Departmental Communications

Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 16 January 2018

Tuesday, 16 January 2018

Questions (131)

Catherine Murphy

Question:

131. Deputy Catherine Murphy asked the Taoiseach and Minister for Defence if his Department uses anti-profanity software on its email systems and online contact forms; if so, the level of human oversight that is applied to the monitoring of this software and its effectiveness; his views on whether persons' legitimate right to petition Government may be blocked unintentionally by errors in the use of such software in determining that which qualifies as profanity being communicated in email and-or online contact forms; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2083/18]

Written answers

Minister of State at the Department of Defence

My Department uses an email filtering system which includes anti-profanity functionality.

Emails containing profanity may be quarantined. Where an email is quarantined for this reason, the intended recipient is notified that an email with inappropriate text has been received. The notification contains details of the sender and the subject. The recipient may then request for it to be released to them.

The email filtering system is monitored regularly by my Department's network administrators and configurations are updated where appropriate.

I understand that on occasions, a legitimate email may be quarantined by the filtering software. This is known as a “false positive”.

I am satisfied that these measures provide the appropriate balance between facilitating effective communication and ensuring a safe and unthreatening working environment.