OIP’s Best Practices Panel (from left to right): Vanessa Brinkmann (OIP), Melanie Ann Pustay (OIP), Karen Finnegan (Dept. of State), Martin Michalosky (CFPB), Erie Meyer (OSTP), and Mark Graff (NRC)
OIP’s ongoing series of Best Practices Workshops continued yesterday with a panel discussing proactive disclosures and how agencies can make information posted online more useful to interested parties. The workshop series, designed as a part of the Administration’s efforts to modernize and improve FOIA administration, looks to showcase successes achieved by agencies across the government on a wide range of FOIA issues and to share successful strategies so that agencies can learn from one another.
The systematic and regular posting of information online by federal agencies in advance of receiving a FOIA request is an important aspect of Attorney General Holder’s FOIA Guidelines, and yesterday’s panel highlighted the creative and innovative ways that agencies are working to not only increase the amount of material made available online, but also the steps they are making to make such material more useful. Serving on today’s panel were Erie Meyer from the Office of Science & Technology Policy, Vanessa Brinkmann from OIP, Karen Finnegan from the Department of State, Mark Graff from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Martin Michalosky from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Each of the speakers detailed the steps and best practices they had utilized in order to carry out the important task of making meaningful and useful proactive disclosures, including:
- Engaging with programmatic offices – By actively engaging with record creators at an agency, FOIA offices can identify potential proactive disclosures with more ease, and can work with those offices to make the posting of the material more efficient.
- Making online information usable, not just accessible – Agencies continue to make strides in making online information more usable as they are also making more information available including posting in open formats, creating topical websites, or employing special search engines.
- Utilizing available expertise outside of the FOIA office – Just as engaging with programmatic offices can help FOIA professionals locate potential proactive disclosures, leveraging available expertise from inside an agency (such as a Chief Information Officer) or from across the government (such Project Open Data or the 18F innovation lab) can help agencies unlock proactive disclosures that may be waiting at their agency.
- Collaborating with stakeholders outside of agencies – Working with the public and interested agency stakeholders can allow FOIA offices to focus their efforts on particular types of proactive disclosures or identify useful formats that agencies can post information in.
Many of today’s speakers noted how their proactive disclosure processes benefited from the use of new technologies to post information in new ways in order to better serve their requester community and agency stakeholders. A common theme from each member of the panel was how the implementation of an effective proactive disclosure process has helped create efficiencies in their agency’s FOIA operations overall. Based on yesterday’s discussion and the importance of proactive disclosures to the FOIA process, OIP will continue to explore opportunities for specialized training in this area including a session on the requirements of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act when agencies post information online.
The goal of this series is to provide agency personnel with the opportunity to hear from individuals who have faced similar challenges in order to leverage successes achieved by others for their own administration of the FOIA. As seen today, opportunities exist to utilize experiences from around the government in order to improve proactive disclosure processes and make posted information more useful to the public.
The Best Practices Workshop series continues October 15, where a panel from the open government and FOIA requester communities will highlight agency best practices they have experienced while working through the FOIA process. Be sure to continue reading FOIA Post for more information about these events and about other training opportunities offered by OIP.