Office of the Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner. Guide to FOIP, Chapter 3, Access to Records. Updated 5 May 2023. 21 responded to the complainant using a personal/business email account. The Commissioner confirmed the alleged complaint and offered best practice advice with regards to the use of personal email for government-related activities. In Review Report 216-2017, the Commissioner again raised concerns when it was learned that public servants with the Ministry of Economy (Economy) were using personal email accounts to conduct government-related activities. The Commissioner recommended that Economy prohibit its employees from using their personal email addresses for government-related activities and require them to use government-issued email accounts only. In Investigation Report 262-2017, the Commissioner investigated a complaint involving the Ministry of Social Services (Social Services). CBC news articles reported concerns about the use of private email accounts for government business by Social Services. The Commissioner found that Social Services was using back-up tapes for the purposes of archiving official records which was not in compliance with The Archives and Public Records Management Act (APRMA). The Commissioner recommended that Social Services continue to work with Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan to develop an institution wide records retention schedule to be compliant with APRMA and to ensure records are accessible for purposes of FOIP. Personal Records in Government Email Accounts There are occasions when applicants request access to records that engage the personal records of an employee of the government institution. When a government employee uses their workplace email address to send and receive personal emails completely unrelated to their work, are those emails subject to FOIP? It can be confidently predicted that any government employee who works in an office setting will have stored, somewhere in that office, documents that have nothing whatsoever to do with their job, but which are purely personal in nature. Such documents can range from the most intimately personal documents (such as medical records) to the most mundane (such as a list of household chores). It cannot be suggested that employees of an institution governed by FOIP are themselves subject to that legislation in respect of any piece of personal material they happen to have in their offices at any given time. That would clearly not be contemplated as being within the intent and purpose of FOIP.30 30 See City of Ottawa v. Ontario, 2010 ONSC 6835 (CanLII) at [37]. See also SK OIPC Review Report F2014-007. Also cited in Guide to FOIP, Chapter 1, “Purposes and Scope of FOIP” at pp. 11 to 12.
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