New York State’s New 90-Day Email Purge Policy Raises Big Questions Over Transparency
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo lev radin / Shutterstock.com
Lawmakers in Albany grill state CIO Maggie Miller, who affirms the Cuomo administration’s controversial guidelines: It’s “consistent with accepted practice.”
New York state’s chief information officer faced tough questions from lawmakers last week amid news of a recently implemented administrative policy that automatically deletes the emails of state employees after three months.
Maggie Miller, was appointed state CIO by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in December, testified before a legislative committee hearing in Albany on Thursday, affirming her support for the 90-day policy, which was approved three years ago.
“In my experience, the policy is consistent with accepted practice, and I do support the policy,” Miller said, according to Capital New York. “It's also a matter of, actually, encouraging good behavior, prudent and responsible use of state resources.”
But the policy also raises questions of transparency, especially when it comes to future litigation or public records requests through the state’s Freedom of Information Law.
During the hearing, Capital reported, Assemblyman Danny O’Donnell was especially unsatisfied with Miller’s affirmation for the Cuomo administration policy, saying she didn’t “seem to be concerned” about longer term implications of a 90-day deletion policy.
Although the policy, Miller said, has retention mandates for emails subject to FOIL requests and those under a legal hold, O’Donnell said that doesn’t factor in litigation filed after the 90-day deletion timeframe.
“We spend a lot of money and hire people like you,” O’Donnell told Miller. “I think that you folks need to take a little closer look as to whether or not there are real risks involved.”
Miller, only a few months on the job, is a newcomer to government but has a lengthy private-sector IT resume.
Empire State Plaza in Albany
State government reform advocates in New York state and groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation, have been critical of the Cuomo administration’s email retention guidelines.
“Whether intentional or not, the 90-day deletion policy creates a new loophole: State employees can ‘forget’ to save potentially embarrassing e-mails knowing they will be automatically destroyed,” the New York Post quoted ReInvent Albany’s John Kaehny—one of 20 signatories on a recent letter from good government advocates to the governor criticizing the policy.
In a Feb. 20 memo sent to state commissioners and agency heads, Miller wrote how the state was nearing completion of a massive email system consolidation and migration to Microsoft’s cloud-based Office365.
“Before this email system consolidation we, as partner agencies, could not readily find each other’s contact information,” Miller wrote in the memo, first obtained by Capital. “Now we can easily communicate, collaborate, plan, schedule conference calls and meetings and manage our online correspondence consistently and effectively. This is a significant accomplishment and I want to thank everyone for their hard work in making government work better.”
(Top image by lev radin / Shutterstock.com; second image by Ritu Manoj Jethani / Shutterstock.com)