Speaker 1: It's April twenty fourteen, and hundreds of protesters are gathered
Speaker 1: near a dusty Nevada overpass about eighty miles northeast of
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. Some wave American flags from their saddles. Others
Speaker 1: the yellow don't tread on any flag. It's like a
Speaker 1: scene out of High Noon.
Speaker 2: Cowboy hats, cowboy boots, jeans, shirts on the back of forces.
Speaker 1: Michael Serich is working for the Bureau of Land Management
Speaker 1: at the time, very agency. These protesters have come to
Speaker 1: stare down. By the afternoon singing turns into something more serious.
Speaker 1: A man in a black ball cap in tactical vest
Speaker 1: is belly flat on the overpass. The barrel of his
Speaker 1: military style rifle is threaded through a gap in the
Speaker 1: concrete barrier.
Speaker 2: He's looking down on the LM rangers that had beads on,
Speaker 2: essentially federal BLM officers.
Speaker 1: It's officially an armed standoff in all of this over
Speaker 1: some cows. The standoff started with Cliven Bundy, a rancher
Speaker 1: who was grazing cattle on government land.
Speaker 2: He had used this land for decades and decades and decades.
Speaker 1: And had paid fees to the federal government.
Speaker 2: In religiously for decades upon decades, but.
Speaker 1: After some permit disputes in the early nineties, he decided
Speaker 1: that Washington no longer had the right to charge him,
Speaker 1: that he had an ancestral right to the land because
Speaker 1: his Mormon ascendants had it before the federal government did.
Speaker 3: The money's not to dale, the cows are not to
Speaker 3: dale his freedom and liberty and get rid of this
Speaker 3: amusing government.
Speaker 1: Over twenty years, Bundy ignored court orders to relocate his herd.
Speaker 1: He racked up more than a million dollars in unpaid fees.
Speaker 1: By April twenty fourteen, the Bureau of Land Management had
Speaker 1: come to collect, rounding up nearly four hundred of Bundy's
Speaker 1: cows in arresting Bundy's son. Then the situation escalates. Another
Speaker 1: one of Bundy's sons kicks a police dog, rangers tays him,
Speaker 1: which riles Bundy supporters, who muster a full on militia
Speaker 1: to converge on the ranch in face off against the Feds.
Speaker 1: Men on horseback against men with ear pieces, And then
Speaker 1: came the news trucks.
Speaker 2: Tensions reached the boiling point earlier this week a real
Speaker 2: Wild West Showdown.
Speaker 1: How cows in our militia and Fox News turned one
Speaker 1: man into a modern folk hero.
Speaker 2: Huge media interests followed from that.
Speaker 1: People want answers, and more than two thousand miles from Nevada.
Speaker 1: At the Washington, d C. Headquarters of the Bureau of
Speaker 1: Land Management, questions start pouring in.
Speaker 2: What's going on here in Nevada? Why are there armed
Speaker 2: agents here standing off with with Americans also armed over
Speaker 2: some cows.
Speaker 1: These information requests are piling up at the Bureau of
Speaker 1: Land Management's Freedom of Information Act office. The foyer officers
Speaker 1: need help, and they find Mike, a recent law school
Speaker 1: grad and fellow at the BLM.
Speaker 2: I was very happily working as a realty specialist working
Speaker 2: on high priority transmission lines. As a presidential management they
Speaker 2: had some FOI experience. The foyer shop was like many understaffed,
Speaker 2: and they said, hey, Mike, we need a lawyer. Come
Speaker 2: down here and help us out.
Speaker 1: So he does, but he has his work cut out
Speaker 1: for him.
Speaker 2: There was three hundred plus media requests, tons of citizen interest.
Speaker 1: The office is chaos, and Mike dives right in fielding
Speaker 1: request after request, even the odd ones from anti government
Speaker 1: types who were galvanized by the event.
Speaker 2: We get requests asking if the president at the time
Speaker 2: was really a space alien covered in human skin, and
Speaker 2: our response to the Foyer shop we were like, well, yes,
Speaker 2: we've been covering up this secret forever, and all the
Speaker 2: presidents are just human skin covered reptiles that are from
Speaker 2: outer space, and we know it here at the Bureau
Speaker 2: of Land Management, the small component of the Department of Interior.
Speaker 2: And now that you've submitted this Foyer request, here's the
Speaker 2: record you got us.
Speaker 1: As Mike would learn over the next decade fielding Foyer
Speaker 1: requests in several government agencies. That's all in a day's
Speaker 1: work for a public records officer.
Speaker 2: I owe my FOYA career in large part to mister
Speaker 2: Bundy and the great cattle Trespass Gather of twenty fourteen
Speaker 2: hit It.
Speaker 3: I'm investigative journalist Jason Leopold. I spent most of my
Speaker 3: days getting documents from the government.
Speaker 1: I'm attorney Matt Tapik, and I fight them in court
Speaker 1: to open their files when they don't want to.
Speaker 3: From Bloomberg and no Smiling, This is Disclosure, a podcast
Speaker 3: about buying loose government secrets, the Freedom of Information Act,
Speaker 3: and the unexpected places that takes.
Speaker 1: Us well I don't often say this about government officials,
Speaker 1: but Michael Sirich is a FOYA warrior. He's a guy who,
Speaker 1: for a long time was on the inside of federal government,
Speaker 1: yanking the curtains open so we all could get a
Speaker 1: better view inside. For more than a decade, he worked
Speaker 1: his way up through FOYA posts at four agencies, from
Speaker 1: an officer at the Bureau of Land Management in the
Speaker 1: Social Security Administration to director of the Veterans Health Administration
Speaker 1: and the Department of Veterans Affairs. And that's a big
Speaker 1: deal because the VA's FOYA program is the third largest
Speaker 1: in the entire federal government. So Mike has accomplished something
Speaker 1: really impressive. He's reduced the VA's FOYA backlong by ninety percent,
Speaker 1: which basically means if you're trying to get your records
Speaker 1: from the VA, Mike is the reason they show up
Speaker 1: in months instead of never. Mike left the government in
Speaker 1: September and now he's working on the outside on a
Speaker 1: new program dedicated to government transparency and training. Michael, welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. Very glad to have you here.
Speaker 2: Pleasure to be here, and thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: I noticed behind you, what does that sign it's kind
Speaker 3: of lurking out.
Speaker 2: Oh oh sure, sure. So peace love and Foya, that's
Speaker 2: is what it says. Yeah, says peace love and FOYA.
Speaker 2: And it's just a nod to the fact that FOYA
Speaker 2: became operative in nineteen sixty seven, the summer of love
Speaker 2: and so peace love and Foya is all about, ah,
Speaker 2: you know, hey, we need to be peaceful with our requesters.
Speaker 2: Do this work in a sense of love and it's
Speaker 2: FOY it it's about the freedom information and having that
Speaker 2: relationship with the American people who pair sellaries. You need
Speaker 2: to have FOYA stock baxactly.
