FOI management software: How to stay compliant with the 20 working day deadline
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A request lands in a shared inbox on a Tuesday morning. By the time it reaches the right desk, four working days are already gone.
The information turns out to sit in three separate systems, one of which nobody in the room has logged into for a year. The clock does not pause for any of that.
According to the Freedom of Information statistics: annual 2024 bulletin from the Cabinet Office, UK monitored bodies received 83,041 FOI requests in 2024, an 18% rise on 2023.
Only 76% were answered within the statutory timescale, down from 81% the year before. Volumes are climbing and performance is slipping in the same year.
Freedom of information software closes the gap between a request arriving and the right person finding the right document, which is where most of that lost time actually goes.
This article covers what that software needs to do, the commercial pressure behind Section 12, and how to build a retrieval process that holds up as request volumes keep rising.
Key Takeaways
- Section 10 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 gives you 20 working days to respond, starting from the date of receipt.
- Section 12 lets an authority refuse a request once compliance would cost more than 18 hours of staff time (24 hours for central government), calculated at a flat £25 per hour.
- The ICO monitors authorities where 90% or more of requests regularly miss the statutory timescale, and in 2024 the compliance rate across all monitored bodies fell to 76%.
- FOI, EIR, and subject access requests run on different clocks and different rules. Confusing them in policy or in software is a governance risk in itself.
- Freedom of information software earns its place by speeding up retrieval across every system that might hold the answer.
What is FOI software?
Freedom of information software is the set of tools an authority uses to log, track, and respond to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act. The category ranges from simple case-tracking tools to platforms built around the underlying records themselves.
Response speed depends less on how well a request is logged and more on how well the records lifecycle is managed across every system that might hold them.
The 18 hour cost limit: FOI's hidden commercial pressure
Section 12 of the Act sets a hard stop. Once a public authority estimates that answering a request would exceed the appropriate limit, calculated at £25 per hour of staff time, it does not have to comply.
The limit itself depends on the type of authority:
- 18 hours for most public authorities, including councils, NHS trusts, universities, and police forces
- 24 hours for central government departments, legislative bodies, and the armed forces
That threshold only covers the time spent determining whether information is held, locating it, retrieving it, and extracting it. Every hour an officer spends searching three different case management systems for a document that should have taken ten minutes to find counts directly against that limit.
Faster retrieval means fewer requests tip over the limit, which means fewer refusals, fewer complaints to the ICO, and fewer authorities on the regulator's monitoring list.
Requests made under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 run on the same 20 working day clock as FOI and cover much of the same statutory ground, which is why most councils report the two together in their transparency figures.
A subject access request runs on an entirely different basis: one calendar month under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, counted from the date of receipt or from identity verification.
The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 has since added detail to the SAR side specifically. It codifies a "reasonable and proportionate search" standard, so controllers are not expected to turn over every system for every request, and introduces a formal "stop the clock" provision that pauses the one month timer while an authority seeks clarification.
Neither change touches FOI or EIR timescales. Treating all three regimes as one undifferentiated pile of "information requests" is the fastest way to miss a deadline that was never actually shared between them.
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How to speed up FOI retrieval: step by step
Hey Doxi, how do you speed up FOI retrievals?
Most missed deadlines come from small delays that stack up across a records estate nobody designed to be searched under time pressure.
Get retention and classification right at the point of filing
A document that is correctly classified the day it arrives is a document that gets found in seconds three years later.
Waiting until a request comes in to work out what something is, who owns it, and how long it needs to be kept is the moment where hours quietly disappear. Consistent classification at the point of capture is what makes fast retrieval possible at all.
Make everything searchable across every system that might hold it
A search that only covers one case management system will miss the version of the record sitting in a shared drive, an email archive, or a finance platform.
Full-text and metadata search that spans every system where a record could live turns a multi-hour hunt into a single query. This is where the biggest time savings sit, because it removes the manual step of checking system after system by hand.
Automate inbound request capture and routing
Requests arrive by email, web form, and occasionally by letter, and each one needs to be logged, classified, and sent to the right team before any retrieval work starts.
Automatically capturing and classifying inbound correspondence removes the delay of a request sitting unopened in a shared mailbox, days that get lost before the clock has even properly started running.
Your FOI-readiness checklist
Before the next request lands, check whether your current records management software actually supports these three steps.
- A single, authority-wide classification scheme, applied consistently across every department
- Full-text and metadata search that reaches every system holding potentially relevant records, including systems outside the primary case management tool
- Retention schedules enforced automatically across every record type
- An audit trail that shows who accessed, changed, or reviewed a record, and when
- A clear, documented separation between FOI, EIR, and SAR handling, including different clocks and different exemptions
- Reporting that shows how close each open request is to its statutory deadline, before it becomes urgent
How to choose the right FOI request management software
Most software in this space is a form of case management software: a case number, a due date, a workflow to log the response.
That part of the job matters, but it assumes the hard part, actually finding the information, has already been solved somewhere else. When evaluating software, ask where the retrieval speed actually comes from:
- Does it search only its own case files, or does it reach across your wider records estate?
