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Suffolk, Virginia by the Numbers
102,955
Residents
139
FOIA Requests Per Month
81
JustFOIA Users in 27 Departments
3
JustFOIA Forms
With attractions like the Great Dismal Swamp and Sleepy Hole Golf Course, the City of Suffolk, Virginia, is brimming with quaint, laid-back charm.
But despite its small-town atmosphere, it’s one of the state’s fastest-growing municipalities.
When Jennifer Moore joined the City as Director of Media & Community Relations two years ago, their system for tracking FOIA requests felt like something out of a bygone era. She knew she needed to modernize it — and fast.
But this urgency almost led Jennifer to make what she called “a huge mistake.”
‘We Were Living on a Prayer’
Jennifer remembers those early days on the job: “We didn’t have an Excel spreadsheet for our FOIAs—that was too fancy for us. We had a Word document. We were living on a prayer because it wasn’t even backed up.”
“I worked 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM as the communications director,” Jennifer said. “I didn’t have time for FOIA during the day. So, from 5:00 to 11:00 PM, sometimes midnight, every night, I processed FOIA requests. I have two young children and a husband, and let me tell you, it was a rough summer.”
Jennifer obtained approval to hire two FOIA deputies. Kaitlyn Newbern was responsible for FOIA requests at the Police Department, and Gayon Burford handled City requests. With an expanded staff in different departments, they didn’t have a shared file system. If they needed to collaborate, Kaitlyn physically printed documents and walked them across the street to City Hall. Jennifer and Gayon were constantly sending the Word document back and forth to each other.
Gayon said, “At one point, we had two documents. We couldn’t be in at the same time. I left work and forgot to close the file. Jennifer needed to access the document. She had to create version two, while I had version one.”
Kaitlyn was the only person who understood the full process for the Police Department. If she was out of office, they ground to a halt—but the clock on Virginia’s five-day FOIA deadline kept ticking.
“A whole year and a half went by where I would take off one or maybe two days at a time, ever,” Kaitlyn said.
'Not the Product for Us’
Jennifer knew that the City of Suffolk needed a solution to their FOIA woes, and the sooner, the better.
So, they signed a contract with a well-known FOIA software after hearing about it from a colleague in a nearby city.
But her colleague, as it turned out, didn’t actually use the software herself—she just knew that others in her department did.
Jennifer joked, “When I saw her again after the fact, I was like, ‘I am so mad at you!’”
That’s because problems arose quickly as they began implementation. Several system features weren’t configurable enough to accommodate her team’s needs. And rather than true in-app redaction, Jennifer needed a separate (expensive) contract with a different software company.
“We were making one concession after another,” she says. “We were under contract, so I thought, ‘You know what, we’re married to this thing. Let’s just get through it.’”
Jennifer, Kaitlyn, and Gayon spent over two months in weekly meetings about the software that ran as long as three hours each—time that they just couldn’t afford.
“I cannot express the anxiety of knowing that every minute you’re not working on FOIA, FOIA is piling up behind you.”
Then came what she describes as “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
She would have to train the rest of the team on using the software herself.
“I barely understood the system myself!” she says. “We just thought, ‘Wow, this really isn’t the product for us.’”
‘And Then We Discovered JustFOIA’
One day at lunch, she got a phone call from Derrick, a JustFOIA Solution Consultant, asking about their FOIA situation.
Jennifer told him, “I straight up don’t have time for this. I’m weeks away from implementing this other solution.”
But Derrick kept thinking about that phone call. If Jennifer was already this dissatisfied during implementation, how much worse would she feel if they went live with the wrong software?
So he called again a few weeks later—just after she found out about the other solution’s lack of training. This time, she was ready to find out more.
She felt prepared: “I now knew what I didn’t want in a product and what exact questions to ask. We had ten thousand questions. But Derrick held my hand the whole way through.”
She knew she wanted a payment integration that would release the records immediately to the requester when they paid—not just to send her a notification so she could release the records manually.
