Duplicate detection, and requests avoided

Govflo surfaces work your agency has already done that bears on the request in front of you. This is advisory and always has been: opening a suggestion never carries over its decisions, its documents or its exemption calls.

Where the suggestions appear

Similar Closed Requests sits on the request's right rail. It surfaces prior closed requests that resemble this one, based on the request's own history.

AI Recommendations sits on the Case/Media tab and covers two things: other open requests in your agency, and cases you have already published.

Where This Came From is different in kind. If the requester read a published record in your archive before filing, that record is pinned here. They named it. It is a fact rather than a suggestion, and it is labeled as such.

Why this matters more than convenience

The same document arriving on two requests is the ordinary route to inconsistent disclosure: two officers, two requests, one document, different redactions. The discrepancy usually surfaces when both versions are put side by side in a filing.

Checking what was done last time before you decide again is the cheapest protection against that there is.

Two ways it saves work

A published case may already answer the request. If the records are in your public archive, the response can point there rather than gathering the same material again.

A related open request may already be gathering the same records. Coordinating with the other officer beats two people searching the same mailbox.

What it does not do

It does not merge requests, copy documents between them, or apply another request's redactions. You open the match, read it under its own permissions, and decide whether it applies.

It is your own prior work, pointed at faster. Not a shortcut past the decision.

Recency, not similarity

Read the panel's own wording. The related-tickets list is ranked by recency rather than by similarity, and the panel says so plainly, precisely so it is never mistaken for a match. Read the suggestions rather than assuming the top one is the closest.

Requests avoided

The most efficient request is one nobody files. Where your intake form shows a citizen an existing published record before they file, and they take it instead, that is counted on the Requests avoided card on your dashboard.

The card only appears once your portal has shown someone a suggestion at least once, so a new agency does not see a misleading zero.

Treat the number as the return on publishing. It is the only place in the product where effort spent putting records into your public archive shows up as work that never arrived.