- Can it enforce retention and classification at the point a document is filed, months or years before any request exists?
- Does the audit trail hold up if a decision on a refusal or an exemption is challenged?
A tool that tracks requests well but searches poorly will always be limited by how fast a person can manually locate the underlying record.
Where FOI response management fits into your wider records strategy
Every FOI request is really a test of how well your organisation manages information day to day. A record that was properly classified, retained under the right policy, and indexed for search the moment it was created is a record produced in minutes when a request arrives.
One that was filed inconsistently, left in a personal inbox, or split across three departmental drives will cost hours no matter how good your request-tracking process is.
The same records also serve subject access requests, internal audits, litigation holds, and day-to-day case work, so building retrieval speed for FOI specifically improves every other public sector records process running alongside it. That means covering:
- Capture at the point of intake
- Classification and retention applied consistently
- Archiving that keeps records both accessible and provably unaltered
- Search that spans the full records estate
Handled as separate projects, these pieces create exactly the fragmentation that makes an 18 hour cost limit start to feel tight.
How Doxis helps you stay inside the FOI deadline
Doxis ECM replaces the patchwork of case management tools, shared drives, and legacy document systems most authorities accumulate over the years with a single platform. Every record type, whether it is an FOI case file, a contract, an HR record, or day-to-day correspondence, sits in the same system, giving you one source of truth instead of several different places to search.
On top of that foundation, Doxis provides revision-safe archiving, full-text and metadata search across every indexed record, a complete audit trail for every access and change, and role-based access controls configured per document or case type.
Doxis Superhuman Search builds on that foundation with natural-language search, so an FOI officer can ask a plain question and get a source-backed answer from across every indexed system in one query.
Doxis AI.dp adds automated capture and classification of inbound correspondence, so an FOI, EIR, or SAR request arriving by email is recognised and routed before anyone has to notice it manually.
These capabilities sit inside Doxis's wider Intelligent Content Automation platform, which also covers contract management, HR document handling, and structured business process automation.
The same records foundation that speeds up FOI retrieval also supports the rest of your organisation's document-heavy work.
- Cuts the manual search time that drives requests toward the 18 hour cost limit, with natural-language search across every indexed system via Doxis Superhuman Search
- Applies consistent retention and classification the moment a document is filed, well before any request exists
- Gives every record a full audit trail, ready to withstand scrutiny from the ICO or a Tribunal
- Extends the same retrieval speed to subject access requests, audits, and internal case work alongside FOI
- Configures role-based access per case type, so an FOI Case class gets the same rights framework as any other
- Deploys as a cloud service hosted on AWS or Azure infrastructure in the UK, or on-premise, whichever your authority's infrastructure policy requires
Doxis is recognised as a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Document Management 2026.
Get in touch with Doxis below to see how a stronger records foundation brings your FOI response times back under control.
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FAQs on FOI management software
How many working days do we have to respond to an FOI request?
Section 10 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 sets the limit at 20 working days from the date of receipt, excluding weekends and bank holidays.
What is the FOI cost limit, and how does software help avoid it?
Section 12 lets an authority refuse a request once the estimated cost of determining, locating, retrieving, and extracting the information exceeds 18 hours of staff time for most public authorities, or 24 hours for central government, calculated at £25 per hour. Software that cuts retrieval time keeps more requests comfortably under that limit.
What should FOI request management software actually do?
It should capture and classify inbound requests automatically, search across every system that might hold relevant records, and produce a clear audit trail alongside the case tracking itself. A tool that only logs a case number and a due date leaves the hardest part, finding the information, unsolved.
Does FOI software need to search across every system, or just its own case files?
It needs to reach every system that might hold a relevant record. A tool that only searches its own database will miss records sitting in shared drives, email archives, or finance platforms, which is usually where the real delay comes from.
Can FOI software integrate with an existing case management or document management setup?
Yes. Records management software like Doxis sits underneath an existing case tracker, supplying the search, classification, and audit trail that tracker doesn't provide on its own.
Is FOI software cloud-based, on-premise, or both?
Both are usually available. Doxis, for example, runs as a cloud service hosted on AWS or Azure infrastructure in the UK, or on-premise, depending on an authority's infrastructure policy.
Does the same software also handle EIR and subject access requests?
It can, as long as it keeps the different deadlines and rules for each regime separate. FOI and EIR both run on a 20 working day clock, while a subject access request runs on a separate one calendar month deadline under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.
How is dedicated FOI software different from general document management software?
Most software built specifically for FOI is really case management software: a case number, a due date, a workflow to log the response. General records management software, by contrast, gives every record a single home, so the retrieval speed that fixes FOI deadlines also supports subject access requests, audits, and day-to-day case work.
Do EIR requests need to be logged separately from FOI requests?
Most authorities report them together, since Environmental Information Regulations 2004 requests cover much of the same statutory ground as FOI, but the underlying regulations are distinct and should be tracked as such internally.
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