ML24150A068
| ML24150A068 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 05/21/2024 |
| From: | NRC/OCIO |
| To: | |
| Leah Kube | |
| References | |
| NRC-2858 | |
| Download: ML24150A068 (1) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
ADAMS Public Search Public Meeting
Docket Number: (n/a)
Location: teleconference
Date: Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Work Order No.: NRC-2858 Pages 1-38
NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1716 14th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009 (202) 234-4433 1
1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
3 + + + + +
4 ADAMS PUBLIC SEARCH PUBLIC MEETING
5 + + + + +
6 TUESDAY,
7 MAY 21, 2024
8 + + + + +
9 The meeting was convened via
10 Videoconference, at 1:00 p.m. EDT, Lynn Ronewicz,
11 Facilitator, presiding.
12 PRESENT:
13 LYNN RONEWICZ, Facilitator
14 STEPHANIE BLANEY, Chief, FOIA, Library, and
15 Information Collections Branch, Office
16 of the Chief Information Officer
17 GRACE CANTY, Senior Information Management
18 Analyst, Digitization, Processing, and
19 Records Branch, Office of the Chief
20 Information Officer
21 ROY CHOUDHURY, IT Services Development and
22 Operations Division, Office of the Chief
23 Information Officer
24
25
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 2
1 ARATHI DOMMETI, Senior IT Specialist,
2 Application Development Services Branch,
3 Office of the Chief Information Officer
4 DAN FRUMKIN, Senior Information Technology
5 Project Manager, Office of the Chief
6 Human Capital Officer
7 ANNE GOEL, Senior Technical Librarian, FOIA,
8 Library, and Information Collections
9 Branch, Office of the Chief Information
10 Officer
11 LEAH KUBE, Chief, Digitization, Processing,
12 and Records Branch, Office of the Chief
13 Information Officer
14 BASIA SALL, Director, Data, Information
15 Management, and Enterprise Governance
16 Division, Office of the Chief
17 Information Officer
18 AMY WAGNER, Acting Deputy Director, IT
19 Services Development Operations
20 Division, Office of the Chief
21 Information Officer
22
23
24
25
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 3
1 ALSO PRESENT:
2 LAURIE BORSKI
3 KATHY EDWARDS-REICHERT, Aerotest Operations,
4 Inc.
5 LARRY GELDER
7 RUSSELL GOFF
8 EDWIN LYMAN, Union of Concerned Scientists
9 TARA NOBLE
10 ANDY RATCHFORD, Jensen Hughes
11 JAMES SLIDER, Nuclear Energy Institute
12 JACKIE TOTH, Good Energy Collective
13 PATRICK WHITE, Nuclear Innovation Alliance
14 JASON ZORN
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 4
1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S
2 1:00 p.m.
3 MS. RONEWICZ: Good afternoon. Welcome to
4 this virtual comment-gathering public meeting and
5 thank you for attending. My name is Lynn Ronewicz.
6 I am an NRC employee, and I will be assisting with
7 meeting facilitation today.
8 Please note that this meeting is audio-
9 recorded in Teams and is being transcribed by a court
10 reporter. The court reporter's typed transcript will
11 be made publicly available at a later date. Please
12 keep yourself on mute unless you have been called on
13 to speak. Also, please keep your camera turned off
14 unless you are speaking and want to turn your camera
15 on during that time. This saves bandwidth and
16 prevents any distraction. The Teams chat has been
17 turned off for this meeting, as we would like to
18 receive all comments verbally for the court reporter
19 to transcribe into the final typed transcript.
20 The members of the public will be asked
21 for comments to three questions after the presentation
22 slides have been shown. The members of the public
23 will be asked to raise their hands via Teams, a
24 bridgeline, and will be called on in order of hands
25 raised. We will try to get to as many of those who
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 5
1 raise their hands as we can, but we cannot guarantee
2 we will get to all of them.
3 The purpose of this meeting is to gain
4 thoughts on how the existing Web-Based ADAMS
5 application is working for the public and potential
6 ideas, feedback, on future search capabilities. The
7 NRC will consider the input and feedback to help
8 develop a modern application that will be called ADAMS
9 Public Search. Please note that this meeting is not
10 to discuss the ADAMS application program interface
11 that some of you may currently be using to retrieve
12 ADAMS data into your database or applications. Also
13 note that Web-Based ADAMS is a separate application to
14 search publicly-available ADAMS documents and is
15 separate from the NRC public site.
16 Again, we plan to start with a
17 presentation about the current known challenges with
18 Web-Based ADAMS and its look and feel currently. Then
19 we will discuss the plan to develop a modern ADAMS
20 public search application with a mockup of the home
21 page. Finally, we will ask some questions to hear
22 from you about your thoughts and ideas for the future.
23 We will start by introducing the NRC
24 members presenting. I will now turn it over to Amy
25 Wagner.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 6
1 MS. WAGNER: Hi, everyone. My name is Amy
2 Wagner, and I'm the acting Deputy Director for the IT
3 Services Development Operations Division in the Office
4 of the Chief Information Officer, and I would like to
5 introduce several of my colleagues before moving on to
6 the presentation and questions/comments portion of
7 this public meeting.