Speaker 3: So, Mike, you didn't see the detail working on the
Speaker 3: FOYA as a step down, because sometimes I will read
Speaker 3: that people who are detailed to FOYA, they've sometimes looked
Speaker 3: at it as like this is a punishment if you're
Speaker 3: detailed to the FOYA. You've heard those stories before, right,
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, for sure, in particular State Department where someone
Speaker 3: said it was a kin to being stationed to Siberia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why do they say that? I don't know, to
Speaker 2: be honest, because when I got down to the Foyer shop,
Speaker 2: I saw an opportunity to tell the story that the
Speaker 2: agency was doing to the American people who were paying
Speaker 2: for that story. The bureauland Management, like all federal agencies,
Speaker 2: exist to serve the American people. And here in Foyer,
Speaker 2: you have this tremendous opportunity, indeed obligation to tell the
Speaker 2: story through records of what the agency is doing on
Speaker 2: behalf of the American people. So the way I saw
Speaker 2: this incredib opportunity to go down and work in the
Speaker 2: Foya shop was to help tell the story of why
Speaker 2: did the Bureau of Land Management feel the need to
Speaker 2: protect in this case, this endangered species, the land was
Speaker 2: being preserved for the desert towards and why we needed
Speaker 2: to take this action, and also in this case in
Speaker 2: the cat standoff, to really demonstrate the years and years
Speaker 2: and years of work that the Bureau Land Management engaged
Speaker 2: until it got to this point. Because really, at this point,
Speaker 2: every reasonable step had been taken to effectuate court orders,
Speaker 2: every reasonable step had been taken to work with the
Speaker 2: lease holders, every reasonable step had been taken to compensate
Speaker 2: folks for you know, maybe lost revenue. And this was
Speaker 2: the final straw. This was the absolute last thing that
Speaker 2: the federal government could do in this instance. And this
Speaker 2: is what got the most attention.
Speaker 3: So I need to ask this this question and then Matta,
Speaker 3: I'm going to bump it over to you. Okay, you
Speaker 3: get over to the Bureau of Land Management, you're working
Speaker 3: in the FOYA shop, You're bombarded with requests from the media,
Speaker 3: from the public. When you start to see all the records,
Speaker 3: you get access to what happened there?
Speaker 2: What was that like?
Speaker 3: Because I've always thought about, Gee, what would happen if
Speaker 3: I was a FOI officer And suddenly I get to
Speaker 3: see all of these emails unredacted, get full access, Mike,
Speaker 3: No B five's right, nob six is get them?
Speaker 2: Nont be five?
Speaker 3: No B seven A yeah, just raw naked documents exactly.
Speaker 2: So I liken this to being a parish priest. You
Speaker 2: get all of the parish's deepest, darkest secrets, right like,
Speaker 2: everybody comes in and tells you everything. And I've never
Speaker 2: been a priest, or very unlikely to become one, but
Speaker 2: I imagine it's similar in that the first couple of
Speaker 2: weeks are probably intoxicatingly fun, like, oh my gosh, I
Speaker 2: know everything, and then by week three or four you're
Speaker 2: just worried about communicating this parishioner's needs upstairs and moving
Speaker 2: on to the next center, if you will, and finding
Speaker 2: resolution that way. It is a fantastic and sacred obligation
Speaker 2: and trust that you're given. Make no mistake about it.
Speaker 2: Boy officers must be some of the most trusted people
Speaker 2: in any organization because exactly what you said, they have access,
Speaker 2: complete access to literally every record that the agency has,
Speaker 2: and it is their obligation to provide as much of that,
Speaker 2: like literally everything that they can possibly provide to the
Speaker 2: request while protecting the agency. And so it's critically critically
Speaker 2: important that they're well helps to speed on all the exemptions,
Speaker 2: all the laws, all of the regulations. But it's pretty fun,
Speaker 2: There's no two ways about it. It's pretty fun for sure.
Speaker 1: I may have done like hundreds of FOIL lawsuits, including
Speaker 1: I think maybe some against agencies you've been at, but
Speaker 1: I don't think our paths have crossed before, have they.
Speaker 2: I think I've tiptoed through the lightning and been able
Speaker 2: to avoid that. So no, but definitely well aware of
Speaker 2: your work and appreciate the work that you're doing in
Speaker 2: the boy community, not just here in the Disclosure podcast,
Speaker 2: but in the FOIA field. Thank you. Jason. Are there
Speaker 2: any Bundy foyas in your archive? Do you remember?
Speaker 1: Were you making foyas for Bundy stuff?
Speaker 3: So that's what I was thinking about it, and I was
Speaker 3: so because one I totally remember it. Two it's definitely newsworthy,
Speaker 3: so I would have most certainly have filed the Foyer,
Speaker 3: but I can't find it. Mike, do you remember if
Speaker 3: I filed? Do remember? I do remember that you were
Speaker 3: one of the names Greenwald all of the Oh Greenwald?
Speaker 3: Is that John Greenwald? Yeah, John Greenwald? So John Greenwald
Speaker 3: is another frequent FOYA filer. And just a quick backstory,
Speaker 3: John and I had filed numerous Foyer requests and sometimes
Speaker 3: they are identical. And years ago I obtained some documents
Speaker 3: from the Justice Department's Office of Information Policy, right, that's
Speaker 3: the shop that handles oversees the Foyer operations, and I
Speaker 3: think I asked for records on myself and anything related
Speaker 3: to FOYA, and I got this set of emails from
Speaker 3: the Justice Department's Office of Information Policy where they were
Speaker 3: talking about me and John Greenwald and they referred to
Speaker 3: us as a Foyer posse.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's the Foya possey.
Speaker 3: That's the Foyle Posse and they said some other Justice
Speaker 3: Department attorney said, oh, that should be their band name.
Speaker 3: They were they were kind of criticizing us because like
Speaker 3: they thought that we were sort of, you know, conspiring
Speaker 3: not to pay fees.
Speaker 2: I think it was the Foya Tang clan or something
Speaker 2: like that. It was I like that clan. Oh that's
Speaker 2: ft FTC, FTC, you know me.
Speaker 3: So I filed a fouer request, and I'm sure I
Speaker 3: did because of the you know, high profile nature of
Speaker 3: this topic. But does my foyer request stand out? Was
Speaker 3: there anything special about it?
Speaker 2: You know? I would love to tell you that I
Speaker 2: have it, you know, printed out and framed. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: what I was hoping, you'd say. At my last duty station,
Speaker 2: we did one hundred twenty thousand four years that year
Speaker 2: or so. Sadly, sometimes the you know, I hear you
Speaker 2: lost in the sea of incredible request.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, very tactful. So let's get back to Bundy.
Speaker 1: I mean, because you got a lot of requests, right,
Speaker 1: were there any that did stand out? Because I think
Speaker 1: there was some kind of wacky stuff going on.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you take the the good with the bad
Speaker 2: and the funny with the with serious and we had
Speaker 2: a lot, a lot of requests along those lines, and
Speaker 2: you know, you get a whole mix of public comment
Speaker 2: disguised as for you. Sometimes in this case, the land
Speaker 2: was protected for the deaths records. Sometimes you would get
Speaker 2: things who would just say I like turtle soup. People said, well,
Speaker 2: you know what, I like to eat turtle soup. So there,
Speaker 2: I mean, were there for the turtle soup? And I
Speaker 2: guess for the space aliens? Were there actual requests.
