Committee on Oversight: “Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay, and Rep. Paul W. Hodes released a new GAO report that finds that senior federal officials are failing to comply with requirements to preserve e-mail records. On Wednesday, the House is expected to consider legislation (H.R. 5811) to modernize the Federal Records Act and the Presidential Records Act to ensure the preservation of these important federal records.

The new GAO report, Federal Records: National Archives and Selected Agencies Need to Strengthen E-Mail Management, finds:

• All four of the agencies examined — the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Federal Trade Commission — are relying on outdated and unreliable “print and file” systems for preserving e-mail records.
• Senior agency officials did not fully comply with key requirements for preserving e-mail records. GAO reviewed the practices of 15 senior agency officials in the four agencies and found that a majority of these officials failed to manage their e-mail records in accordance with regulatory requirements. E-mails were not retained in adequate recordkeeping systems, making the e-mail records easier to lose, harder to find, and vulnerable to deletion or other tampering. Inadequate oversight and training within agencies contributed to the inconsistent compliance with preservation requirements…”