Achieving Compliance & Transparency in the Public Sector

Achieving Compliance & Transparency in the Public Sector INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

Achieving Compliance & Transparency in the Public Sector

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Government has limited resources. Given these limitations, the focus should be on workflow standardization and automation as it is the most efficient and costeffective way to meet these mandated requirements.

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Industry Perspective

INTRODUCTION In today’s ever-changing and increasingly digital environment, there is a whole new set of challenges for government employees.

Public sector organizations are focused on improving digital services to meet the type of personalized and responsive service citizens get from consumer companies. In addition to simply keeping pace with customer service expectations, this switch to digital is key to building the public’s trust in government through better transparency and responsiveness.

In moving to a digital first approach, the government must also display, store, manage and let citizens access a rapidly growing amount of data and public records – and do that with shrinking budgets and workforces, at the risk of effectiveness and efficiency.

Dealing with any one of these issues is difficult – but dealing with all of them at once is nearly impossible. Solutions – particularly workflow, review and processing technologies – are coming forward, however, that help government at all levels better display and manage public records information efficiently and transparently.

To learn more about how the public sector can improve its document workflow to meet compliance mandates and increase transparency efforts, GovLoop and LexisNexis, a leader in data management and information workflows, have partnered to create this Industry Perspective. In this report, we will: Discuss why efforts to improve transparency in the public sector are so important, and how records management can help Explore how the public sector can standardize and automate its compliance and documents process so that it can be more efficient and compliant Gain insight from Michael Gandy, Territory Manager, Public Sector, LexisNexis, on how LexisNexis’ public-sector solutions can change the way a government organization’s workflow runs

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THE CHALLENGES CONFRONTING GOVERNMENT Before we can understand how better workflow for public-records requests improves how the public sector serves citizens, we must first understand the challenges that government faces in several arenas: compliance; trust from the public related to transparency; demands for better digital services and a growing amount of data that government must provide and host.

Compliance: The No. 1 Challenge

“There are approximately 40 state governors who have also mandated some form of this philosophy,” said Gandy.

“Unlike private sector organizations, government agencies are not profit-driven,” said Michael Gandy, Subject Matter Expert, Public Sector, LexisNexis. “They are compliance-driven.”

While being compliance-driven works to increase citizen trust, it is currently putting a difficult burden on government employees and technology.

Federal, state and local governments are leveled with a variety of compliance efforts that mandate a certain standard of transparency and access to public records. Government compliance efforts stem from a variety of transparency and openness mandates that have been growing over the past few decades.

“But in recent years the requests have expanded into all government activities, resulting in a massive increase in the number of requests and a tremendous burden on the government to ensure transparency compliance without compromising sensitive data,” Gandy said.

President Obama and the Department of Justice have directed federal agencies to apply a presumption of openness in responding to FOIA requests. The Office of Information Policy at the Department of Justice oversees agency compliance with these directives and encourages all agencies to fully comply with both the letter and the spirit of the FOIA.

Government has limited resources. Given these limitations, the focus should be on workflow standardization and automation as it is the most efficient and cost-effective way to meet these mandated requirements.

Initially, agencies put up websites to allow for self-service of information and requests. But as the data has grown and requests have gotten more complex, those sites do not support FOIA the way they were intended to. That means that now, highly-compensated people have to step in to simply keep them running – meaning the original purpose of trying to save money on the openness process is not being met.

Additionally, Gandy said, government has still not addressed two core issues: that governments have to get information back to the requester under compliance guidelines – and it must be done in a way to protect the sensitive information in those documents. We’ll review how this can be addressed later in this report.

It’s at the state and local level, too.

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THE LIFECYCLE OF A PUBLIC-SECTOR REQUEST A request is received in the form of a document with details about what information is being requested, and in what timeframe.

That group identifies the proper documents – which may incur a cost. Some materials may be older and archived, and so that may mean producing from one type of media into another that could then ultimately be produced in document form, whether it be paper or electronic.

The office that receives the initial request must turn it over to a separate group (often the IT department) to execute the search, within a mandated timeframe.

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Industry Perspective

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To close out the cycle, somebody has to show it was completed, and the ticket closed.

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Finally, there’s a reporting requirement.

Someone who has oversight, a public information officer, for example, needs to be able to generate reports to determine their compliance rankings.

“Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.”

President Obama’s Transparency and Open Government memorandum

The Hurdle of Transparency and Trust

Demand for Digital Services: New Citizen Expectations

According to a 2015 Pew Research report, “The public’s trust in government remains at historic lows. Today, just 19% say they trust the federal government to do what is right always or most of the time, which is little changed from recent years. Fewer than three-in-ten Americans have expressed trust in government in every major national poll conducted since July 2007 – the longest period of low trust in government seen in more than 50 years.”

In today’s digital age, we can buy almost any good or service from the private sector with the click of a mouse or the touch of a finger. Increasingly, citizens are demanding the same type of ease and convenience in their transactions with the government – everything from renewing licenses to downloading financial data.

Furthermore, the Pew report reveals that few Americans think governments are very effective in sharing data they collect with the public:

FEDERAL

STATE

LOCAL

Just 5 percent say the federal government does this very effectively, with another 39 percent saying the federal government does this somewhat effectively.

5 percent say state governments share data very effectively, with another 44 percent saying somewhat effectively.

7 percent say local governments share data very effectively, with another 45 percent responding somewhat effectively.

