Public Disclosure Officer, Strategic Advisor

The City of Seattle is seeking candidates for Seattle IT Department’s Public Disclosure Officer role. If you are interested in building public trust through transparency and collaboration, this role could be for you!

The Program Public Disclosure Officer performs a wide range of duties that support accurate and timely responses to public disclosure requests fulfilled by city departments in compliance with the Washington State Public Records Act, or PRA (RCW 42.56)

The City of Seattle believes in the diversity of our people, ideas, and experiences and is committed to building an inclusive culture that is representative of the community we serve. Seattle Information Technolo plays a crucial role in enabling smart, equitable, and responsive services for City employees, Seattle residents, and local businesses. We work to unleash our people and community through technology solutions, infrastructure, and well-executed projects that are secure and resilient.

We invest in open access to City information, privacy and responsible technology use, digital access, collaboration, customer service, and strategic planning. We are a leader in local government progress towards responsible Al adoption. These are Seattle's values in action.

Seattle IT Department’s Public Disclosure Officer intakes, manages, communicates, and delivers on all public disclosure requests received by the department. The role includes the following responsibilities:

• Receive and interpret public disclosure requests, and coordinate collection, review and release of responsive records in accordance with state law and City policy.

• Locate and gather large volumes of records and/or datasets.
• Interpret requests and generate search terms for Boolean and other electronic searches in City systems and databases.
• Communicate with department subject matter experts, leadership, records custodians, requestors, members of the media, the City's Attorney's Office, other public disclosure officers, and various agencies or third parties in a clear and timely manner.
• Identify applicable exemptions during record review,apply red actions, and generate exemption logs.
• Use GovQA to track requests, connect with and invoice requestors, and provide records and timely updates via the Public Records Request Center.
• Conduct complex searches using Microsoft eDiscovery, and leverage additional technology solutions, such as Nuix, to identify and review responsive records.
• Provide organized tracking and timely updates on the status of requests.

• Prior experience as a public disclosure officer as a primary function
• Experience performing electronic records search and retrieval, and mining data across various digital media
• Current knowledge of the Washington State Public Records Act and other statutes, case law, rules and regulations governing public records requests
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office suite, Adobe Acrobat Pro, SharePoint or other public recordsrequest management tools
• Proficiency and strong working knowledge of all software or electronic management systems, eDiscovery platforms, used for collection, redaction, production of public records

Your effectiveness in this role will depend on:

• Have strong critical thinking and analytical skills
• Engage in ongoing learning, training, and professional development
• Work efficiently both independently and collaboratively
• Manage high volume of tasks and projects with shifting deadlines and connect with requesters accordingly
• Work as a collaborative partner who exercises tact,good judgment,discretion,diplomacy, and the ability to build cooperative working relationships with diverse groups.
• Understand the importance of responding with appropriate urgency to situations and events that require quick turnaround
• Think…