On the final hearing day of a Queensland parliamentary inquiry into the release of Fitzgerald Inquiry documents, Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) Commissioner George Fox defended Director of Information Peter Duell, who has taken ultimate responsibility for changing the embargo date on sensitive documents.

Recordkeeping practices at  the CMC are being investigated by an inquiry into how documents from the landmark 1980s investigation that were scheduled to remain under wraps for 65 years were instead released after only 20. The Inquiry is due to report on April 5.

See IDM's earlier coverage HERE and HERE

Mr Fox said Mr Duell's background was in IT but he was given the responsibility for the Fitzgerald documents, which required archiving skills.

Mr Fox said Mr Duell didn't have ready access to timely legal advice which could have helped him in his decision, nor was he given a briefing on what the material contained.

"Those matters concern me," he said.

On his final appearance before the committee, CMC Manager Information Technology Cliff Horwood faced a sustained grilling over his inability to retrieve information on internal emails requested under a summons.

One of the summons had requested information on the time and date of creation of a draft email from CMC general Counsel Robert Hutchings to Chairperson Ross Martin.

This email was created sometime in 2012 however only entered into CMC's TRIM EDRMS in March 2013. A printout of the email had been produced to the inquiry, however Mr Horwood was unable to identify whether the printout came from TRIM or from the Draft inbox of Mr Hutchings via delegated access to another staff member whose name appeared at the top of the printout.

Responding to a question from the committee, Mr Horwood confirmed that CMC staff had individual choice when and where to store their email in TRIM.

"That's a decision of the person or persons involved, I put my own on TRIM but of someone has a secretary or assistant or PA they may put them onto TRIM for the particular individual.

"There's degrees of automation that can be turned on. If you have a folder setup in Outlook, you can turn on a level of automation so that if you drag that email into that Outlook folder it will then automatically be picked up by TRIM ...Not everybody uses that because its set to go tp a specific point in TRIM and it may not be appropriate for all emails to go to the same TRIM location."

For the particular email that was the subject of the summons, Horwood explained that the time stamp was not included in the version that he was able to restore from tape backups.

When asked by committee members why he had not directly interrogated the email server by accessing the user account of Mr Hutchings, to find out when the Draft was created, Horwood explained that he did not have the right to do so.

This elicited an angry response from the Member for Redlands, Peter Dowling MP.

"You have a document tracking system within your organisation why aren't you using it," he said.

"Can I remind you, you have a summons [so] you do not need to go to the chairperson, a summons gives you all the permission and access you need.

"We want to know when that passage of text was created. That's what we want to know. You do not need written permission. I am becoming convinced you are unaware of the power of that summons. I think you are going about things in a right and proper way under ordinary circumstances but can I suggest that with the power of the summons you are going about it the wrong way or the long way. You can be anyone in the organisation in response to that summons, you can interrogate you can find out everything you need by accessing as someone else …"

To which Horwood replied, "You may be right that I have more levels of access. What does concern me is that following this if I was to logon as Mr Hutchings for the purpose of this summons I would immediately have access to a lot of other stuff that is outside the scope of the summons. Because of the nature of what Mr Hutchings deals with I would still feel that I would need to advise at the very least the acting chairperson because of the potential that I could be accused of getting access to something that was outside the range of this summons."

Ian Kaye MP, Member for Greenslopes, asked Horwood "What is your experience in the area of forensic computer analysis.

"I'm not a forensic expert I'm the IT manager, he replied

"And you've been doing these searches?"

"Yes."

"Do you have any forensic technology qualified people at the CMC?"

"For forensic examination? There are within the CMC but they are not part of my team."

"Would you be able to engage them to find the creation date for that draft email."

"I can refer that back through the chairman, yes."

"I think that would be a good idea."

CMC Commissioner Judith Bell told the parliamentary oversight committee that while the CMC was remiss in allowing the documents to be released, the questioning of some CMC staff has been heavy-handed.

"I felt that it was an anvil to crack a nut," Mrs Bell said.

She told the inquiry that while there are areas for improvement, the organisation's activities are well documented.

"My experience of the CMC is that everything is documented very well and everything is reported to this committee very assiduously, so I think at the time this was not seen as a major issue."

Committee chairwoman Liz Cunningham did not concur.

"Mrs Bell, to be frank with you I find the documentation at the CMC appalling on the basis of the two weeks of hearings that we've had, so I'll have to disagree with you on that point."