8 So joining me today is Stephanie Blaney,
9 who is our FOIA, Library, and Information Collections
10 Branch Chief. We have Leah Kube, who is our
11 Digitization, Processing, and Records Branch Chief;
12 Anne Goel, our Senior Technical Librarian in FOIA,
13 Library, and Information Collections Branch; Grace
14 Canty, our Senior Information Management Analyst in
15 Digitization, Processing, and Records Branch; and then
16 we also have Arathi Dommeti, Senior IT Specialist in
17 our Applications Development Services Branch.
18 And now I'm going to turn it over to
19 Arathi to go over our presentation today.
20 MS. DOMMETI: Thank you, Amy. Good
21 afternoon, everyone. So as Amy introduced, I'm the
22 Senior Project Manager, and I'm going to be the
23 technical project lead for the new application that we
24 plan to roll out.
25 So let me go ahead and share my screen.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 7
1 And let me know if you are able to see my screen.
2 MS. RONEWICZ: We all see it.
3 MS. DOMMETI: All right. So before I get
4 started, quickly, I want to mention that I will be
5 referring to the existing search application called
6 Web-Based ADAMS as WBA and the future search
7 applications as ADAMS Public Search.
8 So before I move on to the existing
9 screens and others, I wanted to touch upon some more
10 challenges that we are currently aware of in the
11 existing application. So some of these, the first one
12 being is the search results page. I think the
13 majority of you who have been using WBA are aware
14 that, currently, it is limited to the first thousand
15 records matching the search criteria. So this is
16 something that has resulted because of the underlying
17 technical limitation since this application was
18 developed many years ago. So, therefore, one of our
19 primary goals is to address this limitation in the new
20 application.
21 Also, for the search, it's not just the
22 number of records that has a limitation, but sometimes
23 the user is also not able to see the correct number of
24 results count for the search criteria. So, for
25 example, if your search criteria results in 5,000
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 8
1 records, the page shows the first thousand and you're
2 unaware of the fact that there are 5,000 results as
3 part of the search. So this is something we
4 definitely want to address as part of a new
5 application.
6 The second and the third bullets are more
7 related to the intuitiveness of the user interface.
8 So for some of you who use WBA often know how the
9 homepage looks like, what are some of the search
10 criteria you have to provide in specific tabs, and go
11 to the results. But for a novice user, it sometimes
12 becomes challenging for them to know where to get
13 started and how to go about the search screens; and,
14 therefore, they contact the public document room to
15 get the required assistance. And, therefore, we
16 definitely want to address these two to ensure that in
17 the new application you are able to get to the
18 specific documents you're looking for without
19 involving number of clicks and it is easy to navigate.
20 And then coming to the search results,
21 sometimes these are not always accurate. We have
22 observed that, based on the search criteria that you
23 provide and the way the index provides the results
24 back, you may not be able to find the documents you
25 are looking for in the top list. And this is another
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 9
1 thing we want to address as part of the new technology
2 that we'll be using in the future state of the
3 application.
4 So these are just some of the known
5 challenges, and that is why we are undertaking this
6 initiative to modernize and build forward to all of
7 you the new search application. We are planning to
8 develop this search solution using the cognitive
9 search technologies, as well as take a human-centered
10 design approach. What that means is that we want to
11 take a personal-based perspective when designing the
12 user interface so that any user, whether they are new
13 or advanced, is able to know immediately after they
14 come to the homepage how exactly they can put in the
15 keywords to search, whether they can perform certain
16 actions, and so on.
17 So all of this is going to enable the
18 users to reap several benefits, some of them being
19 better user experience, improving the accuracy of the
20 results that they are going to receive, as well as
21 provide faster performance. We have used this
22 technology in developing our internal search
23 application, and the results have been phenomenal.
24 And, therefore, we are very much looking forward to
25 bringing this new modernized search application to the
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 10
1 public users, as well.
2 In the next few slides, I just want to
3 quickly give you a glimpse of how the homepage and the
4 search page look like in WBA and what we are looking
5 to change so that it's much more usable to all of you.
6 So as you can see, this is the current homepage, and
7 you have certain tabs using which you can see the most
8 recently released documents in a folder view. You can
9 click on content search and advanced search to provide
10 the search parameters and get to the results.
11 So in this next screen, I'm showing you
12 the content search, as well. So here you have the
13 ability to provide a keyword and then select from the
14 various properties that are available and click on
15 search, and what that will do is the right part of the
16 window is going to provide you the results which can
17 be exported into a file.
18 How we want to approach in the new
19 application is that, the moment a user comes to the
20 homepage, they are able to see the recently-released
21 documents, as well as for those who probably won't
22 immediately start searching have the capability to
23 look at the keyword, as you can see, type in a word or
24 a combination of words, and click on search. And for
25 those of you who want to actually combine different
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 11
1 parameters using various operators, you'll be able to
2 do using the advanced search feature. And then you
3 can save your search, as well as load it, as well.
