Whitehall email project unveiled

The government wants to create a secure, web-based email system to allow all UK citizens and businesses to communicate with Whitehall departments.

The Office of the eEnvoy (OeE) is inviting suppliers to discuss a £20m email project capable of handling up to 60 million users through the Government Gateway authentication portal.

The OeE wants the system to be based on a secure mail pilot that has been successfully used by the Inland Revenue since October 2001.

'The new system will allow government departments, businesses and citizens to communicate securely,' a spokeswoman for the OeE told Computing.

The existing pilot is an XML-based messaging service that provides secure two-way email between the Revenue and registered users of the Gateway. When a user sends mail, an XML message is generated and sent out of the Gateway to the department's back-end systems.

The specifications for the full system say that as a minimum it must be capable of handling free-text communications, message attachments of varying sizes and format, and interaction with various standard forms.

Suppliers have until 25 January 2003 to register interest and invitations to tender will be sent out in early February.

The OeE wants the email system to provide members of the public with one secure mailbox when they register online for a Government Gateway service, which can then be used for any subsequent services.

The mailbox would only be able to be used in relation to those services and be accessible via a web-browser or third-party software installed on their PC, protected by 128-bit Secure Socket Layer (SSL).