From the Wilmington StarNews (1/19/10): Kure Beach is planning to host a workshop discussing town e-mail accounts and public records.
The town board voted unanimously Tuesday for Town Clerk Kaysie Pralle to plan a conference with state officials who oversee public records laws in North Carolina, with the conference potentially open to officials and attorneys from towns in the area.
The officials would discuss public records laws in several areas, including e-mail accounts.
Questions about public records laws specifically relating to e-mails came up earlier in the meeting as well. Many of the town’s elected officials and department heads use free Web-based personal e-mail accounts instead of town accounts, because the town accounts were corrupted and are now inundated with spam. The town has selected a new e-mail server, which it plans to begin using next week.
However, several councilmen still had concerns about the town’s e-mail policy. Councilman Chuck Keener mentioned the town of Chapel Hill as an example in which town e-mails were sent using personal e-mails and not saved. Once a request was made for them, the town had to hire technology professionals to retrieve the e-mails, at the town’s expense.
Pralle said she would like to draft a clarified policy explaining how long different e-mails must be saved and have it printed, ready to hand out to new employees. While the town has a general records retention schedule, Pralle said, it merely says “e-mails” and doesn’t specify types of e-mails.
The e-mails must be archived, whether sent from personal accounts or town accounts. They must also be accessible any time a public records request is entered for an e-mail.
“On the (town clerk) listserve, there are constantly requests for a policy like this,” she added.
In addition to archiving and timeline questions, several in the audience questioned whether e-mails sent about committees would be included in the policy as well. The board agreed for Pralle and Commissioner Barry Nelder to investigate the questions about e-mail record retention further.
by Amanda Hutcheson, StarNews Staff Writer