The U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), enacted in 1966, ruled government agencies must provide citizens with access to information and records, to uphold openness and accountability. Since then, individual U.S. states have passed their own right to know laws. And following President Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, presidential memos set new expectations for how agencies must handle FOIA requests and guarantee transparency.
All government agencies are required to provide records to the public upon request, often within a short deadline – a burden for busy agencies that may handle hundreds of requests per day. Additionally, agencies need to protect against accidentally releasing unauthorized, sensitively classified, or personal identification information. For example, documents may contain data about citizens that can’t be shared with the public, or even between branches of an organization, or agencies within a city.
Polgroup Corp.’s Compliance Module for FOIA, an add-on to its StrategicValueWare, allows government agencies to meet public requests for information, while selectively “redacting” or blacking out confidential parts of an imaged (PDF) document.
Benefits
Allows agencies to efficiently handle FOIA requests, protecting against release of sensitive material
Enables a worker to find an imaged (PDF) document in DocuShare, easily block classified portions with the redaction editor, and save, print or e-mail the document to meet a request
Provides multi-level security for blacked-out zones within a document
Creates pre-defined redaction profiles for standardized documents
DocuShare audit trails log a history of activities for a document, helping agencies to account for FOIA practices later
The PolGroup Corporation, a New Jersey corporation founded in 2001 is a system integrator, consulting firm and Xerox Business Partner. Polgroup helps customers by understanding their unique process flow and then delivering solutions, systems and services that increase efficiency, improve document process work flows, and reduce cost of operations. PolGroup also has offices in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York and Europe. See Police Records Imaging, StrategicValueWare, and visit www.polgroup.com.
Compliance Module: FOIA – Polgroup Corporation