Director of Education: Bryan Slater
Please ask for: Tina Prince
Contact Number: 01603 222449	Email: tina.prince@norfolk.gov.uk
	15^th May 2003
To: Headteachers of All Norfolk Schools

Dear Colleague,

The e-courier

I am writing to ask for your views to help us in the development of the e-courier for schools.

Following a successful pilot with a small number of schools, the e-courier was launched in March 2002. The e-courier provides an electronic copy of all the items sent to schools in the weekly paper courier. The e-courier is posted on ESINET at 12.00 on the Friday prior to the delivery of the paper courier on the following Monday or Tuesday.

The development of the e-courier is an important development in the strategy to use the e-government agenda to improve the way in which we communicate with schools. It is not intended to restrict the use of the e-courier to the provision of an electronic copy of the material previously sent in paper format. A key objective is to provide additional functions in order to improve the way schools manage information received from the LEA. At the same time we also wish to use it to help to reduce the administrative burden on our schools.

Some of the key benefits of the e-courier are:

• All material is filed electronically and a search facility enables schools to retrieve documents from previous editions of the e-courier. A central filing system avoids the need for schools to set up and maintain their own electronic filing systems.
• Material included within each week's e-courier is sorted into relevant categories with action dates. The intention is to help headteachers to prioritise the material sent by the LEA.
• Headteachers may access the e-courier from any computer with Internet access including machines kept at home.
• Material contained within the e-courier contains appropriate hyper links to facilitate easy access to other sources of web-based information.
• Documents do not need to be printed unless specifically required.

Since March 2002 the e-courier has been trialled alongside the existing paper based courier. (http://www.norfolkesinet.org.uk) The next step is to withdraw the paper courier service and move over wholly to the electronic system. Before this step is taken we would like to have your comments and feedback about the e-courier. I shall be grateful if you will please take a little time to complete the attached short questionnaire and return it by 6^th June 2003.

Yours sincerely

Bryan Slater

Director of Education