Education Secretary Betsy DeVos used personal email for official business, according to a report released this week by the department’s inspector general.
The report also pointed out the department’s failure to provide emails from DeVos’s private accounts following a request under the Freedom of Information Act, The Washington Post reported.
Use of personal email has been an issue since 2015, when former secretary of state Hillary Clinton was subject to a criminal investigation for her exclusive use of a private email account for official business.
However, the report on DeVos was less dramatic, according to the Post, with less than 100 emails sent or received to personal accounts in the first several months of the Trump administration, most from one writer giving advice on potential candidates for agency positions.
“The Department’s policy prohibits its employees from using personal accounts to conduct government business, except for exceptional circumstances when their Department email accounts are unavailable,” the report said.
Department spokeswoman Liz Hill wrote on Twitter, “I get ‘DeVos + Personal Email’ gets clicks but receiving fewer than 100 emails and then forwarding them to senior staff to ensure they are captured on our government email server is hardly news.”
The report said 51 political appointees in the department were surveyed and 40 had used personal email for government business, citing such reasons as technical difficulties, needing to print documents when away from the office, and working after hours.
The report said it is unclear what sort of “exceptional circumstance” is considered justification for using personal email and suggested improving training to provide clarity.
Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who requested the report, said she expects “the department to swiftly improve its policies and training in the areas where the OIG found deficiencies.”
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