Emails deleted by the executive branch in New Mexico will now be permanently removed after 30 days, a significant reduction from the previous one-year retention policy. This change is part of a new email retention policy implemented by the New Mexico Department of Information Technology.
A memo obtained by The New Mexican outlines that this policy affects "deleted emails in the Executive Branch Microsoft 365 tenant." However, it remains unclear which employees are included in this category. The memo states, "Previously, emails deleted by users were retained within the Microsoft system for one year. This was to allow recovery of improperly deleted messages. However, due to concerns about the length of the one-year period, DoIT is reducing the default retention of deleted emails to one month."
The department can adjust specific retention periods to meet different agencies' needs but warns that "retention periods of more than one year may have additional costs associated with storage requirements."
Paul Gessing, president of an Albuquerque-based free-market think tank, expressed his concerns about this new policy. He said, "I think it is troubling that in this day and age, where government transparency is so critical and so much important information is shared electronically, that the executive branch is planning to permanently delete emails after just 30 days," calling it "a real problem."
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