CREW POSTS FURTHER DETAILS OF MISSING WHITE HOUSE EMAIL DOCUMENTS RELEASED BY ADMINISTRATION

30 Jul 2009 // Washington, D.C. - In CREW v. Executive Office of the President, CREW’s lawsuit regarding the millions of emails missing from Bush White House servers, the White House has released documents from two of 38 boxes assembled by the Bush White House as potentially responsive to CREW’s FOIA request seeking documentation of the missing email problem. This latest release consists largely of documents related to four subjects: (1) contracts for computer-related products, many of which relate to records management (OAP00005872-OAP00006637); (2) a February 2006 effort by the White House to evaluate stored email files (OAP00006638-OAP00007021); (3) projects developed and then abandoned by the Bush White House to improve email preservation (OAP00007050-OAP00007801, OAP00007955-OAP00007975); and (4) daily updates of the team assembled in 2005 to investigate the missing email problem (OAP00007983-OAP00008547).

These documents highlight that early in its administration the Bush White House was aware of problems and concerns with its system for preserving emails. Documents from 2003 explain that ARMS (Automated Records Management System) – the email preservation system developed by the Clinton administration – was never intended to be a long-term solution for email preservation and needed to be replaced (OAP00007666). ARMS was designed to work with the Lotus Notes software used by the previous administration and could not capture emails sent or received using Microsoft Exchange, the software to which the Bush administration was migrating. While the Bush White House attempted to modify ARMS to accept Microsoft emails (OAP00007955, OAP00007975), it abandoned that effort for unidentified reasons.

The Bush White House also embarked on a multi-year effort to replace the old system with a comprehensive Electronic Communications Records Management System (ECRMS). The documents include broad plans for ECRMS (OAP00007666), evaluations of potential vendors (OAP00007687), detailed time-lines and schedules (OAP00007571), budgets listing hardware and software needed to implement the project (OAP00007728), and documents related to contracts and other aspects of the system. For unidentified reasons the Bush White House abandoned ECRMS in 2006 or 2007, even though it was ready to go live in August 2006 according to a key former Office of Administration official. A newly released document suggests there were still open technical issues at that time and identifies the next “critical milestone date” as September 2006 (OAP00007243).

The newly released documents also include daily updates from the team of OA employees and contractors assembled in 2005 to investigate the missing email problem (OAP00007830-OAP00007954). Previous releases included emails and spreadsheets OA prepared documenting and analyzing the scope of the problem.

As with previous releases, most of these documents appear to be copies of documents the Bush White House provided the House Oversight Committee several years ago. Many are marked “sensitive” meaning they are not subject to public disclosure.

Click here to browse these documents on GovernmentDocs.org.