4 The search results are going to be
5 displayed in the bottom window of the page. So in
6 this case, what you see is, immediately, when you
7 come, we are going to show you the release documents
8 for that specific day and the count. And on the left-
9 hand side, you will be able to browse through various
10 months and get to the specific date.
11 Now, as you are trying to provide feedback
12 in the later part of the meeting, please do think
13 about how this will be structured on the recently-
14 released documents is working, what are some things
15 you think will be beneficial as we gather the
16 feedback.
17 In the next slide, I just wanted to show
18 how the results will look like. And please note that
19 this is a very bare minimum mockup. This is not how
20 the final pages will look like. We have just started
21 the project, and we didn't add any colors and
22 everything. So this is just to give you a concept of
23 how it will look like.
24 So on the results page, you can type in
25 keywords, and, as I said, it's not just one keyword.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 12
1 You can provide a combination of words, and that's
2 going to produce the results both in a summary and a
3 tabular format. So here on this page, you are seeing
4 the tabular format, and then you will have the
5 opportunity to sort them by various columns. You will
6 be able to go to specific pages using the pagination.
7 You will be able to edit the search criteria, and then
8 you will be able to download the results into a CSV or
9 an Excel and so on. So I'm not going to get into the
10 details of how we are envisioning, but this is just to
11 give you a high-level visualization of what we are
12 planning to provide.
13 So with that, I will then hand it over to
14 Lynn, who is going to go over the questions and seek
15 for feedback. Over to you, Lynn.
16 MS. RONEWICZ: Thank you. So we will now
17 ask for comments from the public to the three
18 questions provided. Please raise your hand, and you
19 will be called on in order of hands raised. Please
20 remember to speak loudly and clearly so the court
21 reporter can capture all the information. Please
22 state your name and then your comments to any or all
23 of the three questions.
24 If you're dialed in by phone, please raise
25 your hand by pressing *5, and then, once called on,
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 13
1 press *6 to unmute yourself. Please try to keep your
2 comments brief to the extent possible so we can hear
3 as many comments as possible. We will try to go back
4 to all those who would like a second turn to speak.
5 We will try to address all those who raise their
6 hands, but it may not be possible to address all of
7 them.
8 Okay. So let's see. We have Tony
9 Clements. Please go ahead with your comment. Tony,
10 please go ahead. And if you're having any problems,
11 we'll go on to the next person and come back to you.
12 We'll give you another moment.
13 MS. WAGNER: I believe, Lynn, it might be
14 Tom Clements.
15 MS. RONEWICZ: Oh, Tom Clements. I
16 apologize. Yes. Tom, please go ahead. Okay. At
17 this point, yes, you'll have to unmute yourself, Tom
18 Clements. So let me go to Kathy Edwards in the
19 meantime, and then we'll come back to you. Kathy,
20 please go ahead.
21 MS. EDWARDS-REICHERT: Hi. My name is
22 Kathy Edwards-Reichert, and I'm with Aerotest
23 Operations, Incorporated. I was wondering, so,
24 currently, the date that's on the web-based thing, the
25 date is the date that it was added to ADAMS; is that
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 14
1 correct? Is the release date going to be different
2 than that, or is that still going to be the date that
3 it was added?
4 MS. RONEWICZ: And did we have staff who
5 would like to answer that?
6 MS. WAGNER: Yes. So I don't believe
7 we're planning on making any changes to the dates of
8 releases of documents. So the date that it was
9 released is the date that it will appear, the same way
10 it does today.
11 MS. RONEWICZ: Okay. And let's go back.
12 Tom Clements, we're going back to you to see if you
13 can unmute and speak. Tom, I will say perhaps you
14 would like to dial in on the bridgeline and that might
15 work. In the meantime, we'll go to Russell Goff.
16 Please go ahead. Unmute yourself and go forward with
17 your comment.
18 MR. GOFF: Sure. I hope my mike works.
19 Yes. When I'm visiting ADAMS, I'm typically trying to
20 find information about a specific company or a
21 specific project and just, you know, everything that's
22 been submitted on the docket for that project or
23 company. And so if that search feature functionality
24 could get built into the new ADAMS search, you know,
25 where I could just click, you know, everything about,
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 15
1 you know, a company, like company A, B, or C, and just
2 like that would just be one of the filters, for
3 example.
4 And then for number three I know that it's
5 sort of typical of the nuclear industry to always be
6 like a generation of technology behind the rest of the
7 world, but it's sort of like we're finally getting our
8 nice search functionality and it looks amazing, and
9 you guys are doing a great job with it. But then it's
10 like now some of the AI is out there, and I'm aware
11 of, like, some private companies that are trying to
12 use AI to make ADAMS more searchable. So is there
13 anything that the staff is doing for AI search
14 enhancements? Thanks.
15 MS. SALL: So, hi, this is Basia Sall.
16 I'll jump on and take this. I'm the chief data
17 officer for the NRC, and we are currently engaging
18 with several of those start-ups to really learn how
19 they're working with our data in ADAMS to ensure that
20 we, you know, provide open data to those folks, and we
21 will be having some additional interactions and
22 discussions with what they're learning so that we can
23 also learn, as well, and sort of grow in this AI
24 environment together.
