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.