I was a Commissioner for three years and a Deputy Commissioner for
nearly a year in the Ventura Administration and can tell you first hand
that we turned over scads of stuff to be archived - both paper and
electronic.
Let me also say that in the last six months alone, I have nearly 2,000
e-mails on a CD and deleted hundreds more! I would guess that less than
10% of my e-mails during my time in office are archived and I do not
think that I am the exception to the rule!
The volume of e-mail one gets - especially if you try to be accessible
to the public - is staggering. Some of it is frankly privileged but
there are no hard and fast rules about falls under executive privilege
and what does not. In a regulatory agency such as mine (Commerce), much
of the e-mail traffic concerning investigations, regulatory actions,
privileged material from companies with pending actions is non-public.
But not all.
Do you keep every e-mail communication from constituents or citizens who
just want to bend your ear? Depends. Do you keep routine intra-office
e-mail traffic that may be interesting at some point in the future but
seems mundane today? Depends. What do you do with e-mail that you are
copied on ("I'll copy the commissioner just to be safe") or the
voluminous e-mail that get from the professional associations and
interest groups that you interact with? What about documents that
people send assuming that you might not have a copy (actually, you
already have five!) but they say something in the e-mail that might be
of archival interest?
I cannot speak for others, but in my experience one would learn very
little about what goes on in a government agency - other than the
mundane and routine - by reviewing e-mails.
I will also admit that if you are dealing with sensitive information or
issues that you may not want to become public, or that are not public
information at that point, one is generally cognizant that by using
e-mail, you are leaving an electronic record that is easily converted
into paper - so you don't use e-mail.
Since I am not knowledgeable about e-mail technology I cannot say for
sure, but I am highly skeptical that "in ten years all e-mail that is
legally public to or from an elected official in Minneapolis related to
their official duties with not just remain legally public, it will also
be
publicly accessible via the web for all to see just like the value of
your
home on the county's web site".
I want to know who is going to archive all of this and even more
important, which government official has the hours to sit down and
determine what goes out on the web and what doesn't?
Jim Bernstein
Fulton
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Steven Clift
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 2:27 PM
To: JOHN AND TAMMY GASPARDO; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [Mpls] Open Meetings
Not only are they public they should also have record retention
schedules
tied to their e-mail archives as well.
It would be interesting to find out if the State Archives received the
e-mail from the Ventura Administration for example or what happened to
the
e-mail of our former mayor.
See the State of MN's Data Practices Act:
http://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/stats/13/
More on record retention:
http://www.mnhs.org/preserve/records/retentionsched.html
In terms of open meetings, I can tell you that the school board in
Winona
tried to experiment with an incoming e-mail address for the public to
send
one e-mail to all members. The e-mails were archived publicly and
initially members were going to reply to the group so they would have
the
benefit of seeing each others responses. The lawyers got involved and
said
... hmmmm could this group communication violate the open meeting law???
The lack of a solid no closed that project down. Particularly with a
publicly accessible web archive, I see no reason to use fear of the open
meeting laws to close off communication among citizens and their elected
officials.
Looking into my crystal ball, I predict that in ten years all e-mail
that
is legally public to or from an elected official in Minneapolis related
to
their official duties with not just remain legally public, it will also
be
publicly accessible via the web for all to see just like the value of
your
home on the county's web site.
In general, the media and citizens don't exercise their access rights
and
the culture within government accepts our proprietary human nature and
allows us to forget the miracle we call democracy. So once in awhile a
scandal or a breakdown in trust forces those in power to reform
themselves
(only to a point) and create new accountability measures. With the
Internet, the potential of easy accountability without scandal has
arisen,
but no one in power has said, turn on the switch that gives all citizens
anytime, anywhere access to how many computers the city bought today or
what that new public employee got for a salary.
The main question is that of building citizen trust, do those in power
want
to aggressively use the tools available to them to break through the
barnacles and build automatic accountability and e-disclosure into
everyday
government at its deepest level? Our leaders today, could say, yes we
live
the spirit of the American revolution and be proactive in meeting their
generation's democratic obligations or they could accept the stats quo
and
wait for scandals or anti-incumbent electoral overthrows to foist such
changes from the outside.
Steven Clift
Carag Resident
P.S. Take a look at Yalova, Turkey. They claim to put real-time
government
spending and bank account information online. On this page you can see
the
wealth declarations of their top officials:
http://www.yalova-bld.gov.tr/?Belediye=mal_beyanlari
One of them drive an 87 Mercedes. :-)
According to Yalova's Dec. 2003 presentation, they provide/plan to
provide
access to:
Council decisions
Immediate flow of incomes
Daily flow of expenditures
Municipal Tenders
Citizen applications and document follow-up
Wealth Declaration - Increase/decrease of income and wealth of top
officials
Steven Clift - http://publicus.net - Reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Join DoWire: http://e-democracy.org/do
Speaking requests: http://publicus.net/speaker.html
Watch my BBC World interview: http://publicus.net/media.html
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Behalf Of JOHN AND TAMMY GASPARDO
> Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 8:50 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: [Mpls] Open Meetings
>
>
> Jason,
> E-mails from Gov't institutions are public domain. If you want a
> copy of an
> officials email record you can request them.
>
>
> >From: Jason C Stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >Subject: [Mpls] Open Meetings
> >Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 11:39:48 -0800 (PST)
> >
> >
> >It's my understanding that public officials can currently skirt
> the intent
> >of Open Meeting laws by
> >using e-mail. Does anyone have further information on this?
> >
> >Regards,
> >Jason Stone
> >Diamond Lake
> >
> >__________________________________
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________________________________
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________________________________
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E-Democracy
Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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