25 So we are engaging with our Office of
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 16
1 Research to gain additional insight into the work
2 they're doing. Thanks.
3 MR. GOFF: Excellent. Thank you.
4 MS. RONEWICZ: Thank you. And next we'll
5 go on to Edwin Lyman. Please go ahead and unmute
6 yourself.
7 MR. LYMAN: Yes. Hi, it's Ed Lyman from
8 Union of Concerned Scientists. Can you hear me okay?
9 MS. RONEWICZ: Yes, we can.
10 MR. LYMAN: Great. So I'd just like to
11 commend you for taking this on, and, actually, in your
12 slide with, your first slide showing all the problems,
13 I've come prepared to say, basically, you know, give
14 examples for each one of those. So I think you've
15 identified the current issues with ADAMS or many of
16 them.
17 And I guess I'd like to second Mr. Goff's
18 proposal that, often, it would be really useful if
19 your initial search, the default would give, let's
20 say, the thousand most recent documents associated
21 with a given licensee. And that's one thing that's a
22 little hard to dig out in ADAMS, and it looks like,
23 what you're proposing, that would probably be pretty
24 easy to do. But I just want to highlight that that is
25 something useful. Or within a date range. So anyway
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 17
1 to make that easier to achieve would be great. Thank
2 you.
3 MS. RONEWICZ: Okay. Then was there any
4 response to that, or are we just good with that?
5 MS. DOMMETI: Yes. We will be including
6 date range in the searches.
7 MS. RONEWICZ: Thank you. And we'll on to
8 Andy Ratchford, and, just as a reminder, after you've
9 asked your question or comment, please try to remember
10 to lower your hand if you could.
11 Andy, please go ahead.
12 MR. RATCHFORD: Thank you. I'm Andy
13 Ratchford from Jensen Hughes, and I search quite a bit
14 in ADAMS, usually on a facility that I know I'm
15 looking for specific correspondence on a certain
16 issue, sometimes document type, so similar to the
17 previous questioners. Sometimes, I find myself doing
18 multiple searches, Googling a docket number when I
19 know it's a specific commercial nuclear plant, and
20 maybe some additional information to make that easier
21 without involving, you know, separate searches because
22 I know specifically but not the docket number
23 memorized or have it on a separate sheet --
24 (Audio interference.)
25 MR. RATCHFORD: -- specific information.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 18
1 So I think it's similar to the other questions, but
2 that's all I had, and that's mainly related to
3 questions one and two. Thank you.
4 MS. RONEWICZ: Thank you. And we will go
5 on to Larry Gelder, please. Go ahead and unmute.
6 MR. GELDER: This is Larry Gelder, and I'm
7 going to answer questions one and two. When I visit
8 ADAMS, I'm mostly looking for 10 CFR Part 71-related
9 activities, and what feature would I like to see is
10 I'd like to be able to narrow the search down because
11 right now I'll go through and look for individual
12 tasks that are related to Part 71. But if it was
13 organized a little bit better by maybe topic or, you
14 know, the part of the CFR, that would help narrow my
15 search down.
16 But I use ADAMS frequently, at least
17 weekly and sometimes several times a week.
18 MS. DOMMETI: And -- oh, sorry. Go ahead.
19 MR. GELDER: No, no, go ahead. I was
20 going to just say if you have any questions for me I'd
21 be glad to answer them.
22 MS. DOMMETI: Sure. I just wanted to
23 address regarding the narrow search, so that will be
24 a feature as part of the new results in the form of
25 facets. So, hopefully, that will help you narrow down
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 19
1 the search better using certain categories.
2 MR. GELDER: Thank you.
3 MS. RONEWICZ: Okay. Thank you. And
4 moving on, Kathy Edwards-Reichert, please go ahead.
5 Unmute.
6 MS. EDWARDS-REICHERT: I have some
7 questions on the existing system. So we'll send in
8 things to document control, and it will take months
9 before it actually shows up on ADAMS. Is there some
10 way to get that -- to expedite that?
11 MS. WAGNER: I'm sorry. Can you restate
12 that question? I apologize.
13 MS. EDWARDS-REICHERT: Okay. So we submit
14 stuff to document control, and it will take months for
15 it to show up on ADAMS. Is there some way to speed
16 that up?
17 MS. RONEWICZ: Let me just interject if I
18 could. That question would be outside the scope, if
19 you don't mind, and we will provide information for
20 you to send that question on and different staff can
21 answer that. Is that okay with you? It's pretty much
22 -- it's just not in the scope of these particular
23 questions, but we'll let you know if we --
24 MS. EDWARDS-REICHERT: We find it
25 frustrating when we go back to look back at history
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 20
1 that we know things have happened but they're not on
2 ADAMS. From both our standpoint and from the NRC's
3 standpoint, the documents aren't there.
