City of Santa Clara

The City of Santa Clara "Disagrees in Whole" with Finding #1. Below are responses to the Findings sub-parts: Response to

The City of Santa Clara "Disagrees in Whole." The City has had a City of Santa Clara Agenda Date: 9/4/2019 19-981 written policy for staff to respond to CPRA requests, compliant with the law, since June 1999. The City of Santa Clara's practices are supported by key actions taken at the policy, administrative/operational, and legal level: (1) City Council Policy Manual - This document has been updated significantly over the past 18 months, and frequently reviewed by the Governance Committee for full City Council action. In fact, in 2017 the City Council approved a City Council Policy #046 titled "MAYOR AND COUNCILPUBLIC RECORDS POLICY" (Attachment 7) to manage its compliance with recent court actions and best practices with public records management. City Manager Directives - The administrative policies for the City of Santa Clara are (2) managed through the City Manager Directive-Procedures (CMD) process which provide instructions to the organization to direct procedures, practices and policies. The Grand Jury report fails to acknowledge CMD #13, dated July 23, 2003, and titled "PUBLIC RECORDS REQUESTS," (Attachment 8) which specifically provides instructions to the organization on how to respond to public records act requests. City Attorney Advice - Following court rulings relative to public records, the City Attorney (3) regularly provides advice with respect to developments and changes in responding to public records requests. As mentioned above, former Administrations failed to keep current the CMD administrative policies. CMD #13 will be updated to reflect new practices and procedures once NextRequest is implemented and observed for six months and further updates will be done or as needed based on other changes. Note: For FY 2019/20, as part of its reforms, the Council approved funds for the City Manager to hire a consultant to review the CMD policies and advise on which CMDs required updating. With focus on updating the Council Policy Manual, staff decided to outsource this work to accelerate modernizing CMDs that require amendment.

The City of Santa Clara "Disagrees in Whole." Again, the Grand Jury Printed on 9/3/2019 19-981 Agenda Date: 9/4/2019 uses a subjective term to characterize the City's records management. In fact, this characterization was the source of a lengthy discussion during the "Exit Interview" when staff expressed several times that the records management is more accurately characterized as manual (with some records digitized), decentralized, and, as a result, inefficient. The Grand Jury emphasized, during that conversation, that unilaterally focusing on Santa Clara's practices would serve as an example to encourage other cities to change because they would not want a similar Grand Jury report issued about them. A simple benchmarking exercise would have yielded important contextual information about how other cities manage their records. The City requested that the Grand Jury benchmark to better inform how the City of Santa Clara compares to other regional cities. They declined to add that information to their investigation. City staff completed said benchmarking and, in Section 2, Figure 1: Volume Benchmarking of Public Records Requests, illustrates that the City of Santa Clara is like other regional local governments with both a combination of manual and digitized records maintenance, such as: Cupertino, Fremont, Milpitas, Mountain View, and Sunnyvale. Unfortunately, the Grand Jury did not think that it was important to benchmark our records management practices to understand whether they are common or not, which would have informed a more accurate Finding because each is similar to Santa Clara (except for volume of requests). It is important to note that the manual method of records management does not mean that the City cannot locate records or is disorganized; however, it does mean that it takes longer and requires much more staff resources. However, new technologies offer and allow for more efficient uses to better the public, which the City is fully engaged in implementing but, as it is well known, new software systems cannot be implemented without first preparing an organization for the change. City staff's work has been very focused on modernizing systems that better serve the public, promote transparency, and advance modern administrative practices. Within the context of much change in these areas, the City has been able to timely and accurately respond to CPRA requests and has been working on various process improvements over the course of the last 18 months that directly prepare for the NextRequest implementation. It is a well-known practice in information technology software implementation, that organizational readiness and business processes need to be stabilized to accept new technology. Below is a summary of some of the major efforts taken over the past 18- months to advance the organization in a more efficient public records management process and prepare it for greater use of digitized records systems (Attachment 9): 1) Resolved Financial Deficit -- Achieving financial stability for the City enabled the addition of a Procurement Manager, Contracts