No Place Like the Home Office

Yesterday to celebrate the movement of the ID card bill through its third reading (a piece of important news, cleverly arranged to be overshadowed by Ken Clark) I emailed the Home Office through the address advertised on their website for general enquiries (public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk), thinking that there was no chance they would offer a straight answer to how much the ID card scheme would cost (current estimates vary from about £3 billion to over £20 billion -- that's American-style billions, by the way), but I might as well ask anyway.

Today I received my response, which wasn't quite what I had expected...

Your message

 To:      public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
 Subject: ID Card Query
 Sent:    Tue, 18 Oct 2005 15:54:20 +0100

did not reach the following recipient(s):

Public Enquiries (CD) on Wed, 19 Oct 2005 09:44:20 +0100
   The recipient was unavailable to take delivery of the message
       The MTS-ID of the original message is: c=gb;a=cwmail;p=home
office;l=SDCEMB010510190844SAAKW16R
   MSEXCH:MSExchangeMTA:PHU:L01EM004

Hmm, if their IT infrastructure can't handle a simple email enquiry, what hope is there for the national identity register? Or maybe there is another explanation...