OVERVIEW
The Town of Queen Creek, Arizona, experienced rapid population growth and, as a result, faced a rising demand for public records. Manual processes and a legacy records management system made it difficult for the small team to track requests, coordinate across departments, and communicate with the public in a timely manner — ultimately leading to delayed access for frustrated citizens. The town implemented Granicus’ Records Request Management (GovQA) to create a streamlined workflow for records requests. The enhanced communication and reporting capabilities contributed to award-winning service that Queen Creek Deputy Town Clerk Victoria Roedig says “is a testament to our commitment to modernizing the way we serve our community.”
SITUATION
The Town of Queen Creek has experienced extraordinary growth over the past decade, creating significant demands on municipal services and operations. According to Town Clerk Maria Gonzalez, the community’s population has grown from approximately 50,000 residents to more than 90,000, while the clerk’s office remained a very small team, expanding from just two employees for more than 30 years to three staff members today. This rapid growth has driven a substantial increase in public records requests; the town receives nearly 800 requests a year — an amount that has grown fivefold over the past six years.
Gonzalez recalls that departments were previously receiving requests directly, which made tracking difficult and provided limited visibility into request status. “When I started, it was a paper process,” said Gonzalez. “There was no mechanism to filter requests to the clerk’s office, so we could never really track what was coming in.”
The team tried another popular digital records solution before its recent switch to Granicus, but that platform proved to be insufficient to handle their complexities and introduced a new set of challenges:
Feeling that there was a better solution available, the town sought a fit-for-purpose platform that could simplify workflows and improve collaboration for staff, while simultaneously supporting their commitment to excellent public service.
SOLUTION
Queen Creek selected Granicus’ Records Request Management after researching alternatives and speaking with peers in the clerk community. The solution stood out as well known for its ability to streamline complex, multi-department public records processes, so the team dove into a quick implementation process of less than three months.
Records Request Management routes requests directly to the appropriate department and creates sub-requests when record searches require input from multiple teams.
“Having the ability to assign a department means everything doesn’t have to filter into the clerk’s office for us to go through — which took a lot of time before with the old system,” explained Gonzalez. “Previously, requests would remain open because no one had the time to address them. Now it’s being taken care of as the request is being generated.”
As-built requests — which are frequent requests for development-related records from multiple departments — account for more than a quarter of all requests. A dedicated workflow was developed to move as-built requests directly to the groups responsible for gathering those records, reducing manual coordination and ensuring requests reached the right teams immediately.
“We were able to get it set up so that it generated directly to the as-built group,” explained Gonzalez. “The flow is much more streamlined.”
Staff now has access to audit trails, built-in redaction tools, customer communications, and reporting capabilities — all of which help the town maintain transparency while reducing administrative effort.
RESULTS
Queen Creek now manages its growing number of records requests while delivering the responsive customer experience residents expect. In fact, the average completion time for a request is now just five days.
“The turnaround time and the response time to the customers is much better,” said Gonzalez. “They don’t feel like they’re lost in the shuffle. They know that they’re going to get a response. We have a very vocal community with direct access to the council, and they never have to go to council and say, ‘We’re not getting a response.’”
Residents now have the visibility to see that the town received their request, and they get status updates throughout the process. This transparency helps build trust — and reduce phone calls — while easing frustrations for both the public and staff.
“With records requests growing annually, I am very proud of the fact that we’ve made things more streamlined in-house. We’re constantly shifting and pivoting from one thing to the next, so to be able to have processes defined from the get-go at the customer level really saves us time,” said Gonzalez. “Our internal customers can shift their attention elsewhere, and records requests are no longer a big weight on their shoulders.”
The clerk’s office manages nearly 800 requests annually within the Records Request Management platform, 27% of which are complex, multi-department requests that are now handled with ease. The new and improved system frees up staff to focus on the town’s award-winning operational excellence.
“Winning the Granicus Digital Government Operational Excellence Award is a testament to our commitment to modernizing the way we serve our community,” said Roedig. “Implementing GovQA (Granicus’ Records Request Management) allowed us to transform our public records request process that was often a complex and time-consuming task, into a streamlined and user-friendly experience.”
This story highlights the hard work and innovation that earned the Town of Queen Creek recognition as a winner in the 15th Annual Granicus Digital Government Awards, honoring exceptional achievements in digital government.
⚠️ REALITY CHECK: Public records pressure is growing
Granicus’ 2026 Trends in Public Records Request Management Report found that nearly half of government records professionals surveyed reported significant growth in public records request volume in recent years, while complexity is driving a 21-50% increase in average processing time for many agencies. The report also found that 59.7% of respondents cited staffing shortages as a challenge, and 71.4% said the quantity of responsive documents contributes to processing complexity.
For Queen Creek’s three-person clerk’s office, those trends were already real. By modernizing with Granicus’ Records Request Management, the town created a more scalable process for routing, tracking, redacting, and closing requests — helping the team manage rising demand while maintaining responsive public service.
