Fredericksburg’s E-mail Archive: Update

by Elizabeth Beck,
VCOG 2006 Richardson Fellow

Since its creation in 2003, Fredericksburg’s city e-mail archive is nothing short of a 100 percent success.

City Clerk Debbie Naggs created the archive during the lawsuit between citizen activists and some city council members over their use of e-mail to discuss public business. The citizen activists had earlier filed a massive Freedom of Information Act request for council e-mails. The city clerk’s office was swamped by the time-consuming searching, culling, organizing and printing that went into fulfilling the requests.

Borne out of the frustration of having to virtually shut down the city clerk’s office for a week, Naggs’ e-mail archive is now a normal part of being on the city council. Rather than having Naggs sort through each council member’s e-mail after they’ve been sent, the new system placed the burden squarely on the council members to archive any public business.

“Compliance by city council members has been wonderful,” says Naggs. “They each have a copy of FOIA and know what needs to be archived. The new members don’t even question it.”

Naggs didn’t use a fancy program or customized software. She used the computer and e-mail programs her office already had to create member-specific folders.

Each council member forwards any e-mail on public business to a council archives account. Those e-mails are then automatically routed to the individual folders. The archives are accessible only by Naggs.

Naggs says the city has not been hit with another huge FOIA request like the one that prompted the archive’s creation, but for smaller FOIA requests, the system has “worked like a charm.”

Naggs says she has no plans to destroy the e-mail records, even after the retention time set by the Public Records Act expires.

“I’ll let the next city clerk tackle that,” she says. “As governing officials, there’s a part of me that views their writings as a part of history, just as their words in the official minutes of their meetings are.”

Naggs adds that she would be “delighted” to talk with other localities about setting up their own archiving system.