Cornyn is pretty well-known for his strong support of open government laws. During his time as Texas Attorney General, his office was charged with interpreting the Texas Public Information Act, and reporters who were around during his tenure say he made fair calls. Since he's been in the Senate, Cornyn has authored numerous pieces of legislation to expand government transparency. In a recent column, Cornyn wrote this:

...As we move to protect our society, we must make certain that government operates in full view of the people who fund it, and give their consent. Our democracy is based on the right to know. This is one of our most treasured civil liberties in America, one that should never be lost or forgotten.

So, given his stance on the issue, what does he make of the governor's office policy of deleting emails after seven days, and allowing these emails to fall into the cyber-abyss unless they are requested before the weekly purge? Cornyn says he'll do more research:

Read more of "The Purge" by clicking the Open Government label to your right. It's also important to note that my colleagues Cody at the Texas Observer and Jay at the Star-Telegram continue their coverage of all of this. Here's some recent stuff:

Perry will share his emails, send a bill (Star-Telegram)
Email Fight: Perry demands $2K per month (Texas Observer)

In Part Five of this series, you saw the responses from the governor's office to public information crusader, John Washburn, about his twice-weekly requests for emails that end in "governor.state.tx.us".

Now Washburn is responding. With a formal complaint to the Texas Attorney General's office.

Dear Mr. Simpson:
I would like to file a formal complaint with the Attorney General of Texas regarding the excessive charges to copy electronic records to electronic media. The charges amount to $568.00 for one CD-ROM worth of data.
As I articulated below, I believe Texas statues and administrative rules only allow for the charge of two dollars ($2.00) not $568.00 as asserted by the Office of the Governor. Attached are the relevant correspondences. I am also mailing the attached to the Austin address of the Attorney General.
As an aside I must say the “itemization” leaves something to be desired. What services exactly am I getting for $567.00?

The Purge project aims to take a look at the email retention policies of state agencies and offices beyond the Governor's, but the Governor's office policy of deleting every seven days continues to drive additional questions.

See Kuff and Vince for some of their concerns.

The Star-Telegram reports the policy will stay in effect:

Just asking for government records triggers a requirement that they be preserved, so Perry has temporarily halted the automatic erasures to give staffers time to comply with the request, officials said. Once that happens, and after installing more sophisticated computer software, [Perry spokesman Robert] Black said Perry will resume enforcement of a seven-day retention schedule for e-mail.

"There might be other exceptions to the PIA that we must assert, thus making redacting necessary. Our office can only redact hard copies of the documents," Perry Asst. General Counsel Chelsea Thornton wrote.

But the Texas Department of Transportation, TXDOT -- is doing what the Governor's office says cannot be done. The open-records-crusader, John Washburn, pointed me to TXDOT's testimonial on the website of its consultant, Messaging Architects. Not only does TXDOT keep its emails, it can electronically search and sort them from its archives.

As a state agency, TxDOT needs to be compliant to the Texas Public Information Act, which was designed to provide access to public information, including email messages and other electronically delivered documents. To fulfill this requirement in the most cost-effective way, TxDOT needed an enterprise-class solution capable of processing over 11,000 GroupWise mailboxes while also providing quick and easy access to the contents of archived mailboxes. In addition, given the scope of the project, access to expert-level GroupWise technical support in the deployment phase was seen as a priority.

Meanwhile, we shall soldier on in our learning.

As I mentioned in earlier Purge entries, each state agency/governmental office establishes its own retention schedule for all of its records, and creates a time frame to archive or delete depending on subject of the record. This is the retention schedule of the Texas Governor's Office, which I've uploaded to a divshare account because it was too big for google docs.

It's lengthy, but take a look at schedules are 1.1.007 and 1.1.008. (Pages 14 and 15 on the pdf):

1.1.007 Correspondence - Administrative
Incoming/outgoing and internal correspondence, in any format, pertaining to the formulation, planning, implementation, interpretation, modification, or redefinition of the programs, services, or projects of an agency and the administrative regulations, policies, and procedures that govern them.

1.1.008 Correspondence - General
Non-administrative incoming/outgoing and internal correspondence, in any media, pertaining to or arising from the routine operations of the policies, programs, services, or projects of an agency.

Official correspondence, such as constituent inquiries and contracts, are saved in some format until the end-of-term. Transitory correspondence, according to the Texas State Library, is communication that is only useful for a limited amount of time and then is no longer needed. This correspondence is exempt from the end-of-term retention policy.

An example of this would be back and forth emails between multiple people trying to set up a meeting time. Once the meeting is set, the emails are no longer needed or useful.

So Perry's office says that it is letting individuals within a public office decide whether something "is needed" for the public record or not. The example about setting a meeting could very well be important public information -- what if the emails "setting up a meeting time" actually discussed having lunch with a powerful lobbyist with interests related to a measure the Governor was pushing?
What is "transitory" and therefore "not needed" to one person, may be something "official" in the eyes of another. What's the danger in saving it all, for a longer period of time?

Anyone want to weigh in on this? The journey continues...