US government incompetent at retaining email
THE US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report today saying senior federal officials weren’t doing nearly enough to keep their email records, prompting the House of representatives to consider new legislation forcing them to do better.
The report, “Federal Records: National Archives and Selected Agencies Need to Strengthen E-Mail Management” claims that none of the four agencies under the microscope - the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Federal Trade Commission – were up to scratch when it came to keeping email records. Worse still, they all continued to use outdated and extremely unreliable “print and file” systems instead of proper backup.
Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Waxman noted that “agency practices for preserving e-mails are antiquated and woefully inadequate,” adding there were “Serious deficiencies” across the entire US government, including the White House. These deficiencies hindered accountability and served to deny people future understanding of certain aspects of US government decision making.
The Bush administration has destroyed (or, as they claim, “lost”) countless emails over the past eight years, including documents directly pertaining to silly little things like the Iraq war, 9/11, allegations of torture by the CIA. Nothing worth reading really, honest.
Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Information Policy, the Census and National Archives, Rep. Clay said that new legislation ensuring emails were kept rather than unceremoniously ‘lost’ (or shoved in a shredder) would “prevent the destruction of important federal documents and preserve our nation's rich history.” Oil rich history more like.
A Member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Hodes said: "The Bush administration has been one of the most secretive in American history,” adding, “their unreliable record-keeping has prevented them from being held accountable to the American people”.
He went on to express the hope that a new bill would reform the Administration’s “shoddy record-keeping” giving Americans more confidence that future administrations would not be able to hide the truth or stick it in the recycle bin of history. µ
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Future administrations will only find new ways of "losing" stuff unless a law is passed which would hold past administrations responsible for their crimes.
If the problem is the US government can't disclose this stuff when it's requested, then the solution is simple. Simply burn it to DVD, stick it in an envelope marked TOP SECRET and give it to our government to look after. It'll be left on a train or copied onto a laptop that gets stolen within minutes.
US are the weakist link.
This is news? The US Government is incompetent at virtually everything they do. There is no activity expected of a mere business at which they excell. Email is hardly the tip of the iceberg.
“...their unreliable record-keeping has prevented them from being held accountable to the American people...”

So take a wild guess why they're so "bad" at this.

This administration seems stupid. (I'm a US resident; I should know). But there was a semi-recent Daily Show skit where Jason Jones made the point, essentially, that "morons are never that consistent."
Guess they haven't heard of Time Machine either...
"These deficiencies hindered accountability and served to deny people future understanding of certain aspects of US government decision making."

What do you want them to go back to secret meetings in back hallways? Something works? You have a record to show your good work, not such a good idea after all? Poof it never happened. Bush killed the working system they had, the last thing they want is a new system that works.
So let me get this straight here...the US Government - headed by the very curious yet inept G.W. Bush - is voraciously recording data on all US citizens (Internet, email, telephone, financial, cell activity), and yet has demonstrated complete incompetence in the ability to manage its own email system, destroying incriminating documents in the process?

Should...US citizens...be concerned???

This might be one of the first things that Mr. Obama could have a look at as President (while he is trying Bush and Cheney as war criminals, he could just add this bonus onto the ticket as Watergate II).
Should have stopped right after "incompetent".

Would've been quite enough.
Perhaps some of the documents have been archived at http://cryptome.org/


well im british, i thought this was the new world standard, gordon brown et-al do better stuff than this all the time, at least theyre following the same standards world wide :O)

i blame the freedom of information peeps, stuff didnt go missing/lost before did it ?? O_o
I'm sure most of you know how to calculate how a lever is going to balance. The amount a weight affects the lever is solved by taking the amount of weight and dividing by the distance from the balance point(The fulcrum? not sure)

People are complaining about how left-leaning Obama is, that he's too liberal. Well, we have had a guy in office right now that's so right-wing that Jesus himself would vote for Barack Obama. It's like your car is slowly heading over a cliff, you want the fattest guy available to jump on the trunk of that car.

And when the 4 years are up, I pray to God we have a 3rd alternative for office.