Name: How the City of Chicago Defeats the Public Records Backlog
Uploaded: 2026-10-07T17:46:11.271Z
Duration: 30 min 12 s
Description: How the City of Chicago Defeats the Public Records Backlog

Transcript for "How the City of Chicago Defeats the Public Records Backlog": Good morning and afternoon, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us today for our civil superhero series, where we're here to spotlight the heroes on the front lines of public records, learn about the challenges they've faced, the ways they've overcome them, and to offer some practical ways for y'all to overcome similar challenges. And today, I'm joined by Yasmin Miranda from the city of Chicago. So before I introduce Yasmin, just wanted to give some background on this series. We started this series because here at Logical, we really believe that the work that civil servants do when fulfilling these public records requests, these FOIA requests is heroic. It's not talked about enough and genuinely deserves so much more support than it gets. So I'm Grace. I'm a content marketing specialist here at Reveal, and I'll be moderating today's conversation. And as a Chicago resident, I am particularly excited about today's guest and, not gonna lie, a little starstruck to be talking to Yasmin Miranda, who is the executive administrative assistant and the FOIA officer with the city of Chicago. So I've talked to Yasmin about her background. So I'm gonna give a little brief overview, and then she... She'll correct me where I'm wrong and where I'm right. But she deserves some serious hype because she's worked with Chicago for twenty eight years, served under four mayors in a variety of roles. She was one of mayor Daley's executive assistants, works in the mayor's press office, and currently handles FOIA response at the Department of Technology and Innovation while also supporting the department's commissioner. So fair to say, she knows what she's talking about and has seen kind of it all. Jasmine, thanks so much for joining Thank you so much for having me, Grace. us. I am happy to be here, and I'm happy to discuss Logical because Logical has literally made such a huge impact within the city of Chicago, and I'm so happy that we have it now citywide. Yeah. No. We... We're happy too. And as a Chicago resident, I'm happy as well. And if you're joining us live, we'd also love to hear where you're joining us from. So please drop that in the chat. I know some people have already started to do that. We see you and appreciate you joining us from all corners of the country and world. Who knows? And, Yasmin, I hinted at this a little bit, but could you tell us us a little bit more about your history with the city of Chicago? What got you started in the government space? So I just applied like anyone else, and I was hired in the mayor's mayor's office, city hall as a receptionist. And then I was then moved up to work under mayor Daley himself as one of his executive assistants in the mayor's office for many years and, got to see how the city works from... Directly from his office, and it was truly an honor. And then. from there, I just moved around. that's awesome. And now you've landed here, in the in the, I... Wow. I lost the acronym. D... DTI office, handling FOIA FOIA responses. So can you tell us a little bit more about your roles and responsibilities, particularly when it comes to public records requests? Absolutely. So when I first started as a voice officer, I was working under the Department of General Services that changed to Department of two FM under commissioner David Reynolds, who was the commissioner for about twelve years. And at that point, he was just reorganizing the department and asked me to start doing foias. And then, and it was great. It it wasn't a huge volume. It was something that I could do along with my administrative duties at the time. Two FM received a lot of requests, specific to that department, which included a lot of underground storage tank environmental because the Bureau of Environment at that point was under two FM. So we would get, request for environmental issues, happening in the city. A lot of people who are... A lot of different construction companies who were building and are still are building in the city of Chicago would request that information. It wasn't until we merged under Lori Lightfoot with two FM with DoIT at the time. And then I had access to every single email that there ever was. And then it became... The volume just became... It it quadrupled, I would have to say. And at that point, we were printing to PDF and reviewing emails in lodge... In, Outlook. Oh, wow. And... Yes. So I would then... It it was almost like, you know, they would share the PST with me, which is a file that I would open up in Outlook and then print, to a PDF each email and then combine them and then do redactions in Adobe. And so the volume became monstrous, and then that at the time, Cassandra Blakemore was the acting commissioner of AIS, and she, one day, saw me working late night, working in printing to PDF. And, she said, what's happening? There has to be a better way to do this. And I said, there is a better way to do it, and it's actually through Logical. And at the point at that time, only the law... Only certain law department people had access to Logical. And so she was instrumental who got me, Logical and literally went right on into it, into a foyer request that was over a thousand