Hillary Clinton’s assertion that any e-mails she sent on her personal account to State Department officials were saved by the agency’s e-mail system alas was undercut by an inspector general’s recent finding that the department’s e-mail archiving system actually was not capable of doing so.

So seems only fitting that the nonprofit National Security Archive announced Wednesday night that it has awarded its annual Rosemary Award to the Federal Chief Information Officers Council — the top officials in charge of the government’s $80 billion IT purchases —  for the “worst open government performance” in 2014. The council got the nonprofit’s highest honor as a result of the government’s persistent failure to save its e-mails.

The 19-year-old council is a two-time winner. Back in 2010, the National Security Archive also gave it the not-so-coveted award for the same failings. (The award is named for President Richard Nixon’s secretary Rose Mary Woods, whose most-improbable stretch allegedly erased 18 1/2 minutes of a key Watergate tape.)

“The only part of the federal government that seems to be facing up to the e-mail preservation challenge with any kind of ‘best practice’,” the Archive said, “is the White House, where the Obama administration installed on day one an e-mail archiving system that preserves and manages even the president’s own Blackberry messages.”

Despite the award, the National Security Archive seems hopeful that the newly appointed council head, Chief Information Officer Tony Scott, and his colleagues will be able to improve the government’s ability to keep a record of official e-mails.

Or maybe we’ll have a three-time winner?