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Report Finds More Aussie Gov't Workers Misusing Internet
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."
Huge year-to-year changes are more likely to result from changes to enforcement rather than changes to actual behavior.
I demand the Australian Government sends a strong message that this won't be tolerated. They must dissolve the Australian Tax Office.
Government workers are people too. Just like the people in businesses all around the world shopping for shoes on the clock.
Makes you wonder what costs more: 313 federal workers shopping for shoes on the clock, or the 313 investigations into their behavior that ensued.
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?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Don't get me wrong, under normal circumstances I love the Aussies. But they are such bad winners. Whenever I lose a game of chess to an Aussie they say: mate mate. Come one - I can see it's mate! Don't have to tell me twice. A bunch of insensitive clods, that's what they are!
whitelisting known sites has download falls for real work and can lead to big work slow downs with the sites move there pages around.
If this is just one-offs in judgement as indicated, big deal! There's a vast difference between people like the completely useless bozo I unfortunately work with who spends the entire day alternating bewteen MSN, and Facebook, and people who might access the odd online shop or whatever inbetween work. It's funny how the OZ Gov can blow billions on wasteful projects, (the insulation scheme of death comes to mind, along with Myki), but they worry about a number of people who might have used internet for a non-work related issue?
These studies about (almost always public sector) workers and their terrible, terrible internet misuse seem like little more than ammunition for the handwringers, and maybe a couple of privatization zealouts.
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".
How does this compare to other misuses? The biggest problem obviously is time wasted. So does Internet add to other waste of time or does it replace it? Does this abuse make them less productive or more productive?
I hate these kind of studies as they are extremely one sided. Used to work for a company that did not allow surfing, so instead people where reading a newspaper. No problem, because it was not easily measurable by looking at a log.
People are not 100% productive. Get over it and start figuring out to praise them by what they do, not punish them by what they don't. Every dogs and raising-kids tv show can tell you that. Management by fear only works for a short period of time.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If I hadn't already posted, I'd give you all my mod points for the next month! I sincerely hope that most companies (and governmental organisations) realise the wisdom in this line of thinking.
I can tell you the article must be something worth reading, it's been blocked!
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.
Since our primary business is not internet related, we only have a nice-but-modest commercial connection setup(ie. multiple redundancies; but actually a bit under 100Mb/s down for over 1,000 users). Since user traffic is quite bursty, this is virtually never a problem. Most user downloads are remote host limited, and against fast remote hosts 1-2 megabytes a second are not uncommon. However, if we assume that "streaming audio" means "64-128Kb/s, per terminal", even a solid 100megabit line could only support 1600 concurrent 64Kb/s or 800 128Kb/s users, and that only if nothing else where going on, which isn't the case.
I suspect that other moderate to large sites are fairly similar: their pipes are faster, and almost definitely more redundant, than what comes to your house; but if evenly divided(instead of burstily divided) among all users across a site, they are actually pretty under-provisioned. Since real-world traffic is typically bursty, they'll run like a bat out of hell if you catch them at the right time; but if the entire accounting department is tuning in to 128Kb/s EZ-listening, that could easily eat 3/4 of the pipe...
The reason the ATO is so high on the list has nothing to do with behaviour of its staff (at least there behaviour is no worse than any other departments staff) and everything to do with how strictly they enforce the rules. As someone that works with many of the agencies in Aus the enforcement ranges from ATO's strict handling of the issue to many other departments that do nothing at all or hand out warning for all but the worst breaches, hell I worked at one that specifically told me to disable logging as if they logged the traffic they would have to do something about it and they didn't have the policy's in place to handle the legal issues that would arise at the time.
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.
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
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 users from linking or being a part of it in some way, then fire them all! They should have more respect for it and the citizens of Australia. But I guess one can't respect something else if they can't respect themselves...
Oh wait, this story is mislabeled and really about the Aussie government (politicians) and 54% of the government workers agree? Well, being that most civil servants do what they are told, at least you still have the majority support there.
Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.
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.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
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 ban 'viewing of porn during the work day. It is to keep firing the 'civil servants' until they are so overworked (some would say rightly worked) that they just do not have time to look at naked ladies at work.
-I wish to apologize to the tax payers for wasting their money at times at times. However they should know that I left because I realized that I was wasting their money. There are many many more civil employees who's sins were much more egregious than mine, and they continue to be employed at your expense. For example do you Australians really need PSA telling you to 'be safe' every 15 minutes. These are jobs that can be eliminated.
-Very Respectfully.
