Boston City Government Discovers Email Retention

An anonymous reader writes "The Boston Globe, covering a battle to unseat the 16-year incumbent mayor, has found out that the city has no email retention policy. A city official who receives hundreds of emails a day was found to have only 18 emails in his mailbox. The city has enabled journaling on its Exchange server in response. The Globe also notes that they had to curtail requests for emails under the Open Records law because for each mailbox, 'City officials estimated they would charge $5,000 for six months worth of email.'"

Comments

Re:No retention?

[laughingcoyote]

Yes, I know where I am, but if you'd RTFA:

According to the Massachusetts secretary of state, the state public records law requires municipal employees to save electronic correspondence for at least two years, even if the contents are of "no informational or evidential value." The only e-mails that can be deleted are those containing completely inconsequential information, such as spam or questions about lunch orders.

Retention is the BIG issue

[redelm]

Since very little is monitored LIVE because it is extremely expensive, retention time of email, logs, etc. is crucial. Too long and you encourage witchhunts from the past, too short and you abet felonies.

The real problem is is that law makers (and enforcement) often think themselves above the law. They made/enforced it, so can change/ignore it. Worse, the punishments for such violations is almost always minor. "Whaddyou gonna doo 'bout it?"

A simple answer is to charge felony "obstruction of justice", and have the felony provisions remove from office. This is highly unlikely to happen for reasons of "good buddy" through to not causing excessive fear in the bureaucracy.

Why tagged "republicans"???

[Vinegar Joe]

Since 1930, every mayor of Boston has been a Democrat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_Boston

Re:Important emails

[lysergic.acid]

You know, if it were just prostitution and extramarital affairs, I wouldn't care if their emails were deleted. Those types of personal vices are rather inconsequential to being a good civil servant. I know that the Republicans saw it as a huge victory when Clinton was impeached basically for having an extramarital affair (and don't tell me that it was for perjury; it was his personal life that was on trial), but, in the grand scheme of things, personal infidelity is probably not the biggest "crime" a public official can commit. I'd choose a president who respects civil liberties & human rights and acts in the interest of the public, but happens to be a philander, over a president who is completely devoted to his wife, but is willing to step on civil liberties, support torture, or sell out the American public to corporate interests. Likewise, I'm much less concerned about a president who lies about his private life than one who lies about justifications for war.

So, no, I'm not particularly concerned about politicians hiding emails to their girlfriends/boyfriends. We should be so lucky if that's all they were hiding. It's more the potential bribes, nepotism/cronyism, and backroom deals that I'm worried about. Those are the type of things that actually conflict with good governance—in other words, government corruption.

Re:No retention?

[bitt3n]

No one ever said that a firefighter had to be smart. All that is required is that he is ballsy, understands how fires work, how to control fires, and is able and willing to obey orders.

I speak as a graduate of the U.S. Navy's finest fire fighting training. ;^)

With all due respect, Navy firefighters have it easy. All you need to put out the fire is a corkscrew long enough to bore through the hull.