pages, over 500 pages. And then that's when I was introduced to jury who literally walked me through, in a team's meeting on how to implement Logical. I didn't even have time to read the playbook because as everyone knows, FOIA is under deadline, and I was already past my first due date. Yeah. So for those of you who don't know, Jerry is one of our customer support managers here at Logical who really helps teams like the city of Chicago make sure that the technology is helpful, as helpful as possible and gets you onboarded and off to the races quite literally. Also, I forgot to mention at the top, but if you have any questions while we're going through this webinar, please drop them in the chat or chat. We're gonna have a q and a at the end. And also Jason, who's one of our experts on the software and on public records request is in the chat answering questions as we go. So, Yasmin, getting back to what you were you were talking about. So what I'm hearing is, like, before you had a dedicated response system to this, it was, like, the the time it would take, the literal volume it would take, and the manual part. Like, were those the biggest challenges you'd say, or. is there any others? Yeah. 1000%. Yeah. Yeah. Well... And I'm wondering because I know you were saying the volume was already getting bad. I... We've heard a lot, like, in the news and from customers that that volume has just only continued to go up, especially in the last couple of years with political activity and with access to AI making it easier to submit a PRA. And I can only imagine that, like, on, like, the state level with midterms coming up as well, there... That has... We see a lot in FOIA requests. Do you... What do you think... Would your workflow even be able to exist if you didn't have a solution, like, logical at the volume. now? Absolutely not. Yeah. Absolutely not. We wouldn't be able to turn around the responses in a timely manner, and it would it would literally be. a nightmare if I didn't have logical and the bulk redaction tool. Gosh. Yeah. And we're gonna dig into that more. But just because I know... I'm seeing in the chat that we're getting people from all over the country, and we often have, like, school districts versus cities versus states. Can you give a little color on what Chicago specifically, FOIA laws look like and what the deadlines are, for that? So under FOIA, you have five days to turn around a response with an extension. You have an additional five business days, so ten days total. You could send a courtesy extension, depending if the requester agrees to the courtesy extension, and then you can go ahead and continue to work on your request. So. that's basically then gist of it. send that... Sorry. Sorry. Go No. But what... And while you are working on an extension, more are coming in. the door as well. Right? More coming in the door and, as... Like, for instance, today, what we have been doing when the volume is... The volume could be depending on the search criteria and the time frame of a foyer request for emails. It can be volume of hundreds of thousands of pages, to 3,000 pages, sometimes 500 pages. So it just depends. So anything under five... Anything over 500 pages, rule of thumb is that we send out an index, which is basically a spreadsheet with the file ID syntax, logical ID syntax, and then we, send a response to the requester offering to narrow their request through a FOIA log. And then to facilitate the request, this is how we we initially produce a log, and then the the requester comes back with the file IDs and the logical syntax and then requesting those emails specific to the log. Got it. So you're basically able to be like, if I was gonna complete this whole request, here's what it would take. I can't do that. But now we're speaking the same language of, like, what specifically do you need so we can narrow it down together. Would. that... Does that sound right? That's. awesome. And then. a FOIA log consists of to and from subject, date and time of the request and if there's any attachments. And then the attachment ID will be right under the actual email request. So then we explain in a paragraph to the requester, in order to receive the attachment of the request, you have to always include that file ID syntax as well so that when we do a bulk, keyword or bulk search in logical, it also pulls that as well. Cool. Yeah. So now we're talking about features specifically. So these are some of the practical tools that you found in Logical. And I'm actually gonna back up to, like, if anyone's unfamiliar with Logical, logical is a purpose built records request tool that streamlines the records request process, from intake all the way through disclosure with special built tools that is for this workflow that's also paired with these litigation and ediscovery grade capabilities. So talking about bulk search, when you're going through and searching a record request, do you have any... Like, do you start with a date? Where do you start to make... Get this narrowed down and make sure you're catching all the responsive records? Yeah. Where do you start? So what that looks like is, for instance, if somebody comes into... Or puts a request in, they have a custodian. And the custodian is usually the email address, to and from. And then their search criteria could be search terms. It could be assistance. It could be support needed. It could be encampment tent. And then... So