Case Study: City of Detroit achieves 50% faster FOIA and litigation response times with Smartsheet

City of Detroit Answers Information Requests in Half the Time With Smartsheet

The City of Detroit’s law department was overwhelmed by a surge in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and litigation discovery requests during the city’s bankruptcy and had no formal request-management process. Requests were handled by email, making it hard to track ownership or deadlines, causing slow turnaround, cascading delays, and added expense while department directors lacked visibility into workload impacts.

By implementing Smartsheet forms, automated routing, alerts and dashboards, the team created clear workflows and real-time visibility. Within a month average response times fell to about 15 days (one lagging division dropped from ~32 to 15 days and over 65% of requests were completed within five days), the law department recouped $55,000 in year one (growing to $105,000 annually by 2019 and $330,000 saved over four years), and directors gained the data to address training, staffing and process improvements.

City of Detroit

Rebecca Wilhelm

Project Manager & Business Analytics Specialist, Law Department