, some of the research we've done has has shown the compliance rates of the states and the federal government, the chance that you'll get a record if you ask for it. And um it ranges from a high of say 2/ird of the time in Washington state uh down to about 10% of the time in Alabama like I said. So uh so quite a range and the federal system ends up being down toward the 10%. So um I think I think generally we see a lot of problems with the federal level and getting records. These agencies are huge. uh they've figured out how to use exemptions really well. And then at the state and local level, it's really hit and miss. You never know. It can vary in the same community. It can vary depending on which uh custodian you get that day. Um so uh it's it's really uh not very consistent. However, what we notice is the states that do have strong enforcement tend to be the most open. So, again, I go back to that if uh you could have the best law in the world, but if you don't have enforcement, why follow it? Uh makes sense. We're all human. I mean, if I could go a 100 miles per hour down the interstate to work and I and get away with it, I would. um you know I mean so that's why we have laws and uh and we have to figure out ways that these laws are actually followed. Um they're followed less and less. Some people say why. I think part of it is because we don't have the enforcers we used to have. It used to be the media. Newspapers particularly used to really dog agencies for records and sue them if they didn't, you know, follow the law. They're less and less inclined to do so now because they're financially hurting. And I think government folks know that. And as a result, uh, they're able to get away with just ignoring the law. And we see that everywhere. So, uh, so far we haven't had strong forces fill that gap. You know, there are some nonprofits that are active in this space. At the federal level, you have American Oversight, Judicial Watch, Heritage Foundation, others, um, ACLU. And, um, you know, but the average person can't pick up that slack. They don't have time. They're busy. They got their own jobs. and they certainly don't have $80,000 laying around to hire a lawyer to sue the government and follow it through. So, um, so our system really isn't made for the new America that we have. Uh, and we have to adjust it. We have to change. We have to balance the scales for the average person. I think this is kind of a good question after that. Um, and I'm going to ask it to everybody. Um, you know, what about transparency and democracy? How does the restricted access to government information impact the public trust in institutions? And I think we're really seeing public trust being affected uh on both sides and all all places. And I I would wonder if it's got partly to do with what you said about the media being in decline to some extent. Um but I welcome all comments and thoughts on this. All right, I'll just start. So I think you're touching on something really powerful, right, which is that all of the public opinion polls show that we have eroding public trust and confidence really in all institutions, right? In government, in the news media, in higher education, in in all institutions. And you know, while we always say in academia that correlation is not causation, um I do think that there is something to be said for the fact that every year these public records laws and FOYA erode more and more as special interests go to the legislators and get more and more exemptions and more and more carveouts to them so that the laws become weaker and weaker and each one of these carveouts make them work more slowly as well. Right. In Florida now there are,00 carveouts, 1100 exemptions. So you as a records custodian have to sit there and think about are there a thousand or more possible reasons that I might have to withhold this record, right? So of course fulfillment is slow. So as these laws become more dysfunctional and government becomes more secretive, I do think that it it's fuel for the conspiracy theory universe, right? Uh just in recent weeks, you'll see uh uh people will go online and and and ask, "Why don't we have all Jeff Jeffrey Epstein records yesterday? Why don't we have all the JFK assassination records?" Um um there's just a a a growing willingness to buy into even things that aren't conspiratorial at all, but willingness to buy into conspiracy theories, the antidote for which should be radical transparency. Right? If you have nothing to hide, then show all your cards. uh and and why government agencies haven't come around to that mentality is is flabbergasting really, but it just feels like we can't keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results. I'll just add quickly, there is research that shows the more transparent an institution, the greater the trust and credibility with the public. uh the social security system for example when they started making your statements really easily accessible um you don't you didn't have to submit a foyer request anymore and wait and fight for it uh increase in trust went way up uh with the public and it makes sense right I mean you trust someone your colleague your friends your family who are transparent with you the ones who are cy and are hiding things from from you, you're not going to trust. So, the same thing applies to government. And I I'm not I think folks in u city managers and others really need to take that to heart because um they may be thinking they're protecting their agency by keeping things hidden especially embarrassing things but in reality they're just harming the their institution because they're creating distrust and loss of credibility. So, so I think there's a fair amount of research that shows that transparency