The Hidden Cost of Public Records Requests Explained

What Does a Public Records Request Cost?

The true cost of a public records request extends far beyond producing a document.

Whether agencies refer to it as a public records request, open records request, or FOIA request, leaders are increasingly being asked to understand the true FOIA request cost and how those costs impact staffing, budgets, and service delivery.

Every request creates a series of activities that consume agency resources:

• Reviewing and clarifying requests
• Searching for records
• Coordinating with departments
• Reviewing records for accuracy
• Identifying confidential information
• Redacting sensitive content
• Obtaining approvals
• Delivering responses
• Maintaining documentation for compliance

While these activities may seem routine, their cumulative impact can be significant.

The biggest cost is usually labor

For most agencies, the largest expense associated with public records requests is staff time.

A single request may involve records coordinators, department staff, legal counsel, IT personnel, and leadership. Even when individual contributions seem small, those hours quickly add up. Multiply that effort across dozens or hundreds of requests per year, and the cost becomes substantial.

The challenge is that most of this labor remains invisible. Few agencies have systems in place to measure exactly how much time employees spend fulfilling requests, making it difficult to understand the true cost of compliance.

Why Most Agencies Underestimate Public Records Work

Public records work is often treated as a task rather than a process.

A request arrives. A response is sent.

Simple enough.

But between those two events lies a surprising amount of work.

A Request Is Really a Workflow

Consider a typical request. A records coordinator receives the request and identifies which departments may have responsive information. Department staff then pause their regular responsibilities to search for records. Questions arise. Clarifications are needed. Files must be reviewed. Potential exemptions must be evaluated. Approvals may be required before records can be released.

What appears to be one task is really a chain of interconnected activities involving multiple people.

Many agencies underestimate public records work because they only see the beginning and end of the process. The hours spent between those points often go unmeasured.

Where the Work Really Happens

To understand the true cost of public records compliance, agencies must understand where the work occurs.

Finding Records

Records can exist across multiple systems and repositories, including:

• Email platforms
• Shared network drives
• Department applications
• Enterprise content management systems
• Legacy databases
• Physical records

Locating all responsive records often requires multiple employees to search multiple systems.

The more disconnected these systems are, the more time staff spend searching.

Coordinating Departments

Public records requests rarely remain within a single office.

A request involving planning, public works, legal, finance, and administration may require participation from multiple teams.

In these situations, records professionals often function as project managers. They identify stakeholders, coordinate responses, track progress, and ensure deadlines are met.

Reviewing and Redacting Records

Finding records is only one part of the process.

Staff must also determine whether records contain confidential, exempt, or otherwise protected information. Depending on the request, this can require extensive review and redaction efforts.

For complex requests involving large volumes of records, review time may exceed search time.

The reality is simple:

Public records work doesn’t live in one department. It moves across your entire organization.

The Public Records Staffing Problem

As expectations for government transparency grow, request volumes and response pressures increase while staffing levels often remain unchanged.

This creates a challenge for records managers and agency leaders alike.

When public records responsibilities are distributed across the organization, it becomes difficult to understand the true staffing impact. Employees may spend a few hours each month helping fulfill requests, yet those hours are rarely tracked under a dedicated public records budget.

As a result, many agencies believe they have a staffing problem.

In reality, they often have a visibility problem.

Without understanding how much time is being consumed and where the work is occurring, leaders lack the information necessary to make informed decisions about staffing, technology investments, and process improvements.

The Cost of Daily Detours

Every organization experiences Daily Detours.

These are the interruptions that pull employees away from their primary responsibilities and into administrative work that slows progress elsewhere.

Public records requests can create many of these detours:

• Searching multiple systems for information
• Following up with departments
• Tracking response deadlines manually
• Managing records across disconnected systems
• Repeating the same workflows request after request
• Coordinating reviews through email threads and spreadsheets

Individually, these activities may seem minor.

Collectively, they consume significant time and resources.

The goal is not simply to work faster. The goal is to understand where effort is being spent and identify opportunities to reduce unnecessary work without sacrificing transparency or compliance.

How Agencies Can Measure the True Cost of Public Records Compliance

Improvement starts with visibility.

Effective records request management starts with reliable data. The more visibility agencies have into request volume, response times, and staff effort, the easier it becomes to identify bottlenecks and opportunities for improvement.

Agencies seeking to understand the true cost of public records requests should begin by measuring key indicators, including:

Request Volume

How many requests are received each month or year?

Labor Hours

How much staff time is spent fulfilling an average request?

Department Participation

How many departments are typically involved?

Review and Redaction Time

How long does it take to evaluate and prepare records for release?

Response Times

How quickly are requests being fulfilled?

Staff Costs

What is the estimated labor cost associated with the process?

Ready to put these numbers into perspective? Use the JustFOIA ROI Calculator to estimate the staff time and resources your agency could save by modernizing its public records request process.

These same metrics can also help agencies calculate public records software ROI, creating a stronger business case for technology investments that reduce manual work, improve visibility, and support long-term compliance goals.

Even basic measurements can reveal valuable insights.

Many agencies discover that certain request types consume significantly more resources than others. Others identify recurring bottlenecks that create delays and increase workloads.

Data transforms public records management from a reactive compliance function into a strategic operational function.

From Compliance Burden to Strategic Opportunity

When agencies gain visibility into where public records work happens, they are better positioned to improve efficiency and allocate resources effectively.

Understanding the hidden costs behind public records workflows also helps agencies evaluate records management ROI. When leaders can connect process improvements to measurable labor savings, they are better equipped to justify investments and prioritize modernization efforts.

This is where meaningful change begins.

Organizations can identify opportunities to:

Skip the busywork

Reduce manual processes, repetitive tasks, and administrative overhead so employees can focus on higher-value work.

Cut the risks

Improve consistency, strengthen compliance practices, and reduce the likelihood of missed deadlines or incomplete responses.

Get the help you need

Leverage proven processes, experienced partners, and purpose-built technology to support growing public records demands.

Importantly, technology should not be viewed as the starting point.

Too often, agencies ask which software they should purchase before understanding the workflow challenges they are trying to solve.

The better question is: Where is the work happening today?

Once agencies understand the people, processes, and effort behind public records requests, they can make more informed decisions about staffing, workflows, and technology investments.

Public records requests are an essential part of government transparency and public trust.

But the true cost of responding to those requests extends far beyond software licenses, filing systems, or legal reviews.

It exists in the hours employees spend searching for information, coordinating across departments, reviewing records, tracking deadlines, and navigating countless Daily Detours throughout the organization.

Before agencies can improve efficiency, justify investments, or streamline compliance efforts, they need visibility into where the work is really happens.

The hidden cost of public records requests is not found in a single budget line item. It is found in the time employees spend searching for information, coordinating across departments, reviewing records, tracking deadlines, and making transparency possible.