Saratoga Springs Approves Contract with IT Company to Retain Text Messages from City Cell Phones

SARATOGA SPRINGS — The City Council unanimously approved a contract with SHI International Corp. of New Jersey, which will implement SHI software to allow the city to retain text messages from all city cell phones and automatically capture text messages. 

“This is part of an initiative to improve our transparency and our ability to respond to FOIL requests,” said city Mayor Ron Kim, who brought the measure to the council table.  

The SHI software, SMARSH, will use its automated carrier-integrated capture solution that retains all SMS/MMS data from the carrier the day SMARSH is implemented going forward. 

Employees will text normally and the text messages will be captured as they pass through the carrier. The text messages are automatically pushed into SMARSH’s cloud-based records portal on the backend in an immutable format. 

All data is indexed as it is pulled into the archive and will be searchable with parameters such as keyword, sender and/or recipients, and date range. The total recurring subtotal cost is just over $11,000, with a one-time subtotal cost of about $1,850.  

“The use of SMARSH will provide an efficient and cost-effective way for the city to retain text messages from cellular devices,” Kim said.  “Up until now, the city has really had no way to do this automatically. This will provide a seamless way for our city attorneys to efficiently, transparently and accurately respond to FOIL requests in the future.”