will actually help these institutions and that goes as well for news organizations. They should be transparent as well for the same reason. Okay. Uh thank you. And next I will um ask uh I would like to ask Dr. Evans um from perspective accessing historical government documents for uh science research uh you have uh you lead the White House scientists archive at Rice University. How do you see the access to historical government documents particularly in science policy influence public understanding and decision-m like in policym research priorities civic engagement etc. Yeah, thanks Anna and I think it goes to just what Frank and David were both speaking about that you know the lack of transparency and policy process particular surrounding science the last few years has kind of fueled these conspiracy theories surrounding you know vaccines or COVID or even lab leak stuff right like it's all part of the same um big issue right about how governments are making decisions about new policies surrounding especially public health has been in sharp focus um but yeah the the the White House scientist archive Thanks for mentioning it. It's um it started about eight years ago during the last presidential uh uh transition, right? you know, or government like overnight a bunch of web pages disappeared and I wondered where I could get these things and I was submitting foyas like crazy trying to like see if I could get you know any any sort of records of of recent um documents related to um to to science science policy and in particular my my research focuses on um it's called the office of science and technology policy which is a small um agency within the white house which is comparatively unknown but in in my world very important um because the US doesn't really have a department of science or ministry of science. So, OSTP as it's called is the closest thing we have to a to science ministry, right? Is something that um can really coordinate the large federal and national effort on research and development which is now um even in the new CR still roughly a new continuing resolution you know 200 billion dollars annually or so. Um so yeah so my my interest is in understanding that exact process right the the the process of policym so I want to know who's making decisions when decisions are being made how those you know how science in particular is shaping decisions um and how politicians and scientists in particular interact so that's really interesting to me when you know you've got you know some physicist installed in the white house and all of a sudden they're meeting the chief of staff right like what is what does that interaction look like um and how do they negotiate kind of wrestle with different not just scientific interests but also political and other public interests in making these decisions. Um so yeah, the project started as building a clearing house for all things OSTP and that's still work that we're continuing to do through FOYA um and other things like um you know just scraping data um furiously last January trying to get everything offline before the transition happened. Um and then really creating a lasting uh digital footprint for OSTP to kind of build up a historical um you know lasting understanding what that office does and how it operates. Um, yeah. So, in in general, I mean, with with folks like David and Frank's help, I've been able to, you know, try and now I'm five years, six years later getting these massive foyer dumps, which I'm in the process of making sense of, right? They give them to you in the most inconvenient way possible, right? Which is tens of thousands of records in a single PDF that's highly redacted, um, you know, mixed media. And and we're in the process of I've hired a bunch of um undergraduate CS majors this semester to help me uh dig through these archives at scale. But it's an which is an interesting engineering problem. But yeah, the the archive that's at Rice um as part of our Woodson special collections um is really supposed to be a resource for people to be able to see how science policy is being made to really dig into not just like you know the shiny products on the end but drafts, people butting heads, right? personal communications, the things that often are considered preddecisional by FOYA and one of the exemptions, but with some time and some lawyers, I have been able uh and some of the stuff is 25 years plus old. So, we're able to see these interactions in real time. And that's where really history is made. We're able to tell these stories about uh about science policy as a as a from a historical perspective. Interesting. Um, I have a sort of wrap-up question unrelated to some of the things we've been talking about. I'm curious when it comes to like civic engagement and um, getting information from the government, how do you guys think um, social media and digital technologies kind of play into all of this as far as like an informed public go? I'll I'll take a quick stab at this one. I mean, it certainly amplifies a lot of the kind of tribalism surrounding conspiracy stuff, right? If you if there's a critical mass of people that believe, you know, XY thing that, you know, it it certainly can amplify uh that across and just escalate um the the level of legitimacy surrounding the conspiracy, right? the more people that believe something that's out there, you get this mass of people that, you know, what we're seeing the effects of that and certainly in in Texas and New Mexico with the measles outbreak, that kind of thing where they're the the conviction surrounding some of the antibax stuff has become so strong um that it's resulted in these u public health emergencies. So, yeah, I think social media um can be a force for positive change in terms of