This is an excerpt from E-DISCOVERY AND FOIA: WHY FOIA AGENCIES NEED E-DISCOVERY SOFTWARE INTEGRATION?

WHAT IS FOIA?

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), also known as Public Records and FOI, represents the civil right of access to records held by the Government.

The Act defines what agency records are subject to disclosure, outlines mandatory disclosure procedures, and defines the 9 exemptions to the statute:

1.     Information that is classified to protect national security.

2.     Information related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency.

3.     Information that is prohibited from disclosure by another federal law.

4.     Trade secrets or commercial or financial information that is confidential or privileged.

5.     Privileged communications within or between agencies.

6.     Information that, if disclosed, would invade another individual’s personal privacy.

7.     Information compiled for law enforcement purposes that:

o    Could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings,

o    Would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication,

o    Could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,

o    Could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source,

o    Would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions. Or would disclose guidelines for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law,

o    Could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual.

8.     Information that concerns the supervision of financial institutions.

This is an excerpt from Armedia.com

Does your government agency have a difficult time keeping pace with responding to FOIA requests? That is likely due to having an old instead of a modern FOIA software solution. The FOIA Project made a study where they submitted an FOIA request to 21 different federal agencies to determine response rates. Two months after they submitted the requests, only seven government agencies responded adequately by providing records.

Federal agencies are as well inefficient when it comes to handling their records. It can be tough for federal agencies to find the particular records because they are flooded with electronic data. To make things even worse, they not only are continuously producing and collecting data, but also plenty of them must retain everything in continuity. So, there’s plenty to sort through when an FOIA request knocks on the door.

It stands to reason that government agencies need a modern FOIA software solutions to deal with the FOIA deluge. Here are a few differences between an old vs modern FOIA software solution and how it can help.

1.     PRE-COLLECTION ANALYTICS

Having a modern FOIA software solution for your government agency that provides pre-collection analytics is highly beneficial. They allow the agencies to estimate the breadth of an FOIA request immediately through keywords and other advanced searching, which in turn limits the amount of data that has to be extracted from the given repository to fulfill the request.

2.     PRE-REDACTION AND DOCUMENT REPOSITORY

This is an excerpt from Armedia.com

Manual processes of handling FOIA requests is both labor-intensive and time-consuming. Searching and reviewing documents to identify the material in the classification guidelines is a difficult and complex process. And, proper document marking can take up to several weeks. The truth is that managing, searching, and sharing documents efficiently costs the government money and time. These inefficiencies result in an inability to respond to FOIA requests in time, increased time spent on searching and accessing relevant data, and can jeopardize government compliance.

Armedia’s FOIA Software Solution helps government agencies eliminate FOIA bottlenecks and find and access the data they need quickly and cost-effectively. Our FOIA Software Solution provides automatic generation of compound term metadata and significantly improves access to unstructured data. With a wide range of tools for searching, metadata generation, and classification, agencies that seek to reduce costs, access to unstructured data, and facilitate the management, can now achieve significant improvements.

FOIA CHALLENGES THAT GOVERNMENT AGENCIES ARE FACING

As we’ve mentioned before, the challenge of managing, searching, finding, and sharing information on time costs the government money and time. Some of the issues regarding these challenges include:

Information retrieval in files, document management systems, and e-mail servers at the local level lowers the quality of information in the FOIA response.

The items that are still open after 20 days, increase the average cost of processing.

Inability to satisfy stakeholder and citizen requirements in a timely manner places additional burdens on the employees to meet the increasing information access requests of different constituents.

Responding to FOIA requests on time and ensuring government compliance is a complex and costly process. The classification/declassification process is usually inefficient and requires fairly big human resources and escalating costs for managing.

This is an excerpt from Armedia.com

Today, agencies are actively looking for the right software management solution in order to increase the rate and quality for responding to public records requests. Back then, agencies used basic web forms, fillable PDF’s, and even faxed requests. As solutions, such as Armedia FOIA Software Management Solution, come to market it is essential to understand what features are a must-have. Check out the 15 key features that you should look for in a software management solution.

 FOIA SOFTWARE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION: PLATFORM

The technology that runs the application is critical. It is what determines if the tool will keep up with the modern developments and your environment and if it will become a part of your daily operations or a severe thorn in your side.

 1. CLOUD-BASED

Modern FOIA software solutions should be cloud-based because they better support the way users consume technology and simplify the access to information. Our Armedia cloud-based solutions are way more secure, easier to manage, and have more frequent enhancements than ordinary, local solutions.

 2. COMPLIANT

The solution you choose should be compliant in three ways:

·         Functionality to support local and national legislation

·         Security certifications such as SOC II Type II

·         Cloud infrastructure

Armedia is compliant in all these ways.