then those search terms and then the time frame are all put into the search criteria for our ediscovery department or team to run that search and then provide me then with a PST with those search criterias and emails, essentially. And then that gets downloaded and then uploaded into logical. And then from there, we just see how many documents are then going... Are being produced in this request, how many pages. And then we... Then I determine at that point if we're gonna provide a log or if we're gonna provide emails. Now before, when we were printing to a PDF, it took... It can take me couple days just to even come up with a page count. Now with Logical, Yeah. it could be ten minutes, fifteen minutes to come up with a page count to determine if it's gonna be burdensome or if we are then gonna provide a log. Great. So it's giving you... Like, from the jump, you're having visibility into what this response is going to look like for a given request. Yeah. Absolutely. And so what does the impact of that look like for your team and then also for your constituents? Can you talk about the value there? So the value is turnaround time. Usually, the bulk of my requesters are reporters or they're... Anyone could be a reporter right now. They can they can have their own Instagram, their own Facebook handle, their own Twitter blog, and they can write about basically anything. And so everyone is just trying to get the information out there. So then my turnaround time would be quicker, and we're also being completely transparent as we can be at this point. Yeah. Do you have a sense of how much quicker you're able to respond, like a rough percentage? well, I'm basically able to determine, like I said, within ten or fifteen minutes. of depending on the size of the PST and how long logical takes to upload something. Sometimes it could be an hour, maybe, depending on the volume. But then we're able to determine if it's if it's over an hour, then it's 1000% burdensome even. for a log. Yeah. Yeah. So... Because Logical is really quick to spit out the numbers and the information. Like, right now, I just uploaded a PST, and it took all of seven minutes. Yeah. And if it's gonna take the technology more than an hour, it's definitely gonna take you all more than ten days, For be. able to get that. Yeah. For makes. a lot of sense. So. in the actual review of the of the records, what do you find helpful or, like, what is really important to you to be able to do? I'm talking about, like, bulk reductions, email threading. Is there anything like that that is particularly useful? For sure. So in the bulk redaction, a lot of a lot of personal email handles can be redacted within five minutes, not even. Maybe five seconds depending on how many pages and documents and or attachments are being pulled. So I'm able to do and determine how many Gmail handles. I do it... I type in g mail dot com, and it'll tell me within a couple seconds there's 10 email... Gmails within this document. And then I'm able to cite the citation of seven seven one b or c for these email handles and do a bulk redaction. So right there, I am cutting down the turnaround time versus going page by page, and, it really removes the error margin. So I'm able to... You know, if I miss something, if I miss a Gmail or Yahoo or an AOL, just by first glance, I'm able to do it in the bulk redaction. Yeah. That's awesome. So it's, like, tighter redactions, and it's quicker, and you're logging the exemptions because there's exemption templates in logical, so you can just attach it to whatever exemption you're citing. That's. awesome. Exactly. There's. templates. Even when I create a log, there's a template that I use, so I don't have to start from scratch. I'm able to just select my nine fields in the log, and it automatically produces it for me. I'm able to download it, and then format it as needed and then send it out to the requester within within the time frame. DTI is. known at this point or, I wanna say, one of the departments for the quickest turnaround time. So a lot of people or requesters, constituents are no longer really going to their respective department for emails. They are coming to DTI because of our turnaround time. That's awesome. So it's... You're the... Moving the fastest in the business, but maybe there's some repercussions to that. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I'm like, should I slow it down a bit? So I'm too good maybe. It's a great problem to have. With that, when you're getting requests that aren't necessarily for your department, how do you handle how do you handle that? Does that change your. workflow at all? It doesn't. It doesn't slow us down. Yeah. We have a really great system put in place now, So we are always, in communication with our ACC, our law department liaison, as well as the mayor's office liaison, as well as... Depending on the request, we always reach out to the FOIA officer for that respective department so they are made aware immediately that this is a request that is for your department. DTI is now handling it and or, the IGA office and the mayor's office, depending if it's an email request for an alderman. No problem. So everyone is. made aware. Yeah. Well, and it sounds like it's a really good example of you're so interconnected and have access to all the data that you need to be able to get that it's plugging and playing at that point because you're so set up. 1000%. Yeah. That's awesome. And I know we talked about earlier that City of Chicago uses Gov QA to manage the intake of records requests, and then moves these... The actual fulfillment of it and the review and redaction into Logikal. Could you walk us through how you use both of those platforms as of, like, you're brought in the context of your broader public records process, and, like, what work you turned to logical specifically for, where where govqa doesn't really support you in that way. So so I haven't, I know GovQA does have an option to do redactions. However, we... As a rule of thumb, whenever we redact, you're essentially putting a black box over communications. And right on top of that black box so that the requester knows that we are citing seven one f, seven one b, seven one c. And then in our response memo, we then explain what these exemptions are being cited for. And then they can go back to that respective email and say, okay. So this is where DTI cited f. This is where it is in the memo. And in the... In GovQA, I don't believe that is an option to actually cite the name of the exemption in the actual email. So it... However, GovQA... So we are... I'm able to work in Logical and then upload the response of documents into GovQA, and we are able to see the history in GovQA. So it does work great together. Yeah. So that's kind of touching on logical's production capabilities of, like, how it produces the request. Can you talk us through of, like, when you're at the end of reviewing something, what... Do have any templates that you use to get it out? What does that phase of your process look like? So we definitely do have templates. So, basically, our memos are pretty much in the same format. So, however, depending on the exemption that's cited, we have to change the template to, coincide with the actual responsive emails. Yeah. Yeah. So good... makes. sense. It's great. Gov QA is great because we are able to see the history of everything. So when the requester uploaded it, when they viewed it, And most of our requesters now know that they provide the file ID and the logical syntax with the attachment file ID, and they send us... They send it back to us, accordingly. So I am able to do the bulk keyword search. We have a paragraph in our memos. If you see a logical ID and all the rest of the columns are blank on your index log, this number is the attachment to that email above it. Of course, it's it's it's some... Summarized better in the memo, but, basically, that's the gist of it. And so our reoccurring requesters already know that we have to send it back correctly because of because of our volume. I I don't have time sometimes to add the file ID, syntax to the logical ID in a WER document in order to to upload it, so they are sending it back appropriately. That's awesome. It seems like it's a... You're all speaking the same language because you're working together with these... Your your repeat requesters. That's really great to hear. Yeah. Thank mutual. understanding from both sides. I love that. Thank you. So because I know Chicago, this is not a unique, this volume and the difficulty of these requests is not unique to Chicago. Do you have any advice for people that are in a similar situation to yours and navigating these high volumes of records requests? Yeah. Do not suffer through it. My motto is work smarter, not harder, and logical is is a tool that can definitely help you through that. I live through it, and now I I I don't have to worry about it. It it is definitely a game changer. Logical is a very smart tool. And what's great is that, working with Jerry Jobs with Logical, I have been... You know, I give him an idea, like, hey. Can you make this better for me? Can can you maybe implement this? And within sometimes forty eight hours, he's like, done. Here it is. We fixed it for you. And I'm like, this is amazing. So it... The logical tool is is is endless, you know. And they're here to work with you. You're you're speaking with real people. You're working with real people. And to have someone like Jerry who will jump on a team's call with me, I share my screen. I can't figure something out, and there he is. So... And then if not, it's through the logical chat. So there's always... There's help available to you whenever you need it. Yeah. It's it's really great. I know it's really important for our teams here to, like, make sure no one feels like they're working alone in this and, like, we got your back as as you have the back of all these people whose responses you're respond... Request you're responding to. So it's cool cool that it trickles all the way up. That's great to hear. And then I have a question that I believe this is from the chat, talking about how in Chicago, like, how... Let me phrase this correctly. I know with FOIA requests across the country, there... It's... There's a little bit variance to, like, who bears the cost of the request. Can you talk about that in Chicago? Do requesters bear the cost for the request... For the records request at all? Is there a certain threshold? What does that look like? So as of right now, in my experience, I have never charged anyone for a foyer request. No. But I. do know that that is a thing. However, we have not charged anyone for a FOIA request. Great. And then I know that also in some places, it's, like, a certain number of hours. Like, I know in Colorado, you can only spend an hour before it becomes... I believe that there's a fee that comes after that. Is there any sort of time cap or it's just, like, within the ten days? So there is a time cap. Like, anything anything over forty hours is kinda a verbal rule of thumb that we claim burdensome for. We literally take the page count, do the math, figure out how many hours it would take. And if it's longer than forty, then we claim burdensome even for a log. Okay. Great. And are there specific, types of, like, data that are... Whenever you see it come through, you're like, oh, that's gonna be burdensome? So I don't know if it's burdensome until I upload it into logical. With Voya, everything is dependent on hours, times. We have to... Any Voya request can can can easily turn into a lawsuit. Okay. So in my initial response, we are responding accordingly, and we are giving justification as to why we are denying the request. And so. we do it from the jump right away. Like, this is... It's gonna take over five thousand hours. Like, it's gonna be burdensome. And so, therefore, we are offering you a log, or we are completely denying your request, and we are offering you to narrow it within fourteen days. Please submit a request, or you can reach out to our our department and speak with us, and we will help you narrow your request. That's great. So it's giving you this visibility and defensibility from the jump, no matter how. the request pans out. Mhmm. And I take a screenshot, everything gets saved. If... And what's great also about Logical is that we are able to provide metadata if necessary for each line, and so that's something that we weren't able to do And is is that something that's becoming increasingly more necessary as tech is. so integrated into the streams of things or or not, so much? I... I've maybe seen it once or twice from the same. requester who is very savvy with, everything logical. So he he knows specifically what we are capable of doing, and so we provide it. It's easy. That's awesome. Yeah. Mhmm. Well, you hinted that logical initially came came across your desk through, like, the law for the attorneys in the city of Chicago. And so I was wondering if, like, for you specifically or in the wider Chicago instance, is it only used for records requests, or do you also use logical for other things? Or do you know if other teams use logical for other things like subpoenas or litigation holds? Yes. They are using it for that as well. I don't specifically use it for that because I am. not a lawyer. But I know that that's what they were using it for. And they were... They couldn't share their license with with. me, and. so I just heard of this fabulous software that could possibly change my life, and I needed it. And so that's when my commissioner at the time said to me, well, why are we why are we working so hard? And she's like, and why don't we have it? And then once I received Logical, and then stayed with the Department of Technology and Innovation, I worked with my team here, and we were influential to get it citywide because why shouldn't every FOIA officer have this tool? It. just... It's not fair. So everyone jumped on board. I shared every FOIA officer's information with jury. We got everyone trained. There was a playbook that was shared with pictures and steps, and it is literally to the t. There is no way. that you... Just by reading... Taking the time to read the playbook. Unfortunately, at the time that I received Logical, I did not have time to read the playbook. I needed I needed to do it, like, now. And so... And jury was like, this is how you do it. This is how you do that. Let's do it. And then so it was bing badda crash. course. Yeah. Yes. Crash course. That was, like, ten minutes, and the response was done, you know, and so we were able to do it. So even if you don't have time to read the playbook, you can figure it out. Yeah. For sure. And, Daphne, in response to your question in the chat, yes, that playbook is still available. If you wanna learn and... Or see it. If you click that get a demo button up there, one of our experts can help walk you through this. So I'm gonna pause this here since we're about to reach the end of our time. And with... Like I just said, if you wanted to learn more about logical for public records, see these bulk redactions, all these magical things is life changing technology according to Yasmin. Click that demo button. We're... We'll get you connected with the right person to show you how this playbook can work on your specific workflow, so then you can feel... Can leave work on time and feeling like a superhero. I wanted to thank you all for spending time with us today and just, the biggest hugest thank you, to you as men for both fighting the public records. requests, villains, and restoring sunshine in Chicago, and also giving out some time to be... Spend time with us today and share what you've learned, with Logical on how you manage this workflow. This has also been recorded, so don't worry. We'll send this all your way. And just a quick plug, we're launching a webinar series that gets you into the product and shows you exactly how all these things work, pulling back the curtain a little bit, and showing the product functionality. So we'll be promoting that through email and on our LinkedIn. So follow us there to keep up to date. And, yeah, thank you so much. I hope you all have a great rest of your day. Bye. Thank you so much. Have a great day, everyone. Thank you. Bye bye now.