The Department of Energy’s (DOE) ineffective management of its email records, including its "inability to archive and retrieve email records could significantly impact [DOE’s] ability to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests, ongoing litigation, or law enforcement efforts,” the DOE Inspector General (IG) said in a report released yesterday. The DOE and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) "had not implemented a process to ensure that email records were identified and managed in accordance with Federal requirements" and “relied on users to identify and retain email records,” the Sept. 3 report says, while “in most cases, users were unaware that they were even responsible for identifying which emails should be retained as records.” The DOE also "had not fully addressed the use of personal email accounts to conduct government business," and the lack of guidelines could make "archival and retrieval of potential records difficult or impossible," the report says. It notes a lack of controls within some organizations "to prohibit an individual from sending or receiving work-related email from their personal non-government accounts.” The report also says the DOE’s electronic recordkeeping issues had been identified in a previous review but "remained largely unresolved.”
The IG recommends “a coordinated approach among programs and sites to increase the likelihood that records management activities will be completed successfully,” records management training for employees, and the use of records management software applications. DOE management agreed with the recommendations and said in the report “that the Records Management Office will develop a policy that provides additional guidance for managing email and will launch records management training . . . for Federal and contractor personnel.”
Jobs