In late June, the City went live with a new online service aimed at making the fulfillment of public records requests easier and more transparent – it's called NextRequest. This new tool allows individuals to request, track and access the status of their public records requests online. In the future, we anticipate that citizens will also be able to pay for their records request online and then receive them electronically – all without a trip to City Hall.

The idea for NextRequest came from a 2013 Code for America project in Oakland, CA, called RecordTrac. NextRequest was then founded just a year ago by Code for America alumni in San Francisco. Since then, it’s been adopted by a number of local governments including Albuquerque, San Diego and the Port of Seattle. Part of the draw for cities to use this system is to cut down on unnecessary requests and to streamline the process of fulfilling requests across city departments.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu has commended this effort saying, “When I took office in 2010, I committed to making City government more efficient, open and transparent so that our residents could hold us accountable. With the launch of NextRequest, we are improving how we track and respond to public records requests and giving the public even more access.”  

In just two months, the City of New Orleans has published over 200 requests – and that’s not even counting the requests that are coming in to the NOPD records division (which we must keep private for legal reasons).

If you wish to file a public records request, please visit nola.nextrequest.com, click MAKE REQUEST and follow the instructions.