Speaker 1: Or were people just yeah, and what was it like
Speaker 1: all documents showing whether the president's an alien or how
Speaker 1: did they how did they structure those.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you would be surprised at how sophisticated a requests
Speaker 2: like that could could be where they want.
Speaker 3: All.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not surprised, Mike, this doesn't surprise me at all.
Speaker 2: It would continue, you know, all emails, limericks and assorted
Speaker 2: things that would shed light on the fact that the
Speaker 2: president is from outer space, along with his cabinet. Oh,
Speaker 2: the cabinet too, okay, Oh yeah, I mean the president
Speaker 2: couldn't exist on his own as a reptile. He would
Speaker 2: need a whole colony of fellow reptiles too. But wait, Mike.
Speaker 2: So here's a question. You get these requests, sure, and
Speaker 2: you do what do you process the requests? Oh, certainly
Speaker 2: you don't necessarily have to do a full record, you know,
Speaker 2: exhaustive search. But you did a search? Did you do
Speaker 2: a search? That's the question. I'm going to be very
Speaker 2: thankful for the six year record retention schedule on Foye's
Speaker 2: and note that this was longer than six years ago.
Speaker 2: So I can't attest to the fulsomeness of the search.
Speaker 2: I don't think that we went to sixteen hundred Pennsylvania
Speaker 2: and asked the president to affirm his Keepman, that's hilarious.
Speaker 1: So I've always wondered this, Mike, is who gets to decide,
Speaker 1: especially if it's something that's like kind of sensitive. Do
Speaker 1: the FOYA officers get to decide what to release? Or
Speaker 1: does that have to go up through like chains of
Speaker 1: command you know, then end with like political appointees making
Speaker 1: those decisions.
Speaker 2: The foy Offsker has the delegated authority to make these
Speaker 2: decisions on behalf of the agency, and it must always
Speaker 2: be this person with the delegated authority. Now that said,
Speaker 2: there are certainly many organizations, if not all, that have
Speaker 2: a process to review and quality control things that are
Speaker 2: really important. The FOY officers not omniscient. The foyofsker can't
Speaker 2: know all of the impacts for every record. So those
Speaker 2: types of reviews help ensure that information goes out in
Speaker 2: a fulsome way, and that it is all the information
Speaker 2: that can go out. It's never the case in a
Speaker 2: good FOYA program where a political appointee who you know
Speaker 2: may not have that subject matter expertise, is going to
Speaker 2: make that call. It's going to be the FOY officer
Speaker 2: who signs the release saying, hey, this is my name
Speaker 2: on this release letter. It is my responsibility, my obligation,
Speaker 2: and my delegated authority to do so. Certainly input is taken,
Speaker 2: but ultimately the FOY officer's decision. Who's the person who's
Speaker 2: signing that lit.
Speaker 1: I did notice in your answer you talked about a
Speaker 1: good FOYA office. So I got to ask, so, I mean,
Speaker 1: are there bad FOY offices? You don't have to name anybody.
Speaker 2: There's a what regarded phrase and Floyd and went into
Speaker 2: out black it out.
Speaker 1: Ooh, went in out black it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Because if you don't have confidence, because you don't
Speaker 2: feel confident, then you end up doing things like, well,
Speaker 2: I don't know, so I won't get in trouble for
Speaker 2: blacking it out, but I will get in trouble for
Speaker 2: releasing it. So I'm in doubt, I'm going to block
Speaker 2: it out.
Speaker 1: What's so interesting about that, and I guess disappointing about
Speaker 1: that is that's the exact opposite of how it's supposed
Speaker 1: to work. It's supposed to be if in doubt, produce it,
Speaker 1: Like if if you can't prove it's exempt, then it's
Speaker 1: got to be released. If the scope of the exemption
Speaker 1: is wishy washy, well you're supposed to interpret it in
Speaker 1: favor of disclosure. So it's totally understandable why this happens.
Speaker 1: But like, are there some shops where it's the political
Speaker 1: appointees who are really, you know, have more control And
Speaker 1: what you're calling QC is really sort of like saving
Speaker 1: embarrassment and you know, because is not. The exemptives are
Speaker 1: not meant to be there to protect agencies from embarrassment.
Speaker 1: But sometimes we see this when we sue things were redacted,
Speaker 1: we win and redactions get lifted, and you kind of wonder,
Speaker 1: this really should not have ever been redacted. And I
Speaker 1: can see why they tried to get away with holding it.
Speaker 1: But like, are there some shops where it's more there's
Speaker 1: more political involvement in what gets released than others.
Speaker 2: You know with eight hundred like individual reporting units, you
Speaker 2: know they go go up to doj in terms of
Speaker 2: reporting their metrics. It's certain that there's probably a reporting
Speaker 2: unit or two where maybe there is a little bit
Speaker 2: of a heavier hand or not. But I think what
Speaker 2: ultimately you see in those when reactions get lifted like that,
Speaker 2: it's really just a training situation where a FOY officer
Speaker 2: may be new, there's really high turnover and a lot
Speaker 2: of Foyer shops. Sometimes, as Jason pointed out, it's not
Speaker 2: considered the most incredible career move to be in that
Speaker 2: Foya shop. So normally, I think that's a reflection of
Speaker 2: inconsistencies in training versus situation where or someone's maliciously going
Speaker 2: in and saying, hell, we're not going to give Leopold anything.
Speaker 2: That Voyd terrorist is not getting a thing out of us.
Speaker 2: So if he prints this request, he's gonna use all
Speaker 2: of his toner right like, because it's just gonna be
Speaker 2: black sheet after black sheet after black sheet, and maybe
Speaker 2: if you does, and ads will leave in there just
Speaker 2: to tease them. But yeah, I think in most cases
Speaker 2: it's an issue where the FOY officer isn't maybe very
Speaker 2: well trained or very confident in their training, so they're
Speaker 2: not confident, they're gonna tend to overreact. And if they're
Speaker 2: very confident and they can articulate the reasons behind why
Speaker 2: they're releasing overholding, then they're in a much better spot.
Speaker 3: Over the years, as I interacted with more FOYA officers,
Speaker 3: Matt and Mike, I definitely understand what goes on behind
Speaker 3: the scenes and the agencies much better as it relates
Speaker 3: to the processing. I've definitely dealt with, and you know this, Matt,
Speaker 3: agencies that are just terrible with FOYA. And you know,
Speaker 3: the first one that always comes to mind for me
Speaker 3: is the FBI. I just think that their FOYA operations
Speaker 3: leave a lot to be desired. And then another agency
Speaker 3: is State Department, and that may be due to the
Speaker 3: fact that they are bombarded with requests and they just
Speaker 3: have a massive backlog, you know, just trying to get
Speaker 3: through it. But the most part, when I interact with
Speaker 3: FOYA officers, they absolutely are dedicated to the work passionate
Speaker 3: about it and want to get the records out. So
Speaker 3: I've always been curious about where's that hiccup where the
Speaker 3: sort of adversarial relationship between request an agency or FOYA
Speaker 3: officer comes in. And that's actually I want to segue
Speaker 3: to that question, Mike, because there is sort of this
Speaker 3: belief that FOYA officers and requests have an adversarial relationship.
