ELAINE DUFFY, Publicity Officer UNISON Scottish Electricity, gives tips for activists on email organisation

To protect members' privacy, and to ensure we are adhering to Data Protection laws, we ensure that when sending e-mails to several members, their names are entered into the BCC field and not the TO field.

This allows the mail to be delivered to all people on the list but no one else can see who it has gone to. When using a home PC you can set up an e-mail list of 'undisclosed recipients' but this is not normally possible at work because of Global Address Lists and security around this. The BCC field is therefore a way round this.

By doing this, we are keeping members' personal data secure and thereby removing the risk of breaching the law and bringing ourselves and the union into disrepute. This is easy to set up within Outlook if not already there.

Furthermore, stewards should be aware of security with regard to e-mails and documents they store on employers' servers. Within our employer, a breach of security was found and since then we have negotiated to agree a policy for e-mail security for TU reps.

Please be aware that anything you store on the employer's servers, even on your home drive, can be accessed and seen by them if they so wish. Confidential documentation should be labelled as such and should be password-protected.

It is helpful if stewards agree a 'code' for passwords and these can be applied to documents easily. Additionally, you can protect documents easily within Word and this allows any changes to be tracked, or limits what people can do to the document.

In addition, we thought about what would happen if a steward were to leave the employer suddenly. They could be holding confidential and sensitive information that you would not want the employer to be able to access, but equally, they could have information that you might need to access quickly to pick up cases for them.

It is helpful if you can agree a policy with the employer to ensure another TU rep has access to the person's mailbox in such circumstances.

An easy way round this is to give delegate access to your mailbox to your convenor or a fellow steward.

I hope this has been helpful and if you want more information on any of this, or want to see a copy of our policy, then please let me know and I am happy to go over this with you. elaine.duffy@uk.saic.com

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