1 October 2021
Amanda Murtagh
[FYI request #16615 email]
Dear Amanda Murtagh
Thank you for your follow up request made under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA),
received on 3 September 2021. You requested:
Why did the Commissioner change the dates or correspondence three times over
three weeks?
If the Commissioner denies responsibility for this, have the IRD have been
compromised and is the IRD working with the GCSB to bring the perpetrators to
account?
On 20 September 2021, officials asked you for clarification on the three situations you
refer to in your request. You provided information from your myIR inbox showing two
instances of date changes to your correspondence.
In our response to your request made on 8 August 2021, we stated the Commissioner is
not permitted to change the received dates or times of messages or correspondence sent
through myIR unless it has been clearly identified the received recorded is incorrect.
It may help if I provide an explanation to what has happened. The initial email dated 16
July 2021 was sorted into Inland Revenue’s correspondence queue for 31 July 2021. The
date update in myIR reflects this change. When web messages move into different queues
in our system, the dates change depending on the action taken by Inland Revenue staff.
It does not change the original correspondence date, which are retained separate from
our correspondence system. For your case, your initial email of 16 July 2021 was sorted
twice on two different dates.
Inland Revenue’s myIR system wil undergo an update later this year that will prevent
future correspondence dates from updating based on queue movement.
Dates in the correspondence system are controlled completely separately from the dates
the billing and financial engine used and have no financial impact on customers.
Thank you again for your request.
Yours sincerely
Jeni Vaughan
Manager START Production Support
www.ird.govt.nz
Ref: 22OIA1240