Advocates and Doris back central FOIL portal bill; Doris urges change and flags resource needs

Council Member Helen Brewer introduced Intro 12—5, which would require the Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) to develop and maintain a centralized, publicly accessible online portal to intake, track and post Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests and agency responses.

Pauline Toole, commissioner of DORIS, told the joint committee that the department already operates an open records portal and that "our existing portal meets many of the requirements" set out in the proposed law. Toole said the department—s portal has received more than 526,000 FOIL requests and that 53 agencies currently use the portal; she said the portal shows submission and acknowledgment dates and posts agency determinations, including citations to exemptions under the Public Officers Law when requests are denied.

At the same time, Toole said portions of the proposed law would require resources and technical work beyond what DORIS currently maintains. She said full text searchability of all responsive records, APIs, additional statistics (such as average resolution time and appeals tracking), and automatic machine-readable posting of records released through Article 78 litigation would require additional programming, personnel and cloud resources. Toole said implementation of an API raises security concerns "including access tokens, rate limiting, and the redaction of personal identifying information," and recommended terminology changes such as using "records access officers" rather than "FOIL officers."

Transparency advocates and government-watchdog groups testified in support of Intro 12—5. Rachel Faus (Reinvent Albany) said the bill "will dramatically improve agency responses to FOIL requests" and cited analysis showing long agency response times; she said 16% of portal requests were still open a year later in 2024. Sarah Roth of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project said Intro 12—5 "will finally bring FOIL into the 21st century" and recommended a short delay between giving a requester their records and making them publicly available on the portal to preserve journalists— ability to break news.

The Legal Aid Society described repeated delays in obtaining records needed for client representation and said centralized publication would reduce duplicative requests and save agency time. The Independent Budget Office and Common Cause New York added supportive testimony on transparency and data access. DORIS and advocates agreed on the goal of greater accountability and faster public access; DORIS asked the council to consider phased implementation and to account for resource and security implications.

No committee vote was recorded at the hearing; Council members asked DORIS to provide follow-up information on agency participation and technical requirements.