ED creates dedicated email domain: Addresses issued to bureaucrats for prompt action, protection

ISLAMABAD: After a long delay, the Establishment Division (ED) has finally created official email accounts for all the bureaucrats falling under its jurisdiction and introduced a dedicated email domain. Officials will now be encouraged to use this address for all official correspondence.

The officials with these new accounts belong to the Pakistan Administrative Service, Police Service of Pakistan, Secretariat Group and Office Management Group said an ED letter, a copy of which is available with The News. Every email account holder has been allowed a five GB storage quota in the ED domain. Username names/email identities have been sent to the concerned officials through SMS at their available cell numbers. The letter noted that passwords would initially be the computerized national identity cards numbers (without dashes) of the relevant officials followed by a three-character code being sent by the ED with the usernames.

The ED asked the officers to start using these email accounts for official correspondence. The letter said that henceforth, the ED will be communicating with the officers at their official email addresses besides traditional means. Any correspondence sent to them by the ED at their official email addresses will be deemed to have been received by them. The officials were advised to check their official email accounts regularly. The ED requested officers to ensure they remain within their allocated storage quota by regularly deleting unnecessary messages to make it a point that emails sent to them do not bounce back. An official said that it was suggested to the ED a long time ago that it should create email accounts for bureaucrats by having its own email domain to protect official correspondence from a security point of view. He said that messages sent from the usual email addresses at the official level are generally not considered credible and are not accepted. No action is usually taken on such private emails worldwide. The international practice is that the ministries and departments create their own email domains for official correspondence. The official said no officer of the groups listed in the ED letter can now argue that he did not respond to any letter, query or order promptly or within the given time because he did not receive it. The ED letter covers officers of four cadres only. There are thousands of officials belonging to other professional groups who do not fall under its domain. They are governed by their respective departments. They include officers from the Federal Board of Revenue, railways, accounts, commerce and trade and many others.