Os Central Experts

New rules were adopted to regulate the use of personal e-mail accounts by Alaska state officials for correspondence that relates to conducting public business. Since earlier in August both public officials and hired personnel of government agencies are recommended to restrict the use of their private e-mail addresses as alternative for their business accounts for exchanging electronic correspondence when it relates to public business matters they are involved with in course of performing their service duties.

Should they receive or send business messages via their personal e-mail account, they are obligated to provide a copy of such message to the state governor (city mayor etc.) office where these messages should be stored, since like in the majority of other US states such messages are public records that must consequently be archived and disclosed for review by public if disclosure is requested under the state’s public records laws. The new policy developed by the Department of Administartion of Alaska now recommends that state employees and elected officials use their business channels of communication whenever possible.

If there’s no such possibility, the governmental agencies staff still can communicate through their private channels of digital communication, but are mandated to forward copies to their state acoount from where they further will be copied to respective state maintained public records database. The employees are also prohibited from deleting business messages from their private electronic mail accounts. If done so, they can be charged with destruction or mismanagement of public records under existing laws. If the deleting was aimed at concealing public information from disclosure, the offender could face severe penalties that might extend to criminal charges. Now people in responsible positions in Alaska that normally require excellent and clean past history confirmed by a compulsory background check, must take special care to avoid corrupting that hard-earned background history of theirs and getting their own criminal record for failing to comply with public records laws, requirements and regulations.