Blog Posts about Best Practices

Many public agencies are facing increases in public records requests. It can be a costly problem to solve, and even more costly to ignore. Choosing the wrong solution can result in bad press, damage to public trust, and lawsuits.

School districts have seen an increase in records requests, in not only request numbers but request breadth, because of their role in school governance. Compiling documents for these wide-ranging requests can be expensive and time-consuming without a records request management system. NextRequest makes the process quicker, easier, and safer for school districts.

When the pandemic hit in March 2020, college students were about to go on Spring Break. But faculty and staff didn’t get a break when they needed to quickly pivot to a remote-first work model. How has COVID affected how universities operate and how has that affected how they manage records requests?

The saying goes “when public health works, we’re invisible”. This has never been more false than during the uncertain times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Public health officials are stretched thin, overworked, and burnt out. Infections may slow down, but public records requests will only increase.

The latest update on our Equal Employment Opportunities efforts here at NextRequest.

Here’s everything you need to know about the ARP Act without having to slug through the actual 242 page bill.

Law Enforcement Agencies tend to think that they only need an RMS or a FOIA solution, but at NextRequest, we see a huge advantage in deploying both.

A major piece of government transparency is cybersecurity. At NextRequest, we know small agencies can struggle building good cybersecurity teams, so we sat down with an expert to find out how it can be done.

As a Board member at NextRequest, co-founder of Blck VC, and Partner at Storm Ventures, Frederik Groce is looking for new opportunities in venture capital.

Our goal at NextRequest is to simplify the FOIA request process for governments and their citizens. We constantly strive to improve our core product and user experience, so this weekend, we launched our beta preview for the new Request Show page in the NextRequest application!

Body-worn cameras used by law enforcement officials is still a new phenomenon. How has this usage become so prevalent, how does their real-time information benefit the community, and what drawbacks are there to outfitting our law enforcement agencies with cameras?

What does the current landscape of public records look like? Read to dive into the five main issues affecting public records request management right now.

Municipal clerks always have a lot on their plates, but this year is a real doozy. The presidential election, coupled with a global pandemic, has led to countless changes and a lot of ambiguity. Read on to hear how clerks have risen to the challenge (as always).

Over $2 trillion dollars has been released in the 2020 CARES Act, but not all recipients have been given equal shares. In this post we breakdown how state and local governments have been allotted different totals and what they've been told they can (and cannot) spend the money on.

Identity theft doesn’t just affect individuals, it can also have devastating effects on businesses and government. We live in a world that is “protected” by thousands of invisible gateways that hackers are learning newer and newer ways to get into. Read our quick tips on password best-practices.

We want to challenge government agencies to constantly be evaluating software to meet their organization's current needs. Read our audit guide to reviewing technology vendors.

Our engineering and design team just released our new and improved All Requests page. It’s look and feel is different, but we made sure to preserve the core functionality and experience. Learn more about the process and what went into the new page.

Can you answer the question “what is a public record” if asked on the spot? Curious what your state includes in its definition of public records? Read to learn all about public records.

Our customers have been telling us that there is a big social component to their jobs and working remotely has been quite the adjustment. Working without the constant hum of colleagues and constituents can be a difficult transition. There are lots of novel ways to connect. This post details those.

Tune in as we sit down with Jihan "Gigi" Soliman, the Assistant City Attorney for the City of Miami to discuss the city's trials and tribulations on public records management during COVID-19. This webinar is Florida-specific.

There are lots of organizations out there that help local governments and communities by offering research, events, and resources. They help to share news, best-practices, and are communities unto themselves. Learn more and get connected.

Tune in as we chat with our customer Eugene Park, the Deputy Port Attorney at the Port of Oakland as he talks about his experience navigating the many "new normals" that COVID-19 has caused in his agency.

Listen in as we talk with customer Gavin Young, the Senior Director for Public Records at UNC Chapel Hill, to discuss the public records trials and tribulations that COVID-19 has caused.

We had the opportunity to sit down with Linda Mendenhall, the Deputy City Clerk and Charity Callahan, City Clerk Specialist of Avondale Arizona to discuss their trials and tribulations on public records management during COVID-19. Listen in!

An all-too familiar problem still plagues many governments: spreadsheets. They're manual, prone to errors, and just simply inefficient. Learn why spreadsheets are bad for your government and ways to overcome them.

Listen in to a recent talk we had with customer Lissa Herrera, the Records Manager/Legal/City Clerk of Las Cruces, NM, to discuss the public records trials and tribulations that COVID-19 has caused.

Don't miss our recent chat with Renée Kingston, the Assistant City Administrator/City Clerk of Camdenton, MO, to discuss the public records trials and tribulations that COVID-19 has caused.

There are so many resources to help with remote work online, but they’re not always obvious or easy to find. We’ve put together a list of helpful remote work resources to get local government employees through this pandemic.

Those new to working from home are probably facing difficulties in maintaining focus and keeping on-task. Many states have enacted extensions for certain business processes like records requests management, but that just means there’ll be a backlog waiting once shelter-in-place is over. Keeping up with or getting ahead of certain tasks will help those in local government to transition back to more “normal” working conditions easier.

Text messages are a new medium of public record that government agencies have to manage. They’re messy, they’re hard to get ahold of, and they’re clogging up public record pipelines. Read on to get expert tips on how other agencies manage text messages and get best practices on how to tackle them.

What exactly is 508 compliance? Who needs it, what does it look like, and why should governments insist on vendors being 508 compliant?

Managing record requests can be burdensome. It can be time consuming. Sometimes it’s ambiguous. Laws are always changing. New record types pop up all the time. We want to offer easy, actionable steps to help governments move towards a better FOIA management system. We want to show how simple it can be.

Reviewing a high volume of files is often time consuming, can create a disorganized workflow, and may become a barrier to releasing documents in a compliant manner. RapidReview allows you to organize requests, easily extract emails, batch redact information, and quickly review documents for responsiveness to create a smoother workflow for everyone who needs access.

"Proactive Publishing" of FOIA requests allows governments to manage and preserve public records while allowing communities to easily find information. Read on to discover even more benefits.

Records requests are increasing nationwide as requesters have become more engaged and empowered. We sat down with Eugene Park, the Deputy Port Attorney for the Port of Oakland, to discuss some of the best practices agencies can employ to lower their risk of litigation.

Here at NextRequest we spend a lot of time thinking about ways to improve public record requests. We also spend a lot of time talking with government staff all across the country, which helps us understand all the great things people are doing to streamline their work. Here are some of the best practices we've seen.