The City’s Ethics Commission was told a month ago that the City was preparing to “flip the switch” on the retention of text messages on City-owned BlackBerrys, but that switch remains unflipped as the City develops a policy on which messages should and should not be retained.
“It’s been over a month since we first started discussing this issue and there is still no plan in place to address the issue,” said James Young, chairman of the Ethics Commission’s Transparency and Open Government subcommittee.
The Ethics Commission has been concerned that City business is being conducted via text message and that those public records are not being saved nor retained, though the City has a means to keep those messages on City-issued BlackBerrys.
Assistant General Counsel Jason Gabriel provides legal counsel to the commission and, at the commission’s request, provided an update on the development of a City policy on the retention of such messages.
The Office of General Counsel’s response was released Monday and sent to City Chief Administrative Officer Karen Bowling, Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Cleveland Ferguson, City General Counsel Cindy Laquidara and Office of Ethics, Oversight and Compliance Director Carla Miller.
“We sent out the memo today and we are waiting for people to digest the information. The administration is also meeting with OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) this week and that information will be included in policy decisions regarding text message retention,” said Gabriel.
The Office of General Counsel made the following recommendations regarding text message usage by City employees:
• All officials and employees, through their department and/or division heads, should be instructed to utilize text messaging for “transitory” related communications. “In other words, to the extent possible, text messages, due to their fleeting and temporal nature, should not be used for conducting official public business, only for transitory-type communications and personal uses,” the memo stated.
• If an official or employee chooses the medium of text messaging to conduct official public business, then they should be instructed to maintain a copy of the text either through the copying or forwarding of it to email or some other recognizable format, or employ a retention mechanism that may be available depending on the device in use.
• The City should consider the automatic retention of text on City-issued devices.
A plan to address the retention of text messages has been slowed because the equipment used to collect the messages is able to do the same for BlackBerrys not issued by the City.
Laquidara explained during the July 25 meeting of the subcommittee that collecting messages from personal cell phones was illegal.
She was also explained that the City does not have a written policy on the retention of text messages and she was awaiting a policy decision from the mayor’s office.
“As far as a written policy, we really have a weakness in that area that we are working to address now,” said Cole Cartledge, now-former director of Intra-Governmental Services for the City, at the July 25 meeting.
The Ethics Commission has been pursuing the issue of text messaging since 2011 and presented a resolution to the City Council in November 2011 requesting that it amend the rules of the Council. Such language would include recommending Council members to refrain from texting and other cell phone use during all Council meetings, while also discouraging all Council members, other elected officials and employees from using text messages for the discussion, communication or conduct of City business.
The rules of the Council have not been amended since 2010.
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