A committee forwarded a set of bill drafts Thursday assuring a debate will occur during next year’s legislative session on ways to improve records retention and oversight of email services provided by the North Dakota University System.
Members of the Information Technology Committee voted to forward four bill drafts to Legislative Council. Three of them are to be combined into a single bill meant to beef up the NDUS’ email services and set a retention policy.
The bill drafts were introduced at the committee’s last hearing in September by Rep. Roscoe Streyle, R-Minot.
Streyle pointed to last year’s opinion by the attorney general that North Dakota State University had broken open records law in not providing emails that were recovered after being deleted to Legislative Council in a timely matter.
Streyle said transparency is important and he doesn’t believe the NDUS would improve transparency on its own.
“I think it should be a legislative prerogative,” Streyle said.
Three bills by Streyle are to be combined. One would require each of the colleges and universities to utilize the same email services for public business. Another would add language to the definition of state agencies that fall under records retention law to include the State Board of Higher Education and all entities it oversees.
The third bill would require retention of all NDUS emails for five years.
“There needs to be a set number of years,” Streyle said. “It’s not a hard deal.”
Mike Ressler, chief information officer for the Information Technology Department, said having a set number of years for records retention in place would help. He said having a standard in place makes it easier to look back when a request for information or any legal issues occur that may require email records.
“Having a set number of years for record retention would clean it up,” Ressler said.
Ressler was asked about the cost of storing email transactions on a state server. He said he wasn’t able to provide a specific dollar amount at that time.
“I don’t believe the cost would be substantial,” Ressler said.
(Reach Nick Smith at 701-250-8255 or 701-223-8482 or at nick.smith@bismarcktribune.com.)
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