She asked whether redaction was actually a part of JustFOIA or something she’d need to purchase from someone else.
And, of course, she needed reassurance that she’d have the support she needed to implement the software and get her team up to speed.
Derrick handled her questions easily, showed her JustFOIA’s robust payment and redaction capabilities, and assured her that JustFOIA’s high-touch implementation services would meet her needs.
‘I Was Prepared to Get Beat Up Pretty Bad’
As much as she loved the idea of switching, she didn’t think it would be possible. But Derrick suggested she look closer at the terms of the other contract. The City of Suffolk might not actually have to pay for the software until it launched.
Every software buyer, especially a new employee like Jennifer, feels like their reputation is on the line if a system doesn’t work out. But she knew she needed to speak up about how poorly the implementation was going—and about the new idea she had in mind.
“I was prepared to get beat up pretty bad by my leadership,” she admitted. “But I called my procurement guy, and I said, ‘Hypothetically speaking, could we get out of this contract?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, you can.’ I’m over here stressing out, but he was so cavalier about it!”
She went to her supervisor and the director of IT and reminded them of the promises they’d heard the other vendor make and explained how they hadn’t followed through.
After consulting with the city’s attorney, to her surprise and relief, she was permitted to terminate the contract and sign with JustFOIA.
‘We Weren’t Getting Behind While Implementing’
Once implementation began, Jennifer knew they’d made the right decision. JustFOIA is highly configurable, but the extra configurability didn’t translate into more work for her and her team. The basic system setup involved talking to their Project Coordinator, Carson, for about an hour.
Jennifer described that conversation:
“She said, ‘Show us your process. Okay cool. And what would you like to be different about the process? What do you want to keep? Great, we’ll see you in a couple of weeks.’ We gave her the intel and a couple of templates, and she took it and ran with it.”
“And then she showed us what she’d done. It was our process, but better. We needed minor tweaks, but it was just a matter of, ‘Okay, give me just a second,’ click, click, click. ‘Is this what you’re talking about?’ ‘Yes, perfect.’”
“We weren’t getting behind on our FOIAs while implementing with JustFOIA. It was smooth,” she said.
‘I Could Not Praise JustFOIA’s Training Enough’
Once their JustFOIA software was configured to their specifications, training could begin.
“It’s scary to undergo a new product and learn the ins and outs of it,” Jennifer said.
Because of their experience with the previous vendor, she knew she wanted the most high-touch option available to her. So she chose to have Carson fly to Virginia to train her and the team in-person.
“Even though we had a good understanding of the system at that point, having a physical person there to be over your shoulder was a game changer for us. Carson was so intelligent in the JustFOIA system and spoke in layman’s terms to us. When we asked a question, she knew the back-end answer, but she also knew how to explain it to us and show us how to do it.”
“I could not praise JustFOIA’s training enough. Top-notch.”
‘We’re Not Living in FOIA Crisis Mode’
Now that they’ve been live in the system for a few months, they’re starting to see how their new FOIA system will benefit their organization in the long run.
Jennifer estimates they’ve cut the time they spend on FOIA requests by 40% compared to their convoluted Word document system.
With the time they save, she’s re-evaluating their redaction process to find even more things to streamline. When ready to adjust their processes, they don’t have to submit a help support ticket and wait months for JustFOIA to change their configurations.
“You can do it yourself on the fly in JustFOIA,” Jennifer said. “It’s easy to go in and navigate, very intuitive.”
The whole atmosphere of the department changed. “We had a chance to come up and breathe,” Jennifer said. “We’re not living in FOIA crisis mode day-to-day. It’s really alleviated stress.”
And Kaitlyn, who hadn’t had a real vacation in 18 months? She got a JustFOIA luggage tag as part of their go-live celebration package from the JustFOIA team.
“I fastened that little sucker to my suitcase. I planned a birthday trip for myself to Tampa. And I peaced out for ten whole days.”
You Don't Need to Live In Crisis Mode, Either!
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