4 MS. RONEWICZ: Yes. And we're --
5 MS. BLANEY: We understand. And if we
6 could have -- at the end, we'll give you the email
7 address to send that to, and we will definitely take
8 that comment into consideration and try to find an
9 answer for you and get back to you as soon as
10 possible.
11 MS. EDWARDS-REICHERT: Okay. Thank you.
12 MS. BLANEY: You're welcome.
13 MS. RONEWICZ: And thank you for that
14 question. Now, Tom Clements, I see you did have your
15 hand raised, but now I don't see you but wanted to
16 give you an opportunity. Tom Clements, if you had a
17 question, please go ahead and unmute. Okay. Then we
18 will go on to Jason Zorn. Please go ahead.
19 MR. ZORN: Hi. Can you hear me okay?
20 MS. RONEWICZ: Yes, we can.
21 MR. ZORN: Hi. My name is Jason Zorn. A
22 quick question about getting accession numbers. It
23 seems to me that a longstanding kind of flaw of the
24 existing Web-Based Adams is there's no simple way to
25 just enter an ML number into ADAMS to quickly get a
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 21
1 document. You have to go to multiple drop-down menus.
2 I didn't see on the previous slides whether or not
3 that functionality was going to be added or you just
4 had a very quick window that you could enter the ML
5 number or maybe through the keyword search or
6 something like that, but my suggestion would be to try
7 to make it easier to just enter ML numbers into the
8 system quickly.
9 MS. DOMMETI: Yes. And we are going to
10 take care of that, Jason. So in the keyword search,
11 you will be able to provide the ML number that it can
12 search.
13 MR. ZORN: Perfect. Thank you so much.
14 MS. RONEWICZ: Thank you for that
15 question. Dan Frumkin, moving on to you.
16 MR. FRUMKIN: Hi. This is Dan Frumkin.
17 I'm a member of the staff, but I feel like there's an
18 opportunity during this call to get some examples for
19 industry searches that people like. Many people have,
20 one person said that they were open to (audio
21 interference) and a number of people said I would like
22 to be able to choose this or choose that or, just like
23 you said, like an accession number.
24 Are there examples of generally available
25 searches that you use that allow that kind of
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 22
1 functionality? Because I think, if we could look at
2 that, we could get some ideas of better, maybe a
3 better picture of what it is you're expecting or
4 hoping for beyond the functionality on the previous
5 slide. So that's a question for previous questioners
6 if they're willing to provide names of products that
7 do the searches like you like.
8 MS. RONEWICZ: And if anybody would like
9 to respond to Dan's question, we'll give it a few
10 moments. Just go ahead and raise your hand or just
11 speak out at this point.
12 Okay. If you --
13 MR. GELDER: Sorry. Was that just that
14 you wanted the names of, like, commercial companies
15 that have, essentially, a replica of ADAMS with --
16 MR. FRUMKIN: No, no.
17 MR. GELDER: -- that search function --
18 MR. FRUMKIN: I'm sorry to be talking over
19 you because there's a court reporter. No. The
20 question is, and I'll feed, like, one, LexisNexis,
21 maybe Wall Street Journal or has a search or
22 Washington Post. They have like technical libraries
23 that are searchable. And I'm wondering if there's
24 examples of those kind of technical searches that have
25 the capabilities that you're describing, like --
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 23
1 MS. RONEWICZ: Dan, you're breaking up a
2 little bit. Not to interrupt, Dan, you're breaking up
3 a little bit.
4 MR. FRUMKIN: Okay.
5 MS. RONEWICZ: Sorry, Dan. You were
6 breaking up a bit.
7 MR. FRUMKIN: So did you get the
8 LexisNexis thing?
9 MS. RONEWICZ: We did.
10 MR. FRUMKIN: Okay. So that's what I'm
11 asking, not for the third parties who are doing ADAMS
12 but for other commercial searches of technical
13 libraries that you think have features that ADAMS,
14 that you would prefer that ADAMS replicate.
15 MS. RONEWICZ: If anybody wanted to weigh
16 in to Dan, I would say just go ahead and speak, just
17 so we don't have confusion on who has got hands raised
18 for the three. So if anybody wants to respond to Dan,
19 just please go ahead and, one at a time, and unmute
20 yourself and speak.
21 MR. LYMAN: I mean, this is Edwin Lyman.
22 I mean, just an ordinary Google search, you can type
23 in a keyword in quotation marks, you can select the
24 period of time or, you know, the last seven days, the
25 last month, and whatever, and that's easier to use
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 24
1 than ADAMS to do that same function. So really we're
2 talking about very basic things here.
3 MS. RONEWICZ: Thank you for that. Were
4 there any other comments for Dan? Okay. For now,
5 we'll go ahead and move on to the next hand raised.
6 Laurie Borski, please go ahead, unmute yourself. And,
7 Laurie Borski, if you can go ahead and unmute yourself
8 and go ahead. Okay.
