Chapel Hill Technology Advisory Committee

[Terri Buckner <tbuckner AT ibiblio.org>]

Last week, Martha Hoylman shared responses to her investigation on NC 
local governments email policies for elected and appointed officials 
(most, including Chapel Hill, do not have any). This gap appears to be 
consistent with most large industries according to the study referenced 
below. According to the agenda for our July 19 meeting, we will be 
discussing the allowable use of listservs. To make that discussion and 
any resulting policy/practice decisions more legitimate, we need to also 
pursue the larger issue of electronic communications retention and use 
policy for employees and elected/appointed officials.

A few facts:

--current town policies on use and retention relate only to email, 
nothing on text messaging, discussion forums, listservs, blogs, etc.

--current town policies on use of email apply only to staff, elected and 
appointed officials are not covered

--except for the Mayor, elected officials of the Town are not using town 
email addresses, therefore no retention (public records/open meetings) 
policy is feasible. According to one Council member, this service has 
not been offered, although each council member is provided with a 
town-owned computer which somewhat mitigates the problem.

--by using their business and/or computers and/or personal email 
accounts, elected (and appointed) officials put all of their digital 
records at risk in the event of litigation

We're not alone. See this 2003 Survey on Electronic Communications and 
Policies (multiple industries)
http://www.aiim.org/viewpdfc.asp?ID=29430