Their view: It's public record regardless of where it is filed

Gwyneth Doland is executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government. Here's her take on public records held in private electronic devices:

Here in New Mexico, we're lucky to have laws that guarantee your right to know what your government is doing.

The Inspection of Public Records Act was designed to ensure, as its authors wrote, "all persons are entitled to the greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of public officers and employees."

But IPRA dates from 1994, when only a small fraction of us had computers on our desks at work.

These days it seems almost everything we do is processed electronically, and that includes most of the business conducted by public officials and employees.

When officials use their private accounts to conduct public business, that promise of transparency is clouded. That's because employees charged with responding to public records requests have no way of easily retrieving public records that might be lurking in their bosses' private accounts.

Devotees of open government in New Mexico have always known a public record is a public record no matter where it is physically located — in a filing cabinet in the office or in an employee's briefcase at home, for example.

Lately, folks have been asking us about the details of email and how it should be treated in terms of public records requests.

First, if a document sitting in a public official's desktop computer at work qualifies as a public record under the definition in IPRA, then it's still a public record when it's stored on that official's personal laptop at home. Similarly, a public record sent or received by email is subject to inspection under IPRA no matter what kind of account — official or private — is used.

Just as records custodians are responsible for documents that may not be in the right filing cabinet, they are also responsible for public records held in private email accounts belonging to members of that body.

But because storing public records in private email accounts can make it hard for records custodians to access those records, FOG strongly recommends all emails related to public business are sent using official accounts.