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How to move Right-to-Know request intake, routing, and response tracking off email and into a Laserfiche workflow tied to your existing PHMC retention schedule — with a practical rollout sequence for townships and counties.
Guide briefing
A defensible Right-to-Know workflow tracks four steps inside the five-day response window: intake, routing to the record custodian, redaction/legal review, and a timestamped response. Automating that workflow on the same platform that holds the records — rather than a separate email-and-spreadsheet process — gives a Pennsylvania township or county one audit trail to produce if a response is ever appealed.
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Talk to a specialistPennsylvania's Right-to-Know Law gives an agency's open-records officer five business days to respond to a written request, and a missed deadline counts as a deemed denial the requester can appeal. Knowing the deadline is the easy part. The operational problem most townships and counties actually face is that a Right-to-Know (RTK) request has to move through several hands — intake, routing to the record's custodian department, legal or redaction review, and a tracked response — inside that same five-day window, using whatever combination of email, shared drives, and paper folders the office already has.
This playbook lays out what a Laserfiche-based RTK workflow looks like for a Pennsylvania township or county, how it connects to the records already under a PHMC retention schedule, and a practical sequence for rolling it out without disrupting requests already in flight.
Workflow Automation
In a manual process, an RTK request typically arrives by email or in person, gets forwarded to whichever staff member the open-records officer thinks holds the record, and then waits on that person's own priorities to locate the document, decide what (if anything) needs redaction, and reply. Every handoff is invisible to the open-records officer until it comes back, which makes the five-day clock the one thing nobody is actually tracking in real time. The most common failure mode is not bad faith — it's simply that the request sat in an inbox two of the five days were already gone before anyone started working it.
A workflow-automated version of the same process starts with a structured intake form instead of a raw email, which captures the requester, the records sought, and the date received — starting the clock automatically rather than relying on someone to note it. From there, the workflow routes the request to the correct custodian department based on the record type, tracks whether a redaction or legal review step is required, and logs every stage with a timestamp. Because the workflow runs on the same platform that holds the underlying records, the person handling the request can pull the actual document, apply redactions, and route the finished response — without leaving the system or re-keying anything into a separate tracking spreadsheet.
Most RTK requests touch records that are already governed by a PHMC Local Government Records Committee retention schedule. Building the RTK workflow on top of the same records structure — rather than as a separate RTK-only log — means the office can answer “do we still have this record, and are we required to?” from one system, instead of cross-referencing an RTK tracker against a separate retention schedule by hand.
The Pennsylvania Office of Open Records hears appeals when a request is deemed denied or when a requester disputes a fee or a redaction. A workflow that logs intake date, routing, review, and response gives the open-records officer a complete, timestamped record to produce if a response is ever appealed — rather than reconstructing the timeline from email threads after the fact.
| Step | Manual process | Automated workflow |
|---|---|---|
| Intake | Email or in-person; date received noted manually (or not) | Structured intake form starts the 5-day clock automatically |
| Routing | Forwarded to a staff member's judgment of the right custodian | Routed to the custodian department by record type |
| Redaction / legal review | Ad hoc, tracked in email threads | Tracked review step logged inside the same workflow |
| Response & audit trail | Reconstructed after the fact if appealed | Timestamped at every stage, ready to produce on appeal |
Start with a single department that handles a steady but manageable volume of RTK requests — police records or the recorder of deeds are common starting points — and run the workflow alongside the existing process for a short pilot period rather than switching everything over at once. Use the pilot to confirm the routing rules match how requests actually move in your office, then expand department by department. Because the workflow sits on top of the records platform rather than replacing it, departments that haven't been onboarded yet can keep working normally while the rollout continues.
For a platform-level comparison of why a records-management system, not general file storage, matters for this workflow, see Laserfiche vs. SharePoint for County Government Records Management. For the retention schedule this workflow routes against, see the Pennsylvania County Records Retention Quick-Reference, and for the digitization side of the same records program, see Government Records Digitization in Pennsylvania.
The five-business-day clock is not absolute. 65 P.S. §§ 67.901–67.902 allow an agency to extend its response by up to 30 calendar days, but only for specific, statutorily defined reasons, and only if the agency notifies the requester in writing before the original five-day window closes. A workflow that surfaces the extension conditions at intake — rather than leaving the decision to individual judgment days into the request — keeps that written notice from becoming the step that gets missed.
The Pennsylvania Office of Open Records' 2024 Annual Report — its busiest year on record, with 3,227 appeals filed against a five-year average of 3,001 — offers a concrete picture of where local agencies lose RTK disputes. Local agencies (counties, townships, school districts, boroughs, cities, and police departments) accounted for 2,490 of those appeals. Requesters prevailed, in whole or in part, in 31% of local-agency appeals; agencies prevailed outright in 28%. The remainder were consolidated, transferred, or dismissed — commonly because the appeal was filed too early, too late, or without the copy of the original request and agency response that the appeal requires. That last category is entirely process-driven: it reflects paperwork and timing, not the underlying merits of a records dispute, and it is exactly the failure mode a logged, timestamped intake-to-response workflow is built to prevent.
Five business days from receipt. The open-records officer can grant, redact, deny, ask for clarification, or invoke a written extension within that window — missing it is treated as a deemed denial the requester can appeal to the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records.
The request has to pass through several hands — intake, routing to the record custodian, redaction or legal review, and a tracked response — inside the five-day window. In a manual, email-based process, none of those handoffs is visible to the open-records officer until it comes back, so time is often lost before anyone starts working the request.
Most RTK requests touch records already governed by a PHMC Local Government Records Committee retention schedule. Building the RTK workflow on the same records platform — rather than a separate RTK-only tracker — lets an office confirm in one place whether a record still exists and is required to, instead of cross-referencing two systems by hand.
Produce the timestamped audit trail of the request: intake date, routing, any redaction or legal review, and the response date. An automated workflow logs each stage as it happens; a manual process usually has to reconstruct that timeline from email after the appeal is already filed.
Start with one department that handles a steady, manageable volume of requests — police records and the recorder of deeds are common starting points — run it alongside the existing process for a short pilot, confirm the routing rules match how requests actually move, then expand department by department.
Under 65 P.S. § 67.901, agencies must respond to a Right-to-Know request within five business days of receipt. A missed deadline is automatically treated as a denial — a "deemed denial" — which gives the requester the right to appeal to the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records within 15 business days. A workflow that timestamps intake and routing removes the ambiguity about when the clock started and whether the deadline was met.
65 P.S. §§ 67.901–67.902 permit a single 30-calendar-day extension when specific conditions apply: the records are stored off-site, the request requires legal review or redaction, the agency has legitimate staffing constraints, the request is unusually complex, the requester has not paid required fees, or the requester has not complied with the agency's procedural requirements. The agency must notify the requester in writing before the initial five-day window closes, stating which condition applies.
In 2024, the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records docketed 3,227 appeals — a record year — of which 2,490 involved local agencies (counties, townships, school districts, and boroughs). Requesters obtained access when appeals were granted, partially granted, or withdrawn, which occurred in 31% of local-agency appeals; 28% were denied outright. A meaningful share of the rest were dismissed for procedural defects — filed too early, too late, or without the required copy of the original request and agency response — which is why documented intake dates and response records matter as much as the substantive answer. (Source: PA Office of Open Records, 2024 Annual Report)
