(The Center Square) – Gov. Bob Ferguson has still not announced a final decision on his directive concerning the auto-deletion of government agency internal communications, despite his self-imposed six-month deadline having passed in August.
As previously reported by The Center Square, in February, Ferguson put a six-month pause on the auto-deletion of Teams messages for state agencies. The pause was ordered after a review following a $225,000 settlement with the Department of Children, Youth & Families for illegally destroying public records.
Microsoft Teams is a cloud-based software application that enables users to communicate, schedule meetings, and share files within a workspace environment, typically via email.
“No update yet, will let you know when there’s more,” Ferguson spokesperson Brionna Aho emailed The Center in September of this year.
Public records and open government advocate Jamie Nixon has sued the state over agencies’ failure to produce public records related to the Teams auto-deletion policy.
“So, I did request that both the AG’s Office and the Governor’s Office provide their records on this matter,” he told The Center Square. “The Governor’s Office, I am now suing over their response to that. They closed it saying they didn’t have a single record, which again is amazing. They had no communication. But I actually ended up doing a similar request with OFM [Office of Financial Management] about the same matter. And there’s emails to and from the PRO [public records officer] of the governor’s office about this issue that apparently she didn’t find in her own emails.”
It’s not clear when lawmakers halted the destruction of emails or what initially prompted it, but according to the Washington Coalition for Open Government, records officers’ emails indicated that “email storage had become burdensome as a result of a 2017 court case filed by The Associated Press and other news organizations that established that legislators are subject to the Public Records Act.”
Nixon continued: “The AG’s Office should be the one that A, understands the legal responsibilities of getting these things out, and B, should really be setting the standard as far as I’m concerned in just showing timeliness and an excellent process. And they’ve obviously just failed there right now. They’re not the only agency that’s failing, but I sent them a pretty strongly worded letter saying I need some understanding as to why this keeps happening on this request. Why am I not getting anything? If you don’t have anything, close the request. If you have something, send it.”
He suggested the use of AI in response to records requests should expedite the process.
“There will always need to be a human connection there to make sure that we’re not sending out somebody’s Social Security number or their health care information without proper authority,” Nixon explained. “But there are a lot of records, like contract records, the basic financial stuff, that stuff should be, ‘Here you go.’ I should be able to talk to the chat bot and it should be like, ‘Here’s those records.’ In that way, there’s a minimal amount of human work that needs to be done in there. And if I’ve got what I’ve got, then I don’t need to necessarily talk with you a whole lot.”
The Center Square reached out to Ferguson’s office about the delay on a final decision.
“Teams chats are still being retained as previously described,” spokesperson Brionna Aho emailed The Center Square. “I will update you when we have more direction.”
