The Maine State Housing Authority

Introduction

The Maine State Housing Authority (MaineHousing) is an independent authority that was created by the Maine State Legislature in 1969 in order to address challenges of unsafe, unsuitable, overcrowded, and unaffordable housing.

At its core, the agency couples the efficiencies of the private financial markets with public-purpose goals to provide affordable home ownership and rental housing opportunities for the people of Maine.

Since inception, the agency has also been asked to handle additional responsibilities on behalf of the state. As a result, MaineHousing administers a number of federal housing-related programs, including the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program, the Section 8 Rental Assistance programs, the Emergency Solutions Grant Program, the Weatherization Program, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, and others.

Recordkeeping Requirements in the Public Sector

As a public-sector entity, MaineHousing is required to keep detailed records of all official communications. This includes all content on its social media accounts like Facebook and Instagram.

Social media platforms offer government organizations the benefits of extended reach, flexibility, and ease of communication—but they also place certain demands on an organization.

Modern channels are typically still defined as official government communications, meaning that their content must be captured and preserved to comply with FOIA and Open Records laws. If, for instance, a records request is submitted for a social media post or online conversation, an organization has to be able to deliver this content.

This may sound simple, but a request could easily include hundreds of posts, or even dozens of comments that were deleted months ago, at which point a records request can suddenly become problematic and time-consuming.

“People can come to us at any time and request information,” says Amanda Ouellette, Webmaster for MaineHousing. “A few years ago, a public interest group requested, via FOIA, copies of every check we’d cut for the previous ten years. The same can happen with our social media accounts, so it’s crucial that we keep detailed records of everything.”

An organization like MaineHousing faces the added challenge of often having to protect the privacy of the individuals they interact with on social media.

“Because a lot of our programs are federally funded, we can’t acknowledge that somebody is receiving funds from us, so we have to be very careful about what we disclose when we talk to people on social media,” says Ouellette. “If someone states that they have a voucher from us, that’s okay, but we need to be careful when we answer them—we can’t disclose the program name, the amount, things like that.”

This has made thorough and accurate archiving of MaineHousing’s accounts critical, since it allows the organization to prove that it has not disclosed any sensitive information over social media. Even if a comment, post, or conversation had been deleted on the live platform, evidence still exists in the archiving, enabling MaineHousing to retrieve that content in order to prove exactly what had transpired online.

Automated Archiving of All Social Media Content

To archive its social media content, MaineHousing turned to Pagefreezer.

“We were actually cold-called by one of your competitors. They were very insistent, and we eventually agreed to a demo, but as a public agency, we had to do our due diligence, and during this process we discovered that Pagefreezer’s solution was about half the cost.”

Although the organization has thankfully not needed to fulfill any major open records requests related to its social media accounts, the Pagefreezer solution has provided a lot of peace of mind.

“It’s good to know that it’s running in the background,” says Ouellette. “We know that if we suddenly need to provide social media data, we can find and export that information very quickly.”

A feature that has been particularly useful for MaineHousing is the ability to create ‘Cases’. By creating a specific Case, the organization can add all relevant content from social media accounts to that case folder and ensure that the information is kept together and easy to reference.

“Largely because of privacy concerns, we try to discourage people from using social media to have conversations with us and share sensitive information,” says Ouellette. “But it still happens, so it’s useful for us to pull all of those interactions into one case file for easy review. It’s also great that Pagefreezer allows you to capture and view direct conversations, since that’s where a lot of these communications happen.”

Unlike many other public-sector organizations that deal with large FOIA and Open Records requests on a regular basis, MaineHousing has not had to respond to many of these requests— at least, not when it comes to social media. But despite this, it has taken a proactive approach that not only ensures that its recordkeeping adheres to regulations, but also improves the openness and transparency of the organization. When the time comes that a major request is filed, responding will be a quick and easy process, instead of a painful slog through old social media data.

Pagefreezer Legal and Compliance Solutions

At Pagefreezer, we offer the following features to help public-sector organizations comply with recordkeeping requirements:

Automatic Archiving of Enterprise Collaboration, Social Media and (Secure) Websites

Pagefreezer archives enterprise collaboration platforms, websites, blogs, social media, password-protected web portals, and even “behind-the-firewall” intranets automatically.

Pagefreezer makes your website and other online data archives accessible via an easy to use web dashboard with rich functionality for full-text search, tagging, sharing, and replay of your archived sites as if they were live. Besides websites and blogs, Pagefreezer archives public social media and enterprise social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Pinterest, Tumblr, NextDoor, Nixle, Yammer, Chatter, and Workplace. All archives are accessible from one comprehensive and easy-to-use dashboard.

Live Replay/Browsing of Archives

Log into your Pagefreezer dashboard to view a list of all archived websites and social media on a single scalable platform. Click on an archive to open your website or social media account as if it is still live and view how the site looked on a specified date.

Keyword Monitoring and Policy Alerts

Pagefreezer’s extended text pattern monitoring makes it easy for customers to monitor social media platforms and receive alerts when inappropriate or sensitive information is shared. Instead of entering multiple flagged words, users can select pre-canned text patterns that instantly add large sets of words. Our extended libraries include offensive language and phrases related to public safety, as well as common sensitive information such as passport, healthcare, and banking numbers.

Defensible Legal Evidence

Digital archives are worthless in case of legal claims unless evidence of data integrity and authenticity is provided. Pagefreezer secures this by placing a SHA-256 digital signature and timestamp on each page.

Tracked Changes and Deletions

You can easily track any changes and deletions made to your online content with an ability to pinpoint text changes when and where exactly they were made. This includes social media accounts, where all edits/additions/deletions to an account can be viewed through the dashboard. So even if a comment or post has been deleted from the live platform, it will still exist in the archive.

Advanced Search

Pagefreezer’s powerful search functions allow you to find relevant posts and comments across all archived social media accounts. Simply enter the name, word, or phrase in the search bar and see all posts and comments across all social media accounts that contain the search term. You can also narrow your search by filtering for specific social media platforms, accounts, dates, and more.

Quick Response to Information Requests

Should students or staff request archived online information, Pagefreezer makes it extremely simple to pull up this content and share it through a public shareable URL. This quick turnaround is a major benefit, saving tremendously on costs to turn around this data.

Easy Data Exports

Your data is yours and remains yours. When dealing with an audit or legal claim that requires a physical copy of your website or social media records, you can export your data in HTML, WARC, or PDF format including relevant metadata.

See Pagefreezer in Action

For more information on how we can help you keep accurate records of your online data,
book a demo with one of our solution advisors.