Report Finds More Aussie Gov't Workers Misusing Internet 90
destinyland writes "A new report to Australia's parliament announces a 54% increase in government workers misusing the internet. In fiscal year 2010, 313 different federal workers came under investigation for improper use of e-mail or the internet, up from just 202 in the previous year. The report — available online as a PDF file — also discovered that nearly half the investigated workers were in the Australian Tax Office, according to an Australian technology blog. 'Maybe it's just a case of particularly boring work making such distractions more attractive,' they suggest, since the report blames most of the discovered cases on one-time incidents of poor judgment."
More likely a change in enforcement (Score:5, Insightful)
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In this particular instance it's more likely to be related to the fact that the tax office had a major problem with their computer systems during fiscal year 2010 and the tax office couldn't actually process diddly squat for several months and therefor these drones had no work to do.
Need to send a message (Score:5, Funny)
I demand the Australian Government sends a strong message that this won't be tolerated. They must dissolve the Australian Tax Office.
What did we learn FTA? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I remember the last time I had a job with internet, they were pretty clear that the connection belongs to the employer and that any use of it for anything that wasn't specifically sanctioned would lead to discipline.
Re:What did we learn FTA? (Score:5, Insightful)
And do you have any idea what that would do to employee morale? To work for a place that's that draconian? You'd lose more productivity to that then you ever would to the internet. Not to mention many of your best employees would leave over time to any of the 99% of employers who don't give a fuck so long as your work gets done.
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Memorize all your pr0n before leaving the house, and recall images as necessary.
Re:What did we learn FTA? (Score:4, Funny)
What about those of us that DON'T have a pornographic memory?
Wish they could mod higher than 5... (Score:2)
Parent is right.
Hell, why not treat it as a benefit, like free sodas? I recently managed to talk our employer into doing just that... As long as you're not divulging company secrets, moonlighting, or surfing pr0n on our machinery, well? We really don't give a shit as long as you get your work done.
As a bonus, I don't have to futz around on the proxy as much building reports on who may be goofing off, which in turn gives me an extra hour during the week to go do something useful on the network. It also means
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happy workers are generally more productive and of greater value to the company
I spotted the problem in your logic above. We're discussing government agencies, not a for-profit company. Governments, as a rule, have always treated their civil servants with the least amount of civility possible. And production apparently never enters into the equation, which is why when on the rare occasion they have enough people to do the job in a timely fashion, they cut the budgets, shed a truckload of them and delays once again become the norm. Standard operating procedures for government agenc
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Indeed. The only people who governments treat with less respect than civil servants, are the ones paying the bills...
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Unless a job requires the internet as one of it's functions it's easier for everybody to just not have it, or agree that you're not going to use it except
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heya,
Sorry, but I think it's not just case of being old-fashioned, but being blind to how things *really* were like before.
See, the thing is, as other posters have noted, so-called internet "misuse" is easy to monitor. You just check your firewall/proxy logs.
But in the olden days, if a worker was distracted, or chatting at the watercooler, or just staring off into space for a few minutes, you couldn't really log that (unless you had audio surveillance at work, as well as mind-reading devices). Heck, they co
Re:What did we learn FTA? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I don't think that screwing around on the internet doing non-work things ought to be acceptable. Personally, I don't want to have my morale harmed by being asked to pick up the slack because there isn't enough productivity to cover the work needed. Doesn't matter whether it's too few employees or too much goofing off online.
It strongly depends on the job. If your business only requires mouth-breathers, you can do what you want, because you're scraping the bottom of the barrel anyway; they're desperate. But if you need employees with some degree of intelligence/creativity/etc, and you go all control-freak, you will lose all the good ones.
Your choice I suppose.
[Of course logic rarely has anything to do with it -- authoritarian bosses tend to be that way for personal reasons, not because it's actually the best way to run their business...]
Re:What did we learn FTA? (Score:5, Insightful)
whitelisting can be a bigger sometimes though.
I know when trying to figure out wierd application errors googling is generally the fastest way to find people who've had the same problem and how they've fixed it.
I'd hate to be working on similar problems with a whitelist stopping me from viewing the thousands of tech support forums out there.
I'd waste countless hours getting the same or worse info from documentation or trying to figure it out from scratch.
ever tried to work out what "assertion error 266" or whatever the cryptic error is without google?
With google: 20 seconds.
without google or the internet: 20 minutes to hours.
