RGF highlights MLG’s plan to delete emails faster

Many thanks to Daniel Chacon of the Santa Fe New Mexican for covering an issue that we highlighted. The following is from Chacon’s recent Roundhouse Report article.

Deleted emails to be permanently deleted faster

Emails deleted by the executive branch will disappear faster than they have in the past.

The New Mexico Department of Information Technology has implemented a new email retention policy in which deleted emails will now be “permanently purged” after a month, a major change from the previous one-year retention policy.

A memo obtained by The New Mexican states the change to the retention policy affects “deleted emails in the Executive Branch Microsoft 365 tenant.”

The information technology department did not immediately define which employees fall into that category.

“Previously, emails deleted by users were retained within the Microsoft system for one year,” the memo states. “This was to allow recovery of improperly deleted messages. However, due to concerns about the length of the one-year period, DoIT is reducing the default retention of deleted emails to one month.”

The memo notes DoIT can accommodate specific retention periods to meet agencies’ various needs.

“However, please be aware that retention periods of more than one-year may have additional costs associated with storage requirements,” the memo states.

Paul Gessing, president of the Albuquerque-based free-market think tank, expressed concerns about the new policy.

“I think it is troubling that in this day and age, where government transparency is so critical and so much important information is shared electronically, that the executive branch is planning to permanently delete emails after just 30 days,” he said. “[It’s] a real problem.”