The City of Rochester says they’re making enhancements to the city’s Freedom of Information or FOIL process. The revamp of the city’s FOIL webpage, now includes a “reading room” where you can see the latest FOIL requests and search past requests. As part of the upgrade, the city says user will get search results faster.
“New technology has given us the tools to bring more transparency to government which is critical for ensuring greater accountability to our citizens,” Mayor Lovely Warren said in a statement. “I am proud that less than a year after we launched the first major upgrades to the Freedom of Information process in decades, we are now providing an even greater level of accessibility. In addition our ability to enhance the City’s website with a stronger search engine will mean important information about City government, programs, projects and policies will be more readily available to residents.”
The city says this was part of a system upgrade that started early this year. The city is also working on enhancements to make PDF documents available and searchable, that will go live in early 2018.