05/08/2008

By GARY D. ROBERTSON  / Associated Press

North Carolina should create an archive system for the hundreds of thousands of e-mails sent daily by state workers, and provide them with more training about what constitutes a public record, panelists reviewing the state's e-mail retention rules said Thursday.

But members of the committee, created by Gov. Mike Easley following allegations his press office ordered the systematic deletion of government e-mails, weren't convinced the state should change the policy that gives workers discretion on whether an e-mail constitutes a public record and therefore must be saved.

"I think we have an adequate policy on how to create it, use it and save it," said Charlotte City Attorney Mac McCarley, a panel member. "'I'm not ready to say, 'Let's change the law to save everything, just because we can.'"

The panel will vote next week on creating a pilot program for a complete statewide archive system, said Franklin Freeman, a senior lobbyist for Easley and chairman of the E-mail Records Review.

Editors at The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer of Raleigh told the panel to recommend that all e-mails related to carrying out government business by public employees be archived for at least five years, and at least 10 years for elected officials.

Some panelists worried the state would wind up saving inconsequential e-mails such as those confirming appointments or list-serve documents, which would make public records requests more time consuming.

But an automatic archive system would save the state money in lost productivity, because workers would not have to decide which messages must be kept, said Rick Thames, the Observer's editor and vice president of the North Carolina Press Association.

"I think it's important that our state government err on openness," Thames told the panel. "I'm a little bit perplexed why some would go out of the way to avoid what would be actually a simpler solution ... when all of them in fact can be saved."

Creating such an e-mail archive system would cost annually at least $1 million for each year the archives would cover, said George Bakolia, the state's chief information technology officer.

E-mails sent and received by state employees are public records if they contain information related to the transaction of public business. State law currently orders the Department of Cultural Resources to set guidelines on when e-mails must be kept.

Several media outlets who sued Easley last month argue the existing Cultural Resources guidelines are unlawful, because they let an employee delete a public record when the worker determines the message has short-term or no value to the sender or receiver.

Separate from the proposed archive system, the panel seems ready to endorse expanding the length of time in which e-mails are backed up on computer servers, from the current 30 days to as much as a year. The daily back up of e-mails is different from an archive, which would be easier to search.

The panel also wants to make available on the Internet tutorials on public records to all state and local government employees. Training would be required for state workers who handle such records.

Easley created the e-mail panel after Debbie Crane, a former spokeswoman at the Department of Health and Human Services, accused the governor's press office of directing public relations workers at cabinet-level agencies to delete e-mails sent to and from the governor's office.

Easley and his attorneys have said there's no evidence such a systematic destruction occurred.