White House e-mails

On Tuesday, February 26,2008, at 10:00 a.m., in rcom2l54 of the Rayburn House Off,rce Building, the full Committee will hold a hearing entitled “Electronic Records Preservation at the White House.” This memo provides supplemental information for members regarding the status of the Committee’s investisation into the loss of official e-mail.

According to Theresa Payton, the White House’s current Chief Information Officer, most White House employees used the Lotus Notes e-mail system when the Bush Administration took office in January 2001. E-mails from this system were archived through the Automatic Records Management System (ARMS), which had been in place since the previous administration. In 2002, however, the White House decided to switch (or “migrate”) from the Lotus Notes e-mail system to the Microsoft Exchange e-mail system.