ARPA Funding for Public Records – Convincing Others to Invest ARPA in Public Records
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ARPA Funding for Public Records – Convincing Others to Invest ARPA in Public Records

By May 26, 2021September 13th, 2021No Comments

How do I convince others in my organization that we should spend some of our ARPA money fixing our public records problem?

GovQA has a funding request letter template ready for you to use!

Funding Request Letter Highlights:

  • Professional letter template you can customize to secure ARPA funds
  • Outlines the impacts of the pandemic on the public records process
  • Provides support for carefully selected eligible uses of funding
  • Details key features of GovQA’s Public Records Response System
  • Similar letter templates from GovQA resulted in successful acquisition of CARES Act funds!

Need to make your case via email?

GovQA has also prepared an email template you can use to communicate the benefits and eligibility of an investment in GovQA using ARPA (or CARES Act) funds.

What’s the Return on Investment for GovQA Public Records Software?

Invest and Save Now AND Later On Staffing, Litigation, and Materials
With GovQA’s Government-Modernizing, Crisis-Ready FOIA Solution

Now more than ever, with Covid-19 revenue losses, you need a cost-effective solution to respond to urgent records requests (including the huge surge in requests for ARPA funds management coming from the public and media in the months and years to come). Be sure to secure a solution that securely supports remote work and helps your agency recover out-of-pocket costs — a system that pays for itself — like GovQA.

Investments in government modernization to enable digital delivery of government services is a hot topic right now. ARPA supports this type of investment!

So, how do you communicate the ROI benefits of public records software to those doling out the money?

 

Justifying the Cost of GovQA

We have identified several ways to save on FOIA costs by investing in GovQA:

    Staffing

    Due to efficiency gains of GovQA software, the time your staff used to spend making copies and walking down the hall to gather records can be reallocated to more important work that requires critical thinking. And, by moving to the secure cloud, your staff can work remotely on any schedule that suits your operations. Plus, with your process streamlined, you greatly reduce your need for future staff increases.

    Litigation

    Non-compliance penalties and fines can be assessed for missed deadlines and improper handling of FOIA requests. And attorneys fees and costs — even criminal charges are possible — for non-compliance, the release of PII, or data theft damages. When your FOIA process is manual, your exposure to non-compliance risk is high.

    When you modernize, you get deadline counters and automated workflows that make it much easier to respond on time. Plus, you gain improved redaction control, and automated, defensible tracking logs that prove you followed the law. These are all reasons why risk mitigation is another powerful benefit of modernizing your FOIA process with GovQA.

    Materials and Time

    With GovQA, you can eliminate the costs of maintaining on-premise hardware and software when you move our cloud-based FOIA solution. You can also reduce the costs of physical storage media – and, if allowed by your local law, recover a big chunk of these costs. If your state allows you to charge for those materials and the time to prepare responses, you should be charging to help recoup those expenses. GovQA makes estimating, invoicing and payments easy.

    Never Thought About the Cost of Public Records This Way Before?

    Inefficiencies and lawsuits can be expensive. Save time and money with the cloud-based GovQA software platform that centralizes, standardizes, and simplifies the exchange of all types of government records and information requests. 

    GovQA can help you answer the call…for answers. And put money back into your budget.

    Read more here.
    See latest ARPA Guidelines from Treasury

    Download an ARPA funding request letter template here.

    Free eCourse – ARPA and public records

    This 8-part eCourse will provide resources to help you convince others in your organization of the value of investing in a public records solution using ARPA funds. 

    To keep up with the pace of increasing volume and complexity of public records – you are going to need to modernize your technology and deliver more government services – like public records – digitally.  

    Other Lessons on ARPA Funding

    ARPA Implications for Public Records