9 MS. BORSKI: Hello.
10 MS. RONEWICZ: Yes, we can hear you now.
11 MS. BORSKI: Very good. I've been using
12 ADAMS for daily searches since 2007. I don't think
13 I'm a novice anymore. The primary area that I'm
14 interested in is nuclear waste, and, of course, the
15 limitation of a thousand documents added to ADAMS each
16 day is a huge impediment, especially when thousands
17 and sometimes over tends of thousands of documents are
18 added per day, as has been recently done. It's hard
19 for me to figure out what is new today without having
20 to filter down, and then I'm limited to ten filters,
21 which makes it sometimes impossible to determine how
22 many documents or what they are that have been added
23 to ADAMS in a given day.
24 My question to you, I actually have two.
25 The new software doesn't seem to show the title of the
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 25
1 document in the search results, and it seems to limit
2 to 25 displayed. So I need to know if that's the plan
3 for the future, or if that is something that can be
4 changed. I use ADAMS every workday. I'm looking for,
5 primarily, what has been added to ADAMS in a given
6 day. The 1000-display limitation needs to go away
7 finally. This has been a problem for years.
8 And I also need to ask if the LSN
9 capability is going to be impacted by your new
10 software. Thank you.
11 MS. DOMMETI: Hi, Laurie. So I can answer
12 the first two questions. So you know what I had shown
13 in the slide is just a mockup, but document title is
14 going to be part of the search results. And second is
15 you will have -- we will not be limiting it to 25 per
16 page, so that was, you know, just to show, but that
17 can be increased.
18 MS. BORSKI: Okay. So to clarify, you did
19 say that the document would be shown if I decide to do
20 it that way?
21 MS. DOMMETI: More than 25.
22 MS. BORSKI: Okay. And will it display
23 the title of the document?
24 MS. DOMMETI: Yes. And the document title
25 can be displayed, yes.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 26
1 MS. BORSKI: Excellent. Thank you.
2 MS. DOMMETI: Yes. Anyone wants to take
3 the LSN question?
4 MR. CHOUDHURY: Arathi, this is Roy. As
5 far as I know, the LSN will not be impacted by what we
6 are doing for the public search.
7 MS. DOMMETI: Okay. Thanks, Roy.
8 MR. CHOUDHURY: The LSN is still working
9 with the search, and that will continue until we
10 actually decide what to do.
11 MS. BORSKI: Okay. Very good. I was part
12 of the LSN ARP meeting in 2018, and so I already had
13 provided NRC with my thoughts on that database.
14 MR. CHOUDHURY: Yes, Laurie, I remember
15 fully. I was also part of that.
16 MS. BORSKI: I know. I recognize your
17 name. Good to see you again. Thank you.
18 MR. CHOUDHURY: Thank you.
19 MS. RONEWICZ: Okay. Thank you. Now we
20 will go on to Patrick White. Please go ahead and
21 unmute.
22 MR. WHITE: Great. Thank you very much.
23 Patrick White with Nuclear Innovation Alliance. So,
24 first off, thanks for hosting this public comment-
25 gathering session. Very excited for this.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 27
1 In response to your specific questions,
2 the first one, when visiting Web-Based ADAMS, I'm
3 normally looking for a variety of documents. This can
4 be things like regulatory guidance or commission
5 documents, like SECYs or other types of either
6 commission papers or staff papers to the commission,
7 or I'm sometimes looking for kind of project or site-
8 specific regulatory documents. So it's a variety of
9 different documents. Oftentimes, also looking for
10 historic documents, so things from 1970s, 1980s, that
11 might be included in the public legacy documents.
12 In terms of features or functionality that
13 I'd be most interested in, a lot of it would really
14 come down to either searchability within documents or
15 more effective keyword searches. Oftentimes, it's
16 looking for a specific phrase or a specific topic that
17 might be embedded somewhere within a much larger
18 document.
19 So, for example, looking at a specific
20 engineering analysis method or a specific regulatory
21 topic that might be embedded in a several thousand-
22 page document. A more effective way to try to find
23 documents that contain those phrases, I think, would
24 be helpful and would be effective.
25 So I guess kind of one, two questions, or
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 28
1 I guess two questions I had as kind of a follow up to
2 this is, one, is there any thought on increasing the
3 searchability of text within the existing documents on
4 ADAMS, rather than just using the existing keyword or
5 title searches, similar to, I think, what Ed Lyman
6 talked about in terms of what you can do with a GOogle
7 search.
8 And, second, is there any thought on how
9 to kind of incorporate or ensure continued
10 searchability of the NRC legacy documents, things that
11 might not yet have been digitized but are something
12 that an external stakeholder might be interested in
13 either following up with a FOIA request or coming to
14 the NRC's library to look at on some of the physically
15 available systems? I know I'll often use the legacy
16 library as a way to look for documents that might not
17 be available now but might be things that I'm
18 interested in following up with the staff on later.
19 So thank you so much.
20 MS. DOMMETI: Sure. So I can answer the
21 first one. So if I understood correctly, you're
22 saying not just based on a property but text search?
23 MR. WHITE: That's correct. So,
24 essentially, searchability within the text of a
25 document.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 29
1 MS. DOMMETI: Yes. That will be
2 available. And regarding legacy documents, I think
3 the public document room can get back to you on that
4 if you can email them.
