Brunel University is planning
to use technology originally developed to filter spam e-mails to
help it identify and act on time-critical requests, including
Freedom of Information Act enquiries and requests for
prospectuses.
The university plans to exploit the pattern-recognition
capabilities of its Ironmail anti-spam appliances to identify
e-mails that require a rapid response, even if they are sent to the
wrong person.
The project will help the university meet its compliance duties
as a public body, said Iain Liddell, policy development manager in
the university’s IT department.
“We have a duty of regulatory compliance. All local authorities
are bound by the Nolan principles of public life and we have to
take that seriously,” he said.
The university has a duty to respond to Freedom of Information
requests within 20 days of receipt, even if the request is sent to
the wrong person.
Brunel also plans to introduce an archiving system that will
allow it to retrieve e-mails in the event of a legal dispute or a
systems failure.
It has been working with internet security product supplier
Secure Computing to develop the anti-spam
algorithms to identify Freedom of Information applications as well
as requests from students for prospectuses.
The development follows work to refine the anti-spam system to
take better account of the fact that some parts of the university,
such as medical departments, legitimately send and receive e-mails
that would be trapped by conventional spam filters.
Brunel University plans to implement the project later his year
on its existing two Ironmail spam appliances.
A third appliance, fitted last year, acts as a dedicated
quarantine, reducing the processing load on other units.
The anti-spam filters should reduce the university’s bandwidth
and storage requirements by 40%, said Liddell.
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