Deploying E-Mail as an Official Communication Tool: Technical Prospect

Abstract

Applications are spreading widely through our lives entering every field controlling some of it and enhancing other; electronic mail, or e-mail, is the best known and most popular application of the Internet. More and more people see e-mail as a way to communicate quickly and affordably. Electronic mail can also provide an advanced means of communication and enhance the recently applied e-government program. The aim of this work is to study technically the official use of e-mail for the communication between the government and citizens. This paper is mainly for proposing an e-mail exchange system that can be used to fulfill the legal requirements, and to make the usage of e-mail as official communication tool is feasible.

Full text

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Wasan Shaker Awad

International Journal of Computer Science and Security, Volume (4): Issue (4)
373
Deploying E-Mail as an Official Communication Tool: Technical
Prospect


Wasan Shaker Awad

Department of Information Systems
Information Technology College
University of Bahrain
Sakheer, Bahrain
Wasan_shaker@itc.uob.bh

Abstract

Applications are spreading widely through our lives entering every field controlling
some of it and enhancing other; electronic mail, or e-mail, is the best known and
most popular application of the Internet. More and more people see e-mail as a way
to communicate quickly and affordably. Electronic mail can also provide an advanced
means of communication and enhance the recently applied e-government program.
The aim of this work is to study technically the official use of e-mail for the
communication between the government and citizens. This paper is mainly for
proposing an e-mail exchange system that can be used to fulfill the legal
requirements, and to make the usage of e-mail as official communication tool is
feasible.

Keywords: E-mail, E-government, Information Security, ICT.



1. INTRODUCTION
Mankind has always had a compelling desire to communicate, that’s why many evolving
communication methods had emerged through the years. Communication has revolutionized from
traditional means to more advanced electronic communications. As a traditional way of
communication, postal mail systems and courier services are considered to be the oldest forms of mail
item distribution. Wherein written letters, and also small packages, are delivered to destinations
around the world. Then communication has evolved to a new concept which is telecommunications,
also known as electronic communication. Telecommunication is the transmission of data and
information between computers using a communication link. It began in 1844, when Samuel Morse
invented the telegraph, whereby sounds were translated manually into words using Morse code. Then
in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell developed the telephone, which brought telecommunication into the
home, and became crucial for business life for many years. After that facsimile (fax) was developed in
the 1900s, which transmits documents over telephone lines. Technology continued to expand its
influence, and another technology evolved in the telecommunication field. This technology was the
Internet. Internet was mainly developed for the purpose of communication. One of the very first
communication means through the Internet was e-mail [1].

In general, the official communication is done through traditional ways: sending the official letters or
documents by post mail, and occasionally done by contacting the person by telephone or face-to-face.
The message must be delivered by the correspondent person who works in the postal office to its
destination. Then the receiver should approve the receipt of the message. To cope with the modern e-
application revolution, there is a need to replace the traditional method of communication with more
advanced and reliable electronic communication. The electronic mail, or e-mail system are best known
and most popular network-based application. It is a way to communicate quickly and affordably. From
here the idea of using the e-mail as official communication has emerged.

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Adopting e-mail as official communication is a critical topic. The importance of this topic emerges from
the wide use of e-applications, and the rapid improvements in the e-government filed. Hopefully the
study results provide some small but valuable contribution to the research quiver especially to what is
related to e-government field, and can consider as a trigger for a great revolution in the official
communication.

The following points are considered as reasons that’s motivates using electronic communication, and
stimulate the need for an official E-mail Exchange System:
• • • •
The implementation of the e-government portal.
• • • •
The need of an electronic communication means for the fast, reliable and convenient
communication that also copes with the emerging e-applications.
• • • •
The need of a new mailing system that can replace the current postal system and supports the
extensive official communication securely and efficiently.
• • • •
The role of the modern technologies particularly the e-mail in enhancing the communication
between the government and citizens.
• • • •
The inadequacy of current electronic communication infrastructure for the exchange of the
sensitive, legal and private official communication.

Communication with both citizens and organizations involves the transmission of sensitive information
and legal bindings. Consequently, electronic communication has to be highly secured. Although there
is an infrastructure developed for commercial use of e-mails, this infrastructure is not securely
sufficient for the exchange of the sensitive, legal and private official communication. As a result, there
is a need of developing a new e-mail exchange system that fulfills the security and legal requirements.
Thus, the main objective of this study is to investigate the feasibility of using e-mail as official
communications, during the attempt to achieve the study’s main objective many sub objectives will be
delivered as well, and these objectives are:
• • • •
Provide a detailed study about the e-mail technology, its advantages, disadvantages, review
of same case studies that has applied e-mail as official communication.
• • • •
Investigate the ability to implement this project technically.
• • • •
Provide a proposed system that supports the technical requirements of applying e-mail
effectively and efficiently.

