Nearly half of all upper-level government officials are reluctant to discuss their work openly in official emails, a new survey shows.
Forty-eight percent of officials polled said they felt uncomfortable or slightly uncomfortable “being candid in internal email communications,” according to a survey by the Government Business Council.
The same survey found that 41 percent of the Defense Department’s civilian employees use personal email to conduct government business at least sometimes. Thirty percent of officials outside the Pentagon admitted to using personal email at least sometimes.
But just 6 percent of civilian Pentagon officials and 5 percent of non-defense employees claimed they did government work exclusively on their personal email accounts.
The survey, administered to 412 federal workers in February, comes as criticism mounts over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s illegal use of a private server and email address to conduct official business during her entire tenure at the State Department.
Emerging details about the extent of Clinton’s personal email use have prompted multiple transparency advocates to question whether doing so was an attempt to circumvent the Freedom of Information Act, which requires official documents, including emails, to be made available on request to the public unless they are exempted under one or more of nine statutory exemptions such as national security and privacy.
Federal officials are also required by federal law and regulation to make copies of all personal emails that concern their official duties to their departments or agencies.
Because thousands of Clinton emails remain on a private server, the State Department must depend upon Clinton and her aides to provide access to the documents.
A combined 39 percent of surveyed government officials cited the specter of FOIA requests and congressional subpoenas as factors that “inhibit candid internal email communication,” according to Government Executive.
Just 30 percent of federal employees said they felt entirely comfortable speaking openly about their work in government emails.
