John Eye writes: “Negotiation is part of everyone’s life. Effective negotiations usually do not emerge without careful planning and intentional execution. Collecting, synthesizing, analyzing, and understanding this information is important to building confidence and establishing leverage to support contractual objectives. Information that shines a light on the factors involved in a negotiation can create additional leverage to strengthen the bargaining position. The better the bargaining position the more likely a satisfactory outcome will be reached. [I have] used open records requests for several years to concentrate on larger, six figure agreements where the savings add up dramatically, especially for multiyear deals.”