It’s time for Sunshine Week! And what better way to kick it off than with a Sunshine Week thought leader interview with Mike Sarich & Nick Wittenberg!
As we discussed last year, Sunshine Week was established in March 2005 by the American Society of News Editors, now known as the News Leaders Association and it occurs each year in mid-March, coinciding with James Madison’s birthday and National Freedom of Information Day on the 16th. This year, it runs from March 12 through March 18. The purpose of the week is to highlight the fact that “government functions best when it operates in the open.” And central to operating in the open is the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which was signed into law in 1966.
Today, from 10:00 am – 12:00 pm, the Department of Justice will hold its annual Sunshine Week celebration event in the Robert F. Kennedy Building – Great Hall at 10th and Constitution Ave NW in Washington DC. The event will include the Department’s annual Sunshine Week FOIA Awards Ceremony to honor and celebrate the work of dedicated FOIA professionals across the government. The event will also be broadcast via livestream at http://www.justice.gov/live.
Other events this week take place this Wednesday at the Department of Commerce – The Office of Privacy and Open Government (OPOG) and the Census Bureau’s Policy Coordination Office from 9am to 1:30pm, and this Thursday at 1 pm ET at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
What better way to kick it off than with a Sunshine Week thought leader interview with Mike Sarich & Nick Wittenberg! Michael Sarich is the Director of FOIA at The US Department of Veterans Affairs and Nicholas Wittenberg is Corporate Counsel and Senior Advisor for Legal Technology and Innovation at Armedia. Last month, eDiscovery Today published their article – Processing Freedom of Information Act Requests and Utilizing eDiscovery – as a five part blog series here.
In the interview available below and on the eDiscovery Today Youtube channel, I discussed topics related to FOIA requests and eDiscovery with Mike and Nick that included current challenges associated with responding to FOIA requests, Mike and Nick’s article and the use of ChatGPT in writing it, how responses to FOIA and eDiscovery requests are similar and different, the FedRAMP program, the role of AI in FOIA requests and resources to learn more about leveraging technology and best practices to streamline the process of responding to FOIA requests.
The resources referenced by Mike and Nick in the Sunshine Week thought leader interview are available here:
NARA’s post: 2024 FOIA Technology Showcase: Request for Information Published on SAM.gov – The FOIA Ombudsman (archives.gov) and RFI.
Senate Judiciary hearing on FOIA which has discussions on the use of AI: OGIS Director Alina Semo Testifies Before Congress – The FOIA Ombudsman (archives.gov).
Information from the AI Working Group: Office of Information Policy | Chief FOIA Officers Council (CFOC) Technology Committee Artificial Intelligence (AI) Working Group Charter (justice.gov)
So, what do you think? Were you familiar with Sunshine Week? If not, you are now! Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.
Image created using GPT-4’s Image Creator Powered by DALL-E, using the term “robot working in a US government agency doing work at a computer”.
Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.
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