The Department of the Treasury strongly supports transparency in government and is continually looking for ways to enhance our citizen-centered approach to increase public access to information. One area of focus is the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which enables citizens to access governmental records. To improve efficiency, Treasury has instituted a new, 21st century solution – goFOIA – that uses innovative technology to help citizens gain access to government documents more quickly.
goFOIA uses three tools to enhance efficiency. The first focuses on improved service to the public by allowing online submissions of FOIA requests. The second allows Treasury employees to use a new cloud-based tracking solution to manage FOIA requests and citizens’ information. The final tool provides employees a collaborative document management system to better handle the documents involved in responding to FOIA requests. Each of these tools is hosted in the cloud, allowing more flexible access and giving other agencies the opportunity to leverage Treasury’s investment by using our secure and private cloud-based system. These three tools were selected because they were cost effective, quick to implement and allowed a balance of efficiency and transparency.
For citizens, the biggest change is the ability to submit a FOIA request on the new Citizens’ Web Portal. For the first time, requestors are no longer required to provide a letter through U.S. Mail, nor do they have to search a web site for information on where to send an email.From our FOIA webpage , requestors simply need to click on “Submit an Online Request” to be taken to a website that provides fields designed to accurately file the request by helping them avoid common pitfalls which can delay processing. Upon submission, requestors receive an email confirmation with a unique FOIA Request Number that can be used to check on the request’s progress.
After requests are in our system, whether from the Portal or traditional mail submission, Treasury FOIA personnel from any computer with an internet connection can easily log in securely to track and share information about requests. This means more accurate reporting, which is used to achieve faster responses to requests and increase accountability. Additionally, the homepage dashboard calculates and charts the amount of pending requests and gauges the ten oldest requests in the agency –essential metrics in monitoring the FOIA administration.
Efficient tracking of requests is part of the challenge associated with ensuring timeliness of processing, but searching, reviewing, and providing the records also hold challenges. Reviewing records across several different Treasury offices can sometimes create redundancies and inefficiencies. The third prong of the approach, a collaborative document management tool addresses these challenges by providing a framework for program offices and sub-groups within the Department of the Treasury to collect, organize and compile their response in one place.
We’re working hard not just to fill each incoming FOIA request but to make the process easier, smarter, and more cost and time efficient. The cloud-based system we’ve put in place has brought each step in the process together to help achieve that goal.
