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Clerk urges $20,000 FOIL software to ease heavy manual redaction workload
Summary
Steuben County Clerk’s office told the Administration Committee it processed roughly 400 FOIL requests and tens of thousands of pages this year and is exploring a software solution estimated at about $20,000 per year to centralize and speed records redaction and responses.
Rochelle Casselbury, speaking for the Clerk of the Legislature’s office, told the Administration Committee the office has processed about 400 FOIL requests totaling roughly 60,000 pages so far this year and is handling most of the work manually.
"It looks as though it will cost about $20,000 a year," Casselbury said after describing demos of several platforms that can store previous responses, extract duplicate emails and help manage video redaction. She told legislators that lengthy Axon video requests can require playing seven hours of footage and manually noting minutes and seconds for the Sheriff’s Office to redact, work that often happens off hours and on weekends.
Casselbury said she is coordinating with Purchasing and Finance and hopes to return to committee at month’s end with pricing and a recommendation. Chair William Thew and members pressed on staff hours and whether counterparts use similar software; Casselbury said she had participated in multiple demos and is interested in a platform already used by Finance for short‑term rentals.
If adopted, the software would centralize FOIL search, deduplication and previous answers so repeat requests can be routed to an existing response and reduce duplicate manual review. Casselbury emphasized that some searches still require attorney review for privilege and that the tool would not absolve that legal check.
