GovQA Supports New FOIA Bill With Technology Enhancements

Chicago, Illinois, January 21, 2016 (Newswire.com) - GovQA, the nation’s leading FOIA Platform, today announced a set of new technologies to support new House Bill H.R. 653 and its proposed changes to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) passed by the House of Representatives last week.

Nationwide FOIA requests increased 25-70% for four years in a row, according to website TechTarget. The need to handle the increase in public records requests and the desire for a more transparent government drove the new legislation.

As the leader in FOIA request processing with almost 700 clients, we are seeing all public organizations search for ways to proactively handle FOIA requests. We want to make these technologies immediately available to all Federal Agencies, as well as state and local governments.

Jennifer Snyder, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer

“As the leader in FOIA request processing with almost 700 clients, we are seeing all public organizations search for ways to proactively handle FOIA requests,” said Jennifer Snyder, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer for WebQA.  “We want to make these technologies immediately available to all Federal Agencies, as well as state and local governments.”

GovQA announced technology enhancements that specifically address H.R. 653’s requirements by:

• Allowing the public to submit a FOIA request for records to any agency through an online portal.
• Posting online records that have been requested three or more times, or any general interest information, using automatically updated and searchable index.
• Assisting agencies in managing information so that no agency withholds information otherwise disclosable under FOIA unless prohibited by law or unless the agency reasonably foresees that disclosure would cause specific identifiable harm to an interest protected by an exemption to FOIA.

These new enhancements join GovQA’s current FOIA platform that already includes:

• Proactive Technologies that provide information and reduce formal FOIA requests by immediately updating searchable social archives, knowledgebases, project pages and information archives.
• Processing Systems that invoke workflows, redaction, annotation and tracking any type of request while managing deadlines, duplicate requests, frequent requestors, request processing time and requestor payments.
• Reporting Tools that identify request trends, help manage personnel, establish storage requirements and configure security within GovQA’s hybrid-tenant database architecture customized for Open Records.

GovQA’s FOIA product suite is already serving some of the country's largest cities, counties and state agencies including cities like Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Portland, Salt Lake, San Antonio, St. Paul and Seattle; and, counties such as Allegheny PA, Bergen NJ, Harris TX, Oakland MI, and Snohomish WA.

About GovQA:  GovQA is a division of WebQA Inc., one of the world’s leading providers of Customized Customer Service Platforms for global 1000 institutions, top universities, state and local governments.  The GovQA platform services over 100 million citizens nationwide with a comprehensive set of multilingual and multichannel inbound and outbound service, information, communication, collaboration and payment capabilities. GovQA solutions support Open Records Processing and 311 requests  along with a variety of other government initiatives.