A couple of thoughts on the perfect blog storm the Fletcher administration has churned up.
The real question here is not what some one is reading but does the act of cruising the Internet negatively impact the job the employee is paid to do.
An employer, even the Commonwealth of Kentucky, has the right to limit computer usage to business related tasks. If an employee is not using the tools given to him by his employer to do the job he is being paid for, then it’s a management issue.
The employee reading a BluegrassReport.org is no different than an employee cruising E-Bay or one reading Poodle breeding sites or one looking at pornography. If they are doing it on company time then there is a management issue not a freedom of speech issue.
Speaking as a former state information technology manager, I don’t think the selective blocking of web sites is ever effective. If the employee is screwing off they will just find another way screw off.
With incredibly rare exceptions, usually the dullards or the techno-phobic, every employee, public and private, in this state that has Internet access at work has used it for a non-work related activity.
If the Fletcher administration wants to clean up Internet usage all they need to do is to very publicly fire a number of employees for cruising the net and not doing their job. The higher they are in pecking order the better the message, a Cabinet Secretary would do nicely.
There is nothing like a few heads on pikes in front of the castle wall to strike fear into the hearts of the peasants.
That will reduce the problem, but it won’t make it go away.
If Fletcher fires all the employees that have used a state computer for private use there won’t be enough employees left to handle the state’s business.
Largely because I haven’t been posting much in the last couple of months this web site has not been blocked by Ernie and company.
So for you state employees reading this, I do monitor the stats on the web site, here is a Mark Nicholas post that you may have missed. I won’t put a link, since it wouldn’t work anyway.
“Thursday, June 29, 2006
More Shameless Fletcher Administration Lies
It continues to amaze me how willing the Fletcher administration is when it comes to flat-out lying to the public.
Earlier this morning, I demonstrated how Finance Secretary John Farris lied to the public in his op-ed in this morning's Courier-Journal when he said that the category of websites containing blogs "showed large state employee usage volume" when in fact that category failed to make the Top 20 list which they produced to us yesterday.
But here comes another doozy.
One of the excuses that the Fletcher cabal makes for banning selected websites is that they actually didn't target any website and that it all was a result of its WebWasher software which simply bans the most heavily trafficked sites of certain categories, like blogs.
We know they were untruthful about that, but I decided to put that to the test a few days ago.
You might remember a post from a two days ago when I announced that BluegrassReport.com was now active and could be accessed by state workers, even though BluegrassReport.org had been banned.
I did that to test their argument that they don't target sites.
Well guess what?
Turns out that a "Remedy Ticket" was signed by none other than the "Governor's Office" yesterday asking that BluegrassReport.com specifically be banned. And as of 1:00 pm today, I was told by a couple of state workers that BluegrassReport.com could no longer be accessed.
They lied. Big time. The governor's office itself submitted a request to ban the new site and it happened in less than 24 hours. It didn't happened because of WebWasher. It happened because of political goons in the governor's office want to ban specific political content, the Constitution be damned.
Let's hope the mainstream press continues to highlight the shameless lies that are being peddled by this administration.
Why the lies?”