This paper is mainly for proposing an e-mail exchange system that can be used to fulfill the legal
requirements, and to make the usage of e-mail is feasible.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW
E-mail, is short for electronic mail, is just an electronic message sent from one computer to another
[2]. It's hard to remember what people’s lives were like without e-mail. Ranking up there with the Web
as one of the most useful features of the Internet, e-mail has become one of today's standard and
preferred means of communication. E-mail usage by businesses became common several years
before individuals began using it at home. Yet by the late 1990s, approximately 40% of all American
householders owned a computer, and 26% of those families had Internet access. An analysis in 1998
indicated that there were 25 million e-mail users sending 15 billion messages per year [3].

E-mail is no longer just a method of communicating in business; it’s a way of doing business. It has
become an integral part of workers’ lives. Most employees have Internet access at their work, and an
e-mail account to help them in collaborating with their colleagues and customers, in order to be more
productive at their work. A portion of those e-mails probably replaces the telephone calls or faxes or
traditional mails [4]. For example, Western Provident Association (WPA) [5] which is one of Britain’s
leading health insurers, who insure over 500,000 people and more than 5,000 companies.

The main reason why people connect to the Internet is to communicate by e-mail. Traditional methods
of communication are now converging onto the Internet – text messages, phone calls and video
images can all be sent via the Internet. Furthermore, the growth in mobile communication and the
continuing improvements in mobile communication devices means that e-mail is now accessible just
about anywhere. So why e-mail taking the communication world by storm? These are the main
benefits [6]: It is relatively low cost, easy to copy a message to many people at the same time, easy to

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distribute information such as reports, spreadsheets, presentations and other files, personalized,
convenient, relatively quick, and it does not sleep.

E-mail is a great tool used to communicate with others, however, with the added great advantages of
e-mail, also comes some disadvantages such as: Viruses, Spamming, Flaming, Phishing, and E-mail
Privacy and Security, such that, without some security protection can be compromised because [6]:
• E-mail messages are generally not encrypted.
• E-mail messages have to go through intermediate computers before reaching their
destination, meaning it is relatively easy for others to intercept and read messages.
• In some business, e-mail messages of employees are monitored.
• Many Internet Service Providers (ISP) store copies of senders e-mail messages on
their mail servers before they are delivered. The backups of these can remain up to
several months on their server, even if the receiver deletes them in his/her mailbox.
• The received headers and other information in the e-mail can often identify the
sender, preventing anonymous communication.

Although e-mail has several disadvantages, most of these can be solved easily. For example using an
anti virus program provides protection from e-mail viruses, or some web mails provide message
scanning for viruses. Spamming and phishing can also be handled by some web mail services.
Moreover, most web mail services warn the user before opening an anonymous mail. Furthermore,
there must be new rules and regulations to govern the use of Internet services, and to organize the
exchange of the information across the world wide information net, mainly those information that are
related to the official treatment and correspondences.

The problem of deploying email as official communication tool has been considered by a number of
organizations and researchers. On November 6 and 7, 1997, with the sponsorship of the Markle
Foundation, RAND convened a workshop in Washington, D.C. to begin a discussion of the character
of the required infrastructure, who might plausibly provide it, how it might be financed, and what other
policy changes (institutional, legal, programmatic) might be necessary to support secure
communication between government and citizens. Attendees at the workshop included managers,
policymakers, and analysts from a variety of government agencies at the state and federal levels and
representatives of private-sector concerns that are users or providers, current or potential, of secure
communications services [7].

At the Summit on the 21st Century Workforce, held June 20, 2001, in Washington, D.C., Secretary
Elaine L. Chao announced the creation of a compliance E-Mail Initiative to ensure that the Department
of Labor answers on a timely basis all electronic inquiries from DOL customers. This policy required all
DOL agencies to establish and advertise electronic public contact mechanisms on DOL public
Websites for collecting general comments, suggestions, or inquiries from the public and to develop
procedures for handling electronic correspondence in accordance with this policy. This initiative
provides the option for agencies to integrate electronic correspondence procedures with existing paper
correspondence procedures [8]. The main purpose of this step is the establishment of OSHA E-
Correspondence system, which provides for processing, routing, tracking, and responding to the
public on general safety and health questions received through OSHA's public Website. The scope of
this project was OSHA-wide. The project was based on the following basics:
• • • •
Department of Labor Electronic Correspondence Policy.
• • • •
Secretary's Order 2-2000, Department of Labor Internet Services, Section 6a.
• • • •
OSHA Instruction of Internet/Intranet Policy & Procedures of December 15, 2000.
• • • •
OSHA Instruction of Policy Issuances of December 11, 2000.
• • • •
OSHA Instruction of Non-Policy Issuances of December 11, 2000.

In order to achieve the above purpose the state must:
• • • •
Develop a system that ensures timely response to inquiries received through the OSHA E-
Correspondence system.
• • • •
Notify OSHA through the Directorate of Cooperative and State Programs of any changes to
the e-mail address designated to receive electronic correspondence.
• • • •
Maintain records of correspondence received and their responses to that correspondence.

The main offices and agencies that are involved in this project are National Office, Regional Offices,
Area Offices, and State Plan States. These offices and agencies must implement the policies and

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procedures contained in this project in order to ensure the consistency of the Correspondence. In
addition to USA, Perry presets the use of e-mail in different countries [9]. Also, Yayehyirad [10] studied
the possibilities offered by E-Government to Africa by documenting few initiatives on the continent that
have developed innovative models that contribute to governments’ efficiency, accessibility,
transparency and accountability through the implementation of ICT based services. He also presented
an application to provide a secure online email service to high level government officials. This implied
the design and deployment of a corporate mail system for the government including the delivery and
setup of mail servers.

