How the Minot, ND Police Department Overhauled its Records Requests Process with CivicPlus®
Keys to Project:
A scalable solution to manage the City's increased volume of records requests
City:
Minot, North DakotaPopulation:
47,789Products:
Challenge:
How to track and respond to a rapidly growing occurrence of public records requests.
Solution:
NextRequest, powered by CivicPlus.
Result:
NextRequest has helped the Police Department process an ever-increasing request workload and free-up time to focus on other critical responsibilities such as transcription and data entry, and digitizing older files.
We would have drowned under the increase in requests if it were not for this software.
Allison Hirschfield
Senior Records and Administrative Specialist
The Magic Touch
Minot, North Dakota (pronounced “My-not”) has the nickname the Magic City because it seemingly popped up overnight in 1886 when the railroad came through. The population quickly grew, and by the 1920s, the City earned another nickname, Little Chicago, thanks to Al Capone using the city as a hub for his smuggling operations. After a devastating flood in 2011 and subsequent Oil Boom, the population has surged to approximately 47,000. The city has recovered wonderfully from the flood, and a new renewal effort for the city has transformed areas once left derelict after the flood.
As the city has expanded, so have its records requests. In a three-year period, the Minot Police Department saw an increase of 20 to 30 percent in its requests. The Police Department sought FOIA software as a way to better track, fulfill, and manage their increased volume of records requests.
Off the Tracks
Up until 2015, the Minot Police Department did little tracking of records requests. That’s when Allison Hirshfield, the department’s senior records specialist, started using a spreadsheet to track every request, which also acted as an index. The number of requests that became lost or forgotten was increasing. Minot processes records requests coming in through fax, mail, phone, and in person, and Allison says that prior to NextRequest (now part of the CivicPlus Civic Experience Platform), it was almost impossible to know the status of a request. Allison and the team needed a better way to track their requests.
At your Service
Allison says that NextRequest has helped her team process an ever-increasing request workload more than anything. It’s allowed them to keep up with other duties such as transcription and data entry, as well as digitizing older files. Allison’s team can, even on occasion, assist other department clerks with their duties. She best sums up Minot PD’s experience with NextRequest by saying, “This software allows us to do our jobs so much better and makes us feel secure that we are providing the best service we can to other agencies and the public.”
Ready to get started with NextRequest?
Find out more about our NextRequest solution for FOIA request management.