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-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Jellinek [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 19 May 2006 12:36
To: egb-html
Subject: E-Government Bulletin Special Issue - Email Management in the
Public Sector
To all our readers:
Please find below the second in our series of special issues
focused on specific e-government topics.
This special focus issue has also been produced in a colour pdf file
- we recommend that you access it in this version, and print it out.
Please note though the file size is 1.04 megabytes.
It been placed on the web at:
http://www.headstar.com/egb/special/email-si-may06.pdf
Best regards,
Dan Jellinek, Editor.
+++E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN
- ISSUE 213, 24 April 2006
- SPECIAL FOCUS ISSUE:
Email Management In The Public Sector.
IN THIS ISSUE - Legal Pitfalls; Email Management Policies; Security
Issues.
Please forward this free service to others
so they can subscribe - full details at the end.
We never pass on email addresses.
++Issue 213 Contents.
01: Staff 'Reckless With Email', Expert Warns
- Failure to take legal status of messages into account.
02: Public Sector Bodies Risk Losing Control
- Unless proper email management policies in place.
03: Freedom of Information Pitfalls
- Risk from lack of proper storage and retrieval tools.
News in Brief: 04: Life On The Move - Newham mobile project; 05:
Safe Connections - Free secure infrastructure; 06: Mobile Success -
Remote worker savings; 07: The Next Event - April 2007 conference.
Section Two: Case Study - Criminal Justice System Secure Email
Programme.
08: Joined-Up Ways of Working: Mel Poluck reports on a system
linking together all parts of the criminal justice system in England and
Wales with secure email, helping realise their vision of partnership
working.
Section Three: Special Focus Feature - Email Management.
09: You've Got Mail: It is hard to imagine public sector management
without email any more: the ability to quickly contact large numbers of
people can be a huge benefit. But the informal, unstructured,
ephemeral aspects of email can also create huge problems for an
organisation, says Derek Parkinson. The answer is to ensure staff
understand how to use the medium effectively.
Section Four: Statistics.
- Public sector managers' views on the statement: 'Time spent on email
administration is a significant barrier to improve productive time.' And
their responses to the question: 'Are your email management policies
well documented and communicated to staff?'
Section Five: A Browser's Guide - Useful websites for further reading.
[Contents ends].
++Section One: News
+01: Staff 'Reckless With Email'.
The public sector is failing to take the legal status of email
communication seriously enough, creating the risk that staff may be
entering into legally binding contracts or undertakings without
realising it, one law expert has warned.
"Data is handled recklessly. People don't recognise the value of
email," barrister Stephen Mason told delegates at Email Management
'06, a conference hosted by E-Government Bulletin. "This has to
change," he said.
A major problem with email is its personal and conversational feel,
which can tempt people into believing it doesn't have the significance
or legal status of print communication, Mason said. Contrary to what
many people believe, it is possible for a person to enter into a contract
unwittingly because an email can count as an electronic signature,
Mason warned. Emails can also have the same status as print under
libel laws, he said.
Public sector bodies also need to be aware that email can also be used
by employees to commit criminal offences, as in a recent case where a
high street bank discovered that an employee used the company email
system to set up cannabis deals with other members of staff.
But organisations must also be aware of the legal restrictions on
accessing the emails of employees, said Mason.
"Ideally your system should include a notice in all emails stating that it
owns the email infrastructure, including the contents. Otherwise, you
put yourself at risk from the Human Rights Act for reading emails that
staff claim to be private communication," he said.
Too often, email is treated as if it's the sole concern of the IT
department, said Mason. "Responsibility for email in a local authority
ultimately lies with the chief executive, not the IT department, which
should be thought of as the custodians," he said.
+02: Public Sector Bodies Risk Losing Control.
Public sector bodies should ensure they have well thought-out email
management policies in place or risk losing control of their day-to-day
communications systems, according to one leading local government
management analyst.
"You may not think email is a business critical application, but try
working without it!" Mark Brett, of the Socitm Performance
Management Group told delegates at Email Management '06, a
conference hosted by E-Government Bulletin. Without adequate
policies in place, organisations have no effective control over email, he
said.
It is good practice to embed policies on email within human resources
activities, including notices in employment contracts, job descriptions,
and induction training, he said. Guidance on email use can easily be
delivered to staff as an e-learning package, possibly with a final section
requiring staff to "click to complete", showing their acceptance of the
conditions of use, he said. Public sector bodies should get to grips with
policies on email because other new messaging applications are
following close behind and will soon enter the mainstream of working
life, said Brett.
"For example, instant messaging is starting to come into the corporate
environment. It's not a case of if, but when," he said.
+03: Freedom of Information Pitfalls.