getting messaging out about uh the science that's out there, but then also can fuel this kind of broader conspiracy stuff. How do you guys think the government or us for example librarians can help mitigate that? Well, I see some comments in the chat to the effect of, you know, librarians and libraries being repositories for civic information, right? And I do think that, you know, we talked about eroding public trust. One of the few institutions that people still really like and value and trust is their community library. Um, and so, you know, that's currency for you to spend. And I think that, you know, if I were in the library business right now, I would really be thinking about, are there ways that I can get my hands on some of those highv value government data sets, which is actually getting easier and easier because of the open data movement. Now, um, many communities and states have what are called open data portals where they're actually pushing out data sets online that people can analyze and use. And that's great. I mean, there are shortcomings to that that we can talk about some other time, but but in the main, I think that it's a positive development and we've seen journalists and advocates really put that open data to productive use. Um, but you know, sometimes you have to lead the horse to the water. Um, I do think that that's a really valuable civic role that librarians can play being kind of civic inter information intermediaries, right? We all need a learned intermediary to lead us to the good quality information. And while I would like to think that local newspapers and local TV stations are going to do that job, as Dave Coolier said, uh, you know, we've seen um just a a a massive bloodletting in the newspaper business over the last few decades. cannot reliably assume anymore that a community newspaper will fulfill that role. So there is a void there that libraries can be I think helping to fill. We actually have a number of questions which kind of fits into to what you're asking. So I'm going to go ahead and ask the first one. In the era of Doge, however you pronounce it, operating in a very secret manner, how can an agency like that be compelled to provide their records? So that is one that I can actually take which is um um doge specifically right there is actually as of last week a federal district court order finding that presumptively that entity is subject to federal foya and does have to honor requests. It was a matter of debate because federal FOYA does contemplate that if an entity is doing nothing more than giving advice to the president that those communications fall within sort of a judicially fashioned communications privilege so that the president can get candid advice. And so if it is something that is no more than purely advisory in nature reporting directly to the president then those communications are not going to be seen at least during the term of the president although they will be preserved under the presidential records act and historians will eventually get to see them. Um but if the agency has actual operating responsibilities like for instance office of management and budget OM is subject to buoya because it doesn't just advise the president. It actually runs programs. Um and so the the judge sort of found that Doge falls more on the OM side uh of the ledger than a purely advisory entity but that's where the line seems to be drawn. Next question is um why is Congress exempt from FOYA? For the branch of government that's intended to directly represent the citizens of our country, it doesn't make sense for everything to be conducted secretly. And I'll answer that because they don't want to be held accountable and transparent. That's why. And they're the ones who made the law. You know, golden rule. Those who make the rules, you know, whatever. So yeah, they exempted themselves when they passed FOYA. Um, interesting. A lot of people don't know this. Most state legislatures are subject to their state public records laws. A lot of people assume that legislators are not, but in most states they are either explicitly or through case law or in in a lot of ways. So um you know it'd be great if Congress would uh adopt at least FOIA like procedures for their agencies uh and uh the FOY advisory committee has been kind of pushing that for several years like the the capital police and other and which I guess they have adopted some practices but but yeah it's a great question and um you know hopefully we can revigorate ashen for transparency in Congress. We did have a lot of um leaders in that um Cornin Grassly Ley others. Uh hopefully we can renew that and uh uh moving forward. And by the way, I threw in a chat a paper I wrote 14 years ago about how um really libraries could be a fundamental central per uh place for making this happen in every because what do we have in just about every community in America, right? Well, you got a bar usually and a post office and a church and usually some library of fashion, right? And um I think libraries could play a special role in filling the gap and and and I would love to see that happen. I talk about that in the paper. Actually, it's happening. If you look in the chat, you'll see the end of term project and there's also a link for the data rescue project which is really exciting. But I think you're talking about something that's more the long term. Okay, we got another question. Thank you so much. Um, what are the panelists thoughts on the data that disappears just out of thoughtlessness rather than intent? Increasingly, as a govocs cataloger, I'm being asked to catalog documents that only exist on the internet archive because the agency didn't think about keeping access to the last version available online when they updated