The role of automation in FOIA compliance.

• Author: Dillow, Cindy
• Position: TECH TRENDS - Freedom of Information Act

The demand for transparency at every level of the federal government has played a prominent role in the escalation of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, which, as reported on the www.foia.gov website, rose from slightly above 514,000 in 2009 to more than 714,000 in 2014.

It should not be surprising that the public expects the same transparency for other levels and branches of government; increases in filings also have been reported in those states and municipalities that have enacted similar freedom of information laws.

Increases are expected to continue over the next decade as large volumes of government-generated information becomes available and citizen demand grows--in part because of an information-savvy public that understands requests do not have to be limited to documents, but can include such things as videos, e-mail messages, and even text messages.

To respond to such filings, agencies must spend a significant amount of time, manpower, and money, in particular those agencies that continue to rely on manually processing and reviewing requests.

Implementing technology to automate processes is a solution, but only if the technology can handle all of its aspects--from FOIA request rceipt, to its review and release--in compliance with all requirements.

The Challenge of the FOIA Environment

Federal agencies face unique challenges in responding to FOIA requests, especially those decentralized entities in which branches or offices have the autonomy to make their own decisions. Without technological standardization, various departments in the same agency may have different responses to a specific information request.

This challenge is magnified when the request is made to a massive government agency. The Department of Justice (DOJ), for example, is a decentralized agency that, according to its website, has 37 bureaus, divisions, offices, and boards collectively referred to as "components," each of which maintains and processes its own records and, consequently, may have a unique FOIA response protocol and, therefore, provide different responses.

A FOiA request to the DOJ may need to be reviewed by any number of these components, and it may entail consultation between components or redirection to another agency. These factors help explain why the DOJ's 70,000 FOIA requests in 2013 required the services of more than 500 employees.

Technology to the Rescue

FOIA or other information processing that doesn't leverage the advanced...