for the government to trust a fax over an email because a fax is easily faked.
Spoof the caller ID and no one would be the wiser.
There are obviously contradictions within the government.
The request to switch from fax to email correspondence came from the FDA. We had to work with their IT folks to ensure that the email ping back worked before we went online.
It cumbersome project for every hospital or pharmacy wanted to set up this system with every doctor and insurance company.
The best way to do it would be through a "trusted" (in the IT sense)central email processing 3rd party.