Stop the "I never heard back" emails on records requests

Issue No. 2 · Tuesday, August 11, 2026 · By Scott Olsen

PULL UP A CHAIR

Have you seen all the social media posts and campaign signs calling for “No More Data Centers” in your neck of the woods? My favorite part: more than a few of them were made with an AI tool. There is something comical about opposing a data center using the very technology that needs one to run. Florida has seen data center fights break out in county after county this year, and my own county, Martin, has already lived through two very different outcomes on the same kind of project.

A developer's proposal near Indiantown was pulled by the applicant after months of resident pushback. That same week, the Indiantown Village Council unanimously approved a much bigger utility-linked project that leaves the door open for future data centers, despite residents asking for language banning them. Same council, same jurisdiction, two very different outcomes within days of each other.

The concerns I keep hearing are consistent: how much water these facilities use for cooling, what they do to the local power grid, the noise, and how much gets decided before residents even know a project is on the table. The case for them is just as consistent: real construction jobs, ongoing tax revenue some of these counties badly need, and the argument that if Florida does not compete for this investment, another state will. Both sides have a point. I am not writing this to tell you which one is bigger.

What I can tell you is that Tallahassee has already weighed in. A new state law signed this year keeps the decision about where these facilities go in local hands; it cannot be waved through by reclassifying a data center as something like a power substation to skip local review. It also puts limits on how long a developer can keep their identity confidential before the public has a right to know. Whatever you think about data centers themselves, that is a meaningful shift toward more transparency at the local level, and it is worth knowing if one shows up on your agenda.

Here is what I am curious about. If you are reading this from inside or outside Florida, is this hitting your county or city yet? What does it look like where you are? I would like to hear from you, hit reply and let me know.

THIS WEEK'S PICK

Stop the "I never heard back" emails on records requests

Last issue, I promised this one. The single most common complaint about records requests is not the wait, it is the silence right after someone hits submit. This week: an automatic acknowledgment email the moment a request lands, built with Microsoft Forms and Power Automate. No new tool to buy. If your office runs on Google Workspace instead, there is a path for you too, near the bottom.

HOW TO ACTUALLY USE IT

1.  Build your records request form in Microsoft Forms. This becomes the actual form residents use to submit a request, not a separate step bolted on afterward, so include whatever fields your office needs to process one: requester name, what they are requesting, a date range, anything specific to how your office handles requests. One field matters most for this automation to work: "Your Email." The person filling this out is a member of the public, not someone signed into your Microsoft account, so this field is the only way the flow knows where to send the acknowledgment.

2.  Under the form's Send settings, choose "Anyone with the link can respond," not the organization-only option. If that choice is greyed out, your IT admin has outside responses turned off tenant-wide, and someone there needs to flip it on before any of this works.

3.  In Power Automate, create an automated cloud flow with the trigger "When a new response is submitted," pointed at your new form. You may see two triggers with that name, pick the one without "[DEPRECATED]" in it. Add "Get response details" right after it, and when it asks you to pick a form, choose it again, that is a separate selection from the trigger, and skipping it is the most common reason this flow silently does not work.

4.  Add "Send an email (V2)" from the Office 365 Outlook connector. The first time you add either of these connectors, Power Automate may ask you to sign in, that is expected, not an error. In the "To" field, insert the dynamic "Your Email" value from the form, not your own inbox, that is the easiest step to get wrong on the first try. Write a short acknowledgment: what you received, that you are reviewing it, and roughly when they will hear back next.

5.  Save the flow, then test it for real. There is no simulate button here, you actually have to submit the form yourself to see it fire, so do a dummy run before you point the public at it.

The honest catch: this whole flow depends on one text field typed correctly by a stranger. There is no fallback and no retry if they mistype their email, so it will fail quietly sometimes, and you will not always know when. It is still a real improvement over silence, just do not treat it as bulletproof.

THE RULEBOOK · TWO RULES WORTH A GLANCE

What changed that affects how your office can use AI. Short, plain, and sourced. The part that keeps you out of the newspaper. Tagged Local for a city or county action, State for a change at the state level, Federal for a change at the federal level that reaches your desk.

FREE THIS WEEK

ONE MORE QUICK WIN

A good acknowledgment email says three things

What you received, that you are reviewing it, and roughly when they will hear from you next. That is it. Resist the urge to promise an exact date or a specific outcome, an acknowledgment sets expectations, it does not make commitments your office cannot always keep.

Know someone at another city or county who could use this? Forward it over.

Until next week,

Scott Olsen, CGCIO

Former CIO with eleven years in Florida local government

Practical guidance for local government, not legal or procurement advice.