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Washington, D.C., Professional
Chapter Society of Professional Journalists P.O. Box 19555 Washington, D.C. 20004 October 22, 2007 The Honorable Adrian M. Fenty Dear Mayor Fenty: The Washington, D.C., chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists urges you to postpone implementation of your administration's proposed policy authorizing the Office of the Chief Technology Officer to eliminate most of the District of Columbia's electronic communications after six months. As you know, the Federal government as well as Virginia, Maryland and other states exercise significantly longer preservation periods. We appreciate the District government's concern about overtaxed computer storage capacity and the cost of conserving unneeded communications. However, absent any clear standards about what is historically or legally significant, we believe that the startlingly short proposed retention time has a strong likelihood of resulting in the destruction of communications that, only later, prove critical. City Council's Government Operations Committee has indicated its willingness to address legislation dealing with the archiving of electronic communications but has not yet done so. It seems to us that any policy action at this time would be premature. The Society of Professional Journalists, www.spj.org, promotes the free flow of information vital to a well-informed citizenry, works to inspire and educate the next generation of journalists to protect Constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and the press. Sincerely, Robert Webb |
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