How ATF Cut Their FOIA Backlog year over year with AI-Driven Redactions

The Customer Challenge: The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) faced mounting pressure to reduce a growing FOIA backlog and improve response timeliness. Manual redaction work—especially repetitive, time‑consuming tasks—was slowing processing and limiting the team’s ability to focus on higher‑value FOIA activities. ATF needed a more efficient, scalable way to manage workload and drive meaningful backlog reduction.

The Casepoint Solution: ATF deployed FOIAXpress AI for bulk redaction activities to automate repetitive work:

• Pattern-based redactions for common PII (SSNs, phone numbers, addresses) eliminated manual page-by-page review

• Bulk application across similar document types (investigative reports, correspondence) reduced redaction time per request

• FOIA teams focus shifted from manually blacking out phone numbers to reviewing complex exemption decisions and sensitive investigative details

Why It Matters: This shift allowed the team to reclaim significant time, improve throughput, shift focus to more complex requests, and achieve year over year reduction in backlog and a reduction in overall processing time and cost per request.

If your team spends more time redacting routine PII than evaluating exemptions, you're in the same boat ATF was. AI redaction doesn't replace FOIA expertise, it eliminates the repetitve work so your team can apply that expertise where it actually matters.

Contact your Casepoint team or email hello@casepoint.com to learn more and explore how we can help you achieve similar outcomes.