If you had to pick just one marker as an indicator of public records request complexity, total time spent might be it.
Simple requests fit a simple description: they’re clear on what’s being sought; they’re easily handled within a logical, efficient system; and responsive documents are easy to find and provide. On the other hand, many factors, alone and in combination, can lead to requests taking many hours — sometimes over weeks or months — to resolve. These are the primary hallmarks of time-consuming requests:
We’ll discuss each of these factors below in more detail, and some in the context of other index markers. We’ll also discuss the role of customer-service orientation in responding to public records requests. The degree to which jurisdictions go beyond what’s legally required in dealing with requesters is a choice each jurisdiction or agency makes for itself, but we’ll give you some input on how extra effort can transform the government-citizen relationship and ultimately save time.
These are run-of-the-mill records requests (no lack of clarity, no controversies, no special management issues) that just require a lot of time and effort to complete. Depending on state law, jurisdictions might be able to recover costs to provide responses above and beyond a minimal charge for record copying.
These are some of the main reasons routine requests can become time sinks:
Some real-world insights on how these factors play out comes through the Washington State Legislature Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee’s (JLARC) 2019 survey to jurisdictions on public records request metrics, including total time spent on requests:
How jurisdictions can treat requests that are variously termed “repeat,” “vexatious,” “unduly burdensome,” or “harassing” depends largely on what state law provides. Federal law defines “unduly burdensome” requests under FOIA, but that doesn’t apply to state and local governments. Any of the Washington State situations described in the JLARC data might have in fact been vexatious or unduly burdensome, but at the time this article was published, Washington State had no provisions for managing such requests. It’s possible that JLARC’s work, which was mandated by state law starting in 2018, was aimed at beginning to get a handle on how to deal with vexatious requests.
On the other end of the spectrum, Texas law has an entire code section, “Requests That Require Large Amounts of Employee or Personnel Time,” allowing jurisdictions to severely limit time spent on requests.
Unclear requests leave you scratching your head over what requesters are after. They often lead you to wonder “what is this requestor really concerned about?” rather than what records they want. We’ll address unclear requests in detail under the number of clarification emails generated marker, but a practice that can really pay off to short-circuit unclear requests and save hours of unproductive time is to consider whether the requester really wants documents at all — or whether what they really want is information.
Looking through citizens’ eyes, it’s easy to see how the dividing lines between information, records, and documents get blurred. Most people have at least heard of the federal Freedom of Information Act and making FOIA requests, and this terminology can get generalized to mean any kind of records or information from any government. This confusion gets reinforced across all kinds of media, so people don’t know they can get lots of information without asking for actual records. Or they might want electronic or paper records but don’t really know in what form they exist or how to ask for them.
For example, people might see a local government construction project underway in their neighborhood and want to know what it is and how it might affect them. Savvy governments often anticipate questions and add a contact name and info to signage posted at the site. But inquiries can snowball into complex records requests — especially if a requester is unhappy and has gotten input from other sources — and become “all project records including design drawings, engineer-stamped plans, consultant contracts, etc.”
If you think a requester has a concern or just wants information, a phone call before immediately starting to gather documents requesters don’t actually want can work wonders. As the public records coordinator for the Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission Reported in a 2019 survey of public records activities, of nine requests received, two “were originally stated as public records requests but were deemed to not be … but simply information requests on agency activities.”
It’s a question of customer service — which we’ll further address below — but a call from public records staff might well come as a welcome surprise to a requester. Especially in the last few decades, government workers have been unfairly labeled unresponsive and uncaring, and taking the initiative to reach out contravenes this attitude and helps cooperation grow in the place of wariness.
As you engage with the requester, you might find that what presented as a complex, onerous records request simply goes away, replaced by a chat between the requester and a neighborhood project manager and maybe adding the requester to the project mailing list. Initiating contact like this can help citizens feel they are equipped with information they can use rather than like they need to gather documents as ammunition for a battle.
None of us needs reminding that the seismic events of 2020 changed the world, including the world of public records requests.
People struggled to understand who — if anyone — had answers in the face of what felt like a stream of chaos turning the world upside down, and all while we were essentially confined to our homes.
The Public Record Complexity Index indicates that after mid-2020 the hours spent on public records requests tripled on a per-request basis, from one hour, roughly averaged, to nearly three hours in the third quarter of 2020, and almost 3.7 hours in quarter four. While we can guess that COVID-19 and the George Floyd killing and aftermath meant that public health and law enforcement agencies were hit with increases in requests, they also had to deal with requests that took them much, much more time to respond to — including time spent redacting personal data from large health care files and police body cam videos.
In addition, the pandemic lockdowns created blockades to records for some agencies where physical access to records systems and collaborators was cut off, limited, or delayed.
Agencies might also have to spend more time figuring out what data they are and aren’t able to disclose. In early 2021, The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation filed suit on behalf of a journalist against the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) for denying a request for records related to COVID-19 deaths in December 2020. The journalist requested a spreadsheet with dates of individual deaths, the week in December each death was added to the state’s official tally, the age and race of each deceased person, and location/address of where the person had been infected and/or died. Michigan law exempts personal or individually identifiable health information (PII), as defined by federal law, from disclosure, and the plaintiff’s request was partially denied on the basis that the information could be used to identify individuals.
The plaintiff claimed, “To the extent that this spreadsheet represents any information originally contained by a vital record, it would be practically impossible to associate this aggregated and anonymized data with any particular [individual’s] vital record.” But how could anyone be sure of that, given the capabilities of existing technologies, not to mention future ones?
