Better not 'shred' that public e-mail

Reporters for the Hartford Courant found troubling inconsistencies when they branched out to 20 towns to see how government officials handled e-mails concerning public business.

Many towns had no formal policies, leaving it to the discretion of individual public employees and elected officials to either retain the electronic communications or delete them. Others provided data backup, but with no clear rules for officials to follow. A few properly adhered to state guidelines.

Granted, this informal survey did not include towns in this region, but we suspect the lack of clear policy on how to handle e-mails is not unique to Hartford County.

For the record, the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission has consistently found that e-mails from, to and among government officials are public documents that should be available to citizens upon request. The FOI Commission has at times ordered towns to retrieve deleted communications from hard drives, a difficult and costly undertaking.

Such records should of course be saved. If it is wrong to shred a written memo from the mayor to a tax collector - and it is - so too is it wrong to delete an official e-mail communication. The state has reasonable standards. For instance, e-mails concerning financial matters must be retained for three years. This is not a great or expensive requirement to meet given today's electronic data storage ability.

Those towns that do not have e-mail policies need to develop them, now.