In a digital sense, the release of former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s email records could not have been more of a disaster. The Freedom of Information Act win by various media organizations to have the emails disclosed resulted in 24,000 printed pages and 14,000 emails. The scope of the documents was so cumbersome that even the New York Times crowd sourced triage of Palin’s correspondence.
The Sunlight Foundation, an open government advocacy group, is creating a database those emails that have been scanned by investigative journalism non-progit ProPublica. Dubbed Sarah’s Inbox, the database is similar to the interface of Gmail and can be searched by keyword, data or common phrase. You can even “star” ones that are important.
Palin had six email accounts while governor of Alaska, two official and four private. Alaska does not have the digital technology to push out the emails en masse electronically, so it printed six “standard paper boxes” totaling about 250 pounds and about $4,350.
The searchable site set up by the Sunlight Foundation is similar to a previous initiative from the group called Elena’s Inbox that made Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s emails available during her confirmation hearings last year.
