CREW SENDS LETTER TO SEC. SPELLINGS REQUESTING ACTION TO PREVENT FURTHER REMOVAL OR DESTRUCTION OF EMAIL

23 May 2007 // Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW ) sent a letter to Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings requesting that she initiate action, with the assistance of the archivist, to prevent the further removal or destruction of electronic records of official Education business created by agency employees through the use of non-governmental email accounts. Under the Federal Records Act, the head of an agency must make and preserve recors of the functions, decisions and essential transactions of their agency. By knowingly allowing Education employees to use outside email accounts to conduct business and then failing to preserve copies of those emails as agency records, Secretary Spellings is not complying with her statutory obligations.