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It can be done. You really need to have google's old preview working though. You used to get to it by doing a standard search, and then opening up "more search tools". You could see a paragraph or so of the relevant information, and often that was enough to figure out how to solve the problem. It's not there any more. I really wish google would turn that feature back on. Hint,
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People monitor the things that are easy to monitor, that's all.
It's very easy for the IT department to log every improper use of the internet connection, but not so easy to make sure that people work while they sit at their desks.
Are they thinking about work right now, or about their dog's broken leg?
Do they keep making mistakes and then correcting them (strictly speaking a waste of their employer's time and money) or maybe working more slowly than what they're capable of?
Are they annoying their co-workers
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I'm a bit surprised that there isn't any policy barring this sort of thing. I guess it probably depends what the job is, but if you're just needing access to email and a couple of known sites, whitelisting those sites and blocking everything else isn't that hard. I remember the last time I had a job with internet, they were pretty clear that the connection belongs to the employer and that any use of it for anything that wasn't specifically sanctioned would lead to discipline.
Oh, there's a policy all right, and a comprehensive system of filtering of content. Without having a copy of the policy in front of me (I'm not browsing Slashdot at work :-), sites such as online email and social media are are prohibited outright and will display a "Blocked" message if you try to access them, others are questionable in some way and will display a "Coached" message, meaning that you can still click through, but be warned that your access is being monitored and you may be called on to justif
Re:What did we learn FTA? (Score:4, Insightful)
Blocked: Category Humour not permitted.
That is the saddest message I have ever seen in my life.
Re:What did we learn FTA? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't even know what "Improper use" is. Shopping for shoes online? Sending an e-mail to your wife? Checking the news, weather, traffic jams? Going on Facebook?
Strictly speaking, even going the toilet is a waste of public money. But seriously... is day-dreaming for five minutes better than going on the Internet for five minutes?
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Agreed, way too vague. And indeed treating people as dumb automaton that always work 8 hours a day is a horrible idea in most cases these days.
Re:What did we learn FTA? (Score:4, Insightful)
IMHO "misusing the internet" should only apply for sending spam, doing DoS attacks, hacking other computers, and things like that. If I look out of the window instead of working, am I misusing the window?
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Not improper enough? How about Kiddy porn viewed on parliament computers [smh.com.au]
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How extensive are the investigations? (Score:2)
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They will be conduced by federal workers, who will spend much of the time looking for shoes, apparently. So, it blows up very quickly.
Oh no. (Score:4, Funny)
After years and years of abuse by the Australian government and the laws they made concerning it, now the internet also has to suffer the misuse by Australien government workers.
Would someone please think of the electrons?
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Just for the sake of clarity. The Australian Government has not actually made any laws about the Internet. They've just talked about it.
is this even worth bothering about anymore? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe it's different in areas other than tech, but in technology, both in industry and in academia, there isn't much correlation between the productivity of a worker and their tendency to "misuse the internet". There are plenty of very productive people who also post on Twitter a few times a day, take a brief detour while googling for an answer to a tech question to answer a question on StackOverflow that came up in the search, glance at a few mailing lists, and check their personal gmail compulsively. Especially for people under 35 or so, it might actually correlate positively with productivity: the kinds of people who can't keep themselves from answering StackOverflow questions, reading / posting on mailing lists, etc., are often much more proactive and plugged into many parts of the tech scene, compared to the people who just keep their head down and put in their 8 hours.
Re:is this even worth bothering about anymore? (Score:5, Interesting)
From what I've seen of this, the flip side of this is that such people are also much more likely to be checking work email, etc. after hours. So if something suddenly comes up during non-normal hours, it's more likely to be dealt with quickly as part of a give-and-take approach. It's a blending of personal and working life. Yes, you do have to accept that some personal matters will be dealt with during work hours, but work matters will then sometimes be dealt with during personal hours.
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I've had time cards, punch machines, and morning check-ins. I do so much more work with nothing more than a weekly progress meeting. And I love life.
The big key here is
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If your company is large enough, it can provide a participatory body that's of positive value to the company. Set up an internal corporate wiki, a corporate stackoverflow, a corporate forum, and a corporate blog site. Encourage your employees to spend some time participating in online activities that mutually benefit each other.
Will it be as useful as stack overflow? Probably not, but it may be more specific, and you can discuss company ideas and applications without breaking confidentiality.
