|
 None of them have official government email accounts, so they
search their personal emails.
Two members each turn over more than 15 emails. The third says she never sent
nor received any emails from the developer. Do you believe her? What can you do
about it if you don’t?
Shockingly, in Wisconsin it’s perfectly legal for government officials to use
their personal emails to do government work. Even though a government entity may
have no ability to access personal accounts and even though it’s ridiculously
easy to use personal emails to hide conversations from the public, these
practices are still allowed.
Yes, as anybody familiar with the Open Records Law knows,
personal email accounts are still subject to the law. Government officials are
required to search through personal email accounts and produce any emails
related to government work that are responsive to a records request.
But the ability of officials to use their personal email accounts is an
opportunity for mischief. In a society that values transparency and public
oversight, it should be unacceptable.
The problems with permitting government work to be done with personal email
accounts are myriad. Without central administration, nobody else can track,
search or review those emails. The emails may not be backed up in any way.
Different email providers will have different retention rules. It’s much easier
to accidentally (or intentionally) lose emails.
Once officials leave service, they are supposed to turn over all their records
to their successor, but that practically never happens with personal emails.
And how do you trust that these officials didn’t delete any emails? That they
thoroughly searched for responsive emails? There is almost no way to verify that
an appropriate search was done and nothing was deleted.
[to top of second column] |
All you can do is trust, but trust is often in
short supply, particularly when a controversial issue is involved or
a citizen is investigating potential misconduct.
The solution for these problems is simple, obvious, and has little
downside. Like some other states and local governments, Wisconsin
should prohibit the use of personal email accounts to do government
business.
It should be illegal for government employees and
officials to do anything more than send a “please use my official
email” response to any contact to a personal email. Also, anything
sent to a personal email account about government business should be
forwarded to the official one for easy retrieval.
Such a law would eliminate all those problems. Government entities
would have to provide email accounts to officials (and some
employees), but most do so already, and email accounts are cheap.
For instance, GoDaddy sells email service attached to website
domains for $2/month, and accounts can be purchased in bulk at even
cheaper rates.
In exchange, the government entity gets central administration of
email records, email accounts that are easily transferred to
successors, and a significant boost in the public’s confidence in
their record searches.
It’s not often that a thorny problem has such an easy, clear, and
inexpensive solution. To remove barriers to public accountability
and improve the efficiency of government operations, the legislature
should prohibit the use of personal email accounts for government
business at the state and local level.
Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by
the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group
dedicated to open government. Tom Kamenick is the president and
founder of the Wisconsin Transparency Project. |
