Secretaries at work on Mad Men (Source)
Government Trespasses
On October 31, 2017, the Edmonton Journal broke a story covering the deletion of 800,000 emails by members of Alberta’s New Democratic Party (NDP) Government, including those within the office of Premier Rachel Notley. Alberta’s official opposition party, the United Conservatives, had unearthed information relating to the deletions following a 2016 request for “…numbers of managerial and director government email records…”. That investigation exposed the sparse inboxes of many high-level government employees, including those who had worked for the NDP for many years.
These events have transpired despite the fact that “public bodies are governed by strict rules demanding the preservation of public records under freedom of information laws,” and, most disconcertingly, as a result of “…incentivized email deletion,” with incentives including Apple gift cards. This story followed a related statement by Alberta’s Privacy Commissioner, Jill Clayton, from early 2017, “…[blasting] the province for its [Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIP)] processes, a lack of respect for legislation, and “unacceptable” processing delays…”
Lessons From Our Past
Within our 21st-century, tech-centric society, Mad Men-esque office layouts, with a secretarial pool in the center of the room, and at each desk the dedicated employee of an upper-manager, are a thing of the past. At that time, a secretary’s focus was on the organization of their employer’s records and needs, and they acted as records custodian from note-taking to filing. Records management was given great care and attention precisely because it was a large part of the secretary’s job description, and could not become an afterthought of more pressing business. This was a well-oiled machine, and although its methods are not always applicable to the digital age, its attitude towards records management still should be.
Back to The Future
In today’s office environment, the increasingly prioritized “efficiency” of self-serve records management has allowed important information to be more easily lost (efficiency is placed in quotes as I have difficulty seeing the efficiency in incentivizing the deletion of emails, only to be faced later with the larger problems of scandal and large-scale investigation). Employees now work on personal computers, laptops, or mobile devices, and are able to access their documents with ease, managing them electronically on a single hard drive or as part of a larger network. Within this system, a large number of documents are generated in the form of email correspondence.
I’m certain that most of us are familiar with the anxiety inducing overflow of our personal email inboxes; perhaps you have subscribed to one too many online retailers, or you never deleted those mass emails from your alma mater. As private citizens, what we do or do not keep in our inboxes is generally of no concern to anyone else. There is a certain apathy in the way we manage our email, either hoarding or deleting everything with no discretion.
In examining the Alberta Government’s recent gaffe, it appears possible to me that the same culture of apathy found in the management of private email is also present in that public sphere. To be clear, I do not mean that the government is not even thinking about their documents, as the evidence of incentivized deletion efforts proves otherwise, but rather that they have prioritized indiscriminate deletion, regardless of their public responsibilities or the legal consequences.
What Can Be Done?
In Chapter 3 of Records and Information Management, by Patricia C. Franks, it is stated that “all records, including business e-mail and other electronic records, created or received, should be managed by an approved records management system.” While it is clear that there are strict guidelines governing the management of Alberta’s government records, just how these guidelines are being put into formal practice (if they are not being altogether ignored) remains a mystery. Dangerously, this attitude has led to the spoliation, or ad hoc destruction, of records in contravention of the law, harming the government’s integrity in the process.
It appears that the Alberta Government has utilized the advancements of the digital age primarily for their convenience factor, while disregarding the ramifications of such practices on proper records management if not applied with care. I do not naively suggest that they should regress from using technological advancements in favour of the “old ways” – that is simply not a viable solution as it ignores the obvious trajectory of how we make and receive records. But to avoid such a misstep in the future there is an obvious need for a system review, with two crucial steps. First, the undertaking of a contextual review using an Organizational Systems Analysis, to find out exactly what about the party’s culture has led them to this point. And second, a look into their policy on retention schedules to know if the legal, regulatory and accountability requirements being addressed, and how can they strengthen their adherence to FOIP (an example of this approach can be found here).
The Big Idea
The Alberta Government cannot in good conscience continue to manage its email as it has previously. After all, where else are records management guidelines more important than in such an organization? The arrival of the digital age was swift and its growth exponential, and in the wake of this overwhelming surge perhaps it is tempting to allow some slack at this lower level of correspondence. Nevertheless, apathy and short-cuts cannot be allowed at any level of government record-keeping, for in a democracy there is first-and-foremost a responsibility to the public. The technology is here to stay, so the government must work with it to meet set obligations, laws and standards. Anything less is definitely unethical, and verging on corrupt.