Speaker 2: Why do you think that is? I don't know, but
Speaker 2: I think it's grounded in why anyone has an absurd
Speaker 2: relationship with anyone else, And that's communication and understanding of
Speaker 2: where the other person's coming from. I view foy's role
Speaker 2: as an opportunity to tell the agency story. And I'm
Speaker 2: always happy to tell the agency story at whatever agency
Speaker 2: I'm working at. Whether that's the Bureau of my Management,
Speaker 2: the Social Security Administration BAPHA, doesn't matter. There's a good
Speaker 2: story to be told. Also, trying to understand what the
Speaker 2: requests point of view is, What is the request you're
Speaker 2: trying to get At a lot of times, requesters will
Speaker 2: kind of bury their motive, like they won't really tell
Speaker 2: you why they're looking for something, then they don't have to.
Speaker 2: But if they do tell you what exactly they're looking for,
Speaker 2: the exact needle that they're looking for, A fuy officer
Speaker 2: can often find it much faster than a request or can,
Speaker 2: and so instead of asking for every record related to this,
Speaker 2: say hey, I'm really interested in this piece, if you
Speaker 2: know what you're interested in, and then the boy officer
Speaker 2: can take that targeted request and provide a timely response.
Speaker 2: So that's an area that I think reeds a little
Speaker 2: bit of animosity because the fuy offser may feel like
Speaker 2: she's on a wild goose chase and the play requestion.
Speaker 2: I feel like, well, why is the staking hundreds and
Speaker 2: hundreds and hundreds of days when it's supposed to take twenty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the number of days. So
Speaker 1: I want, I do want to talk about backlogs because
Speaker 1: you know, I noticed that one of the things you
Speaker 1: achieved at VA was like a ninety percent reduction in backlogs,
Speaker 1: right like that. First, thank you for that. I mean,
Speaker 1: that really is a service to our country to do that.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Mike.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking at that and I'm scratching my head
Speaker 1: and I'm wondering. We talked about the Office of Information
Speaker 1: Policy for a minute so this is an office within
Speaker 1: the Justice Department. They process Feyer requests for the Attorney
Speaker 1: General and some other kind of departments and divisions within
Speaker 1: the DOJ. If there's any agency that should have their
Speaker 1: FOYA house in order, I would contend it's OIP because
Speaker 1: they also have this sort of widespread federal leadership role
Speaker 1: where they issue guidance. And OIP is not getting it done,
Speaker 1: then all these other agencies can really easily say, well,
Speaker 1: we're no worse than op. So every year, agencies have
Speaker 1: to report their backlogs in the average response times, and
Speaker 1: the statue requires twenty to thirty business days to issue
Speaker 1: a determination, and the courts say that typically the production
Speaker 1: of records should occur days or weeks, not months or
Speaker 1: years after that. So we're talking about like a couple
Speaker 1: of months of time for the typical request to be
Speaker 1: processed and complied with. But if you look at OIP
Speaker 1: for say twenty twenty four complex requests, that average response
Speaker 1: is six hundred and fifty days. It's in order of
Speaker 1: magnitude larger than what the statute is calling for. This
Speaker 1: is what I find the most difficult to accept. That
Speaker 1: I'm interested in your views on it for expedited requests,
Speaker 1: ones in which the agency admits that there's an urgency
Speaker 1: to inform the public. It's basically the same six hundred days.
Speaker 1: This is OIP saying, we recognize that there's an urgency
Speaker 1: to inform of the public, but we're going to take
Speaker 1: almost two years to respond to the requests. Like you
Speaker 1: could understand why people get really frustrated and say, the
Speaker 1: government's not doing its jobs.
Speaker 2: So what's your reaction to that? So when my wife
Speaker 2: asks me for my phone, I hand it over to
Speaker 2: her if we're on a trip or something like that,
Speaker 2: like right away, you know, like, hey, I hear you
Speaker 2: go whatever you need. But if I told her it's
Speaker 2: going to be two hundred business days and we're equivalent
Speaker 2: on fees, and it's a different conversation, right, that trust
Speaker 2: factor is going to go way down. So the faster
Speaker 2: that you can give people information, the more reliably they
Speaker 2: will trust you, because they then aren't going to fill
Speaker 2: in the blanks of time absolutely with like why is
Speaker 2: this taking so long? Right, Well, this is just a memo,
Speaker 2: this is just a file. What is the deal here?
Speaker 2: You know, a reasonable interregnum is fine, but six hundred
Speaker 2: days four hundred days for expierty requests especially, it just
Speaker 2: doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: How were you able to reduce by ninety percent, but
Speaker 1: OIP has got these massive backlogs still.
Speaker 2: The way that VHA first and then VA at large
Speaker 2: was able to reduce our FOY backlogs because the people
Speaker 2: that we have committed to the mission. I'm a veteran
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of veterans at VA and BHA,
Speaker 2: and it's very easy to get super motivated about that
Speaker 2: mission working largely for folks that are trying to get
Speaker 2: access to things like healthcare, home loans, student benefits, you
Speaker 2: name it. So a huge credit to the nine hundred
Speaker 2: or so folks scattered across twelve time zones at the
Speaker 2: VA who made that happen. Wow, nine hundred amazing. A
Speaker 2: lot of requests that VA are driven by veterans seeking
Speaker 2: access to an earned benefits, so it's really easy to
Speaker 2: be motivated for that. There's a lot of ways to
Speaker 2: unpack how we got there. The really important metric in
Speaker 2: my view is average processing time. Yes, how long does
Speaker 2: it take an average veteran to get what she's requesting,
Speaker 2: what he's requesting in order to obtain that earned benefit.
Speaker 2: That's what really matters to me. The most important thing
Speaker 2: here is that we're continuing to drive our average processing
Speaker 2: time down to your point, FOYE should be about a
Speaker 2: month long process. And this is why I'm so fashionate
Speaker 2: about technology tools that largely barred from the discovery world,
Speaker 2: that enable you to look at large spasset documents, get
Speaker 2: to the meat of the matter, find out what's protected
Speaker 2: and what's not, and then move move forward. You know,
Speaker 2: you have FOY requests that are toddlers. Mine have master's degrees.
Speaker 1: I mean, would you agree with me that six hundred
Speaker 1: plus days to respond to requests like that, especially urgent requests.
Speaker 1: This is not what Congress had in mind.