Many public sector bodies risk falling foul of freedom of information
(FoI) or audit law because they don't have adequate systems for
securing, storing and retrieving emails, research by E-Government
Bulletin has revealed.
When asked if their organisation had ever received requests to produce
emails under FoI legislation, or as part of an investigation, audit or
court order, almost half said they had. However, some 28 per cent of
those bodies who had received FoI requests were unable to state that
their organisations had measures in place to prevent unauthorised
access, alteration or deletion. This group included people who had no
measures in place, those with partial measures, and those who didn't
know.
In response to a separate question, 11 per cent of organisations said
they did not have any data recovery plans in place in case of
unexpected system failures or data loss.
There was further bad news for policymakers. When asked if their
organisation has an email management policy in place that is well
documented and well communicated to staff, some 17.5 per cent of all
respondents said 'No', 38.5 per cent said 'Partially' and 37.3 per cent
'Yes', with the remainder unsure or failing to respond.
The survey attracted responses from 200 public sector managers and
workers, with 63 per cent working in local authorities, 23 per cent in
central government, and the remainder in education, health and other
public services.
News In Brief:
+04: Life On The Move: Mobile workers at the London Borough of
Newham have begun using email software for mobile devices in a bid
to enhance productivity when away from the office. Staff are using
Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 to receive, edit and send email, read
Microsoft Office Excel and Word attachments and view PowerPoint
presentations while on the move. The council began trials last year in
partnership with mobile phone operator Orange:
http://msmobiles.com/news.php/5051.html .
+05: Safe Connections: A secure free email service for local authorities
has gone live, as one of the key components of Government Connect,
a common infrastructure for online local service delivery hosted by the
North West e-Government Group. 'GC Mail' enables users to email
from their existing email server to a central hub. In future local and
central government bodies and local authorities and their partners
could use 'GC Mail' to exchange emails securely:
http://www.govconnect.gov.uk/ .
+06: Mobile Success: Remote workers using mobile devices in the
public sector could generate large savings by cutting time on journeys
travelling to and from the office to access emails and file data
according to a report conducted by analysts iReach in Ireland.
'Communications in the Irish Public Sector' identifies key factors for
successful mobile working:
http://www.ireach.ie/?id=8919 .
+07: The Next Event: E-Government Bulletin's second annual 'Email
Management in the Public Sector' seminar is scheduled for April 2007.
The event will look at strategies for coping with ever-growing email
mountains, email retention and retrieval policies and allow delegates to
share best practice with their peers. For more details on attendance and
information on a range of sponsorship and exhibition packages, please
contact Claire Clinton by email on:
[log in to unmask] .
[Section One ends].
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++Section Two: Case Study
- Criminal Justice System Secure Email Programme.
+08: Joined-Up Ways of Working
by Mel Poluck.
The Secure eMail system of the Criminal Justice System IT (CJIT)
programme for England and Wales
( http://www.cjit.gov.uk/how-it-all-works/joining-up/secure-email/ )
allows staff to exchange sensitive information across all the main parts
of the criminal justice system, namely the Police; the Probation
Service, the Crown Prosecution Service; Crown Courts, Magistrates
Courts; the Prison Service; and the Youth Justice Board.
Implemented first in September 2003, the initiative is now live in all
42 Criminal Justice Areas of England and Wales (see
http://www.cjit.gov.uk/in-your-area/ for the area boundaries). It allows
secure, searchable and auditable emails to be exchanged between staff,
and the project's managers say the volume of email traffic has
increased by 500 per cent since initial rollout.
CJIT has recently updated the service, adding enhanced features such
as a more user-friendly online registration process; a Yahoo or Hotmail
style interface when connecting via the internet; and a 'group mailbox'
facility, offering access to a single email account by more than one
user, providing cover for shift-working and absent colleagues.
Currently more than 10,000 staff use the system across around 500
organisations, according to a CJIT spokesperson.
"The Secure eMail service is for those organisations that are not on
mainstream [email] systems and are otherwise relying on post or fax to
send and receive documents, or insecure email." the spokesperson said.
"The biggest challenge is to support more joined-up ways of working,
and using Secure eMail has helped to overcome that challenge," the
spokesperson said.
The London Criminal Justice Board is to set a deadline early next year
for the use of fax machines by its staff to cease altogether, says Lara
Orija, Performance Advisor at the board. "A lot of people need
reassurance that if an email is sent, it is received," Orija said. She said
some staff even send emails then back them up with a fax containing
the same information.
The secure email initiative is also aimed at independent practitioners
within the criminal justice system such as barristers and solicitors,
victim and witness organisations and the Youth Justice System,
covering all young offenders institutions, children's homes and training
centres.
