State Dept. Employees Only Retained .01 Percent Of Emails As FOIA-Able 'Official Records'
from the lol-'accountability' dept
With uncanny timeliness, the State Department's Office of the Inspector General has released a report on the State Department's email retention -- or lack thereof. Not covered in the report is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's email retention -- or lack thereof. High-ranking State Department officials use a different email system (when not using personal accounts) that isn't covered in this report.Unfortunately, the lower-level officials and rank-and-file are abysmal at retaining emails subject to open records requests. In fact, they're so far under abysmal as to not even register on the Excellent-to-How-do-these-people-still-have-jobs? scale.
First, we have this:
A 2009 upgrade in the Department of State’s system facilitated the preservation of emails as official records.Then we have this:
In 2011, employees created 61,156 record emails out of more than a billion emails sent.Then… we have this:
Employees created 41,749 record emails in 2013.Assuming around a billion emails for both the years quoted, State Department employees have managed to retain only .01% of emails created as FOIA-able "official records." Some of this is due to the lack of training or guidance on their responsibilities as public officials. But most of it is likely due to this, which is also related to the ongoing lack of training or guidance.
Some employees do not create record emails because they do not want to make the email available in searches or fear that this availability would inhibit debate about pending decisions."Inhibit debate." What a bunch of cowards. So scared of the American public that they shirk their responsibilities to the people who put roofs over their heads, gas in their cars and pension checks in their mailboxes. It's no surprise they haven't received the necessary training and guidance. Everyone from the Secretary of State on down suffers from the same fear of accountability. If they're not retaining records at the top level, those middle-managing aren't going to feel too compelled to make sure every employee takes care to retain emails as official records. "Lead by example," as the saying goes, and the example is… Hillary Clinton, etc.
The OIG discovered that, while every State Dept. office was pretty terrible about following retention rules, some were much worse than others.
The OIG team’s review of the Department’s records on record email use by missions and bureaus shows great variations (see Appendices C and D). For example, Embassy Singapore created 1,047 record emails in 2013; Embassy Islamabad created 121; and Embassy Beijing, only 47. Consulate General Lagos created 4,922 record emails, the most of any post in 2013.Some bureaus increased usage when the OIG informed them that email retention could also work to their advantage. Not all paper trails are damning. Some are exculpatory. Certainly there are more of the former than the latter, hence the State Department's general reluctance to keep any more than .01% of its emails in any given year.
The Department’s bureaus also vary widely in their use of record email. The Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs created 736 record emails in 2013; the Bureau of International Organizations, 311; the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, 26; and the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, only 22. IRM created 1,630 record emails, more than any other bureau in 2013.
The OIG also noted that there is no centralized oversight of this system. Unsurprising, considering no one seems to want the job. Even when given a system that makes retention easy, the State Dept's staff -- from top to bottom -- has gone out of its way to avoid doing that very thing.
The OIG suggests further training, but that's not going to make much of a dent in the ingrained culture of secrecy common to many government agencies. It also suggests a handful of other bureaucratic fixes, many of which will likely be listed as "in the works" or "unstarted" when the next OIG report rolls around.
As for the report itself, it's quite possible this would never had been made public if not for recent events. It's marked "Sensitive but Unclassified" and carries this since-stricken warning in the opening pages.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: This report is intended solely for the official use of the Department of State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors, or any agency or organization receiving a copy directly from the Office of Inspector General. No secondary distribution may be made, in whole or in part, outside the Department of State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors, by them or by other agencies of organizations, without prior authorization by the Inspector General. Public availability of the document will be determined by the Inspector General under the U.S. Code, 5 U.S.C. 552. Improper disclosure of this report may result in criminal, civil, or administrative penalties.In other words, the secretive agency's internal report about its transparency-thwarting was supposed to remain a secret. The OIG blows the lid off the agency's willing failure to retain email records, and the State Department -- with the OIG's tacit approval -- elects to keep constituents from learning how its government is actively working to keep them separated from records they have every right to demand.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: email, foia, inspector general, records, retain, state department, transparency
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
In other words, they'll have them, but that doesn't mean you peasants get to see them...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Yep!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Yep!
If anybody requested them, they would probably either ask for proof the NSA actually has the info, or just claim a national security exemption.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
In other words...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: In other words...
And, yes - quite a lot of the email is social, just as it is in any organization.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: In other words...
That seems to be the problem right there. Letting the officials themselves decide which records are retained and which aren't just guarantees abuse.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
We haven't had a leader in a good long while.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
If anything, it appears that the true lesson of Watergate..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Why does the user/gov employee get to choose
Seems we are paying a lot of people to not do any actual work.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Why does the user/gov employee get to choose
That's craziness. All records should be kept and the determination of whether they're subject to FOIA requests made by a different entity when the requests happen.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Why does the user/gov employee get to choose
Official records are documents that meet the guidelines issued by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Agencies are supposed to hand over official records to NARA for preservation. NARA is not trying to collect every last document and communication.
NARA is under-funded and under-staffed, and cannot impose penalties. So, agencies are pretty much free to hand over what they want and keep the rest.
None of which has anything to do with the Freedom of Information Act. To the best of my knowledge, FOIA requests are not restricted to official documents.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Why does the user/gov employee get to choose
The way my organization trains it (or maybe I should say 'the way I interpreted the training'), 'working documents' are not 'records'. The email my boss sends me saying, "Look at this document and give me a summary" is not a record. The replythat has my summary would become a record because it's "finished". And only one copy should be retained. So if I'm coordinating something over email with 10 people, and each replies to the group once, that's a whole bunch of emails that are likely to be stored as "1 e-mail". Likewise, we don't retain drafts, so a contract of some sort that's in review and has tracked comments on it probably won't be around to be found 1 year after the final is contract is awarded.
I've been required a couple of times to perform searches on our SAN for information. Because of policies intended to maximize equipment lifespan and availability, emails are not generally kept there, and at my level I'm not actually authorized to search people's email accounts. I'm sure there's some other office whose personnel are in a position of greater 'trust' than myself that can do that. The question is who wants to be responsible for searching, compiling and indexing all that traffic for $35K a year, and how much confidence is anyone going to have in anything they're doing at that pay rate. Note that there are protected contracting discussions adn other things that, while completely 'Unclassified' are things that could certainly be misused. If the respect, compensation and whatnot offered to senior military leaders isn't enough to stop them from hitting thier kids or cheating on thier spouses what makes anyone think Larry from down the road is going to keep his mouth shut about the things he reads all day in the emails he's reviewing?
Of course... maybe that'd be a good thing, since it'd represent a level of oversight that's not currently there. Thought I doubt it would take long for the 'truly nefarious' portions of our government to just start talking about thier backroom deals in person or through some other system.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Why does the user/gov employee get to choose
Wow, then the system is even more messed up than I thought. Where I work all communications are archived and stored as business records -- because they are required to be by federal regulations.
I'm dismayed, but not surprised, that the feds have such a huge double-standard here.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Why does the user/gov employee get to choose
Retaining records for compliance reasons also has nothing to do with official records.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
They learned from Nixon
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Why the hell is retention "opt-in"?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The solution
Judging from the track record, government officials can confidently hand over ALL emails, secure in the knowledge that nothing illegal will ever be uncovered once it's sent to Utah.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]