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Bakersfield is a city with a little bit of everything, as it is just hours from popular destinations such as Fresno, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. It’s a city that continues to grow, and the Bakersfield Police Department is also expanding to keep up with demand. While their primary goal as an agency is to keep their citizens safe, there are many ways in which they serve the needs of their 378,000 residents.
The Bakersfield PD receives many public records requests, which all flowed through a single team member in the past. Calculating how many requests were handled by the department and managing the records of those requests proved to be their biggest challenge. With just one person receiving them, it was challenging to find the time to scan all the requests. In the past, requests were kept in a file cabinet. They transitioned to scanning them into a computer folder and eventually a shared drive. And while that was an improvement, they still could not track or differentiate the different types of requests. That resulted in many phone calls from residents, which only worsened the bottleneck.
In response, the Bakersfield Police Department set out to find a flexible, customizable software platform that would allow them to document the requests they received and better communicate with residents. They needed a solution that would also allow them to differentiate between request types in their records.
The first step toward finding a solution was interaction with the City of Bakersfield Clerk’s Office. They use JustFOIA to manage records and are now sharing the platform with the Police Department.
Thanks to the new software, the Police Department can now track requests for public records and view information relating to when the request was received, when responses are due, and whether specific documentation has been sent.
Perhaps most importantly, the service allows them to share the load, training a unit to handle records requests through JustFOIA instead of one person juggling them alone.
JustFOIA has allowed the Bakersfield Police Department to decrease their log of past due public records requests from as many as 1,200 to 300 or less.
It also helped them improve communication with residents making records requests, thus improving those relationships and the agency’s profile. In addition, submitters experience a more user-friendly process for submitting records requests and can easily track the status of those requests. As a result, the Bakersfield Police Department received positive feedback from their more prominent repeat customers and their clerks.
The Bakersfield Police Department is now working on expanding the use of JustFOIA to handle subpoena requests. Their goal is to use it to communicate more effectively with other departments to manage requests in this high-volume area. They are excited about exploring even more application areas in the future.
Interested in learning more about how JustFOIA can streamline your business processes? Contact us today!