If you deal with public records in Washington State, the acronym “JLARC” might make you want to hide under your desk.
Since 2017, public agencies in Washington that spend more than $100,000 annually fulfilling public records requests must submit reports to the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC). And as records requests have been on the rise for the last several years, more and more agencies are finding that they are over that $100K threshold for the first time.
Tracking JLARC Data Manually
JLARC’s 15 complex metrics can take months to compile, causing endless frustrations and taking you away from your regular job duties. That’s because most of the Washington clerks we speak to are tracking JLARC data manually in cumbersome spreadsheets (even if they have a records request solution).
Tammy Mueller, Public Records Analyst for the City of Issaquah, says that the key to JLARC reporting is to proactively think through the data that you’ll need, metric by metric.
“Then make sure that everyone understands exactly how to enter the data correctly,” she advises. “This includes formatting. For instance, if you use decimals to track minutes and hours, create a cheat sheet so everyone can reference that 15 minutes is 0.25, 5 minutes is 0.083, and so on. If possible, restrict this to a number field so you can easily add the column of numbers later and not have to convert text like ‘1 hr, 15 min’ to 1.25.”
Using this method, your ability to get accurate results depends on everyone involved tracking data thoroughly and consistently throughout the year. If they don’t—you have a big problem on your hands come reporting time.
JustFOIA Can Help
But that’s why we designed JustFOIA to be the most powerful, configurable records request software on the market: So you can meet the demands of requirements like JLARC.
As part of your personalized training and initial system setup, we configure your custom fields and reports to capture key data you need for most of the 15 metrics. You don’t have to pay extra for a “JLARC Module” because the settings already exist within your system!
Let’s look at how JustFOIA reduces both reporting time and the risk of human error on some of the trickier metrics.
JLARC provides a worksheet for determining whether you have to report. It requires you to manually input data about each staff member whose job involves processing public records and non-litigation legal costs to estimate your total expenses.
JustFOIA’s Time and Materials features can track how much time your staff spends on records requests and what materials are used—making your total costs easier to calculate.
Calculating the 15 metrics depends on having accurate baseline data of dates when requests were submitted and completed. You probably already track these two data points on your Spreadsheet of Doom—but since all the metrics depend on them, any human error can throw off the rest of your data.
JustFOIA automatically keeps records when requests come into the system and when they’re marked as completed—no need to track it by hand. You can easily filter requests by these two data points to track your total number of requests for the reporting period.
These two metrics deal with communication with requesters. Metric 2 tracks the number of requests where the agency provided a time estimate beyond five days to the requester. Metric 4 tracks the total number of requests for which the agency formally sought clarification from the requester.
If you’re tracking data manually, you must rely on individuals to keep accurate records of when they contact requesters. If this information isn’t recorded at the time of the communication, you’ll have to contact IT for help searching email archives!
Correspondence to and from requesters is saved within your JustFOIA system to ensure accurate documentation. Custom fields can track the purpose of the communication to make reporting on these metrics simple.
This metric requires the total number of requests denied in full or in part and the most common reasons for denying requests. Manually tracking this data is a multi-step process that requires those fulfilling the requests to use a consistent system for tracking denials and redactions. For instance, suppose one person inputs a denial reason as “religious affiliation exemption,“ but another lists it by its section code “RCW 42.56.235.” It’s difficult for the person compiling the report to know these are the same reason for denial.
When requests are denied or redacted within JustFOIA, the user assigns a denial reason from a list configured when the system is set up. This list is typically from the Public Records Act (Chapter 42.56 RCW) that contains the reason for the exemption. You can then run reports on each component of Metric 5.
Metric 8 is the percentage of records delivered to the requester physically rather than electronically, while Metric 9 is the number of requests where physical records were scanned to electronic records.
You can create custom fields on your requests in JustFOIA indicating fulfillment method (Fulfilled Electronically, Fulfilled Physically, Fulfilled by Combination) and whether any documents had to be scanned. Then it’s just a few clicks to run a report based on that input.
Metrics 10 and 11 deal with staff time and costs to fulfill requests. If staff members don’t remember to track their time throughout the year, some clerks end up just guessing about these numbers.
You can set up “roadblocks” in JustFOIA that require people working in the system to start tracking their time before they can start working on a request, ensuring you get accurate data in your Time and Materials reports. (Note this does not count the costs for litigation, which you need for Metric 13 but will need to track outside JustFOIA.)
Metric 15 is the total amount of money that the agency took in from requesters for fulfilling records requests.
Requesters can pay any applicable charges through JustFOIA’s online payment portal, making this metric simple to track.
It’s time to come out from under your desk and face JLARC with confidence and ease.