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One thing that isn't often considered is that we all use multi-tasking OS's and sometimes whatever app you're using to work is the bottleneck. If your work program is spending 2 minutes doing a file save, where's the harm in doing a little shoe shopping while you're waiting?
Aussies, keep em of the internet! (Score:3)
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Whenever I lose a game of chess to an Aussie they say: mate mate.
Have a Meal Mate, mate. [youtube.com]
Never accessed a non-work related site? Much! (Score:2)
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What you don't realize is that that useless bozo is saving tones of productivity by spending his day on the internet. Otherwise, he'd cause about 9 man hours worth of damage for each 8 hours he worked.
Good for handwringing(esp. if porn); but boring. (Score:5, Insightful)
Reality: Unless chained to an assembly line, under guard, most workers are going to spend some minutes a day doing some form of "nonwork". Particularly for people whose work involves a mixture of thinking and typing, it won't even be trivial to distinguish between work and nonwork, and for people whose work involves manual labor, one has to make the distinction between "rest" and "slacking off".
Given that the internet is a bottomless well of amusements, as well as an excellent way to check personal email, pay that credit card bill you just remembered to avoid a late fee, queue up a netflix item while you are still thinking about it from that conversation at lunch, etc. it seems pretty obvious that most of the white-collar nonwork is going to be internet related(and almost 100% of the visible kind is. If somebody spends 10 minutes 'cleaning their desk' in order to avoid work, nobody will ever know. If they spend 10 minutes on reddit, IT can know completely automatically.
Now, as "IT" for an institution myself, I can sympathize with IT trying to block certain sorts of extracurriculars: I don't want to get a BSA beatdown because you were on warez.ru. I don't want to spend my already overstretched time battling viruses because you just had to download free smilies and/or goat porn. If the institution's attorney's come to me and say "We are being sued for creating a hostile, porn infested work environment." I would like to be able to say "Well, we have measures in place that meet or exceed industry standards for professional content filtering; but, as no programmatic filter can be perfect, we do ultimately depend on HR's training and disciplinary procedures." rather than "Well, goodbye to my career..."
However, again in "IT"'s shoes, I don't give a fuck if you want to check your gmail, balance your checkbook, or do some online christmas shopping. If it doesn't mean legal exposure or substantial likelyhood of time consuming or costly network damage(thanks to 3rd party ad networks, virtually any site is a potential risk, but the known hives of scum and villainy are worse...) If your performance sucks, hopefully your performance reviews will reflect that and get you fired. If your performance doesn't suck, the cost of a few megabytes off our big fat institutional connection is A)sunk, we pay for the pipe whether we use it or not and B) probably less than your paperclip budget for the year. I. Don't. Care.
Worker productivity is not a problem that you can solve by dicing up their workday and micromanaging what happens during every second. Decide what performance you want, fire people who don't meet it, keep people who do, promote people who exceed it. Don't fuck around with meaningless(but easy to measure) minutia: that is practically the definition of "cargo cult management".
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Since our primary business is not internet related, we only have a nice-but-modest commercial
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Oh, one other thing (this one actually causes the most friction with the users): we in "IT" generally have to block streaming music sites. This one strikes people as arbitrary and draconian; but the logic is actually pretty clear: unlike streaming video, which is bandwidth intensive but only somebody heading for a pink slip will need more than a few minutes a day of, streaming audio can easily replace the radio.
Speaking as a user, the difference between "arbitrary and draconian" and "annoying but reasonable" is how it's presented.
All too often IT practices are presented as "This is a company resource. IT can institute whatever fucking policies we want, without having to explain ourselves. If you don't want to bend over and take it, quit." However accurate this may be, this comes off as arbitrary and draconian. On the other hand actually explaining, as you did, "constantly-on streaming radio takes up a lot of bandw
I respect that... (Score:2)
Once I get around to bringing headphones to the office, I'm going to plug it into my portable music player rather than fire up Pandora or something. Fair enough.
I suppose understanding/appreciation of basic IT stuff form non-IT types like me is useful.
My music player has a 2.5mm headphone jack rather than the standard 3.5mm, but I've been meaning to buy a special set or a conversion dongle anyways.
Ooh, we have a literal water cooler in the office too.
