The North Carolina Environmental Development Agency (NCEDA, pronounced na-kee-da) was originally established in 1935 in the Rural Development and Protection Act of 1935 and given jurisdiction over such
important issues as soil erosion, wetland development and protection, rural open-space issues and stream
sedimentation. In 1955, its jurisdiction was substantially expanded when the General Assembly enacted the North Carolina Environmental Protection Act which delegated to NCEDA authority over all matters dealing with the environment. The agency promulgates regulations to enforce state statutes relating to the environment, and holds hearings to gather information to support the development of regulations. NCEDA inspects environmental sites for both clean up and for redevelopment. It provides funding for various environmental development projects in local communities throughout the state and oversees those projects. NCEDA also has an educational mission as it is charged with educating the public about environmental
development.

The agency has been at the forefront of creating government-corporate partnerships for forging compliance. It also has facilitated citizen input on regulatory matters by holding hearings around the state, by maintaining telephone hotlines, convening citizen advisory councils, and the like. NCEDA has expanded access to agency decision making by publicly available dockets of ongoing rulemaking. NCEDA has created a website on which it has posted information about the agency, a staff directory, regulations it promulgates, descriptions
of ongoing projects, faqs and the like. It also has links to other environmental websites. The agency is considering creating a public webspace in which any citizen of North Carolina can post items that deal with environmental development on a webpage.

NCEDA has 8,000 employees, about half of whom work in the Raleigh office; the other half are scattered in 14 field offices around the state. Electronic communications have proved to be extremely useful in the agency to connect the field offices with the Department in Raleigh and with each other. The Agency Director is interested in moving to a paperless office with all filings, responses, etc., done electronically as well as handling many internal matters without generating paper files. The agency knows that much of its material is a public record
and is unsure how to handle the move from paper to digital. NCEDA attorneys are now concerned about what to do about e-mail retention. For example, are e-mails necessarily part of agency records? Should lawyers make sure that they do not destroy e-mail while the matter is active? The overall concern, of course, is under what circumstances would such e-mail in become a public record and thus be discoverable. How and for how long should e-mails be kept?

All employees have access to the Internet either through their own desktop computer or on shared terminals. There have been serious complaints about how many employees are wasting time "surfing the net" and viewing pornography rather than doing their jobs. In fact, two employees have complained about sexual harassment because they work in large office in which several male employees constantly have pornographic images displayed on the shared terminals.

The agency has asked the Attorney General for a policy to govern its activities relating to the web and the Internet. You comprise a committee constituted by the AG and charged to draft the policy. The Committee is comprised of both attorneys and NCEDA representatives.