One former State Department employee has been under scrutiny these past few weeks for her email practices on the job. But while the punditry class is honed in on Hillary Clinton, there are thousands of other State Department employees whose online habits also deserve to be examined.
That’s according to the department Inspector General, who released a report on Wednesday, finding that in 2011 alone, State employees sent “more than a billion” emails, but only flagged 61,156 of them as official records to be preserved in accordance with federal law.
In 2014, the number of emails saved for posterity dropped even lower, to 41,749.
The inspector general noted that a fear of “possible consequences“ was one reason why employees opted not to designate emails as part of the official record.
“Many interviewees expressed a fear that if participants in…a debate knew that their opinions would be permanently recorded or accessible in searches, they would not express their opinions in an uninhibited manner,” the IG found.
While internal deliberations are protected from public release via Freedom of Information Act exemption 5—the aptly named deliberative process exemption—federal law requires department employees to preserve records of their “more significant actions.” The rules subject officials’ internal debate to scrutiny by superiors under department regulations, which require accounting of all records related to “formulation and execution of basic policies and actions or important meetings.”
In 2009, the department acquired the technical abilities to make records of emails for that purpose. And it appears to be stoking fears that are undermining the intent of the rule.
The IG found that, “in some cases, an email containing a decision that ought to be preserved as a record was preceded by a chain of emails full of deliberative comments.”
Although there are procedures in place for employees to avoid these mishaps, the IG pointed to “inadequate technical training” as a reason why they were not followed.
“Without adequate training, Department employees will not be saving records—including messages that should be saved as record emails—that will be needed in the future and that are required to be saved by Federal law,” the IG warned, recommending that the department should offer a “1-hour online course on preserving records, including record emails, similar to the course on cybersecurity required annually.”
In addition to more training, the report recommends establishing annual reviews of each agency’s recording of emails, and issuing a formal guidance to employees reminding them of their “record-keeping responsibilities”
A similar report by the same IG, published in 2012 also found the department was “not meeting statutory and regulatory records management requirements.”
The scope of the investigation published Wednesday by the inspector general included time when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. Her own email controversy has not abated, even after she convened a press conference on Tuesday aimed at assuaging concerns over her use of a private email account while in office.
Clinton preserved for the record roughly half of the more than 60,000 emails she claimed to have sent and received from her personal account while serving as secretary. The incomplete record has left lawmakers and the media with lingering questions.
Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-La.), the head of house panel examining the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks in Benghazi, demanded on Wednesday that Clinton turn over for investigation her entire “personal email server,” which hosted Clinton’s email address while at the State Department.
Gowdy did admit, however, that his committee doesn’t have “the power to seize personal property like that.”
Meanwhile, the Associated Press is doing some prying of its own. On Wednesday it announced it’s filing suit against the State Department to compel the handover of emails and records belonging to Secretary Clinton.
“The press is a proxy for the people, and AP will continue its pursuit of vital information that’s in the public interest through this action and future open records requests.” AP General Counsel Karen Kaiser told The Hill.
The suit comes after several Freedom of Information Act Requests filed by the AP went unanswered.