Speaker 2: Right when the President signed this law in nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: six and it became operative in nineteen sixty seven. No
Speaker 2: one envisioned that the request would be like this, And
Speaker 2: how could they have, right, like, there's there's no way
Speaker 2: that you know, Lbj's on his ranch signing this and
Speaker 2: thinking that this is going to be anything anything like this,
Speaker 2: reluctantly signing it at that Yeah, exactly, very exactly on
Speaker 2: July fourth, though we have an actual document signed on
Speaker 2: July fourth, which you know is distinguishes it from the declaration.
Speaker 2: So that's a good deal, right. So the idea that
Speaker 2: every single person in those toy shops virtually also want
Speaker 2: to get those FOI requests out not in six hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty days, but they all want to get them
Speaker 2: out in twenty or thirty days. They want to get
Speaker 2: these things moving so they can move on to the
Speaker 2: next one, largely because there's no end in requests. You know,
Speaker 2: millions of requests a year now, and so people want
Speaker 2: to move these requests as quickly as as possible. And
Speaker 2: that's you know, that's why you see the push to attack.
Speaker 1: You mentioned technologies some agencies have maybe not quite stated
Speaker 1: the are a pretty current systems. They're used in litigation
Speaker 1: context for dealing with massive amounts of documents. I've seen
Speaker 1: other agencies with very archaic systems in understaffing and all that.
Speaker 1: So I've always wondered, like our FOYA offices trying to
Speaker 1: get the money into their budgets to pay for these things,
Speaker 1: or are they like whenever I try to foile my
Speaker 1: way into that answer, I never seem to get documents
Speaker 1: or it ironically takes like years. But are agencies actually
Speaker 1: trying to get more money to comply, or they just
Speaker 1: because you could see how if you thought that the
Speaker 1: political heads were perfectly fine with long backlogs because it
Speaker 1: just means they'll be out office by the time anything
Speaker 1: comes out, you could see why they wouldn't have much
Speaker 1: incentive to try to fix the problem.
Speaker 2: Right, There's a reason the twenty sixteen FOY amendments where
Speaker 2: it'signed at the end of the administration, at the beginning
Speaker 2: of an administration. Like, that's not a coincidence, right, Like
Speaker 2: that is I design? Yeah, And to be fair, it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter if it's an R or a D. This
Speaker 2: I would have expected the same outcome. Totally agree. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, that's just the way it is, right.
Speaker 1: A phrase that I throw around a lot in Please
Speaker 1: don't take this as disparagement. If government officials were inclined
Speaker 1: to be transparent, we wouldn't need a FOYA statue.
Speaker 2: They would just be doing it right. So, yeah, it
Speaker 2: is fascinating. Some of the work that I'm doing right
Speaker 2: now on the consulting side is finding out that the
Speaker 2: answer to this exact question, what is a total addressable
Speaker 2: market of FOYA? What are people using? And it is
Speaker 2: astonishing that people are proud to say that we use
Speaker 2: Adobe and the Microsoft suite of tools, and that's what
Speaker 2: they use. And it is impossible to imagine running any
Speaker 2: type of FOYA program with more than a few requests
Speaker 2: a year. So if you're the Truman Scholarship Foundation and
Speaker 2: you're getting fifteen or FOY requests here, got it, no problem.
Speaker 2: If you're over fifty or one hundred requests and you're
Speaker 2: not using a tool purpose built for FOYA, then you're
Speaker 2: really missing out. And I think that's part of the
Speaker 2: FOY Advisory Committee's movement towards a common case platform where
Speaker 2: the entirety of the federal government could be on on
Speaker 2: a system that A talks to each other B has
Speaker 2: a commonality of training, so that if a FOY officer
Speaker 2: works at Agency A and they move to Agency B,
Speaker 2: there's no learning curve. They are working in the same
Speaker 2: optimized system that is affordable across the federal government. The
Speaker 2: real challenges if you foid the contracts for a department
Speaker 2: like HHS where people are choosing different FOYA platforms, you'll
Speaker 2: see that they're paying different prices even if they're buying
Speaker 2: the same platform.
Speaker 1: You're seeing inside of one department. Sure there are different
Speaker 1: technology stacks that are being used to process fluyerws within
Speaker 1: the same department.
Speaker 2: Yep. Absolutely, and that's crazy. There's some great leadership going
Speaker 2: on at HHS and other places to move away from that.
Speaker 2: This is the current action in the foyer world where
Speaker 2: people are looking to platforms, discovery platforms that can provide
Speaker 2: some kind of commonality for the foy officers and moreover
Speaker 2: to provide quality control and oversight. We're in a world
Speaker 2: now where the tools have gotten better, better and better
Speaker 2: and better. In fact, I think the real answer for
Speaker 2: FOYA is going to be small language models, not large
Speaker 2: language models. The technology that's specifically trained in this area
Speaker 2: to be able to work in the foyer space where
Speaker 2: there's a lot of nuance, to be able to move
Speaker 2: these cases much quicker, So not the six hundred day cases,
Speaker 2: but the twenty or thirty day cases and get them
Speaker 2: out the door in a much much faster way. And
Speaker 2: so when you're litigating, you're not looking at three hundred
Speaker 2: pages a month. You can genuinely and reasonably get thousands
Speaker 2: on thousands of pages a month and get these things done.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, by the way, Mike, that's and Matt, wouldn't
Speaker 3: that be amazing if the FBI were like, all right,
Speaker 3: we have eighteen million pages and we could actually get
Speaker 3: thousands a month.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's it's like a cash machine.
Speaker 3: That's like an ATM, Like every month, every month, I'm
Speaker 3: going to get thousands of pages. So, you know, you
Speaker 3: talked about HHS and like some of the good leadership
Speaker 3: going on there and the various technologies that are in
Speaker 3: place now. But there's also an elephant in the room here,
Speaker 3: which is FOYA offices have been decimated this year, right,
Speaker 3: they're just have It's documented CDC's FOYA staff gone, and
Speaker 3: at other agencies that we've seen a reduction in the
Speaker 3: FOYA staff. When Matt and I were sort of discussing, like,
Speaker 3: all right, what's FOYA going to look like in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five, we actually thought, and I don't want to
Speaker 3: speak format, but I thought that it would more or.
Speaker 2: Less look the same as it did in years past.
Speaker 1: Foolish me, I took with a grain of salt. I
Speaker 1: took Elon Musk's comments to heart when he said that
Speaker 1: virtually all government records should be readily available. It should
Speaker 1: be only in very limited circumstances that anything gets withheld,
Speaker 1: and you should barely even need to use FOYA because
Speaker 1: I think if your political philosophy is sort of distrust
Speaker 1: of government, distrust of agencies, in believing that we have
Speaker 1: too much unaccountable bureaucracy, well foya's for you. I mean, right,
Speaker 1: that's what FOYA is four is to help us understand
Speaker 1: all these things. And you know, of course, then they
Speaker 1: came in and decimated the Foy offices. So you know,
Speaker 1: I know Elon must didn't run for office, but the
Speaker 1: same idea that people run for office on these platforms
Speaker 1: that they're going to be transparent, and then they get
Speaker 1: in office and they're not, and they wait until the
Speaker 1: end of their term and then and then they stick
Speaker 1: it on the next ones.
