Department and Agency Internal Information Sharing Networks: Strategies for dealing with FOIA and Records Retention Policies

Posted Sep 9, 2010 // 3 comments

On December 8, 2009, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget released the Open Government Directive instructing executive departments and agencies to take specific action to implement the principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration throughout their respective organizations. Since then, many of these organizations have begun taking on information sharing initiatives, specifically within the scope of an organization, or between organizations.

We are familiar with the newer types of technologies used outside of the government, such as LinkedIn, twitter, enterprise search, profiles, wikis, message boards, instant messaging, and blogs. The use of technologies like these can help turn a community into a more agile, aware, connected, knowledgeable organization.

While taking on such initiatives to meet the goals of the Open Government Directive, departments and agencies must account for policies such as the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the President Records Act (PRA), and the Federal Records Act (FRA). These federal policies were established to ensure the clarity and authenticity of the decisions our government makes through extensive documentation of its actions. It’s vital that the new information sharing strategies we adopt adhere to these principles. How can departments and agencies meet the demands of the Open Government Directive by encouraging the use of beneficial collaborative technologies, while remaining flexible enough to meet FOIA and records retention policies?

Accurately Define User Groups. For online networks, government users should be defined and appropriately assigned into groups based on what types of records retention policies they are subject to. Making sure there is are unique identifiers in place allows us to put users into classification groups and assign documentation rules.

Strategies to Comply with FOIA and Document Retention Policies

A don’t delete anything policy. On an information sharing website, the simplest method to make sure all user events and activities are saved is to not delete anything. We effectively save all of a websites contributed content allowing us to have a full picture of communication on a site. But as we find out over time, this often leads to site usability issues. We wind up having 100 groups or conversations happening while only a percentage are active, fresh, or relevant. With a don’t delete anything policy, it’s impossible to remove mistakes, irrelevant information, or inactive groups.

Periodic site snapshots. Take a periodic snapshot of a websites database. This is also a relatively simple approach to documenting activity on a website. Individual page displays could also be captured through an automated image capture tool. A question is raised here about the comprehensiveness of the data we are storing. For example, what happens if only daily snapshots are taken? Is there potential for information to slip between the cracks?

Generate Email “Receipts”. The government already has a lot of experience dealing with records retention policies surrounding email. Delivering email receipts (for any user-envoked action or event) to a users email account (or group of aliases created to serve as a receipt function) would accurately and effectively document all activity on a website. Whether or not a user is subject to one records retention policy or another, that conversation is stored through their email account, alleviating policy requirements and concerns surrounding social media in the government. Alternatively, some sort of server-side activity log could also be used as a form of receipt.

History and Archiving. Different types of tools carry with them different methods of tracking communication. For instance, certain flavors of wikis and message boards ship with the option to save a page's change history. This is helpful when reverting back changes on a page, yet for long-term storage, page archiving would also be necessary. How would a change history function if we were dealing with a communication tool like Google Wave?

With competing social values such as security and transparency, it is important not to jeopardize an department or agency’s mission while working to achieve a more effective, collaborative government. This is why it’s critical to give FOIA and records retention policies serious consideration when implementing information sharing networks in the government. This issue is one of many that create the need for an open source CMS that is flexible, easily accessible, and addresses the core needs of government organizations on the web.

For more information on Phase2Technology's OpenPublic distribution, please check out http://www.opensourceopenminds.com/openpublic.