The first set of BlackBerry PIN messages collected as public records by Attorney General Bill McCollum’s office shows, well, not much other than the technology exists to retain and distribute the messages.

Of the first 20 messages since McCollum’s announcement last week, all are benign, like this one sent to McCollum’s Legislative Affairs Director Kimberly Case the same day as the press conference asking, “Why did the AG do that today?” with a subject, “PINs.” Case replied a few minutes later, “Call me.”

McCollum is the first state official to retain PIN messages that pass through his office’s computer server, similar to the way e-mail messages are recorded. PIN messages are electronic exchanges between BlackBerrys, similar to the way a text is sent between phone numbers or an e-mail is sent between e-mail addresses.

Gov. Charlie Crist initially said he would also start retaining those messages in his office, but decided instead to turn off the PIN and text function on his office BlackBerrys and encourage staffers to send e-mails, which are easier for public records officials to handle. More than a dozen state departments have followed Crist’s lead.

McCollum’s office said the 20 PIN messages obtained by The Palm Beach Post was the first time it has handed over PINs as part of a public records request.

Deputy Chief of Staff Bill Stewart said the process of turning around the PINs was fairly slow, but painless. The office dumped the electronic messages into a spreadsheet and created a function to clean up useless code. The office also had to match employees with the PINs, an acronym that stands for the BlackBerry’s “personal identification number.”

Stewart said the amount of time it took to release the messages (about two days — which is actually pretty good compared to the time it takes the legislature or state agencies to turn around e-mail requests) will probably decrease as more public record requests are fulfilled.

Once messages were identified as belonging to a specific staffer, that employee was asked to sift through the messages and mark which qualified as public records — generally, any that pertain to state business. Stewart said the office’s public records specialist also checked the messages.

Tags: Bill McCollum, Blackberry, PIN, public records

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Bill McCollum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.