5 MR. WHITE: Will do. Thank you very much.
6 MS. RONEWICZ: Okay. And moving on, and,
7 I apologize, James Slider, did you already speak? If
8 not, please go ahead.
9 MR. SLIDER: Thank you. James Slider with
10 the Nuclear Energy Institute. One of the features I
11 would love to see happens -- occasionally, I will find
12 an accession number mentioned in a commission
13 document, and when I plug that accession number into
14 ADAMS it returns zero results. And I would appreciate
15 it if, in your new display, you could indicate that
16 such a number that might reference a document that's
17 withheld from public view so that I know it isn't just
18 a failure of the ADAMS search function but it, in
19 fact, is a document, but the document isn't available
20 on the public side of ADAMS.
21 The other related challenge that I face,
22 probably outside of your group's responsibilities, but
23 the search box on the website just isn't -- it's
24 abysmal in terms of producing useful results. They're
25 very disorganized, and I have no way to tell how
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 30
1 relevant they are. And, again, I don't expect you all
2 to have to address that, but in these cases where I
3 get an ML number and I can't find it in ADAMS and I
4 plug it into the website search box and get no
5 results, it's not very informative, other than I
6 suspect it's not available publicly but I don't know
7 for sure. And so I often resort to what Ed Lyman
8 mentioned earlier. Sometimes, it's a lot easier to
9 find things on Google than through these two search
10 options, ADAMS and the website search box.
11 MS. DOMMETI: Thank you. We'll make a
12 note of it.
13 MR. SLIDER: Thanks.
14 MS. RONEWICZ: Okay. And moving on, Tara
15 Noble, please go ahead and unmute.
16 MS. NOBLE: He covered my question. My
17 question was would we have the availability of knowing
18 that a document is not available to the public when we
19 search on it. Currently, the only way we can get
20 confirmation is by emailing the PDR and waiting for a
21 response to be told that that is not a publicly-
22 available document.
23 MS. RONEWICZ: Thank you for that. Edwin
24 Lyman, please go ahead.
25 MR. LYMAN: Hi. This is Ed Lyman again.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 31
1 This also may be out of the scope of this meeting, but
2 I wanted to raise it. With regard to the document
3 naming conventions and the metadata, so that, if you
4 want to separate a document from the search results,
5 some of them are the default names, the accession
6 number. Sometimes, there's a detailed description
7 what the document is, sometimes it's a series of, you
8 know, codes and letters and numbers for some
9 inspection report. I don't know if there's a
10 consistent -- I mean, it doesn't look to me like
11 there's a consistent convention for that, and it would
12 be really helpful if there were so that you could
13 easily download a document without having to rename it
14 according to your own convention. So I just wanted to
15 raise that. And if I'm missing something, if there is
16 some logic to it that I'm not aware of, I'd appreciate
17 being informed of that. Thank you.
18 MS. DOMMETI: Ed Lyman, can you just
19 quickly repeat your suggestion once again? I was not
20 able to gather all of that.
21 MR. LYMAN: Sorry. It's when you -- can
22 you hear me now?
23 MS. DOMMETI: Yes.
24 MR. LYMAN: When you save the document
25 from -- you click on a document to download it from
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 32
1 the ADAMS results, the default name is, there doesn't
2 seem to be a consistent convention. Sometimes, that's
3 the accession number. Sometimes, it's a document
4 title or a description. Sometimes, it's a code for an
5 inspection report or something like that. And I'm
6 just saying it doesn't seem like there's a consistent
7 naming convention there.
8 MS. DOMMETI: Okay.
9 MR. LYMAN: So that was my comment.
10 MS. DOMMETI: Okay. Thank you. We'll
11 make a note of that.
12 MS. RONEWICZ: Okay. And we are waiting
13 for any other comments. Waiting for hands raised.
14 Okay. And we'll wait about 30 seconds or so. If
15 anybody else has any comments, please go ahead and
16 raise your hand. Yes, okay. Patrick White, go ahead.
17 MR. WHITE: Great. I'm just following up
18 on my additional comment. I think if there were some
19 way to help kind of search out what types of documents
20 you're looking at, are you specifically looking at
21 correspondence, are you specifically looking at SECYs,
22 different regulatory guides, that might be helpful.
23 I can't recall if that's already available in the Web-
24 Based ADAMS, or if that can be an additional feature
25 just as a way to help kind of further clarify the
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 33
1 search results.
2 MS. DOMMETI: Sure. Thanks, Patrick. We
3 will have search by document type. Hopefully, that
4 is, I think, what you're referring to.
5 MR. WHITE: That's exactly it. Thank you
6 very much.
7 MS. RONEWICZ: Okay. And Jackie Toth,
8 please go ahead.
9 MS. TOTH: Jackie Toth at Good Energy
10 Collective. I just want to underscore what Patrick
11 just said. That would be very useful to be able to
12 indicate and differentiate between the various
13 document types.
14 And just thinking about accessibility
15 here, I think if there are ways and opportunities to
16 explore different colors or different icons that would
17 start to differentiate between many different document
18 types that are in ADAMS, that would be very helpful
19 from an accessibility perspective. Thanks, all.
