Larry's lengthy post as usual is thorough and includes pertinent cites so
you can RTFM (Read the Federal Manual) yourself. And of course it should
apply to the content, not to whether the content is sent via email, IM,
text, or other information conduit. 

However, it seems to me that the fundamental question here, or at least a
significant one, is whether those emails rise to the level of a state
record, or to use Larry's example, a Federal record under the Federal
Records Act. To move it to the Federal arena, that's one of the key
questions in the White House email scandal: whether email messages that
would be required to be retained under FRA and/or PRA were sent through
another external server and domain (gwb43.com I believe) rather than EOP.gov
in order to explicitly evade those recordkeeping requirements. And we do see
this all the time at the individual state level, but as others have already
and subsequently noted, this is almost exclusively an issue for the
executive branch of government because most legislatures opt themselves out.


If Palin's emails were political or personal, and specifically exclusive of
government information, it might make sense to send them through e.g. Yahoo,
and as I noted earlier in citing the Hatch Act, for federal employees it is
required. But if they were government-related, they'd presumably fall under
applicable Alaska statutes and need to be managed appropriately. She's still
the sitting governor and would still fall under those statutes for things
relating specifically to Alaska; any emails she sends today to McCain or
other senior campaign staff might not have any mandatory retention
whatsoever, providing that they are being sent through e.g.
[log in to unmask] 

Not to beat this one to death, but I have a particular interest in the
intersection of politics, government, FOIA/Open Records Act/Sunshine Act
etc. and there are a lot of nuances. And to be a troll for just a second,
the AIIM Email Certificate Program I developed has what I think is some
reasonable information on the application of these concerns to
organizational email, to web-based email, to personal email, etc. 

Regards, 

Jesse Wilkins
[log in to unmask] 

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