Enterprise Redaction Solutions: A 6-Pillar Buyer’s Checklist

Walk through a mid-size county and you will often find four or five redaction tools doing the same job. Records has a PDF program, Internal Affairs bought a video tool three years ago, HR still draws black boxes in Acrobat, and Legal sends overflow to a contractor. Each purchase made sense at the time. Together, they mean slower responses, duplicate licenses, and a new procurement cycle every time another department asks for help.

The fix is one platform that works for every team, even though each has its own rules, file types, and deadlines. The six pillars below, and the vendor questions under each, come from what we have seen work across agencies of every size.

Key takeaways

• Enterprise redaction solutions let every department in an agency redact documents, video, audio, images, and email in one system, with shared admin controls and an audit trail on every file.
• Buyers should judge any vendor on six pillars: centralized management, complex operations, customization, scalability, automation, and security.
• One shared platform cuts duplicate licenses, speeds up requests, and gives every department the same audit trail.

Why fragmented redaction workflows cost agencies so much

One of our clients, a state agency with 60,000 employees, described its old redaction setup as “the wild west.” Staff used Acrobat for documents and Premiere Pro for video. Other teams used five more evidence, video, and records systems. Each tool had its own login, its own learning curve, and its own gaps.

That scattered setup has a name: fragmentation. It happens when one job, like redacting records, gets spread across tools and departments that don’t talk to each other. You can usually hear it in the hallway. “Hey, can you do me a favor?” “But we’ve always done it like this.” “Don’t you already have something for that?”

The volume makes it worse every year. Federal agencies received 1,707,197 FOIA requests in FY 2025, up 13.7% from the year before, and spent an estimated $661 million processing them (DOJ Office of Information Policy). Meanwhile, full-time FOIA staff at 25 major agencies fell 16% as their backlogs grew 27% (OGIS).

Local offices feel it too. San Antonio’s open government manager said her office handled about 4,000 requests in her first year. In fiscal 2025, the city received more than 86,000 (San Antonio Report). Files keep getting longer as well. Our state agency client used to get requests for a five-minute clip. Now two hours of video in a single request is routine.

How to use this checklist

Enterprise redaction touches a lot of people, so plan your evaluation before you talk to vendors. Get these ready:

• Your file types and volumes. Note how many videos, recordings, and documents you process each month, and how long a typical video runs.
• The right people. Records, Legal, and IT security should each score the product. Every group catches different problems.
• A scoring sheet. Rate each vendor from 1 to 5 on the six pillars below.

Pillar 1: Can one admin see the whole agency?

When every department buys its own tool, IT, and procurement lose sight of who is redacting what, and how. That becomes a real problem the day a release ends up in litigation.

Ask the vendor:

• Can one admin see every user, license, and seat across all departments?
• Can admins reset passwords and move licenses without calling support?
• Can we track usage by person?
• Can we see who is logged in right now?

Pillar 2: Does it handle every file type in one place?

A single use-of-force request might include two body camera videos, dispatch audio, emails, and a stack of scanned reports. If your officers record on Axon cameras while records clerks work in GovQA, you already know how quickly body camera footage becomes its own silo.

Ask the vendor:

• Can we redact documents, video, audio, images, and email in one application?
• Can we process a big batch of files in one action?
• Are transcription and translation built in?
• Does it connect to where our files already live, such as Evidence.com, Box, AWS S3, or Microsoft tools?

Pillar 3: Can you set your own exemption codes?

Every department plays by different rules. Federal FOIA has nine exemptions. Washington State cites RCW 42.56.240 for investigative and crime victim records. Legal teams need privilege logs, while HR needs to protect applicant data. A one-size-fits-all tool forces everyone to work around it.

Ask the vendor:

• Can we create our own exemption codes with the legal citation attached?
• Can we build custom PII lists, like badge numbers, inmate IDs, or case numbers?
• Does it generate an exemption log automatically?
• Can each department keep its own rule set inside one system?

Pillar 4: What happens when redaction volume doubles?

Most agencies can’t hire their way out of a backlog, so pricing models matter. Some vendors charge per user, others per hour of media, and a few offer agency-wide licenses. A model that looks cheap for three users can look very different at 100.

Ask the vendor:

• What happens to our bill if request volume doubles?
• Are there caps on file size, file count, or video length?
• Can a new department join without a fresh procurement?

Pillar 5: How accurate is the automation?

Automation is the reason most agencies buy, and it is also where many get burned. Our state agency client already had automated tools. The trouble was how much the automation missed. Two teams got so tired of fixing its gaps that each started researching replacements on its own. Speed without accuracy simply moves the work from redaction to review.

Ask the vendor:

• How often does the AI miss faces, plates, or spoken PII, and how do reviewers catch it?
• Does the AI track faces and license plates through a full video?
• Can it transcribe audio and redact spoken names, Social Security numbers, and phone numbers?
• Does a person approve every file before export?

Pillar 6: Is the redaction secure and permanent?

Bad redaction is worse than slow redaction. In January 2019, attorneys for Paul Manafort filed a court document with black boxes over sensitive details. Reporters copied the text underneath, and the hidden information became national news.

Ask the vendor:

• Does it permanently remove the underlying text and metadata?
• How does it support the FBI’s CJIS Security Policy?
• How does it comply with SOC2 requirements?
• Does it support single sign-on and role-based access?
• Can it run on our own servers, or fully air-gapped?
• Does every file carry its own audit trail, no matter which department handles it?

What these 6 pillars look like in practice with CaseGuard Studio

We used these same six pillars when building CaseGuard Studio. Admins manage every user and license from one view. Documents, video, audio, images, and email are redacted in the same application, with integrations for Evidence.com, Box, SharePoint, OneDrive, and AWS S3. Teams set their own exemption codes and PII lists and can share them throughout the agency. The AI handles a first pass, up to 95% of the redaction work, and staff approve each file before export. On the security side, CaseGuard meets CJIS and SOC2 requirements, supports SSO, and can run fully on-premise. TeamSpace is where Records, Legal, HR, and Internal Affairs share files over a local network, with statuses, notes, and a log of who touched each file.

One client, put it this way:

“We were so focused on what CaseGuard could do for body-cam alone. Then we realized this would work for records, but only records. We could use this in HR for personnel files, in risk management for our insurance and HIPAA material, and in media relations. It checked all the boxes, and almost a year and a half later, it still checks all the boxes.”

Requests will keep climbing, and the real question is whether you meet them with one system or five separate ones. If you would like to talk through what enterprise redaction could look like at your agency, book a free enterprise consultation with our team!