Dear Child Support Agency,

Under the Freedom of Information Act and the principles of the right to know I would like to request a full and complete list of all Departmental, Sectional, Team and sub group, E-mail addresses within your organisation however they are defined within your organisation.

For example [email address] which is a none specific example for illustration purposes only to demonstrate that I am requesting departmental and sectional e-mail addresses rather than personal e-mail addresses

Regards

Yours faithfully,

Stuart Maskery

Dear Child Support Agency,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Child Support Agency's handling of my FOI request 'Departmental E-Mail Addresses' as I find your response quoting the exemption of section 36(2)(c) totally at odds with government transparency and I fail totally to see why disclosing non personal e-mail addresses "would otherwise prejudice, or would be likely otherwise to prejudice, the effective conduct of public affairs" personally given your IT budget over repeated bills and the increase in use of personal communications I think it would do quite the opposite and increase efficiency and lead to cost savings which considering this austerity period should be welcome to a governmental department.

I also to see why and I quote "CSA’s customer service strategy may be compromised" as increasing the efficiency of communications would lead to quite the opposite and would be in the public interest and I would love to know your rational for stating this as it seems quite at odds with current government IT policy and transparency policies

You also state that "There is a prevailing public interest in that the CSA can effectively operate the
statutory child maintenance schemes and ensure the efficient use of public resources." I hate to break this to you but public record tends to indicate the problem here, and I am quite happy if you need it to give you the online links to reports of your IT and public spending failures from the Register and Computer Weekly, Hansard, Select Committees etc etc if you require it and I believe the crash you just heard was your argument crashing and burning in the car park outside your office.

While I also appreciate that "The CSA’s preferred method of contact is by telephone" it is also a matter of public record that your IT system does not record calls with regards to CSA1 cases and publishing the departmental e-mail directory would give a written record of contact and dialogue for customers that want to utilize it and again this would be in the public interest as it would increase efficiency of communication.

While I take on board your points about the secure GSI intranet, your points with this are easily resolved just merely ask your customers to sign a written declaration of identity and confirming e-mail addresses against accounts as other organisations do to comply with the Data Protection Act and while interception of e-mails is possible it does take a fair level of technical skill to achieve which to be honest most of the general public don't have and it would be easier for people to circumvent your security checks as they are normally NI number and date of birth for phone level checks when I have dealt with your organisation.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/de...

Yours faithfully,

Stuart Maskery