The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process has frequently been plagued with delays, but the massive surge in data production over the past decade means that this problem is only growing. Tackling all of the outstanding FOIA requests manually is not simply burdensome — it is nigh impossible…
FOIA allows any person or organization to request any federal record, and that agency is under obligation to produce that record within 20 days — however, government is notorious for missing deadlines.
Technology-assisted review has the potential to drastically cut back on FOIA delivery times and save personnel hours, and [Michael Sarich, FOIA director for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)] is hopeful that these tools will allow government to meet the demands of FOIA requesters.
“It’s so important in the FOIA space to be on your front foot with these tools and to be able to work with your requesters and build a relationship up front, so the FOIA request truly becomes a conversation between the requester and the FOIA processing community to provide the requester exactly what they want as quickly as possible,” he said. “If widely adopted, these tools can make significant progress down that road — providing that information in a timely manner.”
Sarich also hopes that requesters will have greater trust in the AI tools because of their proven efficiency… Read the full article here.
