When Should Governments Delete Emails?

Some municipalities are torn between clearing space on servers and trying to keep records in case anything happens that requires an investigation.

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(TNS) -- St. Paul recently reinvigorated the debate over government transparency by adopting a new policy that automatically purges all city emails after six months. The city had previously kept email for three years.

All city governments delete emails after a certain period in order to properly manage the data and free server space. But the length of time a government keeps its email has become a prominent issue, from Hilary Clinton's personal server to a blogger's request with his city.

Rochester is among the few Minnesota cities with an automatic email deletion system. In fact, Rochester has one of the shorter retention periods in the state — 60 days. Comparatively, Mankato deletes emails after 90 days but encourages staff to save most emails. Austin suggests that staff members delete email after 90 days, but it's not required.

Minnesota law considers city emails public documents, so a city must have a uniform policy for when it can delete emails. The guidelines on this are vague and often left to a city's interpretation. In recent years, cities have been adopting shorter retention periods.

Some email is exempt from city deletion schedules:

  • Email essential for showing government effectiveness (required by state law).
  • Email containing contracts or subject to a court case.
  • Email employees choose to save to help their work.
Cities and individual employees are typically left to decide what falls under these categories. Broader state document retention schedules often save these exceptions for up to three years.

Government accountability advocates argue that emails are the most informative documents on government policy. They object to short retention periods because it narrows access to information. They often point to investigative journalism projects or failed programs that require reviewing years after they started.

A retention period of at least a year is often suggested by advocates.

Mark Anfinson, a Minneapolis attorney who represents the Minnesota Newspaper Association, said automated deletions are inherently imprecise and risk losing government accountability.

Just 60 days of retention isn't useful to the public, Anfinson said, and cities can easily store emails for at least a year.

At the same time, cities do have a legitimate need to balance their ability to manage growth in data and emails they handle.

"We have no guideposts for how to deal with this," Anfinson said. "It's not nefarious or sinister (by city governments). It's the complexities of the intersection of data management against the traditional values of government accountability."

Rochester City Attorney Terry Adkins, who helped draft Rochester's email policy, said costs and server limitations don't allow for infinite data storage.

He said keeping a large pool of email would tie up staff time and resources. He said his office in particular must review all requested emails to redact non-public information.

"It's not as easy as pushing a button, getting all the emails and handing them over," Adkins said.

A group opposed to the Chateau Circle development has a standing request for all city emails related to the project. He said he can spend a half an hour for even this small request to gather them and review them. He said retaining emails for even just a year could easily make data requests cumbersome for his office.

He also stressed that he doesn't oppose government transparency and encourages public review of government.

Rochester's adoption of its email policy in 2004 highlights the conflict. Adkins attended a legal seminar where he heard "war stories" of cities bogged down and dealing with costs because an individual requested every email the city ever sent or received. Rochester had all of its email on backup files at the time.

He brought the issue before the city council and the policy was later adopted. The 60-day retention period was suggested by department heads.

Rochester did get a request for all its emails, but that was made more manageable because they had deleted all but two months by that point, Adkins said.

Any changes to the city's email retention schedule would have to come from the city council. Rochester City Council President Randy Staver, who works in information technology for Mayo Clinic, said he is open to the idea of a longer retention period if someone requested it.

He said he personally saves his city emails past two months so he can provide more government transparency on his own work.

©2015 the Post-Bulletin Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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