The case
Every citizen has the right to information from the government, about how the government acts, why and how a decision has been made. If someone wants to access and view this information, a request can be filed based on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or ‘Wet openbaarheid van bestuur’ (Wob) in Dutch.
The Challenge
This sounds like a fair and straightforward legal right. However, as a government agency, it will cause quite some headaches and questions.
- How do we find “all” relevant information for this request?
- How do we prevent parts of a document not falling under this FOIA request to be excluded from our production?
- How do we handle the balance between the right for information versus the privacy of civil servants, administrators and other stakeholders?
These are just a few of the questions you may encounter when dealing with a FOIA request.
The Solution
We help you answer these and other questions, use the right techniques to address this problem quickly, effectively and at the lowest feasible cost and as accurate as possible. We use advanced analytical techniques for unstructured data (e.g. e-mail, Word, Excel and PowerPoint) and ensure that these files can be effectively searched, reviewed, redacted and produced. We do this by means of the following easy to follow step-by-step plan:
Source identification: where does the information reside that is within scope of the FOIA request? Collecting: making a (forensic) copy of the information as the basis for answering the FOIA request. Search strategy: prepare an approach to find the relevant information as quickly as possible. Search & analyse: search with terms, but also apply document clustering, deduplication of documents and e-mails, and other advanced techniques to reduce the set. Review: viewing the results and selecting only the truly relevant to the request. Redaction: the automated and / or manual removal of personal data and other information. This way the document can be made public, but not relevant or privacy-sensitive parts are excluded by “black-lining” the file. Production: the delivery of documents that may or may not be redacted in a ready-made “package” in which all kinds of possibilities for delivery exist, from original files, PDF (per document or as a whole) to a printed version. All this includes unique numbering and complete ‘audit trail’ of the entire process related to answering the FOIA request. Using Forcyd’s unique method and techniques, you not only have the results quickly to answer the FOIA request, but also a completely transparent and defensible audit trail of achieving these results.
