On 16/03/2012 10:24, Stephen Booth wrote:
On 16 March 2012 07:58, Seb Bacon<[email protected]> wrote:
FYI, every outgoing email already says "Please use this email address
for all replies to this request: [email protected]" at the
bottom. Other ideas for user education welcome :)
Could the ICO be encouraged to view a reply sent to an email address
other than that in the From: or Reply-To: headers of or specified in
the body of the original emailed request as not being a reply, even if
the authority believe or claim to believe it went to the same person?
I don't think that would fly, for a variety of reasons.
Firstly, as Colm has already pointed out, there is legal precedent for
the fact that delivery is considered to have taken place when it reaches
*any* address known to be used by the recipient, irrespective of whether
it's their preferred address[1]. If that works one way, it will work the
other as well.
Secondly, it's just bad PR to try to insist that every FoI authority in
the land adapts itself to WDTK's way of doing things. The FOIA, and
WDTK, is unpopular enough in some quarters anyway without giving
bureaucrats another stick to beat it with. While the majority of
misdirected responses are almost certainly a result of human error,
there will be occasions where they are not[2]. So the system has to be
able to cope with them being different sometimes.
[1] There are very good reasons for this. It means that an organisation
can't insist that you jump through hoops of their choosing when sending
legal documents via email in order to discourage them from being sent in
the first place (or to disclaim responsibility for acting on them when
they arrive). Among other things, it makes it impossible for
organisations to refuse to answer FoI requests on the basis that they
were sent via email rather than submitted through a web form, for example.
[2] One such situation is where a person submits two (or more) separate
requests to the same authority. Provided that they can still manage to
respond to both requests within an acceptable timeframe, it's entirely
legitimate to send both responses in one email.
Mark
--
Sent from my Babbage Difference Engine 2
http://mark.goodge.co.uk
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