"It was all a bit of a muddle," a Youth Justice Board spokesperson told
E-Government Bulletin. "Sometimes people were misdirecting faxes
containing confidential information." In December 2005, around a
third of Youth Offending Team (YOTs) began using the system to
improve communications around 'placements' - the process whereby
authorities allocate young people in custody to appropriate institutions.
Staff using the system can send via email young offenders' documents
containing all their personal data and records prior to court cases, for
example. "It's a sharper operation," said the spokesperson. "If a young
offender moves, you can share that information more securely instead
of sharing it by post or by phone."
But take-up of the service has been a "slow process," said the
spokesperson, so in response, the YOT Secure eMail project manager
set up an awareness campaign and set about investigating the barriers.
Today, some 78 per cent of YOTs use the system and of those, 93 per
cent of so-called "high volume" YOTs (those that have over 50 young
people in custody per year) use Secure eMail. One team - in Leeds -
claims they save 21 hours per month through the service.
In future, YOTs plan to extend their use of Secure eMail to include the
sharing of data between themselves and the Police for restorative
justice programmes, whereby offenders discuss the crime they have
committed with their victims.
[Section Two ends].
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++Section Three: Special Focus Feature
- Email Management in the Public Sector.
+09: You've Got Mail
by Derek Parkinson.
It's difficult to imagine modern public services without email.
Electronic messaging is now such a common feature of life that
communicating with public sector bodies by email seems as obvious a
choice as picking up the phone or posting a letter.
Part of its appeal is that email is free, instant, and relatively easy to
use.
But these aspects can create problems for public sector bodies, a recent
survey by E-Government Bulletin found. The replies, from more than
200 public sector managers, revealed a picture of staff struggling to
stay on top of the daily deluge from their inboxes.
About 40 per cent of respondents said they already spend more than an
hour of every working day on routine email tasks such as "searching or
downloading emails, deleting spam, filing/foldering and printing
emails," while a further 38 per cent spend between 30 minutes and an
hour doing so. Moreover, of those spending more than an hour, 75 per
cent expected this time to increase over the next year.
"A high volume of email is a symptom of something going wrong,"
Roger Williams, a knowledge management specialist with PA
Consulting, told delegates at Email Management in the Public Sector
( http://www.headstar-events.com/email ).
The conference, hosted last month by E-Government Bulletin,
discussed examples of good and bad practice, and policies needed to
deal with these.
Emails can be amended easily and distributed with a few clicks of a
button, so it can be difficult to know which message should be treated
as the definitive version, said Williams. "It's easy to imagine the
confusion that can result when an email setting out the agenda for a
meeting is sent to 50 people, and they each make some changes and
forward their new version to 30 other people. Organisations have to
ask how many versions of the truth they need, and how many they're
using," he said.
Without proper attention, inboxes can turn into a dumping ground for
information that should be properly structured and contained in a
single document, said Richard Blake, head of the records advisory
service at the National Archives. "I know of one organisation where
emails weren't being managed properly. Instead of briefing agency
staff properly, they gave them 200 emails to plough through," he said.
Poor use of email may be a symptom of other poor management
practices, said Keith Nicholson, former head of information
management systems strategy at the Scottish Executive. "Sometimes a
manager will distribute an email to a group of colleagues to spread
responsibility for a particular issue, to cover their own backside, so to
speak," he said.
Part of the problem lies with attitudes towards ownership of emails,
suggested Nick Povey, head of information management at the Civil
Aviation Authority. "Perhaps the first mistake was calling desktop
machines personal computers. One of the results is a vast amount of
internal chatter," he said. Because of this inboxes often contain a
mixture of ephemeral personal chat and documents that should be
archived properly, and made accessible to other staff, in some cases for
a period of several years.
Deciding to which of these categories an email belongs is all too often
left to the judgment of individuals, said Richard Blake. "Expecting
individuals to recognise the value of an email, which in some cases
may have to be retained for five or ten years, is ludicrous," he said.
Organisations may be tempted to adopt a blanket approach to
archiving, but this brings problems of its own, said Blake. "It could
mean breaching the Data Protection Act. But even if it doesn't,
automatically archiving emails will mean storing information in an
unstructured way, which isn't a good idea," he said.
Emails are written in a cryptic style, and this may become a barrier to
effective communication, said Blake. "You often see replies like "ok"
in emails. Suppose this is a response to a request for approval of a
30,000 pounds budget, what does "ok" mean? It could be the general
idea of a budget, or the specific figure, but how can you tell?" he said.
According to Blake, use of acronyms can also be a problem. "Many
government agencies tend to do this. In my experience, the Ministry of
Defence is particularly bad. It's especially confusing when two
acronyms mean two quite different things," he said.
