Calls to End Quick Purge of New York State Workers’ Email; New York Times, 3/12/15

Thomas Kaplan, New York Times; Calls to End Quick Purge of New York State Workers’ Email:

"The legislators were annoyed. The state official testifying before them did not have many answers. And the subject of her appearance — the “multiyear transformation” of New York’s information technology system — had been pretty much cast aside.

Instead, the official, Maggie Miller, newly appointed as chief information officer, faced a barrage of questions on a newly delicate matter: Why had Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration put in place a policy of automatically deleting state workers’ emails after 90 days?

“All I can say is that I fully support the policy,” Ms. Miller told one lawmaker at the hearing on Feb. 26.

Another asked her whether “any other government, anywhere” had a comparable policy; she cited no government, nowhere. And she was also asked: Who came up with the idea in the first place?

“It was already in place, I’m afraid, so I don’t know,” she replied.

Frustrated at the meager explanation and alarmed at the prospect of a virtual incineration of records, some lawmakers are looking to rewrite state law to forbid the email purges. Government watchdog groups have denounced the purges as a threat to transparency and accountability in a capital that has seen more than its share of troubles."