Speaker 3: And that's not unique to this administration. That's just the
Speaker 3: way it's been. But I have never seen Foyer offices
Speaker 3: kind of caught up in the crossfire where now you
Speaker 3: have whole agencies FOYA offices that are just gone. And
Speaker 3: so I have request sitting out there to various agencies
Speaker 3: where there's either one person or there's no one there
Speaker 3: and wondering, you know, what happens with the Foyer, you know,
Speaker 3: with my Foyer requests. So I'm just Mike, I'm just
Speaker 3: wondering what's the remedy that.
Speaker 2: That's a great question. I well remember Elon saying exactly that,
Speaker 2: Matt I clipped it, put it on LinkedIn very robust
Speaker 2: conversation around it, and then does took zero FOI requests
Speaker 2: and said that they're part of the Presidential Records Act.
Speaker 2: So it's exactly right. And Jason, to your point, I
Speaker 2: think when the stats come out, presumably in March or
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six, which is when they generally government wide
Speaker 2: statistics come out around Sunshine Week, I think you're going
Speaker 2: to be seeing just numbers that are bonkers, the increases
Speaker 2: in requests, processing time, and the decreases in personnel. Provided
Speaker 2: the numbers are captured accurately. Right, there's a real concern
Speaker 2: and base in terms of whether, and that's part of
Speaker 2: my ongoing research now is what is the true cost
Speaker 2: of transparency? What are we actually paying for contract support?
Speaker 2: What are we actually paying for the discovery solutions? What
Speaker 2: are we actually paying for COPS products? Because the numbers
Speaker 2: I think are going to be really surprising once all
Speaker 2: this information is fully compiled what is the true cost
Speaker 2: of transparency in the federal government. And it's clear that
Speaker 2: we're not getting the bang for the buck. And I
Speaker 2: think that the statistics in March are going to show
Speaker 2: a real year over year delta that's not good for transparency.
Speaker 2: And largely the brand DRAN that's shogging about is going
Speaker 2: to be responsible for part of that that good people
Speaker 2: have left solid programs and left good people behind as well. However,
Speaker 2: you need a certain mass kind of colon piles doctrine
Speaker 2: of overwhelming force. We don't have overwhelming force, and we
Speaker 2: do need force multipliers in the Foyer community. And I
Speaker 2: think technology will get us part of the way there,
Speaker 2: but you can't do it without people. You know, the
Speaker 2: best MRI is worthless if there's not a trained person
Speaker 2: to interpret it and unprovide advice related to it.
Speaker 3: So I said, you know, these offices have been kind
Speaker 3: of caught in the crossfire. Do you believe that as
Speaker 3: well or do you have a different take in terms
Speaker 3: of how these Foyer offices ended up being more or
Speaker 3: less shut down during the course of the purge.
Speaker 2: This year of federal government workers for some of the
Speaker 2: departments and some of the agencies. The reorganization was very
Speaker 2: necessary and will yield long term dividends. In many departments
Speaker 2: with components act as if they're part of a confederation,
Speaker 2: they're kind of doing their own thing, and they're not.
Speaker 2: They don't have, you know, org line chart responsibility to
Speaker 2: maybe someone in the Senior Ejective Service like they'd do
Speaker 2: with the Department of Interior now, so there's not that
Speaker 2: kind of command and control that can get results, and
Speaker 2: so part of this is going to think be a
Speaker 2: long term benefit for the federal government and transparency. Interesting, however,
Speaker 2: when you look at Plates's most famously at oh PM
Speaker 2: where someone tried to put in a FOY request and
Speaker 2: the person on the phone said, hey, good luck, they
Speaker 2: just fired everybody.
Speaker 4: Good luck with that. They just fired the entire privacy team.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that actually happened to a CNN reporter earlier this
Speaker 3: year when you filed a request with the Office of
Speaker 3: Personnel Management.
Speaker 2: I believe there was a video of it.
Speaker 4: That's the email I got back when I filed a
Speaker 4: pretty routine records request asking for documents related to Elon
Speaker 4: musk role in the Trump administration, including his security clearance.
Speaker 2: That's not helpful. Has to be a human being. There
Speaker 2: a number of human beings there to provide that transparency
Speaker 2: because the computers can't do it by themselves, and one
Speaker 2: person by themselves can only triage maybe at best, but
Speaker 2: they're never going to get to a response. Litigation will ensue,
Speaker 2: the fees will accrue, and the agency can can find
Speaker 2: themselves paying multiple, multiple hundreds of thousands, if not to
Speaker 2: the millions of dollars in FOY related fees. Because judges
Speaker 2: will also lose their patients. I'm sure you've seen Mattin
Speaker 2: and judges continuing to lose their patients with administrations that
Speaker 2: drag their heels consistently and say we can't do this,
Speaker 2: we can't do that. Then they look at the agencies
Speaker 2: headcount and they look at the agency's budget and say,
Speaker 2: well that's your problem, not mine, like you need to
Speaker 2: be able to do this.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that up. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: this year has been a tipping point. I think historically
Speaker 1: courts have been very reluctant to micromanage you know, how
Speaker 1: much money, how many resources agencies are putting into FOYA,
Speaker 1: and instead what they do the further behind the agencies fall.
Speaker 1: The courts just lower the processing rates to accommodate. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not really f the problem at all, it's it's
Speaker 1: enabling the problem. I think this year has been different
Speaker 1: because when when the answer is, oh, we fired all
Speaker 1: the FOYA people, they've gone so far. Now the courts
Speaker 1: are like, I gave you some leeway, but like you
Speaker 1: cannot just fire all the FOY staff and then say
Speaker 1: we're not going to process requires. So they went so
Speaker 1: far that I think it has moved back, and my
Speaker 1: hope is that that momentum continues and we, you know,
Speaker 1: we continue to kind of put the emphasis on this
Speaker 1: that we should.
Speaker 2: There's another side to this coin that I think is
Speaker 2: really worth mentioning. There's some agencies where they've got a
Speaker 2: requirement for their FOY officers to put through ten thousand
Speaker 2: pages a week, and some of those are checked and
Speaker 2: some of those are not. So what you end up
Speaker 2: having is a lot of overwork, over stressed foil officers
Speaker 2: just kind of going yep yep, yep, yep yep to
Speaker 2: meet a number that they have to produce without spending
Speaker 2: the time. The line by line, page by page analysis
Speaker 2: that by law says that has that you have to
Speaker 2: accomplish well.
Speaker 1: If a poorly trained FOY officer isn't sure what to do,
Speaker 1: they're going to err on the side of withholding, right.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: So when you couple that with what you just said,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to just get them to pound through
Speaker 1: a bunch of documents as fast as possible, it seems
Speaker 1: to me like what's going to happen is they're going
Speaker 1: to end up over redacting and over withholding those documents.