Recent developments, such as the popularity of portable email devices
such as BlackBerry devices, have made the problem worse, said Keith
Nicholson. "Because of their small interface they encourage even more
cryptic messages, and because they are portable, users may be tempted
to send messages at inappropriate times, when it's late and they're
tired," he said. Such devices can also distract users from other tasks, he
said.
An effective way of containing distractions is to set aside specific
times to work through the inbox, he said.
Generally managing email is seen as an IT issue, but this approach is
inadequate, Nicholson said. "It should be part of a change management
programme. It's too big and too important to be seen as an IT issue."
Because of this it is important to benchmark the current position, so
that progress can be measured and demonstrated. And if any single
department "owns" an email policy it should be human resources,
because they are also responsible for disciplinary procedures, he said.
Staff should be made aware that their employer is the owner of its
email infrastructure and all the content it contains, said Nick Povey. An
easy solution is to include a short "footer" in all emails stating this, he
said. All speakers agreed that it is essential for staff to understand that
email inboxes are not to be used as archives. If information needs to be
archived, it should be printed out and kept in paper files, it was
suggested. If records must be stored electronically, it is advisable to
store them without encryption, and in a format likely to be accessible
in future.
Accessibility is an issue that should be considered in everyday use of
email, pointed out Norman Waddington, a vision impaired delegate.
Attachments in formats such as Adobe 'pdf' can cause problems for
users of assistive technology such as screen readers he said. Email
attachments should be made available in text formats like Microsoft
Word, for example.
Also, emails laid out in columns are to be avoided if possible, and
using a mixture of font colours and styles can be difficult for users of
magnifiers, as well as screen reader users, he said.
Learning an email policy should be part of the induction of new
employees, and part of the ongoing training of existing staff, it was
suggested. This can easily be done with an e-learning package,
possibly with a "click to complete" section at the end, showing that an
employee understands what is required of them.
An email management policy is important, not just for the smooth
running of an organisation, but also the happiness and well-being of its
employees, it was suggested. Employees who feel they cannot escape
work are likely to experience problems in other areas of their lives.
"I expect email and BlackBerries to become a major cause of divorce
over the next 10 years," said Roger Williams.
[Section Three ends].
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++Section Four: Statistics.
- Table 1: Mountain to climb.
- Public sector managers' views on the statement: 'Time spent on email
administration is a significant barrier to improve productive time.'
Strongly agree: 14 per cent
Agree: 38 per cent
Neither agree nor disagree: 21.5 per cent
Disagree: 23.5 per cent
Strongly disagree: 1.5 per cent
Did not respond: 1.5 per cent
NOTE: Source: Email Management Survey conducted by E-
Government Bulletin, March 2006. Respondent base: 200 managers
from UK public sector.
- Table 2: Email Policy.
Response to the question: are your email management policies well
documented and communicated to staff?
- No: 17.5 per cent
- Partially: 39.5 per cent
- Yes: 37.5 per cent
- Don't know/did not respond: 3.5 per cent
NOTE: Source: Email Management Survey conducted by E-
Government Bulletin, March 2006. Respondent base: 200 managers
from UK public sector.
[Section Five ends].
++Special Notice: Support Our Katie!
On Friday 26 May E-Government Bulletin's Marketing Assistant
Katie Wilkinson is embarking on a charity walk from Brighton
to London to raise money for Marie Curie Cancer Care.
The walk is approximately 50 miles and will take two days to
complete.while wearing hideous yellow jumpers
and waving around buckets to collect donations along the way!
To help make the sore feet bearable, and support this fantastic charity
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[Special Notice ends].
++Section Five: A Browser's Guide
- Useful websites for further reading.
Guidelines on developing a policy for email management published in
2004 by The National Archives in the UK:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/em1 .
Information and security tips for email policy from the Department of
Trade and Industry:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/em2 .
Directive from the European Parliament on the processing of personal
data and the protection of privacy in electronic communications:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/em3 .
Email Management in the Public Sector conference presentations:
http://www.headstar-events.com/email/programme.php .
Targeted trojan email attacks: briefing on email threat to the UK
government, from National Infrastructure Security Information Centre:
http://www.niscc.gov.uk/niscc/docs/ttea.pdf .
[Section Five ends].
++END NOTES.
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+COPYRIGHT NOTICE.
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ISSN 1476-6310
+PERSONNEL
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- EDITORIAL.
Editor - Dan Jellinek
Deputy Editor - Derek Parkinson
Senior Reporter - Mel Poluck
Technical Advisors - Nick Apostolidis, Pete Hall.
- SPONSORSHIP AND ADVERTISING.
Marketing Executive - Claire Clinton
Marketing Assistant - Katie Wilkinson.
A searchable archive of our back-issues can be found on our web site:
http://www.headstar.com/egb .
[Issue ends].
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