Manager, and Public Records Manager which are all core to improved records management. In January 2018, when the City Manager first surfaced this matter before the Council, had the budget deficit not been resolved, there would have been no opportunity to add resources needed to resolve service areas. In fact, faced with a $46 million deficit, the City would have been facing the preservation of other core services, beyond records process improvements. (Timeframe = October 2017 - June 2018 for FY 2018/19 and July 2018 - July 2019 for FY 2019/21) 2) Implemented a Council Agenda Management System (Granicus) -- Within the City Manager's first 90 days, action was taken to prepare the organization for the implementation of Granicus because it was deemed the software system that would achieve the most significant City of Santa Clara Agenda Date: 9/4/2019 19-981 impact of advancing the City's records management (i.e., establish a workplan, communicate workplan, establish and schedule user training for many departmental report writers, establishing new report writing formats and requirements, Council approval of a new agenda format, Council approval of action minutes, implementation of software, testing of software while concurrently maintaining both agenda production systems, and resolving glitches that naturally surface during this process). Granicus is a system that supports City Council (and Boards and Commissions) agenda management, from agenda development phase to minute production. With the implementation of this software system, the City made a significant leap with archiving reports, resolutions, ordinances, minutes, agendas, and attachments to reports for transparency and quick public access to these records. (Timeframe = October 2017 - March/April 2018) Implemented a Log to Track CPRA Requests- Given the high volume of records requests, 3) to support the Council and organization with informed decision making and workload management, the City began collecting data of CPRA requests and has observed the upward trend of more frequent and complex records requests. This data helps with understanding the CPRA request activity. Data analytics in this area of public service was not previously performed in prior years/decades, January 2019 was the first time that CPRA data was reported. (Timeline = ongoing) Council Policy Manual - At the Governance Committee meeting of April 10, 2017, the 4) Committee unanimously recommended the approval of a Mayor and City Council Public Records Policy, particularly with the recent court case Smith v. San Jose relating to public records on both private and public accounts pertaining to the conduct of public business. The Council adopted a resolution to approve the Mayor and City Council Public Records Policy #046 on May 16, 2017. (Timeframe = April - May 2017) Relocate Significant Amount of Public Records for Proper Storage - The Council 5) acknowledges that we are short on workspace for employees. With the addition of the above referenced staff, space was needed for them to work. Additionally, the former City Clerk stored the City's archives in a room in City Hall that did not support the proper storage requirements for City archives, and they were at risk of water, or other forms of, damage. This put the City's records at risk of rotting and destruction. Recognizing that this was not a best practice, the Administration acted to properly store the records at a facility that provides the proper storage conditions for our valuable City archives. This action opened space for the new employees and this action alone was a tremendous effort and advancement for records management. (Timeframe = September - October 2018) Establish Funding, Job Description, Recruit, and Hire a Public Records Manager - Public 6) sector employment requires that a new job description/classification be coordinated with the relevant bargaining unit and approved by the City Council. The City Council approved the Public Records Manager job description on June 26, 2018. Through resolving the financial deficit, the City was able to fund this position in July 2018. Upon approval of the classification, the City posted the position on September 6, 2018, after completing "meet and confer" labor requirements for the proposed job descriptions, and a job offer was made upon finalizing the interviews in early November 2018. The Public Records Manager began work on January 14, 2019. It should be noted that it can take six to nine months to recruit and place employees. (Timeframe = February 2018 - January 2019) State Law Change re Police Records (AB1421 and AB748) - 7) Assembly Bill 1421 went into effect in January 2019, which requires Police Departments to release certain records and videos. Assembly Bill 748 went into effect on July 1, 2019, which will now require the Police Department to release body camera video of shootings within 45 days. Printed on 9/3/2019 19-981 Agenda Date: 9/4/2019 Police Departments from throughout California received CPRA requests shortly after the law went into effect. The process to respond to these requests is very staff intensive and requires a coordinated effort between with the City Attorney's Office and the Police Department. The Police Department reclassified one Staff Aide position to a Records Specialist for Fiscal