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nothing to do with boring work or distractions (Score:4, Informative)
This implies (Score:2)
That it is possible to "misuse" a tool that was built to do anything and everything. Sure it is on work time, but if your at your desk during lunch or doing a break at some point, there shouldn't be anything against rubbing one out. Assuming your in an office, not a cubicle anyways.
Miuse of the Internet??!?!?? (Score:2)
I am all for cracking down on misuse of the Internet... 100%. Just like the misuse of anything! I mean come on, think about it.
Now the question is, "What is misuse of the Internet?" Which means the question is then, "What is the purpose of the Internet?" The purpose, design, and original intent of Internet access was to communicate openly and link to other content. If we have a bunch of individuals working for the Aussie government workings locking down the Internet, abusing privacy and preventing
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Hear that sound? That was the main idea of my post flying at mach 12 a foot over your head. Well, not completely, you did state they are semi sane not demoralizing and also likely inhibiting their employees with locked down white-list only access.
But let me help you out, the Aussie government as reported on Slashdot has been flirting with destroying the privacy and free access to the web in many ways. That should be what is an issue to be on Slashdot, this story? Not even in the idle section imho.
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What is misuse of the Internet?
Exactly. As guardians of what is sober and wholesome, I give Australian government workers the benefit of the doubt as to whether it is abuse. If dingo porn is wrong, then I don't want to be right.
Aussie Government and PDFs? (Score:2)
The report — available online as a PDF file
Wait, wait, wait! Didn't we decide last week on Slashdot that the Australian government shouldn't be posting any more PDFs? They make you go blind, or give you hairy palms, or something.
Sounds like a management issue. (Score:1)
As a former government employee, I can attest to the fact that for large amounts of time I was not productively employed. In my case I knew Big Brother was watching so I did not goof off on the Internet. I did goof off in numerous other ways. The fact that the civil servants were goofing off is symptomatic of a bigger problem. A smart manager would realize that the public stewards just have too much time on their hands, and therefore their jobs can be eliminated. In other words the solution is NOT to b
Fast networking vs Oz copper in suburbia (Score:2)
A graph of adsl2+ bitrate as the user gets further away from the exchange.
Add in reality of crushed ducts, old copper, long loops, digital loop carriers (RIM), historical data caps with heavy per mb fines its easy to understand why a fast clean city backhaul like connection is so attractive.
Unauthorised disclosure of information (e.g. leaks) is up too, thats good news
Proxy ? (Score:2)
Frankly, if workers are able to misuse Internet, this means that no filtering proxy has been set up, and the IT didn't do their job (or at least, the upper management didn't ask for a proxy, probably because they 'misuse' Internet too).
It's easy to fix that: just install a proxy, and block whatever site is 'misuse'.
In my opinion, they should only set a proxy for blocking P2P, other download sites and porn.
At my work, we have a proxy, and the most bandwidth-consuming site is Youtube.
Same as it ever was (Score:1)
Before it was the water-cooler and the phone.
Missing the bigger issue here. (Score:2)
I dunno, that is a big place. I think they deserve some break time.
As a government worker.. (Score:2)
As a government IT Security Adminitrator... (Score:2, Interesting)
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Just another pointless petty little annoyance that is trivial on the scale of things but worth mentioning since it's on topic and seems to be happening in a lot of places.
Inefficiency in general... (Score:2)
This came up in a business book I recently read, a hallmark of inefficient work processes - spending lots of time waiting between handoffs of work units, rather than actually completing the work. Sometimes it seems that an order of magnitude more time is spent on waiting.
That analysis looked at the time ti takes a particular work unit to make its way through the chain, rather than the capacity utilization for particular employees; I'm analogizing.
Canberra and our bloated federal public service (Score:2)
The federal government really delivers bugger all to the average Australian. They collect taxes through a very nasty fed
"Misuse" of internet but "team player" (Score:2)
90% of the time it is just people surfing when they have no work to do. That is NOT mis-use of internet, anymore than having people carry a work blackberry when they are not being paid to be working violates overtime laws.
If someone does their job, does not visit porn, does not use up excessive bandwidth, they are not 'misusing the internet'.
If you don't do your job, then you should be fired, and it should NOT matter if you are not doing your job becau
Makes sense (Score:2)
'Maybe it's just a case of particularly boring work making such distractions more attractive,' they suggest, since the report blames most of the discovered cases on one-time incidents of poor judgment."
I'm here posting this instead of doing some data entry. Yeah, it helps blow off steam, but it's also easy to fall into a timesink.