Bloomberg Administration Plans Email Purge
By James Fanelli on September 17, 2013 6:58am | Updated on September 17, 2013 6:58am
@fanellijames
The Bloomberg administration
could let an important part of its legacy end up in a digital Dumpster.
Currently, the city only has plans to retain the emails of a
finite number of agencies from the Bloomberg era — and those are mainly being
saved to protect itself in the event of future litigation, DNAinfo New York has
learned.
But the city still hasn’t decided whether to preserve the emails
of major agencies like the mayor's office, NYPD, the Department of Education and FDNY, sources said.
If the emails are not saved, an unvarnished window into the
decision-making and thoughts of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and top deputies like Schools Chancellor
Dennis Walcott and NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly could vanish.
When DNAinfo New York asked the mayor's office and the city Law
Department about the possibility that these agencies' emails would eventually
disappear, both called that account "incorrect and inaccurate" but
wouldn't elaborate.
They also said that an email retention plan
has not been finalized.
What to do with the city's copious emails from the past decade
became the topic of a presentation that Larry Kahn, the city Law Department's
chief litigating assistant, delivered to multiple agencies late last year,
sources said.
In his talk, he explained that certain agencies’ emails may not
be preserved, according to sources.
DNAinfo New York asked under the state's Freedom of Information
Law for copies of memos and documents connected to the Law Department’s email
retention presentation. The Law Department denied the request, citing
attorney-client privilege, but acknowledged that city lawyers had met to speak
about the issue.
However, DNAinfo New York learned that Kahn’s presentation
discussed recent legal decisions where an institution was found liable for
retaining emails for a certain period in case they are relevant to future
litigation.
For that reason, the city plans to retain the emails of the Administration for Children’s
Services, the Department of Buildings, the Law Department, the Office
of Collective Bargaining, the Department of Aging, the Office of Administrative
Trials and Hearings, the Business Integrity Commission, the Parks Department,
the Department of Youth and Community Development, the Department of Probation,
the Department of Small Business Services, the Department of Citywide
Administrative Services, the Department of Consumer Affairs and smaller
agencies.
The Department of Information
Technology & Telecommunications currently hosts these
agencies’ emails on its servers. The city Law Department is still formalizing a
plan for how long to keep them and where, but it has floated three scenarios.
Under one scenario half of these agencies' employees — including
top brass and managers — would have their emails retained for 30 years. The
other half of employees would have their emails saved for five years. This
retention plan would cost the city $83 million over 30 years.
In a second scenario, 10 percent of these agencies' employees
would have their emails preserved for 30 years. This category would again
include agency brass and top managers. The city would keep the emails of 40
percent of these agencies' employees for 15 years. The remaining 50 percent employees
would have their emails saved for five years. It would cost the city $56
million over 30 years.
Under a third plan, 25 percent of employees would have their
emails retained for 30 years. Another 25 percent would their emails saved for
15 years. The remaining 50 percent would have their emails preserved for five
years. The total cost would be $66 million.
With four months to go, the city hasn't decided whether to
retain the emails of other agencies, sources said.
On Monday evening, an agency spokeswoman issued a statement
from Kahn:
"The city is always examining resource management
issues," it said.
"In that context, DOITT and the Law Department have
discussed the retention of e-mails in light of practices recognized by the
federal rules of civil procedure, the federal government, many businesses, and
the Sedona Conference, a leading legal organization comprised of judges,
lawyers and other experts in the field.
"No new policy has been adopted or decided upon, and your
description of discussions that have been had is incorrect and
inaccurate."
Good government groups told DNAinfo New York that the emails
should not be discarded under any circumstances — rather they should be a part
of the city’s Municipal Archives, which traditionally preserves the papers and
documents connected to a mayor’s administration.
“Any city employee, if while they're on the job, and they're
writing letters — or in this case emails — and it's in the business capacity as
a city employee, that shouldn't be purged,” civil liberties lawyer Norman Siegel said. “That's public
information. In due time, the people of New York should know what business has
been.”
Siegel was part of a 2002 battle with Bloomberg’s predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, who after leaving office
transferred his mayoral papers to a nonprofit he controlled rather than follow
the usual protocol of handing them directly to the city’s Municipal Archives.
At the time, Giuliani said he was personally paying for a
private archival firm to catalog the documents quickly.
Siegel and scholars charged that he was sanitizing the historical
record of his administration by winnowing out blemishes. They threatened legal
action and held protests demanding he return the papers to the archives.
Eventually, the Giuliani documents were transposed to microfilm and delivered
to the city archives.
“What's troubling is that this is sort of déjà vu,” Siegel told
DNAinfo.
Bob Freeman, the executive director of the state's Committee on
Open Government, said the public generally has the right to obtain government
emails under New York's Freedom of Information Law.
"Typically, email communications involving government ...
would constitute agency records that fall within the Freedom of Information
Law," Freeman said.
He added that government emails deserve a shelf life before
they're destroyed.
"We cannot simply destroy or dispose of records," he
said. "We have to maintain records for various periods of time that relate
to a retention schedule."
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