Sara,

You wrote: 
"Our policy simply states that, unless the person sending the correspondence has specifically expressed a desire to have the correspondence remain private, all correspondence is public record."

I would advise you to check with your state's laws.  In KY, the person can express all of the confidentiality that they want, but there is a strict list of what is makes a record exempt from Open Records (KY's version of FOIA) and thus truly confidential.  (KRS 61.878 is the list of exemptions to the Open Records Act if you're interested.)  Unless your message falls into one of these exemptions, it's an open record and can be requested by anyone.  It doesn't have anything to do with whether the sender or recipient wants it to be confidential or not.  (Quite frankly most public officials would then declare all of their correspondence "confidential.")  I will admit, KY has rather strong Open Records law and as I have stated on this list before, we don't have an "in the course of buisness" statement in our definition of a record.  Our law says ". .  . prepared, owned, used, in the possession of or retained by a public agency."  Because of that the general
 interpretation of our state's AG (who is the first authority on Open Records/Open Meeting issues) is that if it is on a government computer it is a government record and thereby subject to the Open Records Act.

 Mark J. Myers
Electronic Records Archivist
Technology Analysis & Support Branch,
Public Records Division,
Kentucky Department for Libraries & Archives
300 Coffee Tree Road PO Box 537 Frankfort, KY 40602-0537
Phone:  (502)564-8300 ext. 244
Email:  [log in to unmask]
www.kdla.ky.gov


      

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