Year 2019/20. The process to review one shooting case may take approximately 30 days. Given the research needed and specialty in this area, two audio/video companies have been contacted and identified to conduct the redaction function. (Timeframe: September 2018 - present) 8) Assess Department CPRA Response Processes & Establish New Practices - In order for the City to understand the needed improvements and City practices, the Public Records Manager met with Department Directors to learn about processes and areas of opportunity for improvement beginning in February. She developed a process that began establishing a less decentralized model and log system to track the City's many requests, on March 12, 2019 she joined the Assistant City Clerk in a workshop providing educational training on the agenda management process and public records process to agenda coordinators and public records liaisons for each department. (Timeframe February - April 2019) 9) CPRA Training Development and User Training - In March 2019, upon completion of #7, City staff provided an educational training workshop and provided basic training related to the CPRA that was tailored based on learning the needs of the organization. 10) Basic Public Records Management Training & Pre-NextRequest Training -- In preparation for the NextRequest launch, staff also provided basic public records management training as well as NextRequest user trainings for all public records liaisons from all departments on August 5, 7 and 13, 2019. (Timeframe January- August 2019) 11) LaserFiche Department Director Workplan Prep - On April 8, 2019, the City Manager's Office and IT Director presented a PowerPoint presentation that contained key information about the planned implementation of Laserfiche software with key milestones outlined. The purpose of this meeting was to review the organizational needs to prepare for the implementation of this software and to hold a discussion about preparedness and workload, to anticipate how to advance this effort. This PowerPoint presentation was provided to the Grand Jury on April 5, 2019, in advance of presenting it to the Department Directors (Attachment 10), which the Grand Jury failed to mention. Absent acknowledgement of our workplan for LaserFiche implementation, with target dates, misleads the public about our efforts. 12) Laserfiche Soft Launch-- At the above referenced meeting, it was suggested that the timeline be adjusted and that Laserfiche be prioritized. A soft launch of Laserfiche has been implemented with the City Attorney's Office to assist with work process and anticipate any implementation changes in the workplan created. It is anticipated for a broader implementation in fall 2019, which will largely begin with scanning documents, establishing user rules, and other organizational preparations that will go past December 31, 2019 (an arbitrary deadline set by the Grand Jury). Once completed, Laserfiche will allow City Departments to scan vital records to a "central repository' for enterprise records management of vital records. (Timeframe = April 2019 - Present). 13) Records Query Improvement - Given the volume of public record requests, staff has worked to provide focused and relevant search terms to the Department of Information Technology (IT) to yield more focused responsive records and to create a more efficient search of records. IT staff collaborated with the Microsoft exchange engineers to review opportunities to streamline the search results. As a result of this, the search now eliminates duplicate emails and can be provided to staff in a pdf format upon request. Prior to this effort, it was not uncommon for any City of Santa Clara Agenda Date: 9/4/2019 19-981 email sweep to produce a large volume of duplicative records for review by staff. The former City Clerk procured both Granicus and Laserfiche through a combined RFP process in FY 2016/17 and an informal process for the NextRequest software. While the Grand Jury's

The City of Santa Clara "Disagrees in Whole." While the Public Records Manager is a sole job classification, each department has one or more departmental staff assigned to coordinate the City's responses to CPRA requests. Staff relies on subject matter experts to respond accurately to requests. As shared with the Grand Jury members, the City has several staff members who are trained, equipped and have the professional experience and ability to assist and support the City's public records response process. To serve in the best way possible, the City recognizes that having staff in various areas and expertise levels, who are involved in the process for public records, increases its ability to fully respond to public records requests. The position of Public Records Manager cannot serve as a subject matter expert in every department to identify all responsive records to a request and, accordingly, as a long-standing practice, the City has had multiple staff within its departments trained on responding to CPRA's. The Public Records Manager's work is to ensure consistency with response methodologies, support the system development, prepare for the various required trainings with this change management of the entire organization, and track requests that do not fall into one department or are more complex in nature.