Method

Every request handled in Sic Semper Errata leaves a record built from a chain of recorded steps. This page describes that chain as the v0.1.1 demo performs it and notes where a municipal deployment is designed to differ.

Intake

A request arrives through the public form, as an imported PDF, or by clerk entry for mail and in-person requests. The original submission is preserved unchanged. A separate Bates-numbered PDF copy is created for review, and the request receives a permanent reference such as OPRA-2026-0001.

Deadlines

The response clock is computed from a New Jersey business-day calendar. A clerk confirms the operative received date and records clarifications, extensions, and corrections. Each change is an event in the request’s history, not an edit to it.

Search and collection

The demo searches a prepared, fictional repository. A person selects which candidate records enter review; nothing is collected by default. A municipal deployment is designed to search configured Windows file shares through an outbound-only local agent that returns metadata and bounded snippets until an authorized selection releases the full files.

Review

Reviewers record responsiveness, exemptions, and redactions on each collected record. Automation may recommend; a named person approves, modifies, or rejects each recommendation, and that decision is retained with the record.

Response

The system assembles the response letter, the approved release copies, the withholding and redaction log, and a manifest into one release package. The package the demo produces contains the response text, a manifest, and the released files.

Audit and versioning

Every intake, record, and deadline event carries a sequence number and a fingerprint, and the activity history can be exported. The OPRA ruleset a municipality adopts is versioned; an open matter stays on the ruleset it started under unless an authorized user records a migration and the reason.

This site keeps its own history the same way: releases and amendments in the docket, corrections in the notices of errata.