This paper differs from previous studies by providing a general framework for deploying e-mail as an
official communication tool between citizens. Although they presented an infrastructure for commercial
use of e-mails, this infrastructure is not securely sufficient for the exchange of the sensitive, legal and
private official communication. Consequently, developing a new e-mail exchange system that fulfills
the security and legal requirements is needed.

3. THE OFFICIAL E-MAIL EXCHANGE SYSTEM LEGAL REQUIREMENTS
Deploying e-mails for official communications will be successful if:
• A number of legal rules and regulations should be set in order to govern the use of e-mail and
the other e-communication means, and to organize the exchange of the information across the
world wide information net.

• There is an awareness of the legislation interventions – locally and globally- to deal with the
illegal and unlawful behaviors that it's performed via the e-mail and the other e-communication
ways. In addition, there must be appropriate penalties against the individuals who cause those
behaviors.

• There must be constraints that restrict the way of using e-mail in the official communication.
The main purpose of these constraints is the assurance of the accuracy and the reliability of
information being exchanged through such way of communication, at the same time these
constraints are used to prevent the misuse of the citizen's sensitive information.
Consequently, if these constraints were skipped there will be a stiff government penalties as
well as civil suits. The responsibility in the e-communication field dose not confines on the
management responsibility, but it includes the civil responsibility as well as the malefaction
responsibility.

a) The Management Responsibility: the management responsibility represented in the
various penalties that usually issued by the management parties which has the role of
mentoring and supervising the other parties that work in the E-communication field.

b) The Civil Responsibility: regarding to the e-communication filed the civil responsibility
is basically means the adherence of the individual citizens and the other parties that
are involved in such communication to compensate the damages and harms they
caused.

c) The Criminal Responsibility: criminal malefaction responsibility is the inculpation of
some of the actions that are related to the field of collecting, processing and distributing
data.

• There must be continuance supervision and monitoring activities on the use of e-mails as the
official communication, along with the ability of deciding on the legal responsibilities in case of
skipping one or more of the rules and constraints that governs the use of e-mail as an official
communication.

• There must be mechanisms to confirm that the message originated from its originator and that
can take the place of the hand written signature usually used in the paper based official
correspondent.

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• There must be mechanisms for protecting the e-mail message that contains sensitive
information, and to protect the behalf of the sender and the receiver, the sender and the
receiver must agree upon a mechanism to confirm the reception of the e-mail message by its
appropriate recipient [11].

4. THE OFFICIAL E-MAIL EXCHANGE SYSTEM SECURITY TECHNIQUES
The satisfaction of the above requirement requires the use of the following security techniques:

• • • • Message Encryption: Protects the privacy of the message by converting it from plain,
readable text into cipher (scrambled) text [12, 13].

• • • • Digital Signature: An electronic, encryption-based, secure stamp of authentication on a
message. The signature confirms that the message originated from the signer and has not
been altered. Digital Signature provides Authentication, Non- repudiation and Data Integrity
[14, 15].

• • • • Digital Certificate: A digital means of proving your identity, using a public and private key
pair. The private key is the secret part kept on the sender's computer that the sender uses to
digitally sign messages to recipients and to decrypt (unlock) messages from recipients. Private
keys should be password protected. The public key is sent to others or published in a
directory, so that others can use it to send you encrypted messages. Mainly there the system
will use two types of digital certificate: Identity and Authority Certificate [16].

a) Identity Certificate: is the process of associating a public key with a
particular user and establishing his identity.

b) Authority Certificate: is the process of granting the user whose can
now be verified, authority to access information, to make use of
services, to carry out transactions, or whatever.

Although this two functions (establishing identity Certificate and establishing authority
Certificate) are distinct and quite separable and usually are initiated by different entities, in
some cases they are initiated by the same entity, a government agency for example.

• • • • Conformation Mechanism: An e-mail not reaching their destination is a growing problem, in
case of the official communication this problem become more serious. Therefore there must
be some mechanisms that can help both senders and receivers of emails to make sure their
official emails are not lost. There are several confirmation mechanisms that can be used to
ensure Official E-mail Exchange System delivery capabilities [17, 18]:

a) First: User Generated Feedback is used to determine if Email is not flowing through
the system. If no feedback is received then the system is presumed to be operating
normally.

b) Second: Test Message Monitoring is a variation of the user based feedback
method. Instead of depending on user to notice non-delivery of E-mail messages, an
administrator will periodically send a message through the E-mail system to a testing
account. If the message is successfully delivered, the administrator assumes that the
system is functioning properly.

c) Third: Looped Message Monitoring is a variation of the test message monitoring
method. An administrator still manually generates a message to test the E-mail
system. The message is used to test the system by sending it through a loop to more
than one testing accounts in different regions. If the test messages are successfully
delivered, the administrator assumes that the system is functioning properly.