20 MS. RONEWICZ: Thank you. Joe Gillespie,
21 please go ahead.
22 MR. GILLESPIE: Yes, hi. I just want to
23 point out that I would encourage the systems board --
24 and maybe this was addressed earlier, I joined a
25 little bit later -- that you all continue to keep the
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 34
1 documentation for whatever API is in place to keep
2 that updated because it's a very useful feature right
3 now for things like custom searches and using other
4 applications to access the information.
5 MS. DOMMETI: Sure. Thank you.
6 MS. WAGNER: Joe, can I ask a follow-up
7 question to that?
8 MR. GILLESPIE: Absolutely.
9 MS. WAGNER: What applications are you
10 thinking of putting that into, just out of curiosity?
11 MR. GILLESPIE: Right now, I use it in a
12 couple of different ways. One is to, you know, I run
13 a small application that will go and query the API for
14 recent documents based on certain dockets or
15 adjudicatory documents, things like that.
16 Alternatively, I've used it for pulling information
17 about titles and information from documents to go and,
18 you know, so I can put an ML number and just find that
19 information in different formats. Like, mine sends it
20 directly from an Excel document or, I mean, an Excel
21 file, for example.
22 MS. WAGNER: Awesome. Thank you. I
23 appreciate that additional information.
24 MS. RONEWICZ: Okay. Dave Lochbaum,
25 please go ahead. Okay. Dave Lochbaum, please go
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 35
1 right ahead with your comment. We can't hear you if
2 you're speaking, Dave Lochbaum. Okay. Maybe there
3 was an issue.
4 Okay. So looking to hear any other
5 comments. Please go ahead and raise your hand. Yes,
6 Andy Ratchford.
7 MR. RATCHFORD: Hi. One of the things I
8 struggle with is the document type, and I think some
9 others have brought about that. I know it's heavily
10 populated, but sometimes, like, I'll note something is
11 an inspection report but it might be coded as NRC
12 inspection report. You know, there's trip report and
13 trip reports and things like that, so maybe having
14 some flexibility in that document type that will pick
15 up all of the things that look like a license
16 amendment request or an inspection report or something
17 like that might be helpful because I think they're
18 probably limited to what it was coded at the time for
19 a document type, and it might not be what we would
20 traditionally call it. So that's my input on document
21 type because there are a lot of choices, and some of
22 them look to be duplicates to each other and things.
23 MS. RONEWICZ: Thank you for that. Okay.
24 I'm waiting for other questions or other comments.
25 MR. FRUMKIN: Hey, Lynn. This is Dan
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 36
1 Frumkin again. A couple of questions ago, I think
2 maybe before Joe Gillespie's question, somebody talked
3 about accessibility, the use of icons, the ability to
4 click on a certain type and drill down. Again, I
5 think it would be helpful if we had some examples of
6 -- we know about Google, which doesn't really do those
7 things, but what other examples of commercially-
8 available library search software can we look at and
9 say, oh, yes, that's what they're talking about
10 because right now it's a very, I guess, theoretical.
11 But I think if we could get some examples of actual
12 products that other large vendors use, we could maybe
13 make some progress faster if we know what it is that
14 we're going to be looking for. Especially if they're
15 government tools that are out there that do this
16 better than you think NRC does, please let us know
17 because we can collaborate with government agencies.
18 So any of the questioners, please, if you
19 have examples of, like, well, if ADAMS looked like
20 this, other than Google, let us know and we will be
21 able to take that into consideration.
22 MS. RONEWICZ: So anybody that would like
23 to respond to Dan? No need to raise your hand. Just
24 go ahead one at a time and feel free to provide any
25 input to Dan that you'd like to. And there will be
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 37
1 information at the end if you think of things you
2 would like to send in. So let's give it a little bit
3 more time for any other comments. Please go ahead and
4 raise your hand. We'll give it about 30 seconds more,
5 and then we'll turn it over for closing remarks.
6 Seeing no hands raised, we will go ahead
7 and turn it over to Basia Sall for closing remarks.
8 MS. SALL: Thanks so much, Lynn. First,
9 thank you, everybody, for your participation in this
10 public meeting. As a chief data officer for NRC, one
11 of my key responsibilities is engaging agency
12 employees and the public in using public data assets
13 and encouraging the collaborative approaches to
14 improving data use. By opening the doors to data, we
15 can really start to unlock innovation as we move
16 forward.
17 If you have additional comments about
18 anything we've discussed today, you can contact the
19 public document room resource, and that's located at
20 pdr.resource@nrc.gov. We encourage participants
21 outside of NRC to provide public meeting feedback to
22 the NRC staff via the NRC public meeting website. A
23 link will be posted shortly after the conclusion of
24 this meeting.
25 Thank you all for participating in this
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com 38
1 public meeting about Web-Based ADAMS. Your feedback
2 is valuable to us.
3 With that, this meeting is concluded, and
4 we thank you all for attending.
5 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went
6 off the record at 1:47 p.m.)
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com