Transcript Mod Title - Joint Office of Gas Transporters

0479A:
Mod Title: Inclusion of email as a valid UNC
communication
Proposer: Colette Baldwin – E.ON
Panel Date: 21st August 2014
Why change?
 Email has superseded fax as a more efficient and common form of business
communication but remains disallowed as an official form of UNC
communication, despite all relevant parties using it across other aspects of their
business.
 Where formal communication grants rights or imposes obligations on parties,
the deemed sending/receipt for email communication is not sufficient to bind
the parties contractually and it is important that the network code reflects the
necessary safeguards needed to ensure that there is the “meeting of minds” in
the evolution of that contractual relationship between the parties.
 The rules need to reflect the ability of the parties to communicate whilst
recognising that there are some technical challenges that interrupt the
instantaneous communication that emails offer, for example some email
systems are set up such that they automatically return emails if they detect
what they believe to be a virus/Trojan horse/spyware.
Options
The original proposals are in our opinion deficient in not addressing the issues of robust
business rules for managing successful communication.
 If a postal address has a mistake within it, very often the rest of the address can be used
to sense check where it should be delivered to, combinations of other elements can make
up for the erroneous element…for example the street address may be “avenue” rather
than “road”, but the inclusion of the (correct) post-code may improve the likelihood of
successful delivery to the intended recipient even if other parts of the address are
incorrect.
 A homeowner who receives a letter they believe is incorrectly addressed may put it back
in the mail with the suggested correction - particularly if it’s a common error in the
address…”Road” not “Avenue”, and the carrier will attempt redelivery, however if an
email address is incorrectly recorded or incorrectly set up by the sender, non-delivery
notices or “bounce backs” may occur, however the email may just be delivered to
someone else - totally unrelated and that unintended recipient is under no obligation to
reject it, or contact anyone to advise them of the sender’s mistake. So business rules on
address management and non delivery notices will ensure successful communication is
achieved in the most efficient way.
 In the electricity mods which NGN’s mod was based on, the code defined exceptions to
the use of email communications which the original UNC mod doesn’t consider.

Solution
 Determine what can be communicated by email and how
that is agreed
 How consent to receive and send email communication is
established and maintained
 Determining whether communication has been achieved
and setting out obligations to manage “Non-delivery”
notices
 How UK Link manages changes to Appendix 5B
Recommended Steps
The Proposer recommends that this modification should be:

Not subject to self-governance - we disagree that the original modification
meets the criteria for Self Governance as we believe it could have a material
impact on contractual relationships if important communication provisions
are not managed robustly and therefore it could impact competition.

Should be sent to the existing 479 workgroup to develop the modification for
3 months.