Government agencies today are facing unprecedented pressure to do more with less. Recordkeeping teams, responsible for critical functions like responding to open records requests and FOIA compliance, are increasingly challenged by staff reductions and the ever-growing volume and complexity of digital records.

Government recordkeeping professionals across federal and local agencies are partnering with Pagefreezer to help navigate growing resource constraints, fewer available staff, and the need to achieve more with fewer resources.

One thing is becoming more and more clear: automated digital recordkeeping is becoming essential for government efficiency. 

This article explores the challenges we’re seeing agencies face with manual recordkeeping and highlights the critical need for automated government recordkeeping software, especially when it comes to increasing efficiency with fewer resources.

The Role of Recordkeeping in Government in 2025

Government agencies at all levels are facing significant pressure to maintain transparency and compliance despite having fewer people and resources available. As a result, efficiency has become essential for daily operations.

If you’re responsible for recordkeeping, public information, or digital preservation at a government agency, I’m sure I don’t have to explain the importance of historical government recordkeeping to you. 

We all agree that recordkeeping is the backbone of government operations, ensuring accountability, transparency, and continuity. 

Accurate and accessible records are vital for:

• Facilitating public access to information
• Maintaining regulatory compliance with FOIA obligations and open records laws
• Preserving institutional memory
• Supporting audits and investigations

The problem is that most digital recordkeeping in government is manual and complicated. It takes a lot of effort, resources, and significant time to manage even digital-born records, like website content, social media posts, or Microsoft Teams chats. 

But this isn’t a problem rooted in the skills or competency of the professionals managing these records – as you well know. 

This is a technology issue. 

The Major (Costly) Issues with Manual Recordkeeping

There’s no doubt that inefficiency is costly, but now with reduced headcount and increased workloads, the cost of traditional approaches are steeply rising. Unfortunately, government digital recordkeeping is typically burdened by insufficient, and overly complicated software and processes, exacerbating the strain on already stretched teams. 

However, inefficiency is not the only problem with traditional, manual solutions for digital government recordkeeping:

1. High risk of error in capturing and preserving critical information

Did you know that if someone comments on your agency’s social media post, but then deletes that comment before it can be captured manually, the deleted comment is  still considered a public record? Or if someone makes a change to your department’s website, that change is also a public record?

And if someone messages you on Microsoft Teams about official government business, but then edits the message – that edit is also considered a public record?

So how on earth are you supposed to capture something that’s been edited or deleted, to make sure you have complete records? 

And what if you don’t have dedicated staff for these manual capture and quality assurance processes? Having fewer staff to continuously monitor and capture these sources only increases the likelihood of missing critical records and the difficulty of quality control. 

So unless you have some sort of software that automatically captures and records these changes and preserves them in tamper-proof format, you may be looking at a major compliance gap.

But let’s put a pin in potential solutions for now and first discuss another major challenge recordkeeping professionals are facing with manual archiving.

2. Incredibly time-consuming processes

Manual digital recordkeeping processes consume valuable time that understaffed teams cannot afford.

When we first partnered with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on their website archiving modernization project, they were using a solution that took 6 months to archive their website. 

And that’s not including the extensive quality assurance testing that had to occur for every record archived to ensure accuracy. This entire process was a huge bottleneck for producing records and maintaining compliance—and took full time staff to manage. 

The process of archiving hundreds of pages for their frequently updated website content was frustrating, incredibly time-consuming, and quite frankly, unacceptable. 

And they soon realized it did not have to be this way. 

Now that they’re using automated website archiving software from Pagefreezer, what used to take weeks or months to accomplish, now takes around 10 minutes. And because the capture process is automated and captures are now of such high quality, the QA processes that used to be a full-time job, now only take a couple of hours a month. 

In fact, the web archiving modernization team at HHS reported saving over 800 hours annually on recordkeeping once they implemented Pagefreezer. 

But again, let’s put a pin in discussing solutions right now, and talk about one of the most troubling issues facing government recordkeepers right now: transparency. 

3. Difficulty accessing and retrieving information for records requests

If you got a records request for MS Teams records or social media posts from early 2020, how quickly would you be able to locate and export those records?

If you’re using manual recordkeeping methods, chances are you’re going to have to go back and forth with IT to narrow down your records search for weeks, before you get a huge data dump that you have to sift through to find the records in question. And if they’re MS teams records, you’re going to have to reconstruct those conversations from individual message records into something readable, one-by-one. If they are records from Facebook, you’ll either have to work backwards from the native export JSON file to create something readable, or you’ll have to screenshot the posts and comments screen by screen. 

Meanwhile, requestees are getting frustrated, and so are you and your IT team. Even though you’re doing everything in your power to be as transparent and responsive as possible, you’re faced with the challenge of inefficient processes and technology.

Now multiply that request 100 times over.

This inefficiency already burdens IT, recordkeeping and public information staff who are already handling more requests with less support. But especially in times of significant change journalists, legal professionals, and the public can overwhelm agencies with public records requests. 

Government transparency is arguably more important to the public than ever. And with instant access to almost all information imaginable from the palm of our hands, people are growing to expect that same responsiveness from government agencies. 

Unfortunately, many government agencies are not equipped to handle the growing number of requests, reducing public trust and creating risky compliance gaps. 

