New Zealand Government Web Standards

6.4 Agency sites provide mandatory email addresses

New standards released

The New Zealand Web Standards 2.0 were released in March 2009 and replace the previous version, the New Zealand Government Web Standards 1.0 (below).  See Meeting the standards for more information.

The Standard

6.4 The site provides an email address for each of the following:

It is at the discretion of the agency whether these email addresses are published on the site.

The agency must have a response mechanism for each address, such that an appropriate person ultimately reads an email item coming to any of these addresses, and a response is made to the sender of the email if so requested.

Guide to this standard

An auto-response should be sent back to any sender to acknowledge receipt of the email.

It is at the discretion of the agency as to how these email addresses are “funnelled” into the agency. For instance, they may simply all combine to one group address. More important is that any messages sent do get read by appropriate personnel within the agency, the agency personnel reading a message are aware of the category (via initial email address) for which it was sent. That is, personnel should be able to differentiate a Complaints email from a Webmaster email, and ensure that they are responded to appropriately. The agency must acknowledge receipt of the email, if this is requested by the sender. Obviously, this is to be qualified within reason, i.e. that the request from the sender is reasonable.

If agencies have concerns regarding spamming to these email addresses, then

Rationale for this standard