On the Mark

On Tuesday March 18th, 2008, Magistrate Judge John Facciola gave the White House a mere three days to respond to a proposed order directing them to show why they should not be made to copy all email found on computers in the Executive Branch. The Judge seeks to protect email from 2003 through 2005, as it was recently disclosed by the White House that they had previously recycled back-up tapes for the period before 2003.

We have discussed this case before here at On the Mark back in October last year and it appears that this will be coming to a head in the near future.

In a post today on Law.com, writer Pete Yost details this recent order and the White House response and their conduct which lead to this situation.

As an editorial comment, I find it mind boggling that the White House has been unable to do what Corporate America has been able to do and that is to establish a simple document management and email archiving system. Work started on this project in 2003 and as of 2006, work was not complete and actually stopped with nothing to show. On the 5th anniversary of “Shock and Awe” the Executive Branch has made a relatively straight-forward document management and email archiving project an impossibility. It is amazing to me that with all the billions of dollars spent, they were unable to get a handle on such an important matter.

On the Mark

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