Misdirects

Do you receive calls and emails that don’t apply to your agency’s mission and wish you had someone else who could handle these for you? By letting the National Contact Center (NCC) handle your misdirected inquiries, your agency will have more time to focus on your core mission.  This service is free to agencies.

How It Works

• You can refer the telephone calls to 1 800 FED-INFO and/or forward emails to an email box specific to your agency, and the National Contact Center will respond to these inquiries for you – at no cost!
• If the NCC does not have the information to respond to these “misdirected” inquiries using our extensive database, it will refer the citizen to the appropriate agency.
• By forwarding these “misdirected” inquiries to the NCC for handling, your staff has more time to handle your agency-specific responsibilities.
• You can see how the process works in this flowchart.
• Once you have your program in place, you will want to get the word out to the rest of your agency staff. View our communications plan for “how to” ideas!

The preferred and easiest way to take advantage of the Misdirects program is as follows:

1. Contact eileen.dewey@gsa.gov to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with GSA that you will participate in the Misdirects Program.
2. Complete the intake document to expedite implementation.
3. Your agency sets up a common mailbox; all agency employees can forward their misdirected email there. (For example: notgsa@gsa.gov)
4. Promote the mailbox address and its proper usage.
5. The messages in the mailbox are forwarded to the NCC. Either you set a rule to automatically forward the email messages or someone reviews the messages and manually forwards them to the NCC.
6. NCC's specially-trained email agents review and respond to each message. The responses either give a direct answer or furnish contact information for a source that can.

If you have any questions or need additional information, contact eileen.dewey@gsa.gov