During our recent webinar, “What Have You Done for Me Lately? Examining Your Vendor Relationships,” Jackie Joyner, Client Director of the CDS Federal Group, offered insights into the unique issues facing her clients. We’ve synthesized a few of her comments here. To access a recording of the webinar, click here.
Often, the government is the first to request a certain data set, but the last one to interact with it. It’s up to our team at CDS to highlight for them the trends that we’re seeing in the data.
When working on behalf of a government agency, other requirements come along with litigation like public disclosures of information such as FOIA requests or investigatory analysis. It’s not unusual when workflows are so siloed that when data is released for different requests, sometimes the same data is redacted differently.
Addressing it is a bit twofold – the disconnect can be at the matter level and/or the client level. Oftentimes, one case team may not be aware another case team is either seeing the same content or working within the same data set. We may have the same custodian entity, so how can you repurpose that workflow? How can you ensure you’re not doing the same workflow with the same dataset, but in two different workspaces, for instance?
The government is a big constituency and being able to get an agency to agree on one type of approach is certainly challenging. To be in the best position to assist, we like to take the time to meet with the agency to understand their workflows generally, and with that information, identify areas where we may be able to streamline their existing workflows. Once they bring those inline, then it’s about making sure they are maintained.
Recently, we found that several of our agency teams were struggling with transitioning to a telework workflow. Because we took the time to understand their pain points and explain what we’re able to do, we helped them implement a workaround so the teams could move forward and work more effectively in their new arrangements.
To learn more about how CDS supports government agencies, click here.
