Electronic communication with the City of Vienna

E-advertisement, SPAM and junk e-mails are increasingly interfering with private and commercial e-mail traffic. Therefore a SPAM check is run on all e-mails addressed to the City of Vienna. The guidelines compiled below are meant to ensure safe and smooth e-mail communication with the City of Vienna - so your messages reach the City Administration without any problems.

• Electronic communication in the administrative procedure
• Supported file formats
• General recommendations on e-mail content
• Rejected e-mails

Electronic communication in the administrative procedure

Unless otherwise stipulated in administrative regulations, the General Administrative Procedure Act (AVG - Allgemeines Verwaltungsverfahrensgesetz) specifies that applications, requests or queries, formal notices, complaints and other messages can also be sent to administrative authorities by electronic mail.

It is therefore permitted to use e-mail for official communication with the Vienna City Administration, the Office of the Vienna Provincial Government and other authorities formally acting for the Vienna City Administration. To make sure your e-mail has full legal validity, please keep in mind the following organisational and technical requirements.

There are two ways to send official electronic mail to the City Administration: either per regular e-mail, or by filling in and submitting an electronic form. As a rule, electronic forms should be used wherever available.

Online forms

The City of Vienna E-Government Portal allows you to submit e-forms with full legal validity in a large variety of fields.

E-mail

You can also send e-mails directly to the official e-mail address of the City Administration department or office in charge. The Directory of City Administration Departments and Offices allows you to look up the correct e-mail address. Please note that e-mails sent to the individual e-mail address of City Administration staff have no legal validity.

It is also important to remember that, for your e-mail to the City Administration to have legal validity, all attachments must be in a supported file format.

Supported file formats

For the purpose of electronic communication (e-mail), the City of Vienna supports a variety of file formats for attachments. To minimise the security risks (e.g. viruses), other formats are not supported. If the City of Vienna receives an e-mail with attachments in other formats, this fact is pointed out to the sender by return e-mail.

File formats for electronic communication with the City of Vienna

General recommendations on e-mail content

• Use the subject line to indicate the topic of your message.
• Write the content of your message in the text window. If possible, do not use an editor to write your message. This also helps avoid unnecessary attachments.
• Do not use the attachment functionality (to attach a file or document) unless the document you wish to send is already available in this form and should be used in this form for further processing by the City Administration. If you use attachments, please do not leave the text window empty but briefly describe the content of the file(s) attached.
• Do not send data in the form of self-extracting archives, as this would force the e-mail recipient to run unknown programmes when opening your files. It is better to assume that recipients will extract the compressed or archived files themselves. Moreover, some of the file formats involved are not accepted by the system.
• When attaching files, make sure the file name does not contain any special characters, e.g. punctuation marks or German "Umlaut" characters.

Rejected e-mails

Blacklisting

The City of Vienna rejects messages from e-mail providers that are frequently used for SPAM mails. For this purpose, the City Administration uses the international SPAM black lists. If your e-mail is rejected, you will receive an automatic reply from the City of Vienna firewall.

Please therefore contact your e-mail provider if you have problems sending messages to the City Administration. As soon as your provider has been taken off the black list, you will again be able to reach the required address within the City of Vienna e-mail system.

Greylisting

The City of Vienna temporarily rejects e-mails from unknown senders on their first delivery attempt. You should not notice any consequences of this, since your mail server will usually automatically attempt to send it again later, at which time it will be accepted. Your first e-mail may therefore arrive with a delay of approximately 30 minutes. After this first e-mail your address is known to the system, and therefore your further e-mail traffic with the City of Vienna will no longer be affected. Spam servers, as opposed to regular mail servers, will typically not retry a failed delivery, since they are designed for mass mailings with a high failure rate. Therefore this measure also effectively helps reduce spam.

Should your mail server not retry the delivery automatically and you receive an e-mail with the error message "450 you are greylisted - try again later", please resend the e-mail manually and inform your provider of the problem.

You can also use the Bürgeranliegen Online (Online Citizens' Service) page to send a message to the City Administration. It guarantees that your e-mail will be forwarded to the right recipient.