Thirty days after an email is deleted from a Denver Public Schools’ (DPS) account, district officials are unable to retrieve it, stripping potentially important documents from the public record.

Board of Education Director Scott Baldermann wants to change that.

Emails lost to public under DPS retention policy | CLASS NOTES

At least for the board and its staff.

Baldermann told The Denver Gazette he had been kicking around the idea for some time before a story earlier this month found – after the district denied a Colorado Open Records Act request because the email sought had been deleted – weak policies.

DPS policy states electronic communications on district computers or communication systems “shall be retained only as long as necessary.”

The DPS policy further encourages deleting emails on a routine basis.

It’s still unclear who makes this determination.

Baldermann said that was problematic. And the policy he will propose will define what is “necessary.”

“There’s just way too much left up to interpretation and we should address that,” said Baldermann, noting his policy would create “guardrails” for board members and their staff.

While the state archives law requires agencies to create a retention policy, it does not define an email or text message as a record unless the recipient retains it as valuable government data.

State and federal open records laws do not require public officials to disclose whether a record has been destroyed.

The board policy Baldermann hopes to introduce by the end of the academic year would spell out how long emails should be retained. A possible solution, Baldermann said, could be requiring all emails and texts be saved for the duration of a board members’ term.

It’s an issue Jeff Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, has been sounding the alarm on for years.

“It really gives the sender and receiver a lot of discretion as to whether something is important enough to save,” Roberts said.

Formed in 1987, the coalition promotes the freedom of the press and open access to government.

Because record retention in Colorado is a longstanding issue, the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition commissioned a study about four years ago to examine the law and identify best practices.

That report recommended what’s called the “Capstone” approach – developed by the National Archives – which assesses the account owner’s position and not the content of the email. So, for example, the higher the governmental position the more likely the content of the email or text message will be of value to the public.

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Software that automates retention could also bolster enforcement, the study found.

In principle, open records serve to advance the goals of a free society by giving the public a glimpse into the inner workings of government with the presumption a transparent government leads to greater citizen engagement that ultimately makes for better decisions.

“We need a board policy,” Baldermann said. “I’ll make it happen.”