CAO document found on servers: report
Files could have been sent in a number of ways or deleted
One of the confidential documents downloaded by Niagara Region CAO Carmen D’Angelo that gave him inside information when he applied for the job in 2016 has been found on the municipality’s servers through a narrow and limited search.
The document included CAO candidate interview questions written by the regional chair’s policy director, Robert D’Amboise.
An additional three documents linked to the tainted hiring process were not located.
A report by University of Western Ontario professors Andrew Sancton and Timothy Cobban says the documents could have been sent to D’Angelo in any number of ways or even deleted from regional computer servers.
“If any documents were sent inappropriately by regional em-
ployees to Mr. D’Angelo or to anyone else, it is quite possible that they were sent using personal (rather than regional) email addresses. Anyone with rudimentary familiarity with common computer hardware and software can imagine ways in which regional documents could be sent from non-regional email,” says the report, which will be presented to council tonight.
The report further says that the search as conducted by regional staff was limited in scope, and only included a backup of municipal servers from Nov. 30, 2016.
The documents in question were written by the personal staff of Regional Chair Alan Caslin in September and October 2016, and downloaded by D’Angelo prior to his final interview in October that year.
“It is our considered opinion that the document search mandated by regional council’s motion of July 26 relates only to a relatively small and unlikely sample of the various ways in which documents could have been inappropriately transmitted,” the report says.
The search did not include an examination of personal email accounts or the servers of Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority, where D’Angelo worked in 2016.
The search for documents was ordered by council following two special Standard exposés, published in April and July, that found D’Angelo downloaded four documents written by Caslin’s staff during the hiring process. Three of those documents, written by D’Amboise, contained confidential information on other CAO candidates plus interview questions. The fourth document, written by Caslin’s then-communications director Jason Tamming, contained answers to five questions D’Angelo was to address in a written submission to the CAO hiring committee.
During a closed session of regional council on July 26, D’Angelo told councillors he asked for Tamming’s help because he is a “communications expert.”
The Standard has not reported the documents were downloaded onto regional servers.
In their report, Sancton and Cobban say they are not computer experts and had to rely on the expertise of the Region’s IT director. As such, they said, they cannot judge if the search was the most effective way to look for the documents.
The report also says a search of NPCA servers has not been ordered.
Sancton and Cobban’s report says the search was limited to a “snapshot” of the backup of the Region’s servers of Nov. 30, 2016.
The report says the snapshot only “captures what is available on the servers on the date of the backup. If data was deleted prior to backups being performed the data will not be included in the backup.”
The server search also included a search of corporate email accounts of Caslin, D’Amboise, D’Angelo, Tamming and former regional clerk Ralph Walton.