After reading the correspondence, does the recipient know what has happened, why it has happened, what they need to do next, and where they can go if they do not understand or disagree?
Why correspondence matters
Administrative complexity can exist in language as readily as in procedure. The project distinguishes necessary technical or legal precision from communicative complexity that predictably generates further work for both the recipient and the institution.
The Second-Letter Test
Does the first communication predictably generate another communication whose principal purpose is to discover what the first communication meant?
Where that happens repeatedly, the first letter may be creating a hidden correspondence loop: the institution writes, the citizen is uncertain, the citizen contacts the institution, the institution explains, the citizen acts, and the institution processes the additional contact.
Correspondence-Generated Administration
IOAS uses Correspondence-Generated Administration (CGA) as a proposed research concept for administrative activity generated principally because an earlier institutional communication was not sufficiently understood to produce the intended response.
What we will examine
The assessment framework asks whether purpose, required action, deadline, reason, consequences, review or appeal routes and sources of help are intelligible. It also asks whether similar communications are consistent and whether the recipient can identify the practical meaning after one careful reading.
A person with reasonable familiarity with ordinary written English should, wherever the subject permits, be able to identify the purpose of a routine administrative communication and any action required after one careful reading.
Next stage
The project will develop a standard assessment framework, test inter-rater consistency and pilot the method on publicly available or voluntarily supplied routine correspondence, with appropriate anonymisation and privacy safeguards.
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