Public Records Requests in a Digital Age: Challenges and Solutions
We recently conducted a digital communications survey and discovered some telling findings about the challenges government agencies face in fulfilling public records requests. The responses also revealed a trend toward declining government transparency overall.
Alarmingly, 53% of respondents who were polled indicated they were unable to fulfill a records request for employee communications. This snapshot paints a troubling picture because the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provides the public the legal right to request access to records from any federal agency, with some exceptions. Thus, if a federal government agency cannot fulfill a public records request, that’s a violation of FOIA, which is designed to help keep citizens informed about the government’s operations.
“If half the communications requested of government can’t be provided, that’s a huge problem because that’s how people find out what their government is up to,” said David Cuillier, director of the Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida. As Cullier noted, it “puts a crimp on the whole process” if records cannot be retrieved, archived, searched or redacted.
Greater transparency not only promotes government accountability and a healthy democracy, but it also informs citizens about the inner workings of their local, state and federal government agencies. “You want to be able to trust that your government officials are operating in your best interest,” stressed Riley Lambert, senior government account executive at Smarsh.
The findings reflect a trend toward consistently less government transparency year-over-year. Across the board, research shows that it’s getting more difficult to access public records from the government as the complexity around fulfillment increases.
According to a 2023 Public Records Complexity Benchmark Report by Granicus, since 2018, the request volume is up 94%, the quantity of response documents sent to requesters is up 73%, and file size of those documents are up 322%.
Roadblocks to government transparency
The big question is why aren’t government agencies responding to these requests? There are several roadblocks as to why public records are more difficult to get today than in years past.
“Sometimes you have some officials who just want to avoid embarrassment, and the higher-ups will tell the clerks, ‘Don't give it out.’ We see that,” Cuillier said.
However, the more common reason has to do with, “the ease of requesting records electronically and the difficulty in finding records electronically, which is counterintuitive,” Cuillier explained.
Most people today make records requests electronically. It’s fast and convenient. Not only are more records requests being made than before, but those requests are getting more complex. Now that most records are digitized, keyword searches can make finding specific documents even more difficult, instead of easier.
“It was a lot easier when you had a file cabinet and everybody knew what records were where and in what drawer, and you just walk over and get it and make a photocopy,” said Cuillier. “In fact, the most common response we’re hearing now to records requests across the country is, ‘We don’t have records responsive to your request.’ In other words, they can’t find the records.”
That’s one factor that explains the continued decline in transparency by government agencies.
Moreover, digital records are typically in many different systems or siloed across an organization, which makes responding to records requests even more difficult.
“Couple that with sometimes outdated recordkeeping solutions, and that just makes the burden on a record manager that much more difficult,” Lambert said. “As a result, you have less transparency because it’s harder to produce complex records.”
All-consuming and resource-intensive process
Moreover, government agencies are using all kinds of digital communication channels to communicate today – Facebook, text messaging, Microsoft Teams, and many more – creating a complex web of open records that need to be captured before a records request can even be responded to.
For many government agencies and other public-sector organizations, responding to records requests is an all-consuming and resource-intensive process.
In fact, according to the survey findings, the majority of respondents reported that they receive one to two record requests each week. Some even receive more than 20 per week. Additionally, approximately 80% reported that they spend one to five hours a week fulfilling records requests, while approximately 10% said they spend up to 16 hours each week. Tackling these ‘all-hands-on-deck' requests day-in and day-out drain teams of their time and their mental energy.
Furthermore, the respondents to this survey indicated they serve in the job roles of IT, administration, clerical work, or education. So, even having to respond to one or two records requests per week places too much time spent on one task, especially when it’s not their primary job function.
Best practices for improving government transparency
There are many measures government agencies can adopt to become more open and transparent.
“Number one is better funding,” Cuillier said. “We need to fund the system better – more public-records custodians and better technology. That’s critical.”
Some measures should be taken from a governance standpoint as well, such as providing training to custodians and requesters. New systems need to be put into place to help custodians more easily respond to public records requests.
Governance also plays a role here. Internal procedures need changing, such as defining who handles which records types, and empowering records managers with the autonomy to respond to records requests without having to leverage IT. This means streamlining workflows and generally removing the obstacles.
Lastly, methods of responding to record requests need to be modernized to keep pace with the digital age. “Even amongst those that are responding electronically, you need to have the right solutions in place,” Lambert said.
That’s where technology solutions, like those offered by Smarsh, can play a valuable and critical role. By automating the capture of data from various communication channels and improving the record search and retrieval, agencies can improve transparency and reduce the financial and reputational risk of a FOIA violation.
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