Filing & tracking requests

PRA Center helps teams file public records requests, track them to their statutory deadlines, and keep every request, reply, and document in one workspace. It supports the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA) and the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

PRA Center provides software assistance, not legal advice.

From your workspace, choose “New request” and fill in three things:

• The agency you’re requesting records from (picked from the agency directory).
• The statute the request is made under (NM IPRA or federal FOIA).
• A description of the records you want.

By default, PRA Center drafts the request letter from the statute’s standard template: the platform supplies the legal framing and you fill in only the records description. If your workspace has saved its own letter templates, you can pick one for a request instead, and that template supplies the letter’s wording. Either way, the legal disclaimer is appended to every letter. On the manual (no-AI) flow, no AI is involved in drafting at all.

A drafted request waits for a person to review and approve it. Nothing is sent on its own — you decide when a letter goes out.

A new request is never filed automatically — a person reviews and releases it. (Later escalation letters can be automated per workspace; see “Escalation flows and approvals”.)

When a request is filed, PRA Center sets its statutory deadline — for example, IPRA’s response window — and counts down from there. Your inbox highlights what’s overdue and what’s due soon so the clock is always in front of you.

Each request moves through a lifecycle you can see at a glance:

• States such as Draft, Pending, Acknowledged, In review, Partial, Fulfilled, and Overdue.
• A compliance grade and history on the Reports page.
• Estimated statutory damages accruing on overdue New Mexico requests.

Deadlines, grades, and damages estimates are computed to help you stay on top of a request — they are not legal determinations.