And the big, impactful events just keep on coming. Frigid temperatures, ice, and snow hit large swathes of the U.S. in February 2021, wreaking havoc especially on the Texas power grid. As of March 11, 2021, ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), which manages about 90% of the state’s electric power, had posted this notice on its website:
“Asking for the same information from multiple agencies can help speed up the process — if one agency is stalling, for example, or maybe even legitimately doesn’t have access to the data, you can circumvent them without having to start over from scratch.”
Most of us who deal with public records requests would be dismayed to see this advice for requesters online. While it’s hard to imagine how making identical requests to multiple agencies at the same government could “speed up the process,” it’s easy to see multiple scenarios for how it could involve hours and hours of personnel time.
A major benefit of a public-facing records request system like the Public Record Request Management solution offered by Granicus is that it guides people to make requests efficiently and effectively for both their needs and the government’s. But, intentionally or unintentionally, requesters do try to bypass these centralized systems.
If multiple agencies at the same government discover they’ve received the same request, they’ll often have to spend time detangling a mess, then designate a coordinator to act as a single point of contact to interact with the requester and the involved agencies to ensure the jurisdiction overall has thoroughly searched for responsive documents, otherwise complied with legal requirements, and documented its efforts.
The Granicus system automatically flags similar requests, bringing these to the attention of all assigned users in the system. This is especially helpful for decentralized governments.
As the City of Kennewick reports in the 2019 JLARC data, this request management time is often lost: “While we attempt to account for time spent actively working on requests, it’s difficult to capture time spent conversing about requests with colleagues, researching related records, meeting in teams to discuss requests, etc.” Chelan County echoes that sentiment: “I don’t feel like the time was adequately recorded … numerous employees … spend countless hours on these requests … These employees take their work home in order to meet deadlines.”
Granicus’ invoicing and payments module does allow users to log time and generate reports against that data, as well as estimates, invoices, and receipts.
If a request relates to a sensitive or controversial issue such as a lawsuit that involves staff, managers, legal teams, or even elected officials and their staff, the time can burgeon out of control. The City of Spokane when reporting to JLARC on its 2019 total hours spent, stated, “Of the estimated 24,369 hours; 8,000 hours are attributable to one public records request … related to a matter involved in significant litigation.” Eight thousand hours is the equivalent of four full-time employees for a year.
We’re used to applying the concept of customer service to government functions like water or electric utilities. It’s less common to see the records request and provision process from this perspective. And while it can add time and effort upfront, it can yield big benefits and end up saving time overall.
While technology has given us amazing mechanisms to facilitate making and processing public records requests, we’ve seen that not all citizens have access, ability, or even the desire to use online tools and systems. This is why governments provide multiple pathways for making requests: Through the front end of an online system like the one offered by Granicus, via email, snail mail, or in person (many jurisdictions require requests to be in writing and some allow them to be phoned in) and expect every request to be treated with the same respect and diligence.
Best Practice Note: Agency staff can enter requests that originate outside the intake portal (such as with in-person requests, as well as faxed, emailed, texted, and telephoned requests) into the Granicus system themselves — gaining the benefits of tracking and workflow management for every request, not just those entered via the public portal intake online form.
Here’s an example of how a customer service approach could affect the overall time it takes to process a request. This question and answer appeared in a “Frequently Asked Questions About the Public Records Act” article posted on the website westerncity.com, serving California:
“[Q]: A person requesting records from our department got very angry when we told him we didn’t have those records and that he would have to submit his request to another department in the city. He claimed that he should not have to go to another department and that our department should provide him with the requested records. Were we wrong to refer him to a different department?
“[A.] No. The PRA [California’s Public Records Act] obligates a local agency to supply those disclosable records that are in the agency’s ‘possession.’ Nothing in the law requires ‘one-stop shopping,’ nor may it be practical given the fact that not all city departments maintain all city records. Staff should, if possible, refer the requester to the proper holder of the records.”
The law might not require “one-stop shopping,” but in the process of communicating with the requester, the staff person would have had to invest the time anyway to understand what the requester wanted.
Let’s say that instead of telling the requester to start over and contact the correct department, the request handler offered to “bridge” with their counterparts in the right department to facilitate transferring the request. In taking this customer service-oriented approach, the handler is going above and beyond, hopefully impressing the requester and preventing anger and frustration — which we all know represents real costs to governments. The staff person might also have saved time for the jurisdiction overall by doing a colleague-to-colleague communication (or “translation,” which is sometimes necessary) of the request and letting the right department know of any issues or sensitivities that came up during the contact.
Note: this government-to-government hand-off could be automatic or, at the very least, greatly streamlined using Granicus’ Interagency, Subrequest, or Exchange Request features, depending on the agency’s configured workflows.
Back for a moment to our point about not all requesters being able to or comfortable with directly accessing an online system for requesting, communicating on, and receiving documents. Since these citizen’s requests are likely to take more time than those who are able to seamlessly mesh with online systems, interacting with “old school” requesters in a way that works for them is a customer service decision for governments to weigh. How much time are they willing and able to spend to not just meet legal requirements but show requesters the process is accessible to everyone?
There are no magic wands to eliminate the amount of time it takes to handle complicated requests — or even some simple ones. Even with logical, efficient systems in place for responsive action, requests received with short turnarounds, those with large numbers of documents to procure, unclear request parameters, or any combination of the three can create chaos in even the most refined teams.
While digital tools, such as those from Granicus, can help better withstand those storms, having a clear and committed philosophy dedicated to customer service and putting in effort to deal specifically with requesters can help reduce time while also transforming the government-citizen relationship
Learn more about the index in the 2025 Public Record Complexity Benchmark Report.
