The State Department is saving just an infinitesimal fraction of its emails as official records, a scathing inspector general report finds.
The department’s Office of Inspector General report said of the more than 1 billion emails created in 2011, about 61,000 were archived as “record emails” – a rate of roughly 0.00006 percent of all emails created by the department, according to The Blaze.
In 2013, just 41,000 emails were preserved, the report finds.
“The department does not give employees adequate training to distinguish between information that should be preserved as records and information that may be discarded,” according to the report.
“Some employees were under the impression that record e-mails were only a convenience; they had not understood that some e-mails were required to be saved as records.”
The report, however, noted other employees seem to be intentionally thumbing their nose at preservation.
“Some employees do not create record emails because they do not want to make the email available in searches or fear that this availability would inhibit debate about pending decisions,” the report finds.
“Every employee in the Department has the responsibility of preserving emails that should be retained as official records,” the report scolded.
The watchdog’s report also finds compliance varied across units; the consulate in Lagos, Nigeria, created 4,922 record e-mails, the most of any foreign post, while the embassy in Beijing created 47.
In Washington, the secretary’s office created 7, the public affairs office generated 29 and human resources made 99, according to a chart in the report.
The Obama administration in 2011 ordered department heads to conduct official business on government accounts. Clinton was secretary of state from 2009 until February 2013.
Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
