[pbhjpbhj]

The story from the Chinese Visa Application Office (CVAO) is that an employee opened the letter "by mistake":

>"It said that it was contacted by an employee of the Chinese Visa Application Centre who said she opened the letter addressed to Statistics Denmark “by mistake” but then delivered the package to the statistics agency." (TheLocal, linked above, http://www.thelocal.dk/20160720/five-million-danish-id-numbe...). //

Having worked as a civil servant I find this unlikely if it were properly addressed. In the office I worked at all mail came in via a mail room who checked and registered it and directed it to relevant personnel.

Presumably the CVAO receive a lot of mail, they must have a dedicated system for recording [because we're talking about legal documents and receipt dates therefore are important to record] and directing that mail. So a piece of mail comes in for "Statistics Denmark", now what happens?

What I'd expect is it's sent to a mail-room manager to handle. They can then either redirect the mail unopened or forward it to some other personnel. I really can't see them just opening things "by accident" at all. They have a choice to honestly redirect unopened or to actually open it. Now, the opening may have been an individual's simple curiosity, for sure.

Interested in any other analysis particularly with reference to how mail receipt is handled in other country's civil service locations. I expect things have moved on somewhat, something like 'tag with barcode, photograph and the computer records the article' is probably the current workflow?

[kayone]

well, the Danish mail service who's one of its main purposes is to read and process the mailing address correctly failed. And they most likely have _many_ more processes and safeguards than any office mailroom.

[tomjen3]

I am a Dane. I have twice received mail incorrectly sent to my current address. One was sent to somebody with a different name, to an address that was close to but not the same as my previous address, the other was to a person who may have lived here but was not the previous occupant.

This does not include the letters that should have gone to my neighbors but was put in the wrong letter box.

While I naturally assume this is deliberate I won't rule out that this is just complete incompetence.

[pbhjpbhj]

You noticed that they were misaddressed though, right?

Now imagine you work in an office handling personal identity papers and travel documents mishandling of which is probably a sack-able offense and possibly a criminal one too. Every piece of mail entering your address has to be date registered and properly redirected. Do you think you'd just open letters without looking at the address?

[pbhjpbhj]

The Danish mail service presumably handles several orders of magnitude more mail per member of staff than an office mail room too.

In a civil service establishment handling legal documents you have to have controls on the mail, no member of staff is just going to open a piece of misaddressed mail willy-nilly, it's going to follow procedure especially in an office handling identity papers.