Keep the E-Mail Around Longer, D.C.

The Aug. 12 editorial "Deleting the Pileup" accepted uncritically many of the assumptions underlying the District government's stated rationale for deleting "outdated" e-mail. As a result, the editorial didn't raise the tough questions.

Regarding the issue of overwhelming the city's computers: E-mails and server transaction logs need to be periodically archived in off-line archive files, to ensure sprightly performance in searching and sorting through e-mail, among other tasks. E-mail is then deleted from the server, but the archives remain intact. Why is the city seemingly so unclear on something so basic?

As for limits on data storage space, I have 10 years' worth of work e-mails in my archive, but it can fit on a couple of CDs (and I'm verbose). A 500-gigabyte external hard drive costs less than $200 now; storage is dirt-cheap and getting cheaper. How exactly did the District government arrive at the estimate that it would save $1.2 million over three years through its new policy?

And about "clear policies on e-mail disposal": Of course, the city needs to limit individual employees' deletion of their e-mail. But why a policy that mandates systemwide extirpation of all e-mails older than six months? That's simply institutionalizing a coverup. And those dreaded "large penalties" if litigants can't use e-discovery -- aren't they even more predictable with this scenario?

Six months is a perfectly reasonable interval for archiving e-mails. But in the interest of accountability, every single e-mail ought to held in the archives ("in escrow", so to speak) until a minimum of two years into the subsequent mayoral administration. Permanent deletion shouldn't even be an option until then.

MARK LaBARRE

Rockville