The 14-year-old statute doesn't provide guidelines for handling technological marvels like e-mail, voice mail, text messages and electronic signatures.

Members of a task force charged with modernizing and streamlining the state's Government Records Access and Management Act discovered the law's shortcomings at a meeting Tuesday.

"It is a daunting task," said task force chairman Dave Thomas, a South Weber Republican senator.

For lawmakers, the most immediate concern is the issue of their e-mail: Are they public? Do they have to save them? What if an e-mail dealing with legislative business is sent to their private e-mail account? When GRAMA was first adopted in 1991, legislators did not use e-mail for routine correspondence. But that practice has changed.

"E-mail is a large gray area right now," said legislative attorney Eric Weeks.

Utah Press Association and Society of Professional Journalists lobbyist Joel Campbell urged lawmakers to consider carefully before classifying as private all public officials' e-mail.

"If it's not used appropriately, we can see a lot of government activity being pushed into e-mail" to avoid disclosure, Campbell warned.

Since GRAMA was written, lawmakers have tried to amend it nearly 50 times - seven pieces of open records legislation were introduced this year alone. But those patches are not enough. Local governments have pleaded for help cutting off repeated records requests by residents they say are harassing city and county leaders. Others would like to charge a "fair market" price for real-estate databases used by private companies. Law enforcement agencies have requested an exemption for police officers' addresses and salaries.

And task force members will consider whether to restrict access to any public record that contains more than one identifying feature - a person's name, address, birth date, phone number, marital status or Social Security number.

"You can use any combination of those two to find out information about a person," said co-chairman Doug Aagard, a Republican representative from Kaysville. "That creates the potential for identity theft."

For the last four years, Aagard has sponsored legislation to restrict the kinds of information that can be released to the public.

But Salt Lake County Records Manager Terry Ellis pointed out that declaring such records private would complicate requests for County Council minutes, where those who speak are asked to give their names and street addresses.