Some organisations and others use a relative newcomer to the means of contacting them – the WEBFORM.
When submitting a Freedom of Information Request to a Government department, the submission is governed by the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Paragraph 8 – 2- (c) states that sender should have a copy of his FOI, “capable of being used for subsequent reference.”
However, when the sender uses the WEBFORM of submitting his FOI, he encounters a fundamental problem:
When he completes the ‘webform’, and presses the ‘Submit’ button, the message is sent. However, at that specific time, he is left with NOTHING to prove that he had actually sent anything at all, Unlike the conventional method of an outgoing email message, a COPY IS NOT AUTOMATICALLY placed in the sender’s OUTBOX.
Therefore, the sender has NO proof that he had sent anything at all, should be need to follow up on the message or use a copy of it for whatever purposes.
As the recipient of the message is in NO way obliged to confirm the receipt, the sender has no leg to stand on.
We are of the opinion that sender, whoever he may be, should be able to a legally valid copy of his message, sent to to whomever.
