How to Prove Email Delivery & Replies: Solving the ‘I Didn't Get the Email’ Excuse

What May Seem Like a DOGE Dodge -- “I Didn’t Get the Email”—May Be a Legit Technical Issue.

Armand here, RPost’s product evangelist armadillo. Since I am apolitical, I thought I would opine on only the technology that DOGE appears to be using via the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to send notices to Federal employees across various departments, agencies and entities, and common misconceptions related to email delivery.

Here is the issue. This is fact:

Not all email sent is received.

• A record of sending is not a record of the email having been received. What is in a sender’s sent archive is not a record of content received.
• A bulk email sending platform (contact management / email marketing type like what DOGE appears to be using) that tries to record opens and clicks is fraught with false positives for a variety of technical reasons.
• Content sent may not be content received. There are a lot of reasons for this. (Read more in this corporate counsel guide to email notices).

Here is the uncertainty:

If someone claims they did not receive the time-dependent email notice that requires a time-dependent response, and the intended recipient after the deadline has past simply says, “I didn’t get the email,” with standard email, generally there is no way to prove affirmatively that they did receive it.

Consider this (DOGE and Gov Workers):

OPM appears to be using an email customer contact system for these mass email notices that (a) have a time-dependent requirement to respond and (b) have consequence if the response is not adequately returned within the timeframe and with the requested content. The non-response, it appears, could have legal consequence (e.g., off-boarding employees from government departments).

The most common excuse for non-response (and for the reasons noted above, it could be a valid excuse) may be, I did not get the message --- or, I don’t know why you didn’t get my reply (again, in particular if there is a legal consequence such as off-boarding an employee with self-stated litigation-ready public employee unions).

We believe for consequential email like this, OPM might be better served by using an email service that can provide greater accountability, proof, and authentication. One that returns a proven court accepted evidentiary record – because as noted, a simple record of what was claimed to have been sent is rife with areas to challenge.

Employees may likewise be better served by such a service that also provides an evidentiary record of the time and content of the reply associated with the received notification, in case they do reply yet the recipient of the reply does not receive or see the reply. The employee might want THEIR proof of who said what when by email.

A humble armadillo recommendation to add accountability to time-dependent, legally consequential email for both sender (DOGE / GOV DEPARTMENT HR and GOV EMPLOYEE): if the sender used our RPost technology, our RPost Registered Email™ service, OPM, DOGE, Employees, and any lawyer if litigated could irrefutably prove,

1. Time of specific content delivered (not just when the mass send occurred)
2. Timestamped content of what was delivered
3. Timestamped content of the reply (see 2-minute short video of Register Reply service) -- not what may have been claimed to have been the text content of the reply.

The Registered Email™ proof is evidenced in a returned Registered Receipt™ record that can independently authenticate the content of the message, attachments if any, level of delivery, viewing, and underlying internet forensics (see short 2-minute video). This data package structure (self-contained receipt) has been court accepted nationally for more than a decade and is independently authenticatable.

It has served as legal and court accepted time-stamped proof of delivery in the US Federal Government for two decades (used by GAO, USDA, SEC…) and for delivery of legal summons in nearly every Federal court for more than a decade. For government, this RPost Registered Email service is also available for purchase from AT&T off the AT&T GSA Schedule.

PLUS, an added security and accountability benefit is this service uses advanced AI to additionally detect which personnel may have compromised email accounts and have email being actively accessed by cybercriminal cabals or espionage gangs leading to information leaks.

What OPM is using today (at least what seems to have been announced) to send is probably fine for their first email volley, but if they believe there will be legal consequence, it is worth their time to investigate sending these as Registered Email messages. It would also be nice to use this service to provide recipient repliers irrefutable proof of the reply content.

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