Arroyo Grande
Arroyo Grande’s policy states
that email messages “should only be retained for as long as needed to
accurately document city functions and to help create a historical record. This
means deleting messages soon after they have been read, sent or printed and
kept in a record keeping system.”
The system is set up to
automatically delete messages more than 180 days old; messages in the trash
folder are deleted after 14 days.
The policy dates to 2006 and
“has been identified as one that needs to be substantially updated to reflect
current information technology infrastructure and practices,” City Clerk Kelly
Wetmore said.
Atascadero
Atascadero’s policy states that
emails not deemed a public record should be deleted within 90 days. The policy
leaves it up to each city employee to determine what is considered “city
business.”
Non-record emails are defined
as “correspondence not relating to city business, messages that do not set policy,
establish guidelines or procedures or document city business (and) routine
email messages comparable to telephonic communications.”
Public record emails include
“policies and directives, correspondence and memoranda relating to official
business (excluding duplicates), agendas and minutes of meetings, any documents
that initiates, authorizes or completes a business transaction and final
reports and recommendations.” Public records should be retained in hard copy or
electronically.
Grover Beach
Grover Beach’s email policy was
put in place in December 2013, about seven months after a county grand jury
concluded that Grover Beach residents couldn’t easily contact their elected
officials via email because the city didn’t provide official city email addresses
for each council member.
City officials disputed this
contention because it provided an email address for the entire council. The
City Council approved an email policy a few months later.
It specifies that email
messages should be purged manually at least once a week because the email
system is not designed to retain messages long-term. “Email that the employee
desires to save or that becomes part of an official record should be printed
and/or stored in another database,” it states.
Messages that have been deleted
will be wiped from the city’s computer server after 30 days.
Morro Bay
Council members and city
employees determine if an email is an official city record. The city doesn’t
have a policy specifying how long emails are to be kept.
A 2012 resolution states, “city
emails are intended to fulfill the same general function as ordinary daily
verbal communications among City Council and city staff and are considered
‘transitory’ documents (work-in-progress), and therefore are not subject to
records retention requirements.”
Emails are kept only as long as
needed, and the city attorney can help determine which should be deemed
official city records. Those must be printed out and saved.
“City Council members and
employees are encouraged to delete documents that are not otherwise required to
be kept by law or whose preservation is not necessary or convenient to the
discharge of your duties or the conduct of the city’s business,” the resolution
states.
The resolution does state that
emails are subject to disclosure under the California Public Records Act.
The email system does not
automatically delete emails at a specific time, City Clerk Dana Swanson said.
Paso Robles
Paso Robles has a records
retention policy adopted by the City Council in 1995 and a separate email and
internet use policy from 1998, but city officials say the policies are outdated
and they instead rely on the state’s government code.
The city doesn’t have a
specific email retention policy, Assistant City Manager Meg Williamson said.
The 1998 policy dictates that
the city’s computer systems and the contents are the sole property of the city
and that “communications sent over the system may be subject to disclosure
under the Public Records Act or litigation.”
Further, there is no formal
policy for deletion after a certain number of days.
“We have the ability to search
emails by key words, subject matter, recipients, timeframes, etc. And we have
applied these searches when we respond to certain public records requests,”
Williamson said. “Of course, all emails produced from those searches are
screened to ensure that any privileged information is not disclosed.”
Pismo Beach
Pismo Beach does not have a
specific policy in place governing email retention. Electronic communication,
including email, is addressed in the city’s personnel policy, City Clerk Elaina
Cano said.
The policy states that messages
sent or received on city equipment may be saved and reviewed by others, and as
a result, city employees have no expectation of privacy in such messages.
The policy does not specify how
emails should be managed.
San Luis Obispo
Email messages are subject to
the same retention requirements as other city documents (a separate “records
retention schedule” details how long specific documents are to be kept).
Emails not deemed records or
that are considered works-in-progress are not subject to the retention rules,
according to the city’s email policy, approved in 2007.
The policy states that emails
that are not records should only be retained for as long as needed – in many
cases, deleting them as soon as they have been read or sent because mailboxes
are limited to 600 megabytes. Deleted files are erased after 30 days.
Messages that are kept should
be stored on a network drive or folder, or printed and filed, the policy
states. The records retention policy was approved in 2001 and updated in 2009.
SLO County
San Luis Obispo County does not
have a specific policy regarding retention of emails, County Counsel Rita Neal
said.
“There are numerous statutes
that address document retention and many county departments have separate
retention schedules,” she said. She said county staff is currently reviewing
the retention schedules, which will include an analysis of how long emails
should be kept.
The county does have an overall
policy that addresses employee use of computers and regularly reminds employees
that any writing created in the course of county business is potentially a
public record.
January
24, 2015
The
Tribune
By Tribune Staff
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