the website. And they gave a good example of state electrical codes. Yeah, I will say I actually have a research paper that's about to come out in the Seattle Law Review addressing the subject, which is that while public records statutes are great, they require only that agencies produce the records they actually have. And unfortunately, under both federal FOYA and the state counterparts, the courts have been unwilling to read into FOYA an enforcable duty to actually retain the records. And so for retention, you have to look to a completely separate body of law. And that completely separate body of law, which in most states is enforced just by your secretary of state's office um which has an archival division, right? Those don't have any teeth to them. There's no penalty for non-compliance. Um nobody loses their job or pays a fine uh if they if they uh fail to adhere to the retention schedule. And so, you know, my suggestion is that a deleting a public record should be carry all the same penalties as failing to turn it over in the first place, right? If something qualifies as a public record, then we shouldn't reward people for pushing the delete key and saying, "I know somebody is going to want this someday. Let me destroy it." Right? But right now, all the incentives are are misaligned. And so, that's a a huge huge hole in uh uh freedom of information juristprudence at both the state and the federal level. And I agree that that hole needs to be patched. I'll I'll just add real quick. Last week I was uh doing training at a journalism conference and they wanted 50 data sets that um you could download federal data sets so you could download for free. And so I went through and I put the handout in the chat. Um, and I a lot of the data sets I knew about had gone dark. Uh, others weren't updated. There's one I note in there, the meteorite database, which is really cool. You can find it on data.gov, the latitude longitude of every meteorite that's fallen since the 8 800 AD. Um, the problem is it's only current up to like 2013 or something on data.gov. I mean, so they haven't updated the data and it's the freshest data set out there. So, even though I'm sure there have been meteorites who have that have fallen in the past 12 years on this planet. So, um, yeah, I think it's really challenging because, and I don't blame the agency so much because they probably don't have a lot of money to invest in improving their data management, records management systems, right? It's an afterthought in a lot of governments. And um, and so I don't know if we have to figure out a way to adequately fund records management. I think we do. I think at the federal level, I think line item budgets for FOYA and records management are important. Um, but um until we get there, it's going to be hit and miss with government docs and data online and especially at the local and state level where it's all a mishmash, right? Unlike other countries like Mexico and other places where there's one portal, we're all government agencies to to have all this um collected and sifted and disseminated to the public. Um so boy, we could with the tech abilities we have in this country, we could do so much if we put our minds to it and our money to it. Our next question is uh what are some options for increasing government transparency when we're faced with the current deregulatory environment? It seems like it would be even harder to get information as these agencies become more short staffed. Yeah, no question. Right. One of the casualties that we're seeing at the federal level as agencies downsize is the FOYA fulfillment offices which are in a lot of places seen as sort of a luxury item rather than a necessity item. Right. And I'm going to tell you an answer, but I can't say that I'm especially optimistic or confident that agencies will move in this direction. But I I think a really good answer to your question would be to remove the bottleneck that all FOYA requests have to be processed through a centralized FOYA agency, a FOYA custodian, right? And I'm old enough to remember I was a newspaper reporter back in the old paper and pen days um when you would just show up at a government agency and walk into the office and say, "Hey, Professor Kulier, you know, I understand that you've got some memos that you've been working on and uh you've been uh exchanging memos with the Federal Foye Advisory Committee and I'd like to see him. Hand them over." And Professor Collier would comply. Right. But now the policy at every agency, first of all, I'm not going to get into the office anymore because I got to have an appointment and an escort by the public relations office and security is going to throw me out as soon as I finish my conversation. But even if I get into the office, the policy is no, no, no, don't honor that request. Funnel all those requests this very understaffed Hoya office, which is going to put them in a very long queue even if the request is actually very simple to fulfill. And so, um, you know, the the answer is that we should go back to the shortest distance between two points. And if I know that Professor Koulier is the custodian and he's got the records and I know that he's got them right at hand and he can hand them over to me without any delay, I should be able to to to to bypass the the the bottleneck and go straight to the source. Our next question is um I would love to hear the group's perception of the impact or interplay of high-profile whistleblower cases on public perception and the application of laws relating to FOYA and transparency. Is there a relationship that is um if that's and the person added if that Kenneth did you want to talk about that at all? Yeah, I mean uh sure. I I mean I think it it kind of hammers