On June 1, 2007, the Attorney General submitted his second report to the President pursuant to Executive Order 13,392, "Improving Agency Disclosure of Information,"describing the progress agencies have made, and the challenges they face, in implementing their goals under their individual FOIA Improvement Plans. In the June 1, 2007 report, a series of conferences and training sessions were recommended.
Specifically, the Attorney General recommended the convening of a third Chief FOIA Officers Conference "to communicate and emphasize the importance of agency implementation activities in the coming months." In addition, the Attorney General recommended that two specialized training sessions be held for government personnel.
The first specialized session is designed as a follow-up seminar for FOIA Public Liaisons and "will ensure that these supervisory officials continue to understand their many responsibilities in both FOIA administration and Executive Order implementation," including their role in resolving disputes. The second specialized training session will be focused on FOIA Website improvement, and is designed to address both the required elements of agency FOIA Websites and the potential such sites hold for enabling agencies "to successfully reach [their] milestones in many Executive Order improvement areas, including backlog reduction and customer service."
Lastly, the Attorney General recommended a follow-up meeting of the Inter-agency Working Group on Technology, to explore "approaches for maximizing the opportunities that technology offers for providing agencies with cost-effective ways to process FOIA requests on a more efficient and timely basis."
All of these conferences and training seminars have now been scheduled for the upcoming months. In addition, the Office of Information and Privacy has scheduled a FOIA conference for all Department of Justice FOIA Officers. This Department of Justice conference will build on the discussion from the Chief FOIA Officers Conference and will also focus on the implementation issues applicable to the Department in particular. All agencies are encouraged to hold similar agency-specific conferences to further aid in their successful implementation of their FOIA Improvement Plans.
The details for each of these events are listed below: