FOI workflow quick check.
Answer seven questions to get a candid pulse on where your FOI process stands today. This is not a full assessment — but it will surface where the friction is, and where there's the most room to improve.
Quick assessment
Pick one option for each question. Score yourself honestly — the value is in the diagnostic, not the number.
Document collection
Can your team search and pull documents directly from SharePoint and email into a single FOI case?
What good looks like: Custodians search SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange and Teams from inside the case and mark records responsive without exporting anything. Adding records from Microsoft 365 →
Write a one-page search protocol for custodians — which repositories to search, the date range and the search terms — and ask them to report where each record lives rather than emailing copies. Use the reasonable FOI search checklist to decide what it covers.
Departmental coordination
Can you easily see which departments have responded to a request and which are still outstanding?
What good looks like: Every assignment carries its scope and due date, and the list of outstanding business areas updates itself. Assignments with scope and due date →
Keep one assignment list per request with the business area, a named contact, a scope line and a due date, and review the outstanding ones at a fixed time each week.
Workflow visibility
Do you have a real-time view of every active request, its owner, and days remaining on the statutory clock?
What good looks like: One statutory clock per request, computed from your Act, on a dashboard a director can read. The requests dashboard and its clocks →
Put every open request on one list with its statutory due date computed from your Act, sorted by days remaining, and make it the first thing the office looks at each morning.
Redaction consistency
Are redactions applied in a standardized, reviewable way across requests — with rationale captured?
What good looks like: Rule-based suggestions, an exemption cited on every mark, and a redaction index that ships with the release. Redacting with the exemption cited →
Agree a house list of exemptions with a standard rationale for each, and require every redaction to cite one before a release is approved.
Response packaging
Can your team produce a complete, defensible FOI response package without manual compilation?
What good looks like: The package assembles itself with a contents page, the redaction index and a manifest of file hashes. Assembling the response package →
Define a standard package — cover letter, contents page, redaction index and the records in a fixed order — and build it from a checklist rather than from memory.
Auditability
Can you demonstrate, on demand, how documents were collected and how disclosure decisions were made?
What good looks like: A tamper-evident audit ledger and a one-click case audit export a commissioner can follow. The hash-chained audit ledger →
Start a per-request log of who searched what, when, and what was decided about each record, and keep it with the file rather than in someone's inbox. The reasonable FOI search checklist lists what that record should show.
Records-in-place
Can your team work on FOI requests in their original systems — without copying records into a separate platform?
What good looks like: Records stay in Microsoft 365 with an evidentiary original that is never modified. Where records live: the architecture →
Stop copying records out for review: record where the original lives in SharePoint or Exchange, and treat the copy in the response package as the only duplicate.
What your score means
Maturity bands. Most FOI teams sit somewhere in the middle, and that's fine — the question is which direction you're moving.
Reactive
Workflow leans heavily on manual coordination and ad-hoc document collection. Risk grows with request volume.
Maturing
Process has structure, but inefficiencies in collection, coordination, or visibility still create friction.
Mature
Workflow is relatively mature. Opportunities tend to be at the margins — consistency, automation, and reduced manual lift.