The Relationship Between E-Discovery and FOIA

When we talk about e-discovery software integration, we mean on electronically sharing information which can be requested by FOIA.

From the moment of requesting submission to delivery, FOIA is very similar to e-discovery.

They both need to:

• Review and identify records to prevent disclosing exempted information to the public,
• Centralize and standardize an enormous amount of electronic documents,
• Give information under a given deadline, and
• Locate information linked to specific issues

After receiving FOIA request to a federal agency, it handled by that body’s FOIA coordinator. He has 20 business days to respond on that request. Seeing the large volumes of ESI federal agencies, responding on time is a significant challenge.

To Sum Up

E-discovery is often used to control costs and increase efficiency when making ESI productions in government investigations or litigation. This operational similarity can be used for improving productivity and efficiency among federal agencies that deal with FOIA. You are asking HOW? By integrating e-discovery as part of agencies’ FOIA Software Solution.

Old vs Modern FOIA Software Solution

Processing FOIA requests is a time-consuming process. That’s why using a modern FOIA software solution instead of a traditional one is a really good idea.

Government agencies must have a modern FOIA software solution for their FOIA requests. Why? Take a look at these differences between an old and a modern FOIA software solution and you will see my point.

1. An old FOIA software solution only serves reduction, but a modern FOIA software solution serves document repository.
2. An old FOIA software solution provides only a paper-based FOIA requests processes. Using a modern FOIA software solution government agencies can have a web-based automation solution.
3. By using an old FOIA software solution, the government can’t respond to their FOIA requests quickly. Because of that agencies have to implement a modern flexible and fast FOIA software solution.

An automated solution enables improved e-FOIA request processing and tracking.

Benefits of Using a Modern FOIA Software Solution

Armedia offers a modern, web-based FOIA software solution for helping government agencies to quickly manage large numbers of FOIA requests.

Benefits of using Armedia FOIA software solution:

• The requested information is electronically delivered.
• Automated business intelligence.
• It is mobile friendly, etc.

Armedia FOIA software solution makes everything digital and easily searchable.

Conclusion

Using an automated FOIA software solution provides government agencies with web-based workflow and most importantly-satisfied citizens.
So, if you are looking for a reliable and cost-effective modern FOIA software solution then take a look at Armedia FOIA software solution.

Modern FOIA Software Solutions

The government spends a lot of time and money on managing and sharing information.

Some of the challenges that the government is facing are:

• Items that are open more than 20 days, are increasing the cost of processing.
• Failure to satisfy the colleagues and citizens additional burdens the employees to meet the increasing information access request of different constituents.
• The process of responding to FOIA requests on time in very complex and costly and requires huge human resources for managing.

Modern FOIA Software Solution

Modern FOIA software solution is a flexible, open source management system to help agencies easily handle FOIA requests.

Armedia FOIA software helps agencies to automate manage and search the requests that are coming.

The modern FOIA software will automatically send the request to the adequate queue and respond very quickly.

Modern FOIA software solution can produce all records concerning the issues in question.

Using Armedia FOIA Software Solution helps to:

• Eliminate FOIA bottlenecks
• Find and access data on an easy and cost-effective way

Also, FOIA software solution can provide automatic generation of metadata and improves access to unstructured data.

With a big range of tools for search and metadata generation, government agencies can now achieve significant improvements.

Benefits Of Implementing FOIA Software Solution

Some of the FOIA software benefits are:

• Ability to handle with citizens and stakeholders FOIA requests reducing the internal costs.
• Reducing the time and costs spent on asking legal requests.
• Reducing the time and costs answering FOIA requests etc.…

Conclusion

Using Modern FOIA software solution you can handle FOIA requests only in few hours. With this, government agencies will reduce costs and increase their efficiency. Also, with Modern FOIA software solution now agencies can increase documents security and can be protected from data loss.

Top 5 Features To Look For In A FOIA Software Solution

All the time, agencies are looking to find the right software management solution that will increase the rate and quality for responding to public records requests.

Armedia FOIA Software Management Solution shows you what features are a must. So, let’s take a look at some of them.

1. Compliance

The FOIA software solution you are looking for should be compliant in 3 ways:

• Functionality to support local and national legislation
• Security certifications such as SOC II Type II
• Cloud infrastructure

And ArkCase FOIA software solution is compliant in the 3 ways.

2. Low Maintenance and Easy Setup

ArkCase FOIA has a complete dashboard with a point-and-click user interface (no-coding). So, you can set up our solutions and have a path for customizations without extensive projects. This is a feature every solid FOIA software solution should offer.

3. Reporting and Metrics

Agencies with expanses of at least $100.000 are required by legislation to report on request activities and expenses.

4. Public Records Officer Dashboard

The dashboard includes a calendar where the public records officer has the ability to see which requests need a response right away, those that have some issue, and the total number of requests. This feature of ArkCase FOIA is very important for determining the urgency of FOIA requests. As such, this feature is something that every federal agency should look for in a FOIA solution because it significantly simplifies FOIA records management.

5. Advanced Case Viewer

All documents should be visible in one single window with the ability to preview and launch the original document.

It is crucial to choose the right FOIA software management solution that will manage public records.

The platform that doesn’t provide up-to-date features will prove to be more expensive to customize.

Armedia solutions provide all of these and hope that this article helped you to pick the right software management solutions for your agency.

Solve The Overworked Staff Problems With A Single FOIA Software Solution

Very often federal agencies think that they have a problem with lack of staff. But the truth is that in most of the cases, federal agencies have a problem with overworked staff and their efficiency.

Every agency needs to grow the effectiveness of their department.
So, if you are looking for ways to solve the overworked staff problem in your department, Armedia has the solution.

Armedia offers ArkCase FOIA software solution that can help you to:

1. Lower costs and be more productive. Armedia FOIA software solution will save your agency staff members a lot of time and your clients will be satisfied.
2. Track & analyze staff productivity and utilization. There are a lot of factors that can affect your productivity and utilization. You need to find out how your stuff is spending their time and analyze it.
   Armedia can easily track and categorize activities and provide your team with a better understanding of work effectiveness.
3. Improve your planning. Armedia has a variety of tools that will quickly and easily schedule staff tasks, assignments, and milestones.
4. Optimize with Armedia through ArkCase. ArkCase is a platform that successfully delivers an automated FOIA case management solution that is scalable, easily configurable and compliant with its dashboard and drag and drop functionality.

To sum up

You need to understand your agency’s current productivity so you can improve your staff productivity by comparing planned vs. actual results. Modern software solution as ArkCase provides proactive and clear FOIA communication which improves staff productivity.