Speaker 1: They're not just going to say, oh, here you go,
Speaker 1: here's a bunch of documents, because like, I'm cool with
Speaker 1: that outcome. I mean, there are certain things I recognize
Speaker 1: agen she shouldn't be releasing, like people's social Security numbers.
Speaker 1: But a whole lot of this stuff is very discretionary
Speaker 1: and if they want to release it, they can't.
Speaker 2: Right, And I've made so much of my career in
Speaker 2: terms of discretionary release. We had a situation in California
Speaker 2: at BLM where someone's pistol was stolen and later the
Speaker 2: weapon that was said it was dropped and the round
Speaker 2: killed a woman and the gun was obsession with the
Speaker 2: leage immigrant at the time. In San Francisco. Immigration Illegal
Speaker 2: immigration a hot topic for sure in that community, and
Speaker 2: so people look to the bureauland management and they're like, hey,
Speaker 2: how did this happen? If you don't have any control
Speaker 2: over your weapons. Then what we did is we showed
Speaker 2: our history of gun loss relative to the rest of
Speaker 2: the world terms of other law enforcement agencies and really
Speaker 2: very very bottom in terms of guns for officer lost
Speaker 2: the last the last on there and able to put
Speaker 2: that in context. If more foyer shops would be more
Speaker 2: fulsome with their information and discretionary release information to kind
Speaker 2: of put their story in context for what the person
Speaker 2: is looking for, a lot of things that may seem
Speaker 2: sensational become very reasonable in terms of what has happened,
Speaker 2: because in the main, you have very good people on
Speaker 2: the federal side trying to do their best possible work.
Speaker 2: And if you give the full story, if you're able
Speaker 2: to actually provide all of that data on a discretionary basis,
Speaker 2: you end up with, you know, hey, that's that's a
Speaker 2: human being trying to do a really hard job, and
Speaker 2: this is what they chose with the information that they had,
Speaker 2: and things become more reasonable versus like, can't believe they
Speaker 2: did that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that does a lot to turn the tide on,
Speaker 1: you know, the distrust of government in our countries. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just continues to mount.
Speaker 2: It humanizes it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So anything Foyer officers can do to release
Speaker 1: more information you are really helping to deal with that
Speaker 1: and to show people that they don't need to be
Speaker 1: so distrustful that they it's and it's you know, the
Speaker 1: classic the cover up is worse than the crime. So, Mike,
Speaker 1: you're working now on something called Foyer University. Tell us
Speaker 1: more about that.
Speaker 2: We're launching that in January, full suite of FOYA trainings
Speaker 2: and tools for FOYER professionals. The turnover and the FOYA
Speaker 2: profession can be you know, thirty forty percent in some shops,
Speaker 2: and want to provide an outlet and an opportunity for
Speaker 2: people to get credentials and to get certifications in the
Speaker 2: core competencies of FOYA. So we've done things like we've
Speaker 2: released our most recent white paper on small language models.
Speaker 2: We call it the slim Solution to a fat problem
Speaker 2: of FEOYA processing and really dig down into the current
Speaker 2: technology and how it can impact FOY operations. And it's
Speaker 2: gotten a lot of traction. We've done a few cool
Speaker 2: things I can tell you that we've rewritten the DOJ
Speaker 2: FOYA Guide, the one thousand page tome filled with footnotes.
Speaker 2: It's under two hundred pages, it's accessible, it's graph it
Speaker 2: has an opportunity to really get into it and learn.
Speaker 2: So we're recording the videos that go along with that,
Speaker 2: along with FOYA program management to help people that get
Speaker 2: tagged to go into this FOYA field. How can you
Speaker 2: be successful in this field?
Speaker 3: I do want to ask how I become a tenured
Speaker 3: professor at Foya University.
Speaker 2: I'm looking for work after you know my my journalism
Speaker 2: correct well, so many are and you'd be a very
Speaker 2: welcome adjunct professor's initially at fly adjunc No. I want
Speaker 2: tenure tenure, Mike. If you can bring more courses to
Speaker 2: the table like that Professor Leopold, we'd be delighted to
Speaker 2: welcome you into our into our university. I think I may,
Speaker 2: I think I may have to work on that.
Speaker 1: You know, we people think of FOYA as like journalists
Speaker 1: using it or maybe like companies using it. But you
Speaker 1: know you've talked just now about just individual people using
Speaker 1: their rights to records under FOYA to get any number
Speaker 1: of things. What are some other things you've seen of
Speaker 1: like just individual people using FOYA.
Speaker 2: Sure, First partly, FOYA is a real thing, and I
Speaker 2: think it's incredibly important. For example, at VHA of woman
Speaker 2: called and she was the former wife of a service
Speaker 2: member who've committed suicides, and she was looking for his
Speaker 2: last medical records to see if there's anything in there
Speaker 2: that she could get some closure to because the veteran
Speaker 2: committed suicide a few days after a VHA appointment and
Speaker 2: kind of had to add some stonewall in there, had
Speaker 2: it like, hey, you're not you were divorced from this
Speaker 2: service member. But she was working in concert with her
Speaker 2: former mother in law and she was right there with them,
Speaker 2: and we were able to get her access to those records,
Speaker 2: so those two women could have some closure in this
Speaker 2: really traumatic and horrible moment in their lives. And that's
Speaker 2: just one way how FOYA can impact people on a
Speaker 2: human level and help people cope in a really awful situation.
Speaker 2: And that story is replicated one hundred and twenty thousand
Speaker 2: times a year, not exactly, of course, but like the
Speaker 2: story of humans getting access to information that can help
Speaker 2: improve their lives.
Speaker 1: Any other examples you can share with us, whether it's
Speaker 1: like VA or Social Security Administration, and you know people
Speaker 1: using FOYA for individual interesting things.
Speaker 2: Sure social Security Administration. What you see time and time again,
Speaker 2: are people really interested in, you know, where did I
Speaker 2: come from? Where is my family from? In a great
Speaker 2: way that genealogists and other people that are really interested
Speaker 2: in finding their identity and figuring out where they come
Speaker 2: from are through social Security records. Because when you get
Speaker 2: an original Social Security number, yes for your place of
Speaker 2: birth and that your parents made names and so there's
Speaker 2: are really important clues for people to look back and
Speaker 2: research and find where they have come from. At the
Speaker 2: Veterans Health Administration, we saw countless times where people were
Speaker 2: trying to substantiate claims, does my dad really need assistance? Here?
Speaker 2: Has my mom qualified for help by virtue of her service?
Speaker 2: Camp La June issues? Folks that had served and had
Speaker 2: illnesses associated with water. My own uncle who was at
Speaker 2: Camp La June and had significant medical issues able to
Speaker 2: get access to his records through the FOYA and qualify
Speaker 2: for earned benefits. Then you see these in older vetter
Speaker 2: is more than anyone else. And now you're seeing that
Speaker 2: cohorts your Vietnam era some of your Korean but more
Speaker 2: so your Vietnam Era. Plus that maybe they don't have
Speaker 2: the facility with a computer to really get into these things,
Speaker 2: to get into the records and kind of provide self service.