3. LOW MAINTENANCE AND EASY SETUP

This is an excerpt taken from Armedia.com

Are you looking for ways to solve the overworked staff problem in your department? Sure, each and every agency wants to increase the effectiveness of their staff and the maturity of their department. However, only a few companies understand the core of the problem. That’s where our Armedia modern FOIA software solution comes in, to help you understand and solve the problem.

Perhaps you’re thinking,

“I don’t need a new solution. I don’t need software. I just need more, better staff.”

No, your agency does not need more, better staff. It needs increased efficiency in their productivity. We will now explain in detail how can you achieve that through a modern FOIA software solution.

ARMEDIA AS A MODERN FOIA SOFTWARE SOLUTION

This is an excerpt taken from Armedia.com 

With large-scale repetitive processes like FOIA requests management, it makes perfect sense to try and optimize the workflow as much as possible

Even a minor process improvement can mean avoiding tons of unneeded repetitive work.

Here are some of the best practices to improve your FOIA records request processes. Even if you apply one improvement to your workflow, the amount of avoided repetitive work can be enormous.

1.       PUT MORE INFORMATION ONLINE

Enabling the public to self-serve with more information online is the best way to fight increases in information release requests. Many agencies, such as the EPA, have used this practice to make whole categories of requests unnecessary.

That saved them millions of dollars in workload related expenses.

Now, you might be saying to yourself, “But the majority of our requests are for very particular documents that only one would want.”

Well, that may be true for most of the requests. But even if only 10% of your requests are for records you will release proactively, that’s still a considerable amount of time saved for your agency and for the public.

1.       TRACK THE NUMBER OF REQUESTS YOU GET

You would be startled to know just how many agencies are a bit behind on this or are not tracking agency-wide.

Ask yourself this:

“Could I easily and quickly discover the number of FOIA records request my whole agency, including all the departments, received this past year?”

If the answer is no, then you are putting yourself at serious legal risk. Also, you will not be able to determine how you can improve the FOIA records request processes for your staff and the public.

But that’s why Armedia is here to help you out. With Armedia FOIA request management solution, all requesters receive a tracking number by which they can very easily track the number of requests they get. The solution also notifies requesters of the track in which the request is placed.

More proactive information disclosure and higher transparency are the current needs of federal agencies responding to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Complying with the FOIA is the essential way in which the government agencies serve US democracy. But, the reality is that complying these regulations is extremely expensive and time-consuming.

1. EASILY DETERMINE IF DOCUMENTS MEET THE NEEDS OF THE FOIA REQUEST

Government agencies can use automated FOIA request solutions to determine more easily if all the documents meet the needs of the request. Furthermore, government agencies need to be able to manage FOIA requests on an annual basis. Utilizing FOIA software solution will not only help them in streamlining the whole process internally but also in reporting outside entities.

ArkCase FOIA software solution has capabilities for document production, processing, and recordkeeping which enable users to:

·         Considerably reducing the time for searching and photocopying,

·         Download, email, or batch print after redacting documents,

·         Save redacted record collections for future requests.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Government agencies are rapidly beginning to take advantage of automated FOIA software solutions and are showing exceedingly positive results.

Some agencies have concerns that adopting a FOIA software solution will mean throwing their currently established processes and starting from scratch. To avoid such a radical step, some of the government agencies are going to vendors asking for completely customized FOIA workflows. And some of them are implementing solutions built just for a specific purpose such as document redaction. Most solutions that only offer reduction do not offer document repository and a web-based solution, and they don’t offer eFOIA solutions.

This is an excerpt from Armedia.com

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) which supports release of information (ROI) gives citizens the right to request access to undisclosed information, managed by the government. Citizens are becoming more aware of their rights and are increasingly using FOIA to get more information about government actions that affect them. On the other hand, the government can’t keep pace with the flood of FOIA requests.

FOIA organizations are lagging behind a constantly growing and challenging workload. While almost every part of government has implemented some workflow automation, the changing demands and increasing complexity of the FOIA have led to lapses in effectively processing requests.

Every agency that handles FOIA requests wants to build a system that will support its primary tasks and improve the entire organization’s performance. Every year the number of FOIA requests increases together with the FOIA backlog. An effective solution for organizations to handle this backlog is automation of FOIA requests.

HOW WILL FOIA REQUEST MANAGEMENT SOLUTION HELP ORGANIZATIONS?

FOIA is all about taking information and making it available to citizens, ensuring that the information is safe for publishing, and then granting access to those who requested this information. A software solution to handle all these tasks should promote efficiency and collaboration within the organization. Here’s a short list:

·         Automating FOIA requests will help organizations throw away the black marker and white tape, and respond to requests more efficiently and quickly.

·         Organizations will have a more systematic way of organizing information and can minimize challenges while searching and accessing large volumes of records in different systems.

·         Organizations will be able to meet legislated deadlines and improve their accuracy and timely reporting.

·         Employees will be able to do much more with the same resources, reduce the backlog and provide better service to the citizens.