When government officials carry out their duties each day, they do so as employees of the people.
That means the public deserves the right to know what they’re doing and when, even when the activity is routine or otherwise considered unimportant.
Washington state has long recognized this, adopting a public records law stronger than its federal counterpart to allow for quick and thorough responses for requests for documents created in state and local governments.
That tradition doesn’t seem to be under threat by a current Lewis County initiative to clear out unnecessary emails and messages, but it certainly deserves repeating.
County officials say 90 percent of the emails, text messages and other means of communication are not substantive enough to require longterm storage.
There are an estimated nine to 10 million emails in the county’s system at any given time, and officials are adopting a policy to begin deleting many of them.
“We want to provide you with more data, not less. We want to be more effective in how we’re getting this data to you, more timely,” Information Technologies Services Manager Steve Wohld told The Chronicle last week.
By ridding itself of “junk,” record requests can be conducted much faster, he said.
The state is encouraging the activity.
It appears the effort is at least partially aimed at limiting liability when and if a records request is not properly addressed, an error that could result in a costly lawsuit.
While we understand the purpose behind the project is not to limit the availability of public records, it’s important that safeguards are in place to prevent misuse of the system.
If a public employee engaged in wrongdoing is able to simply delete evidentiary messages, the liability might have shifted, but the public’s ability to obtain the documents is damaged nonetheless.
The county deserves credit for being transparent with the process. Officials approached The Chronicle to discuss the effort, and all questions have been answered directly and promptly.
Still, we sincerely hope for strong protections against abuse as the county toils with balancing the needs of open government and the technicalities of storing millions of messages in a way that keeps them accessible to requests.
“If we can train employees on what records have retention value, what records don’t ... give them an understanding of what is transitory, then we can keep the email system clean and the text messages clean,” Wohld said, “and be able to, I think, respond more appropriately and more effectively to public disclosure requests.”
The quality and quantity of that training will be essential in keeping employees of the public within view of those they serve.
