Guidelines for Managing University Email Lists

This page describes the new list management procedures adopted by the University in response to the Federal Government's Spam Act, which regulates the distribution of commercial electronic messages.

Contents of This Page

The Spam Act
Changes to Email Lists Supported by ITS
New List Management Software
Email Lists Managed by Other Areas of the University
Personally Managed Email Lists

Forms
List Creation Form
List Deletion Form

For More Information
List Management Business Rules

The Spam Act

The Spam Act (Commonwealth) 2003 came into force on 11 April 2004. The Act regulates the sending of unsolicited commercial electronic messages, including emails and faxes. The Act can be found at http://www.comlaw.gov.au/.  The sending of email messages (and in particular the sending of email messages to lists managed by the University) is a significant compliance issue for the University, and presents risk of legal action against the University.  Under the Act, all email messages, regardless of type, must contain accurate and up to date contact details of the sender. Additional obligations are imposed depending on the type of message;

Factual email
Email messages that contain only factual information, and do not include a link to a commercial website, fall outside the definition of commercial electronic messages in the Act. The University can send these email messages to any individual recipient or list.

Commercial email
Email messages that offer to supply, advertise, or promote goods/services or business opportunities, or advertise or promote a supplier of goods/services, or contain links to commercial web sites, are considered to be commercial email messages. The University can only send these email messages to individual recipients or lists if consent can be construed on the part of the recipient, and only if a functional unsubscribe facility allows the recipient to withdraw consent at any time.

Exempt emails for Educational institutions
The consent requirements are waived for educational institutions that send emails relating to goods and services supplied by that institution to current or former students, or members of their households. Further, a functional unsubscribe facility is not required for emails which are exempt in this way. This exemption does not extend to emails relating to goods and services supplied by separately incorporated bodies that may be related to the University, but are not part of the University itself (e.g., the Adelaide University Union).

The impact of the Act on email sent out from the University is detailed in sections 7 to 13 of the Guidelines for Email Use by Staff.

Changes to Email Lists Supported by ITS

In order to ensure that both the University, and people who use University email lists, are able to comply with the Act, ITS has reviewed the email lists that it supports.

These lists include;

• 'all students' and 'all staff' lists;
• campus, faculty, school and other organisational unit specific lists; and
• subject and membership specific lists such as the Newsletter to SA branch of Aust Society for Microbiology (eg newsletter.saasm@adelaide.edu.au)

Mandatory versus Voluntary Membership Email Lists

A number of lists, such as the "all student" email list, are used for both factual emails and commercial emails (as described above). In these cases, two lists will exist - one to which the University only sends factual information (such as enrolment instructions) and from which students cannot unsubscribe, and another to which the University can send more general information (including information about the Adelaide University Union and its affiliates) from which students may choose to unsubscribe.

New List Management Software

Migration of Existing Lists
ITS has moved its email list management operations to new software ('Mailman'). This software has significantly enhanced features over that previously employed to manage email lists. ITS managed email lists can now meet the requirements of the Spam Act. The new software also gives list managers much better control over their lists. List management tasks that previously required a request to the ITS Help Desk can now be done quickly by a trained list manager.

The migration of existing email lists from the old Majordomo software to Mailman has commenced and will continue until early March 2006.  The ITS Help Desk will migrate existing lists to new lists once the list manager has completed the short email list training course. On completion of the training, list owners can request that their list be migrated to the new system using the list creation authorisation form.

Training schedule and booking form

The list management business rules cover the arrangements established for the migration, creation and naming of lists.

New Lists
New lists can be created in the new software. List managers will need to have completed the training before the ITS Help Desk can create a new list. Lists can consist of a static list of email addresses, or be configured to dynamically mail out to the current members of a known group, such as all students, or all staff in an organisation unit.  Again, the list management business rules cover the arrangements established for the creation and naming of lists.

Training schedule and booking form

Email Lists Managed by Other Areas of the University

Should any organisational unit within the University choose to manage email lists with their own software, it will be their responsibility to ensure that any such lists are managed in compliance with the Spam Act. These areas should consider using confirmation consent emails, and unsubscribe text as described below (under Personally Managed Email Lists), and should be aware of their responsibility to remove a recipient from a list on request. Due to the complex requirements which the Spam Act imposes on list managers, all organisational units within the university which currently maintain their own email lists are strongly encouraged to convert these lists into ITS supported lists via the process described above.

Personally Managed Email Lists

The University recognises that there are many University staff and students who are members of professional organisations and who use lists sent from their University email accounts to routinely communicate with other members of such organisations. It is important that any emails sent to your own lists also comply with the Spam Act, as under that Act individuals may be held personally liable for non-compliance.

For each and every email sent by you to such lists, the Act requires that you include your accurate and up to date contact details. Further, to comply with the Act requirements regarding consent of the email recipient, it is recommended that you send the following confirmation consent email, as a separate email, confirming that recipients of emails from that list are agreeable to receiving such emails.

 SUGGESTED CONFIRMATION CONSENT EMAIL TEXT
The Spam Act 2003 came into full force on April 11 2004. Its purpose is to regulate the sending of unsolicited commercial electronic messages. In accordance with the Act, the purpose of this email is to confirm that you wish to continue to receive email from this mailing list in regard to [Insert name of professional body/learned society etc to which the list relates]. To remain on this mailing list you need not do anything, and you will continue to receive information at this email address. If you no longer wish to receive such information please reply to this email stating that you wish to be removed from this list. Please note that you may request to be removed at any time. [Insert your accurate and up to date contact details including name, title, email address and phone number]

It is recommended that you send out such confirmation consent email at least annually and that for every other email sent to that list, the following text be included every time.

SUGGESTED UNSUBSCRIBE TEXT
If you no longer wish to receive such information please reply to this email stating that you wish to be removed from this list. Please note that you may request to be removed at any time.

This allows recipients the option to withdraw their consent to receiving emails from a particular list that you maintain. The Spam Act then requires that you remove any such names from the list within five days of their sending an 'unsubscribe' email to you.