FOIA redaction software for public records offices
The records took two hours.
The response took eight to ten months.
RecordBeacon is redaction software for public records responses. It reads every page, flags what may need to come out, and holds each mark for your reviewer. The review that eats the deadline, done with the staff you have.
We run a messy sample set of scanned reports and email exports on the call, or your own files if your policy allows. No card to try it yourself.
Drop in the file you actually have. A crooked scan, a phone photo, a form filled out by hand.
It reads every page and flags what may need to come out. Then it stops.
A reviewer in your office decides each one, and every decision is recorded by name.
Released pages are rebuilt as images. The redacted text is gone, so nothing can be copied out from under a bar.
- 8 decisions, each on the record by name and time
- Released copy checked before download
It reads the set, then it stops.
The same four steps, in more detail.
01
Reads everything
Scans, phone photos, faxes, whole email exports with every attachment split into its own record. Call and interview recordings become readable transcripts, so what someone said is reviewed the same way a document is. OCR with an escalation path for handwriting.
02
Flags with a reason
Personal information and exempt content, marked across the whole set rather than one file at a time, each mark labeled with why it was flagged.
03
Waits for a person
Nothing is redacted automatically. Your reviewer approves or rejects each mark and can draw a box on anything detection missed. Release refuses to run while anything is undecided.
04
Releases defensibly
Released pages are rebuilt as images, so redacted text is gone from the file and cannot be copied back out. On a recording the approved spans are muted, and every muted range is checked again before the copy leaves. The release carries who decided what and when.
The part most tools get wrong.
Automatic redaction moves the work, it does not remove it
A tool that redacts on its own and then asks you to check its work has not saved anyone anything. You still read every page, and now you are also second-guessing a machine.
So detection here stops at a flag. The decision is a person's, on the record, by name.
A black rectangle is not a redaction
A box drawn over live text in a PDF is a box drawn over live text. Select the page, paste it somewhere, and the name you covered is still there. That has ended careers and produced settlements.
Released pages here are rebuilt as images, so redacted text is gone from the file, and the output is checked before it leaves.
A city told a requester the work would take 2 hours and 15 minutes, and that the records would arrive in 8 to 10 months.
City of Grand Rapids, in litigation over FOIA delay. Michigan Court of Appeals, December 2025.When a denial is challenged a year from now, the question is not whether the software was clever. It is who decided, what they decided, and when. That record is the product.
It does not replace how you track requests.
Intake, routing, the clock and the requester correspondence stay exactly where they are. RecordBeacon does the part between finding the records and being able to release them.
You already have a request platform
Keep it. Records come out of it, get reviewed here, and the released set goes back. Nobody changes how requests come in, and nobody has to retrain a department. How it fits next to your portal: GovQA, NextRequest and JustFOIA.
You run FOIA out of a mailbox and Acrobat
Most townships, villages and small districts do, because a platform priced for a city makes no sense at fifteen requests a year. This is the piece that actually costs you hours.
- Duplicates are caught across the whole response, so nobody reads the same page twice.
- Related documents are grouped, so a file and its attachments stay together.
- Every release is verified: the output is read back to confirm redacted content is gone.
- On team plans, read-only seats are free and unlimited, so anyone in the organization can see the work without paying for a seat they will not use.
See it work before anyone talks about contracts.
The first fifteen documents are free, with no card. A clerk can run an actual response through it and see what comes back, before involving procurement, legal, or anyone else.
An agency that needs its own deployment is a different conversation. Single-tenant, hosted for you or running inside your own cloud account, with a security review, your retention rules, and support through your procurement process. We respond to RFPs and we have written the security and cloud attachments before.
Agency deployments are scoped to the work after a walkthrough.
Where the records actually live.
RecordBeacon was built for a municipal law department's records work. Public agencies ask this first, and they should. The controls, without the marketing.
- United States regions only. Records do not leave them.
- Zero data retention with the model provider. Your documents are never used to train anything, by us or by anyone else.
- Role-based access and a named audit trail, which is the same record that makes a release defensible a year later.
- Encryption in transit and at rest.
- Single-tenant deployment, hosted for you or running inside your own cloud account, when your security review calls for it.
- We answer security reviews directly. Questionnaires, architecture, data flow, retention and subprocessors, in writing, from the person who built it.
Questions agencies actually ask
Can it handle a large email export?
Drop the whole export in. Each email and each attachment becomes its own record, duplicates across overlapping exports are caught once, and nothing needs converting first. An email search that returns thousands of pages is a normal upload here, not a special project.
What about 911 calls and interview recordings?
A recording becomes a readable transcript, sensitive moments are flagged for review, your reviewer decides each one, and the released copy is muted where they approved. Transcription runs on our own servers in US regions. Recordings are never sent to an outside transcription service.
Does it replace our records request system?
No. Intake, routing and the deadline clock stay wherever they are today, whether that is a request platform or a shared mailbox. RecordBeacon does the part between finding the records and being able to release them.
Does it redact records automatically?
No. Detection flags what it finds and stops. A reviewer approves or rejects every mark, and the release step refuses to run while anything is undecided. A tool that redacts on its own and then asks you to check its work has not saved anyone anything.
What happens when detection misses something?
Your reviewer draws a box on it. Reviewer-drawn marks carry the same audit record as detected ones, so a manual catch is not a second-class citizen in the log.
How do agencies buy this?
Two ways. A clerk can run the first fifteen documents free, with no card, and see it work on a real response before involving anyone. An agency that needs its own single-tenant deployment, a security review and support through procurement is a scoped engagement. We respond to RFPs.
Can we try it before we buy it?
The first 15 documents are free with no card. For a real evaluation, book a walkthrough. We run a sample set of scanned reports and email exports, or an actual response set of yours if your policy allows it.
Your state's rules, in plain language.
Deadlines, fee rules and exemption structure are different in every state. We keep a reference page for each one, reviewed against the statute's own text and dated when it was last checked: Michigan, Washington, California, Texas, Illinois, Florida, Ohio, New York and Georgia. The full set lives at public records laws by state. Choosing tooling? We also keep a vendor neutral guide to evaluating redaction software, the same questions to ask any vendor, including us.
Bring your worst scan.
The phone photo, the faded fax, the one your staff complains about most. Run fifteen documents through it yourself with no card and no call, or book twenty minutes and we will run a messy sample set with you, or your own files if your policy allows.