As many as 161 million state government e-mail messages, dating back five years, are stored on backup computer tapes at the state Department of Information Technology in East Hartford -- a situation of some immediacy now, as Gov. M. Jodi Rell and her top appointees get ready to leave office in January.
Officials have talked in recent weeks about which e-mails can be destroyed, and which must be retained, by appointees on their way out the door before Democratic Gov.-elect Dan Malloy takes office Jan. 5. Meanwhile, a proposed "e-mail retention policy" obtained by The Courant, for which Rell's chief information officer received approval from State Librarian Kendall Wiggin last April 15, says the huge e-mail resource "will be erased, deleted, or otherwise destroyed" after 60 days.
Read the whole story in Sunday's Government Watch column by clicking here.