Our view: E-mail records

That's because sending e-mails between personal accounts -- a common practice in Gov. Palin's office -- bypasses the state's system for archiving electronic records. Once the sender deletes those personal e-mails, they are essentially gone. Yahoo and other personal e-mail services don't keep deleted copies for very long.

Activist and persistent Palin critic Andree McLeod went to court seeking to end the use of private e-mails for state business.

What she has gotten so far is a half-measure -- a court order allowing use of personal e-mails for state business to continue, as long as they are preserved in some fashion pending the outcome of the case.

What the court should do is issue an order making sure e-mails involving state business are preserved as public records for public access.

That doesn't necessarily happen under current policy.

Dean Dawson, state records manager in Juneau, says he's not aware of any policy banning personal e-mail accounts for state business.

"We recommend people use the state archive system," Dawson said Tuesday. If they do use personal e-mail for state business, he said, they should copy it to a state e-mail address, so it gets into the state system.

Even then, there is no guarantee the e-mail is preserved. Employees are free to delete personal or trivial e-mails that don't concern state business -- and they use their own judgment about what can be deleted, says Dawson.

That's fine, when the state employee is deleting personal e-mail about a doctor's appointment or soccer practice.

But what if the worker wants to delete e-mails that might show inappropriate official conduct?

The state has no way to deter that. Archiving is all done on the honor system. Nobody audits or routinely cross-checks the process. Independent scrutiny comes only if the e-mails are relevant to a court case, disciplinary matter or public records request.

Gov. Parnell is a straight arrow, a stickler for rules and procedures. Has he ordered a different approach to using personal e-mails for state business? Dawson says he isn't aware of any new policy -- but he and colleagues have spent the past year working up a new policy on archiving e-mails, and it is due out soon.

The surest way to guarantee that public records will be preserved is to have all state business done on state e-mail accounts. That doesn't necessarily have to inconvenience employees who sometimes work at home or on the road. Technology makes it possible to access your employer's e-mail system just about any time, any where. People can work outside the office without resorting to personal e-mail accounts.

The state's current system allows state employees too much room to use personal e-mail accounts the way Gov. Palin did -- conducting state business on a channel that may avoid public scrutiny.

If the court won't close this loophole in the public records law, the Parnell administration should.

BOTTOM LINE: State rules about doing state business on personal e-mail accounts are too lax.