FOIA Command Center

Government FOIA compliance for JSM. Automatic 20-day deadline tracking with tolling that extends due dates, plus zero-egress PDF redaction. FedRAMP ready, Section 508 compliant.

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Inspiration

Federal agencies receive over 800,000 FOIA requests annually, and have to meet the statutory 20-day deadline while maintaining security. Current tools to manage this are external to Atlassian and can challenge the FedRAMP security requirements, so I realised Atlassian Forge's zero-egress architecture was the perfect solution. The challenge: could I build production-ready FOIA compliance software that never sends data outside Atlassian's secure infrastructure? FOIA Command Center was born from this question.

What it does

FOIA Command Center transforms Jira Service Management into a complete FOIA compliance platform with two core features:

Statutory Deadline Tracker: Automatically calculates the 20 business-day deadline from receipt date, excluding weekends and federal holidays . The killer feature is intelligent tolling, when an issue enters "Waiting for Customer" status, the clock doesn't just pause, it extends the due date by the exact number of business days tolled. The system parses Jira's changelog to track tolling history and displays a colour-coded countdown with transparency for audit compliance.

Secure Redaction Workbench: Draw black boxes over sensitive PDF content directly in the browser. When you click "Apply Redactions," the magic happens: coordinates are sent to Forge's Node.js runtime where pdf-lib draws permanent black rectangles and flattens the PDF, making redactions impossible to remove. The entire process happens within Forge, zero egress, FedRAMP Moderate compliant.

The UI is Section 508 accessible with WCAG AAA color contrast and full keyboard navigation.

How we built it

Backend (Forge Node.js Runtime): Frontend (React Custom UI):

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Built a zero-egress PDF redaction tool for the Atlassian ecosystem, all processing happens in Forge's secure runtime FedRAMP Moderate ready—can be deployed to Atlassian Government Cloud immediately

What we learned

React Patterns in Constrained Environments:

  • Sometimes vanilla solutions beat fancy libraries—custom CSS beat styled-components for CSP compliance
  • Memoization becomes critical when you can't easily refresh data from the backend
  • Canvas APIs are still the most reliable way to capture user drawing interactions

What's next for FOIA Command Center

Enhanced Deadline Management

  • Multi-request dashboard: Track all pending FOIA requests across a service desk queue with sortable urgency levels
  • Appeal deadline tracking: FOIA appeals have different timelines (20 days for requester to appeal, 20 days for agency response)

Advanced Redaction Features

  • Batch redaction: Apply the same redaction pattern across multiple pages or documents
  • Redaction templates: Save common redaction patterns (signature blocks, SSNs, phone numbers) for one-click application
  • OCR text search: Highlight potential sensitive content for redaction (requires finding zero-egress OCR library)

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