Electronic storage a murky issue for many Shoals cities

Cities across the Shoals have few if any policies in place regarding the use and storage of electronic files, including e-mail, Word documents and Excel spreadsheets.

Unlike paper city records such as business licenses, ordinances and written minutes from meetings, much of the area's electronic records are scattershot among city and home computers, according to a canvass of local municipalities.

Many important documents, ordinances, financial audits and business licenses remain in paper form, but in most cases, electronic e-mails are disposed of by the whim of individuals.

The lack of electronic policy flies in the face of recommendations from the Local Government Records Commissions, which issued a policy in April 2001.

"All public officials have the responsibility ... to protect and guard their public records, including e-mail messages, from 'mutilation, loss and destruction.' " the document states.

"Although our law does not address electronic communications specifically, we assume electronic documents should not be treated differently than paper documents," wrote Felicia Mason, executive director of the Alabama Press Association, in an e-mail.

Russellville Mayor Troy Oliver said e-mails should be strictly city business, should be treated confidentially and should not necessarily be considered public record.

As for the day-to-day e-mails - "routine stuff" - Oliver said, "There's no reason to keep that - we'd tie up all our computer space with garbage. It's of no interest."

In many cases, digital data comes through centralized servers, which can be backed up at the source. Digital backups and data storage costs have plummeted in the past few years. Several companies now offer terabytes of free data storage for e-mail accounts. The entire book collection of the U.S. Library of Congress contains approximately 20 terabytes.

"Each person at City Hall has their own e-mail account," said Sheffield City Councilman Steve Stanley, who manages the city's servers. "Whether they are retained on a server or not, I don't really know." Stanley uses a personal e-mail account to conduct city business, he said.

"This is something that may become an issue in the future," he acknowledged.

As local governments decentralize their electronic records, the federal government is working on centralizing datasets into its new data.gov Web site. The transparency effort, headed by the White House's first chief information officer, Vivek Kundra, is already running.

Several officials print out electronic documents and treat them like any other city document. Oliver said e-mails of importance are printed and sent to the appropriate department. Muscle Shoals City Clerk Ricky Williams said when a project is done, for example, a financial audit on a digital spreadsheet is generated and printed for the record.

"Chances are, it will still be on my hard drive - I rarely delete anything," he said.

In other cases, e-mail is selectively stored. Tuscumbia Mayor Bill Shoemaker said he has about 400 e-mails saved in storage, but that when his e-mail gets full, he hits the delete button.

"Our system is fairly simple, each of us has the capacity to store e-mails and we have the ability to dispose of them," he said.

The Florence server grabs data that moves through its system for about 45 seconds before it becomes deleted, said Steve Price, information manager for the city.

Florence, likewise, has no written policies on electronic communications, even though its employees use a centralized e-mail system. Similarly, Muscle Shoals and Russellville also use e-mail systems with shared addresses.

"There is no need to save everything," said Tuscumbia City Clerk Jo Ann Armstead. "You would probably have fewer people doing e-mail if everything was thrown out in cyberspace."

Trevor Stokes can be reached at (256) 740-5728 or trevor.stokes@TimesDaily.com.