The leader of Northern Ireland Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) has called for an urgent meeting of the Province’s Executive after it emerged that the Public Service routinely deletes emails after three months.
Steve Aiken (pictured) said a software system was in place to delete all Government emails after that period of time unless a Public Servant deemed them to be important to retain.
The Executive Office said the policy was in place throughout the Northern Ireland Public Service and had been established in April 2009.
Mr Aiken said he was unaware of the policy.
He said that when he worked for the Ministry of Defence during his military career all systems were backed up every week and everything had to be retained for at least five years.
Mr Aiken, a former submarine commander, said he found the revelations “surprising and very disquieting”.
He said there was a culture of secrecy in the Public Service and rejected claims from Head of Service, David Sterling that things had changed.
“From what I’ve heard today I don’t think the culture has changed one little bit,” Mr Aiken said.
“This is very worrying, and David Sterling needs to get in front of the Executive Committee and explain exactly what has been going on because this is completely unacceptable,” he said.
A spokesman for the Executive Office said it was “simply wrong” to say that the software system deleted all Government emails automatically after three months.
“Emails deleted from work inboxes can be retrieved within a certain period of time, if there is a business reason to do so, but it is costly to do so and is only carried out in very exceptional circumstances,” the spokesperson said.
“The Executive Office’s E-mail Management Policy…requires all staff to save emails which are relevant for ongoing business purposes into the information records system known as TRIM within the three-month period,” they said.
Belfast, 13 June 2020
