{"id":72,"date":"2017-12-31T17:54:52","date_gmt":"2018-01-01T00:54:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/?p=72"},"modified":"2018-01-01T12:10:23","modified_gmt":"2018-01-01T19:10:23","slug":"avoiding-the-digital-downfall-apathy-and-spoliation-in-the-21st-century-government-office-by-emily-guthrie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/?p=72","title":{"rendered":"Avoiding the Digital Downfall: Apathy and Spoliation in the 21st Century Government Office<\/em> by Emily Guthrie <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Secretaries at work on <\/span>Mad Men<\/i><\/b> (<\/span>Source<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

Government Trespasses <\/b><\/p>\n

On October 31, 2017, the <\/span>Edmonton Journal <\/span><\/i>broke a <\/span>story<\/span><\/a> covering the deletion of 800,000 emails by members of Alberta\u2019s New Democratic Party (NDP) Government, including those within the office of Premier Rachel Notley. Alberta\u2019s official opposition party, the United Conservatives, had unearthed information relating to the deletions following a 2016 request for \u201c\u2026numbers of managerial and director government email records\u2026\u201d. That investigation exposed the sparse inboxes of many high-level government employees, including those who had worked for the NDP for many years.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

These events have transpired despite the fact that \u201cpublic bodies are governed by strict rules demanding the preservation of public records under freedom of information laws,\u201d and, most disconcertingly, as a result of \u201c\u2026incentivized email deletion,\u201d with incentives including Apple gift cards. This story followed a related <\/span>statement<\/span><\/a> by Alberta\u2019s Privacy Commissioner, Jill Clayton, from early 2017, \u201c\u2026[blasting] the province for its\u00a0[Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy <\/span>(FOIP)<\/span><\/a>] processes, a lack of respect for legislation, and \u201cunacceptable\u201d processing delays…\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Lessons From Our Past<\/b><\/p>\n

Within our 21<\/span>st<\/span>-century, tech-centric society, <\/span>Mad Men<\/span><\/i>-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\u2019s focus was on the organization of their employer\u2019s 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\u2019s 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. <\/span><\/p>\n

Back to The Future<\/b><\/p>\n

In today\u2019s office environment, the increasingly prioritized \u201cefficiency\u201d 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). \u00a0Employees 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. <\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m 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. <\/span><\/p>\n

In examining the Alberta Government\u2019s 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 <\/span>thinking<\/span><\/i> about their documents, as the evidence of incentivized deletion efforts proves otherwise, but rather that they have <\/span>prioritized indiscriminate deletion<\/span><\/i>, regardless of their public responsibilities or the legal consequences. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What Can Be Done?<\/b><\/p>\n

In Chapter 3 of <\/span>Records and Information Management<\/span><\/i><\/a>, <\/span><\/i>by Patricia C. Franks, it is stated that \u201call records, <\/span>including<\/b> business e-mail and other electronic records<\/b>, created or received, should be managed by an approved records management system.\u201d \u00a0While it is clear that there are strict guidelines governing the management of Alberta\u2019s 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 <\/span>spoliation<\/i><\/b>, or ad hoc destruction, of records in contravention of the law, harming the government\u2019s integrity in the process. <\/span><\/p>\n

It appears that the Alberta Government has utilized the advancements of the digital age primarily for their <\/span>convenience<\/span><\/i> 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 \u201cold ways\u201d \u2013 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<\/span> Organizational Systems Analysis<\/span><\/i><\/a>, to find out exactly what about the party\u2019s 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 <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>). \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Big Idea<\/b><\/p>\n

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 <\/span>is <\/span><\/i>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.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s New Democratic Party (NDP) Government, including those within the office of Premier Rachel Notley. Alberta\u2019s official opposition party, the United Conservatives, had unearthed information relating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54249,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3100255,3143036,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital-transformation","category-legal-issues-and-current-records","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/54249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/arst516\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}