In May this year I chased up some correspondence I was expecting from CASA, only to be told that correspondence had been sent to me attached to an email weeks earlier. The effect of that correspondence was that if I didn’t say or do anything within a specified period of time, a process I had commenced would end.
I never received the email and, therefore, never received the correspondence attached to it. I therefore didn’t do anything within the period specified in the correspondence because I was not aware ‘the clock was ticking’.
I assumed there had been a technical glitch ‘somewhere’. Rather than having an unproductive ‘you didn’t send it / yes we did’ argument with CASA, I recommenced the process. Nothing of great safety importance was affected by the delay.
I should stress that the CASA person with whom I was dealing has always been and remains very professional, courteous and helpful in the processes concerned.
But the same thing happened to a colleague of mine. He said he had not received an email from CASA attaching some correspondence when CASA said it had been sent. Because neither of us is in the habit of overlooking or inadvertently deleting emails from CASA, and because he and I use different email providers, I had considerable difficulty in shrugging the circumstances off as coincidence.
So I ‘approached’ the CASA ICC. I said I didn’t want to be construed as ‘complaining’ about any individual within CASA because, as I noted above, the person with whom I was dealing has always been very professional, courteous and helpful in the processes concerned, and I had no doubt that the person believed the correspondence had been sent.
The person with whom I corresponded in the CASA ICC’s office was also very, professional, courteous and helpful.
Well jigger me with a bargepole if I didn’t receive a ‘preliminary decision’ document, for comment, containing the following:
To establish whether this email was successfully sent, I requested that CASA’s IT team conduct multiple searches using various terms. An initial search using criteria I provided found no record of the email being sent. CASA’s IT team then conducted additional searches of the Secure Email Gateway (SEG), which also found no record of an outbound mail from CASA to [your email address] during the specified timeframe. Of note, these searches did locate the 8 June 2023 email which was sent to you successfully. CASA’s Team Leader - Solutions Capability … advised me that all search avenues had been exhausted without an email attaching [the notice] being located.
At this stage, while I am satisfied that there was an attempt to send the email (attaching the [notice]), I propose to conclude that based on the search results and your evidence that it was never received, it’s more likely than not the email failed to send.
What caused the failure?
The size of the attached [notice] was 323kb, well within the handling capability of CASA’s IT system. Instead, CASA’s IT team have advised me that it appears that the email classification ‘dropped off’ the email, which would block the email from sending. Although the failure to send should have triggered notification message being sent to [the CASA officer], there is also no record of this in the IT records as would have been anticipated.
Because no failure to send notification was received and the email remained in the … mailbox sent items folder, I am satisfied that it was reasonable for [the CASA officer] to believe it had been dispatched. Rather, it seems likely there was a technical issue compounded by the failure of safeguards that ordinarily would have alerted [the CASA officer] to the problem, specifically that no failure to send notice was generated.
So: If you're sure you’ve never received an email CASA said was sent to you, you may be right.
My response to the ICC’s invitation to comment said in substantial part:
Thank you for what has evidently been a comprehensive investigation which solved the mystery. I anticipate that the circumstances also solve the mystery of the equivalent email attaching an equivalent [notice] that wasn’t received by [my colleague], whom I’ve cc’d.
I only seek to address the point made by [named person]. I do not request or expect that CASA put in place arrangements for confirmation of receipt of all items of … correspondence. I do so only in respect of the subset of … correspondence the non-response to which CASA treats as extinguishing any further statutory obligation on its part ...
Setting aside the risk to CASA in not being able to prove the correspondence was sent at all - a governance issue of which you’re obviously aware and I’ll leave CASA to ponder - the outcome is patently unfair for the applicant who has not in fact received the correspondence due to a ‘glitch’ in CASA’s systems.
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