4. Vulnerability to loss, damage, or tampering

Chances are your government agency has a website with many pages, updated by different, siloed departments. Or you could have a few social media accounts associated with your department or department heads, across multiple platforms like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram, with thousands of followers that can leave hundreds of comments every day.

Because of the dynamic, ephemeral nature of social media records, for example, manually archiving these data sources is fraught. It’s all too easy to miss a record if you have to manually screenshot conversation threads. And if that post is deleted or edited in the meantime, you’ll be missing records. 

Manual recordkeeping methods for these dynamic data sources require near constant vigilance that is difficult to maintain with reduced staff, increasing the risk of compliance gaps. 

Another major issue with manually archiving digital sources is the issue of tampering. These days, it can be incredibly difficult to discern between a real and fake record. In the age of AI image generation and mainstream use of editing software like photoshop, it’s becoming increasingly easy to manipulate images and documents without detection. 

Manual archiving methods don’t always have safeguards in place to ensure security and authenticity of the records, or the authentication technology is out of date and vulnerable to tampering itself. (Click here to learn why secure SHA-256 hashing algorithms are the standard for ensuring data integrity.)

Outdated technology for digital recordkeeping is not just an issue of inefficiency, but an issue of integrity. At best, it could hurt the reputation of an agency to have records without the most up-to-date safeguards ensuring tamper-proof capture and storage, at worst it could undermine the integrity of government records themselves.

Why Automated Recordkeeping is Crucial for Government Department Efficiency

Given the increasing pressure on government agencies to achieve more with fewer resources, automated recordkeeping is no longer a luxury but a crucial tool for maintaining efficiency and compliance.

As we’ve previously alluded to, automated archiving software for government recordkeeping can address all of these challenges pretty easily. 

In fact, we’ve personally seen it happen time and time again with our government customers. 

Automated recordkeeping software like Pagefreezer consistently:

• Increases accuracy and efficiency of recordkeeping processes
• Reduces labor costs
• Improves data security and integrity
• Enhances accessibility and reduces records request response times

That’s why Pagefreezer users like the HHS report reclaiming over 800 hours annually on recordkeeping processes and have even reduced open records requests by 30% through the implementation of our self-serve public access portals.

Solutions to problems of inefficiency are rarely this simple, and that’s why Pagefreezer is trusted and recommended by hundreds of government agencies across the US. 

Beyond Efficiency — How Automated Recordkeeping in Government Improves Transparency and Maintains Stability in Times of Change

With government departments experiencing reduced headcount and shrinking budgets, efficiency has become a necessary strategy to continue operations without sacrificing compliance or transparency.

For departments looking to do more with less, automation provides the opportunity to:

• Reduce operational costs
• Optimize resource allocation
• Increase productivity with fewer staff resources

Automated recordkeeping software can improve continuity and stability in times of change by:

• Reducing reliance on individual knowledge or IT teams
• Mitigating the risk of losing institutional knowledge when teams are downsized
• Ensuring swift public access to records
• Reducing time spent on onboarding and training
• Improving the transfer of data and responsibilities
• Ensuring accuracy and completeness of records well into the future

Why Making the Case for Automated Recordkeeping Software During Government Cuts Isn't Crazy

Asking for new technology during reduced resources, staffing shortages, and increased pressure to manage growing workloads may seem counter intuitive. But in our work we see everyday how government recordkeeping professionals who advocate for this kind of technology or process change are able to prove their ROI very quickly. 

Beyond the time savings, increased team resources, and reduction in headaches, government recordkeepers advocating for automation see tangible professional benefits as well.

We’ve seen advocating for and implementing automated recordkeeping software help professionals:

• Demonstrate their commitment to efficiency and modernization
• Position them as valuable assets in implementing new technologies
• Shift roles from manual tasks to system management and analysis
• Focus on higher-level tasks and strategic initiatives

Automated government recordkeeping goes beyond tackling inefficiency and modernizing technology, to becoming a strategic imperative that provides a stable and secure way to manage critical information. For government employees, embracing automation can demonstrate value while ensuring the continued success of their agency. 

How Pagefreezer Can Automate Your Government Recordkeeping Process and Increase Government Departmental Efficiency

Pagefreezer is an automated archiving solution for social media accounts, website content, and Microsoft Teams chats. When you use Pagefreezer, the entire archiving process is automated — meaning you never have to manually capture anything or worry about missing records.

And if you choose, you can even automate public records request fulfillment by implementing a public access portal with a click of a button, like:

• The City of Sacramento (Read the Case Study)
• The US Department of Health and Human Services
• The Department of Education

All records captured and managed with Pagefreezer are easy to locate with our full-text search that allows users to find and review any record in the Pagefreezer archive in just a few clicks. 

Exporting records for public records requests? That’s even easier. Exports are available in easy-to-read PDF formatting with all important metadata and digital signatures intact. 

Speaking of digital signatures, all Pagefreezer records are tamper-proof and signed with digital signatures and SHA-256 hash values to prove authenticity, should it come into question. 

The bottom line is this: right now, resource limitations mean inefficiency is simply not an option. Automation is easily one of the most significant opportunities to reclaim time and resources for government departments, while ensuring stability and ongoing transparency. 

Pagefreezer is already helping hundreds of government agencies, large and small, do just that. Let us show you how.