-Former public employee who realized the error of his ways.
http://www.internode.on.net/residential/broadband/adsl/extreme/performance/ :)
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
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
misuse the internet ???? , like used it to prop up a falling wall ?? its just as bad as claiming that some one mis-used cocaine, ?? did they use it as wall paper paste or something. or abused it, did they prevent it from eating or something ????????????? perhaps they mean they didnt follow there work contract conditions by using the internet for personal use.
ho de hum
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 bandwith -- it would cost the company too much money to allow it" makes it sound like you have some sort of reason, and aren't just banning it because you're misanthropes, hell-bent on eradicating all signs of happiness.
Unfortunately there are always a few people who will view any explanation as an invitation to argue. I think most IT guys, in order to avoid dealing with the 1% of complainers, have adopted policies which stick it to the rest of the 99% of the workforce. Where I work, they've done the sensible thing of explaining the rationale of changes/policies up front (e.g. in the initial memo), and then only pulling out the "because we said so" stick out privately for the few annoying individuals who make a pain of themselves. (They also do a good cop/bad cop thing where there's one IT guy who does most of the public-facing work, and another guy who's the one who wields the LART. )
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.
Before it was the water-cooler and the phone.
Table-ized A.I.
So according to the numbers reported, 202 (last year) to 313 (this year), is a 54% increase, which means that the Aussie government is run by less than 750 people?
I dunno, that is a big place. I think they deserve some break time.
Okay, so I work for the U.S. government, not the Aussies, but I'm betting it's similar there; as a fed, you spend a ridiculous amont of time waiting on things. I see no reason to vilify people who honestly can't do anything but twiddle their thumbs waiting for something else to happen.
Okay, so I work as a contractor for an Australian government department, as an IT Security Administrator no less... by accessing pornography, pirated material, games etc. you're opening up a vector for attack which can be exploited by a variety of malware, from Flash exploits to browser exploits, all because you bastards want to use work resources for non-work reasons. Now, I don't care that much if people use work resources for non-work reasons but when it threatens the confidentiality, integrity and availability of various systems on the network then it becomes my problem which in turn becomes everyone's problem on the network. Most of this crap is sent via email and people accessing links from said emails, with the increase of sophisticated social engineering attacks, with some specially crafted for a target, and with the average employee's ability to determine what's real and what isn't (fuck all) it can become a serious problem quite quickly especially when politicians and people with have evaluated privileges for certain systems do it as well.
Quid pro quo. In the UK, they estimate 7Bn in lost revenue and expenses from abuse of work internet.
In an earlier study, unpaid overtime is owed to the tune of 17Bn a year in the UK.
Swap?
The federal government really delivers bugger all to the average Australian. They collect taxes through a very nasty federal tax office, blow billions on defence Defence so we can get involved in wars that have nothing to do with us, and the rest is pork barreled out at election time.
But both the Labor and Liberal Party are pro-big government which is why Canberra - the federal capital - is experiencing a huge spurt in growth as these departments bloat up, all paid for by our taxes. The federal public service has a reputation for sloth and corruption, and promotions and hires (supposedly by independent panels) is really based on where your mates or your dad's mates work.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/burgeoning-bureaucracy/story-e6frerdf-1225866150479
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 that folks aren't spending as much time trying to circumvent the system. Now certainly we block production tools from reaching the Internet (they're on their own insulated subnets, so it's drop-easy to wall them off), but office computers are only proxied enough to keep things efficient.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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 because you are texting/talking to your friends on the phone (your personal one), or if you are using the massively capable communication device sitting in front of you.
Imagine you are a CEO and you ask your secretary to confirm your personal vacation plans. If she does that on the internet would that be "MISUSE"? What if the CEO does it himself? No. Neither is Misuse. It only becomes misuse if the personal stuff gets in the way of your job, and then it is poor work habits, not anything to do with the interent. This is just evil shmucks trying to redefine perfectably normal behavior that everyone (INCLUDING CEO'S) does.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
'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.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
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.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
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.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I worked at the ATO HQ in their IT section around ten years ago. Even then, the porn situation was so bad that we had a workstation dedicated entirely to scanning the network 24/7 and deleting the most obvious porn from users' home directories and corporate team folders. And this was just the blindingly obvious porn images and videos. We never had time to search for anything which was even lightly hidden, because every time we'd run a search for something like *porn*.mpg, we'd time out after 20,000 hits and have to tell the workstation "Go delete those 20K hits and then search again."
I couldn't say what the regional (state) servers were like, but the national servers were so stuffed to the gills with porn I was honestly surprised that there was room to store anything else at all.
If anyone reading this was also in that team and wants proof I was there, let me just say this: The Alsatian porn video and the executive colour printer. That is all.