Case Study: Freedom of Information Act achieves near-instant FOIA searches (from 22 days to 6 seconds), 90% labor reduction and $55M annual savings with Forcepoint SureView Analytics

Freedom of Information Act - Customer Case Study

Forcepoint helped a large U.S. government department struggling to keep up with FOIA demand: the department received more than 22,000 requests in FY2012, employed roughly 375 FOIA specialists, and was averaging 33 days to respond (22 of those days spent just locating data across more than 20 separate agency databases), resulting in about $60.5M in annual labor costs and frequent delays and compliance shortfalls. The department sought improved keyword/Boolean search, BI-driven precision, and faster, repeatable cross-agency queries.

In October 2014 the department deployed Forcepoint’s SureView Analytics, a federated Big Data search and analytics platform with a customizable web interface that connects remote data sources and automates repeatable searches. Searches that once took 22 days now complete in about six seconds, cutting personnel hours by 90%, reducing estimated annual expenses from $60.5M to $5.5M, and delivering an anticipated departmental ROI of nearly $55M annually while reducing exposure to litigation and appeals.

Freedom of Information Act