How Starbridge uses FOIA and open records to track public spend

How Starbridge uses FOIA requests, purchase orders, and web data to surface real public spend anonymously, so your reps know who's buying what and when.

Michael Shieh

Revenue Marketing

You already know what FOIA gets you. Contracts, line-item spend, renewal dates, and the rest of the public record. The data that tells you who actually bought what, from whom, and when their contract runs out. Starbridge helps you access this data at-scale, across every state, without you filing a single request yourself.

The three ways Starbridge tracks public spend

Most customers use all three together.

1. Purchase orders

We collect purchase order files from tens of thousands of government and education institutions. Line-by-line detail on what was bought, when, and for how much, with product description and vendor name. Searchable across your entire TAM the day you turn Starbridge on.

2. Contracts (via FOIA)

Custom FOIA requests on the buyers and competitors in your market, anonymously through Starbridge. Detail on how this works is in the next section.

3. Web and meeting mentions

We pull data from the open web and from board, committee, and council meetings to find references to a vendor's presence. Especially useful for tracking competitor activity inside private schools and other institutions that don't publish POs or contracts.

The combination is what matters. POs give you breadth. FOIA gives you depth on contracts and pricing. Web and meeting mentions catch what the records miss.

What Starbridge requests via FOIA

FOIA goes by different names depending on the state. Open records request, public records request, open files request, or data request. They all describe the same thing, a legal request for records held by a public body. Starbridge sends three types.

Broad-based purchase order data

Starbridge requests individual line items of transactions over a defined period of time. These are made by Starbridge itself, not on behalf of any specific customer, and they're the backbone of our base PO coverage. Valuable for surfacing broad spend patterns and competitor presence across thousands of agencies at once.

Targeted contract FOIA campaigns

This is where customer-specific FOIA comes in. We request the specific contracts of your competitors at the agencies you care about, through a dedicated campaign that anonymizes you as the requester.

These requests pull denser, more actionable data. Contract start and end dates so you know when the renewal window opens. Pricing details. Scope of work and product specifics. Renewal terms.

Reactive FOIA for a specific RFP

When you want details on a specific, completed RFP, we'll FOIA for the responsive records. Depending on the state's public records law, that can include the winning vendor's response, scoring sheets, evaluator notes, and final pricing.

How we handle state-by-state requirements

A handful of states restrict their public records laws to residents of that state. Starbridge can handle FOIA requests in every state. No need to worry about compliance requirements.

How to get started

Reach out to your Starbridge account manager or book a demo at Starbridge.ai/book-demo to scope FOIA into your plan, add credits to an existing plan, or request details on a specific RFP.