home um both of your points about just increasing government secrecy. I mean it it seems bordering on cruel to be punishing people that are um actively trying to improve government transparency. So some of these high-profile whistleblower cases just proof and point of um kind of this slide into protectionism um and and you know I think also undermines again public trust in our government democratic institutions right that we'd somehow be targeting people that are trying to um shed light on what's happening inside the government. So I don't don't have anything profound to say except that it's certainly personally it's it's um alarming to me. But then I think on a on a fundamental level with our democracy that's um not uh productive in terms of increasing trust or or um in in our government. So yeah add that quickly. We've got another question. Um what and I'm kind of jumping over them because we're running out of time and I apologize but this seems like a good one. What advice would you give a novice to navigating the FOYA process for the first time? Okay, I've got a quick answer to that one, which is don't ever make the FOYA the first communication you have with the agency. Um, it's always a good idea to pick up the phone and get an idea of how the agency manages its records because very often what you will find is either a this is already available on the web somewhere and they can point you to it or b you will learn that the agency has certain nomenclature and terminology and workflow that will make your request a lot better. Right? If you have a conversation with the agency and they tell you, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We do those month every month and they're called TPS reports, right? Great. Then when you're fashioning the foyer request, you say, "I want to see the last six months of TPS reports." Uh, so you know exactly what to ask for rather than sending one of these, "I need all documents, all data in every form whatsoever that's ever been invented, which is almost always an invitation to have the request kicked back to you as overroad." And I might add, I just threw in the chat, Mukrock. It's a nonprofit that can help you. Uh, and it has tons of resources in starting out. Uh, they've helped with over 150,000 public records requests since 2010. A great resource for anyone who wants to get get moving on this and learn more. Do we have time for another question or I actually want to answer the one about the um standing requests because I see somebody put it in both the the chat and the Q&A. Um the answer is to my knowledge agencies typically do not honor prospective requests like that. It's another of the mechanical weaknesses of oil laws, right? Is that they're only required to give you the documents that are in existence at the time of the request. So even if you know that at the end of next month they're going to complete a report, the answer is you have to request it the day after they complete the report. And so while it would be wonderful if I request work that way, right? If the request to your request was no, we don't have that quite yet, but we'll happily send it to you next month. That would be a much happier world to live in. But uh mechanically speaking, that's not their obligation. And to my knowledge, most agencies um don't work that way. Uh thank you. I I think uh this discussion can really go on and on and uh this was a f fascinating panel discussion. Uh we want to also give uh our panelists uh little time to um to say last remarks to our audience. I can go first. Um I will just quickly say thank you to to all the librarians and archavists especially the tireless work of uh the internet archive all the grassroots efforts to maintain data repository and government government records. It's such an incredible help um to and service um to the nation. So um I'm very heartened by ALA and um God's activities in this area and um just thank you so much for including me and inviting me to participate. I put my uh UG email uh address in the webinar chat for anybody who'd like to follow up. Also, there's only one person in America with my name, so I'm very easy to find. The um um what I will say is since I have the ear of a bunch of librarians around the country, I also have a research paper that I published last year that's all about the uh disappearance of photographic archives at local newspapers around the country. It's a real crisis for our community's history as these newspapers lay off their librarians, close their photo morgs, and destroy decades worth of local photographic history. And I would love for librarians to take on rescue projects to try to preserve these priceless pieces of local visual history for future generations. We are all partners in freedom of information and um I think librarians are more important than ever. So thank you for what you do and um sorry that I'm suggesting we load more work on you. So um uh but it matters. So thanks so much for this. Thank you for saying that and thank you again all the wonderful panelists for coming and speak to us today. Uh we really appreciate your time and the unique perspectives on this important issue. Um and uh does any other committee member have anything to uh to say at the end? Links to the uh evaluation and to the uh help um YouTube channel where this recording could be found are in the chat. And I did have a question in the chat about um providing links to the websites and documents. So I'll work um with the committee on providing those somewhere in the text of the YouTube recording. So thank you very much and thanks everybody. Thank you so much to the education committee program committee and everybody here in attendance and have a great day. Thank you. Thank you all. Have a wonderful day.