[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] Does the federal government have any systems at all to back its email archives? Maybe not, because the Environmental Protection Agency is now using the same excuse as the IRS is using in response to a Congressional subpoena: the computer ate our homework.If the government would like to give me lots of money I'll be happy to show them how to back up a database remotely three times a day in case of a hard drive crash.
In a hearing Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said the agency was still trying to recover the emails from a now-retired employee who was involved in a controversial EPA evaluation of a proposed mine project in Alaska's Bristol Bay.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., asked McCarthy: "Were all of his emails preserved according to the Federal Records Act or was a law violated?"
McCarthy responded: "I think we have notified the appropriate authorities that we may have some emails that we cannot produce that we should have kept. I do not know yet whether we can recover all of these or not." She added that later: "We are not sure where the failure came from and what it is attributed to."
A committee aide told the National Journal that an apparent hard drive crash in 2010 is preventing the recovery. The crash reportedly happened right around the same time that the committee first started expressing an interest in the emails.