After a series of fiascos involving deleted e-mails by state officials, a new archiving system for employee e-mails will capture messages en route to workers’ inboxes, retaining them for 10 years as public records.

What the software system cannot do, however, is monitor messages sent to and from state employees’ personal e-mail accounts. State workers could continue to correspond using private e-mail, as former Gov. Mike Easley did, and evade the software.

A California software company, Mimosa Systems, installed the archiving program in Gov. Beverly Perdue’s office Feb. 1, where it’s now being tested. The program cost nearly $700,000. After the kinks are worked out and further funding is secured, the e-mail-capturing system will be expanded to other state departments.

Mimosa received the contract as a result of an executive order Perdue issued in July instructing state employees to keep all electronic messages for at least 24 hours, until they had been archived. Under Easley, employees were given leeway to decide which messages related to public business and delete those they deemed personal.

Easley press officers have also given conflicting stories of the the e-mail retention policies of that administration, as outlined in depositions taken last month in a public records’ lawsuit filed by Carolina Journal and several other media organizations.

Mimosa will capture all messages automatically and sort those that should be archived.

Although state officials are encouraged not to conduct public business through private e-mail, there is no law prohibiting them from doing so.

“I have a private e-mail account and everything that mentions anything about state business is archived. We are very careful. I can promise you we are very careful, and anytime we have a public records request we also search my Gmail account,” Perdue said in response to reports about Easley’s secret “Nick Danger” e-mail account.

All state employees are instructed to archive any mention of public affairs transmitted through private e-mail, but there is nothing in place other than the honor system ensuring that they do so.

A spokesman for the governor’s office said only way to enforce the policy was through educating employees about public records’ law and warning them of the consequences for violating it.

Sara Burrows is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.