Office of the Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner. Guide to FOIP, Chapter 3, Access to Records. Updated 5 May 2023. 19 (ii) the official record has been captured and maintained, in accordance with policies of the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, by the court, government institution, minister of the Government of Saskatchewan, Legislative Assembly, Legislative Assembly Service or Officer of the Legislative Assembly who or that is responsible for the record; (b) a record of a temporary or limited usefulness, as determined in accordance with policies of the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, that is not necessary to sustain administrative or operational functions of the court, government institution, minister of the Government of Saskatchewan, Legislative Assembly, Legislative Assembly Service or Officer of the Legislative Assembly who or that is responsible for the record. Public records need to be retained, destroyed or transferred to the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan as per the APRM Act. Using personal email for government-related activities runs contrary to this requirement as the records reside elsewhere. Government should be taking steps to ensure that it is consistently preserving records in the name of good governance as well as for the responsible preservation of documents that could be subject to future access to information requests.26 Overall, such practices undermine the transparency and accountability of government that is the foundation of access and privacy legislation. FOIP requires a government institution to respond to a written access to information request openly, accurately and completely (s. 5.1(1) of FOIP). The use of personal email accounts by public servants makes this duty difficult to comply with because government may not be aware of the existence of records on personal email accounts that are responsive to an access to information request. In addition to access to information concerns, there are also privacy concerns with housing government records in personal email accounts. Many public servants (or elected officials) are unclear how to protect government records in such environments. Email is not confidential by default and in some situations, records are stored outside Canada. See the Guide to FOIP, Chapter 6, “Protection of Privacy” at Personal Email Use for Business for more on this. For more on this topic, see also IPC resource, Best Practices for Managing the Use of Personal Email Accounts, Text Messaging and Other Instant Messaging Tools. 26 SK OIPC Investigation Report 101-2017 at [34].
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