VoIP In Detail

Jul

3rd

Tech Expert: Nagin E-Mails Disappeared

Author: | Files under Tech News

A technology expert said Wednesday that potentially years’ worth of Mayor Ray Nagin’s e-mails have been deleted.

Christopher Reade, a partner in a tech firm who assisted the Louisiana Technology Council in efforts to recover data for the mayor’s office, said the mailbox was removed between June 2008 and May 2009. He said 22 gigabytes of data vanished from a defunct server on May 5 — the day of a conference call with the city on the work the outside technology experts would do — but he did not know if the mailbox was among that data.

City technology chief M. Harrison Boyd, who came on board last summer, said he was shocked. He said controls put in place in March would have made it “virtually impossible” to delete any information in May.

Boyd questioned whether the job was too big for the group to handle, adding, “Until I have the opportunity to review their methodology, I would strongly encourage them to step back.”

The city blamed a faulty server for not being able to produce more records sought by WWL-TV. The station sued earlier this year over its request for Nagin’s 2008 calendar and e-mails from July-through-December 2008. An attorney for WWL-TV, Mary Ellen Roy, said the calendar was turned over, and about 150 e-mails were discovered.

The mayor, as part of the lawsuit, was said to receive 50 to 100 e-mails a day and to send up to five.

The Technology Council, according to city spokesman James Ross, was hired to determine if there were additional e-mails. Boyd said the group was brought in at his suggestion to provide an independent, third-party review — and given full access to city servers.

The Technology Council hopes to finish its work — including trying to recover the mayor’s mailbox — within the next week or two, said…