Data governance and e-discovery company Smarsh has announced a partnership with NextRequest, a provider of processing software for public records and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

The partnership will see both companies offer their proprietary technology as a packaged service to help streamline digital record intake, retrieval and management at government agencies.

To be sure, the partnership does not offer an integrated tool. “We haven't done any technical integration at this point,” said Tamara Manik-Perlman, CEO of NextRequest. But the two platforms are bundled as one end-to-end service. While NextRequest's tool deals with managing the front end, such as creating requests for records as they come in and tracking where they are in the process, Smarsh works on the back end to capture, index and manage all relevant data.

“We are indexing data and automating the capture process across the broad spectrum of digital communications being used today in government agencies,” added Mike Pagani, senior director of product marketing and chief evangelist at Smarsh.

Manik-Perlman explained that the relationship stemmed from the two companies offering “complementary” services to government clients, who often have to contend with a rigorous procurement process and “don't want to go out and acquire [technology platforms] individually.”

As part of the partnership, Smarsh can sell the packaged service to their individual government clients. The arrangement allows NextRequest, which solely services local and state government agencies, access to Smarsh's clients, who, in addition to local and state governments, service agencies on the federal level.

Pagani noted that, to collect and index text messages from a government employees, Smarsh will acquire them “directly from the carrier itself through our API-driven interface.” Likewise, for other “business messages, we are getting the messages directly from the source,” he added.  “We have a relationship with Twitter, LinkedIn, Skype, Facebook, etc.”

Though Smarsh and NexRequest believe most clients for their bundled service will be local and state governments, due to the sheer number of them around the U.S., they also see interest for the service among federal agencies as well. Such agencies are under increasing pressure to implement data governance processes ahead of the Dec. 31, 2019, deadline to comply with the Managing Government Records Directive, which requires agencies to manage permanent records in an electronic format.

Some agencies have turned to e-discovery and information governance technology to get a grip on their digital files. Complete Discovery Source, for example, is working with the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation and recently achieved certification under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) to officially operate its cloud-based discovery services for other agencies as well. Smarsh is also working to get FedRAMP certification.

What's more In 2016, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's ran a two-month-long ”Disparate Data Challenge” and provided two winning e-discovery and search companies, Voyager Search and Diffeo, with cash rewards. The companies have since continued working with several government agencies.