Speaker 2: So the FOY officers really help them and help walk
Speaker 2: them through that process to help either caregivers or the
Speaker 2: better than themselves get access to the documents that will
Speaker 2: substantiate their service, to provide them with information that will
Speaker 2: enable them to really, in many cases, live a much
Speaker 2: higher quality of life where they'll have access to better care,
Speaker 2: perhaps a nursing home that is for veterans, or you know,
Speaker 2: any type of service along those lines that will provide
Speaker 2: them some comfort in their final years. The federal government
Speaker 2: touches our lives in so many ways, and there's an
Speaker 2: administration for that. If you're doing it, there's someone in
Speaker 2: the federal government that has a touch point and a
Speaker 2: record that can help you achieve literally any goal that
Speaker 2: you're trying to accomplish. My favorite FOY isn't even really
Speaker 2: a FOI. The Right Brothers when they were doing or
Speaker 2: an nautical experimentation in Ohio and then going to Kitty Hawk,
Speaker 2: they sent a request to the Smithsonian institution, so you
Speaker 2: can do now, you can send a foid to the Smithsonian,
Speaker 2: It's no problem. And they ask for all of the
Speaker 2: charts and every bit of information that they could have.
Speaker 2: And even though Samuel Langley, who was the head of
Speaker 2: the SMITHSONI at the time, was also engaged in this
Speaker 2: very activity, he said send them everything. Wow. And he
Speaker 2: also said, hey, if you want my pamphlet, it will
Speaker 2: be two dollars. The right brothers sent back two bucks
Speaker 2: and they got the pamphlet. Right. So even even a
Speaker 2: fee use in that instance, And that's kind of part
Speaker 2: of our culture. I think that's ingrained in the in
Speaker 2: the American experience. We will share anything with you. If
Speaker 2: you can do it, better, go for it right here
Speaker 2: you go. And so that freedom of information, that transparency,
Speaker 2: I feel like he is really a fundamental bedrock to
Speaker 2: what our country is and FOYA really enables that.
Speaker 1: Mike, in your experience, have you seen businesses using FOYA
Speaker 1: to you know, help with with their business operations or
Speaker 1: learn learn things that are good for their businesses?
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, not just good for the business, but also
Speaker 2: good for the tax payer. What you'll see frequently is
Speaker 2: five businesses or six businesses may bid for a project,
Speaker 2: one will you know, certainly get it. Oftentimes the other
Speaker 2: companies will make a FLOY request for that contract and
Speaker 2: that will give them some insight in terms of pricing
Speaker 2: and services and other ways that they can strengthen their
Speaker 2: bids in the future. Ultimately, who benefits from that the
Speaker 2: American tax payer, because these businesses can come back with
Speaker 2: better honed projects and responses to the request for proposals,
Speaker 2: and ultimately the American tax payer should be getting a
Speaker 2: better price at the end of the day. Ultimately, a
Speaker 2: number of businesses use FOYA to gain information when they're
Speaker 2: developing products, when they're trying to bring something to market.
Speaker 2: And what this does, hopefully is it speeds a development
Speaker 2: curve and enables the American consumer to have better products
Speaker 2: at better prices. So you see a tremendous value in
Speaker 2: the foyer for business information, and you see that all
Speaker 2: over the place with the number of companies that are
Speaker 2: making requests on behalf of say private equity or other
Speaker 2: com companies in order to gain a competitive advantage. Ultimately,
Speaker 2: that competitive advantage should be born out in lower prices
Speaker 2: for American consumers.
Speaker 1: And I think what gets missed sometimes is that those
Speaker 1: types of requests, they pay additional fees to help cover
Speaker 1: the cost of those requests. So this isn't just kind
Speaker 1: of the taxpayers subsidizing private businesses through you know, getting
Speaker 1: them records. I mean there's a process by which those.
Speaker 2: Costs are largely born by those requests.
Speaker 1: Right which is it is?
Speaker 2: It should be? Yeah, they pay one hundred percent full
Speaker 2: freight for search and review and right now we look
Speaker 2: at a very small percentage of the FOYA operations being
Speaker 2: recovered through this, and they help make that happen and
Speaker 2: more to come on that for sure.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for that, Mike, and thank you for
Speaker 1: the work you've done for a veterans. Thank you for
Speaker 1: your service as a veteran. I think it really helps
Speaker 1: people to understand just how broad the statue is in
Speaker 1: the many things that it can accomplish. It's not just
Speaker 1: for journalists, it's for everybody, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: good that you can do. I have a final question,
Speaker 1: what's on your music playlist right now?
Speaker 2: I have a lot of Taylor Swift lately because I
Speaker 2: have a children, and the Wicked playlist has been prevalent
Speaker 2: as we all wicked, just all Wicked too, but yeah,
Speaker 2: my personal playlist is usually usually filled with the Doors
Speaker 2: and the Allman Brothers, Leonard Skinner and NWS. So it's
Speaker 2: a good mix.
Speaker 1: Oh nice, that's a good mix. And on the Taylor's
Speaker 1: soit point, I may you have good foya karma.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that. And thank you to Jason and everybody
Speaker 2: else for the work that you do on the request
Speaker 2: side for helping keep the FOYD community so well engage
Speaker 2: and informed of what's going on. What you're doing to
Speaker 2: highlight the important work that goes on across the federal
Speaker 2: community is really important, and I think we're just hitting
Speaker 2: the tip of the iceberg because there's also state and
Speaker 2: local freedom Information Acts and indeed international freedom Information Acts
Speaker 2: that really help illuminate what's going on across the world.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, mag this has been a wonderful discussion.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Mike. Stay tuned for next week his the
Speaker 2: season to be foyed. Why are you wearing an elf costume? Greetings?
Speaker 1: I request the first twenty five pages you.
Speaker 2: Locate for the term quote Santa Claus. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Despite what may be unauthorized violations of US airspace, violations
Speaker 1: of eavesdropping and privacy laws involving minor children. A second,
Speaker 1: and the opportunity to use his annual delivery run to
Speaker 1: distribute narcotics manufactured by Zelms.
Speaker 2: From Bloomberg and No Smiling. This is Disclosure.
Speaker 3: The show is hosted by Matt Topic and me Jason Leopold.
Speaker 3: It's produced by Heather Schroing and Sean Cannon for No Smiling.
Speaker 3: Our editor for Bloomberg is Jeff Brocott. Our executive producers
Speaker 3: for Bloomberg are Sage Bauman and me Jason Leopold, and
Speaker 3: our executive producers for No Smiling are Sean Cannon, Heather
Speaker 3: Schrowing and Matt Topic. The Disclosure theme song is by Nick,
Speaker 3: with additional music by Nick an Epidemic Sound, sound design
Speaker 3: and mixing by Sean Cannon.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Mike Serich. For more transparency news and
Speaker 2: important document thumps.
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Speaker 2: We'll see you again next Tuesday. I thought you said
Speaker 2: I was a right spidery. You are a right spider