Many in and outside of government believe that increased transparency in government data and records is the solution to address this distrust in government. As cited in President Obama’s Transparency and Open Government memorandum, “Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.”

Public records have been historically requested via a phone call, an in-person visit to a government office or by mail. But today, citizens demand that these public records and government data be easily available and searchable online – no easy feat for governments that struggle with innovative technical solutions and limited budgets to devote to improving digital services.

Citizens don’t demand this ability just for ease of use or convenience – when government data and information is easily accessible to all and transparent, it gives constituents more trust in the work their government is doing and the way they are spending taxpayer dollars.

TYPES OF PUBLIC RECORDS “Public records” refer to county, state or federal materials that are typically viewable by the public. Here are just a few of the dozens of types of records that may be requested by a citizen.

corporate filings

real estate sales

birth records

political contributions health professional licenses

Growth of Data and Information: A Rapid Rise It’s no secret that government data along with every other sector is experiencing an explosion in growth. In fact, there is a 40 percent projected growth in global data generated per year.

“The size and complexity of the amount of information the government has to open up is enormous,” Gandy said. “This rapid growth of data, information and the requests on it has led to hodge-podge, labor-intensive, inefficient, expensive and largely ineffective programs with no standardized tools to meet the requirements of the mandates.”

unclaimed property

marriage licenses

voter registration status

court records

As this data is growing, government faces another challenge in managing it: much of this data needs to be open data, in order to comply with some mandates and encourage trust and accessibility for the public.

police reports

financial data

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THE SOLUTION FOR BETTER COMPLIANCE & TRANSPARENCY Complying with mandates like FOIA and other public-records compliance acts at the state and local levels is critical to the success of our democracy.

But having an understanding and appreciation of open government does not change the fact that complying with these mandates is incredibly time- and cost-intensive.

How To: Handle Large Volumes of Data Complex cases involve large volumes of data and documents that require powerful processing technologies. Publicrecords teams can use this processing capability to scan, import, de-duplicate and produce all of the potential documents needed to answer a request.

Once all documents have been reviewed and appropriately redacted, LexisNexis’s LAW PreDiscovery can produce the final package for delivery to the requester.

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Industry Perspective

Nevertheless, the public sector must rise to the challenge of providing public records in an efficient, transparent, effective and easy-toaccess way. Technologies that can help ease these challenges include software originally intended for eDiscovery and review.

LexisNexis provides several tools that can help government at all levels do just that. With a long history of developing litigation workflow

How To: Manage Documents from Request to Closure A review technology makes it easier to determine which documents meet the needs of a citizen’s request, then review relevant documents for necessary redactions.

Using case review software not only helps streamline the process internally, but aids in reporting to outside entities.

Concordance® software offers document production, processing and recordkeeping capabilities that allow users to: batch print, download or email after selecting and redacting documents as well as save redacted document collections for future requests, greatly reducing photocopying, searching and redacting time and expense.

How To: Automate Discovery Key word searching can cover an organization’s entire document population while also utilizing de-duplication and near-duplication of records to reduce the clutter and get reviewers to the most relevant documents.

solutions, LexisNexis is now partnering with government agencies to apply the right mix of technologies to meet the challenge of responding to public-records requests. Its solutions – in particular, LAW® PreDiscovery and Concordance® – help agencies meet their openness responsibilities, while balancing the need for transparency with privacy and national security demands in times of austere budgets.

How To: How To: Keep Sensitive Expand Your Information Data Pool With the processing Secure While many organization’s compliance efforts ensure that anyone has access to government information, there are real security and privacy concerns in that data.

Many times documents are held back because the redaction process is just too difficult, which violates the spirit of the compliance efforts. But LexisNexis tools can automate parts of the process of redacting sensitive information to ensure that all applicable documents can be released without security or privacy risk.

power of LexisNexis software, organizations can search extremely large data sets to get down to relevant data within just one search.

Users can customize searches to get the right data the first time.

CONCLUSION Government, today more than ever, faces a slew of challenges ranging from distrust in its work to a need for better digital services. What can help government better succeed in dealing with these challenges is well-executed compliance with public-sector records requests. But

ABOUT LEXISNEXIS LexisNexis Software Solutions provides agencies, law firms and legal departments of all sizes with world class business of law and litigation software tools. Our innovative software and mobile solutions include competitive solutions for eDiscovery, case analysis and presentation, enterprise legal management (ELM), customer relationship management (CRM) and practice management.

For more information, please contact us at: 703-673-3545 or transparency@lexisnexis.com.

opening up government is easier said than done.

“Meeting compliance, being able to quickly get the information back to the requester, making sure it’s a secure process, making sure it is standardized, and making sure it’s easy to do so government employees can spend their time on mission-critical tasks, is so important to the success of the public sector,” said Gandy.

“And that’s where tools like ours will help them,” he said. “We offer

ABOUT GOVLOOP GovLoop’s mission is to “connect government to improve government.” We aim to inspire public-sector professionals by serving as the knowledge network for government. GovLoop connects more than 250,000 members, fostering crossgovernment collaboration, solving common problems and advancing government careers. GovLoop is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with a team of dedicated professionals who share a commitment to connect and improve government.

For more information about this report, please reach out to info@govloop.com.

the standardization and capabilities to help the public sector meet its goals. And when that happens, government becomes more efficient, transparent and able to work on its core goals.”

Achieving Compliance & Transparency in the Public Sector

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Industry Perspective