Weinberg urges ban on auto-delete and codified messaging retention

Third, on record retention related to the pre-considered by Chair Brewer.

The council needs to ban the use of auto-delete functions from government communications and codify instant messaging record retention policy in the charter.

This was discussed in September as well, a bit in this hearing as well, but a recent reporting that you all might have seen of a whistleblower lawsuit involving DCAS, where senior

managers allegedly used personal phones, private emails, memos to keep sensitive talk out of public record, in one case explicitly opening their text messages by saying, hey, I didn't want this on Teams.

That further highlights

It's why we need to keep this issue, keep clear rules on this issue.

So, and I'll just mention, I know a lot of time, just mention quickly, at the last hearing, we heard the administration imply that public servants are basically free to choose for themselves

whether messages on third-party apps should be retained.

What messages constitute as substantive communication, what apps they should use for communication.

So there's obviously a lot of confusion there, to say the least.

Councilmember Brewer's bill to have a working group led by Doris to study and recommend improvements is a useful first step.

We appreciate the effort to align the modern use of instant messaging with the city's needs for record retention.

And public accountability, and to encourage the administration to rethink its position on enforcement in this issue.

But we also believe the council should go further and prioritize directly amending the charter to address these challenges, establish binding record retention requirements, codify instant messaging message policies, and explicitly prohibit the use of these auto-delete functions.

Thank you very much.