DEPARTMENT: Government and Public Affairs
DEPARTMENT HEAD: Jeff Coyle
COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: City Wide
SUBJECT: Open Record Process
SUMMARY: This Ordinance authorizes the purchase of Veritas eDiscovery Solutions to assist with responding to the City's Open Record Request process in the amount of $288,000.00. Funding for this purchase is available from the New Technology Portfolio project included in the FY 2018-2023 Adopted Six-Year Capital Improvement Program.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
Today, the City of San Antonio receives more than 40,000 Open Record Requests (ORR) annually and endeavors to fulfill each request as timely as possible in compliance with the Texas Public Information Act (TPIA). The Government and Public Affairs (GPA) Department manages the City's ORR process, in coordination with the City Attorney's Office (CAO) and City departments.
In March of 2011, GPA became responsible for the City's ORR process and implemented a centralized electronic cloud-based data management system, WebQA (FOIA), to facilitate the processing of requests received organization-wide. The requests for documents received by the City have steadily increased from a total of 6,716 ORR received in FY 2012 to 45,220 received in FY 2017.
The FOIA system allows the City to efficiently manage the 500 to 1,000 daily ORR received across all departments. Through the system, found on the front page of the City's website under the Transparency in Government section, a requestor may open an account and submit their request for information directly to a City department. The GPA ORR Division ensures the request is submitted to the responsive department through ongoing monitoring and review of ORR received on a daily basis.
Each of the City's 38 departments assigns a trained ORR Liaison to work in coordination with GPA's ORR Division to respond to a request for information from the public. The CAO works independently from GPA to assist City departments in determinin...
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