Sponsor: CDW-G More from Governing Revolution in the Stacks: To appeal to a new generation, libraries are positioning themselves as places to create content. Read Governing magazine: Complimentary subscriptions for many public officials WiMAXed Out: Why one wireless broadband option hasn't lived up to its hype. The Rediscovery of Place: Despite all predictions, old-fashioned geographical community still triumphs over technology. Going Viral: The video a state or locality puts up on YouTube doesn't have to be wacky, but it helps. The Junkyard Crew: Governments struggle to keep up with a surge of high-tech waste. In Idea Center: Telemedicine in the ICU, and more From Governing's 13th Floor blog: Coverage of Managing Technology 2008 from Seattle. Grading the States 2008: Governing's 50-state management report card. Daily technology news on Governing.com Upcoming Events June 17-19: Governing management workshops in Raleigh, N.C. Aug. 3-7: Association of Public Safety Communications Officials in Kansas City, Mo. Sept. 3-6: National Association of Legislative Information Technology Professional Development Seminar in Louisville, Ky. Sept. 7-11: National States Geographic Information Council 2008 annual conference in Keystone, Colo. Sept. 9-12: National Association of Government Webmasters annual conference in Chicago Sept. 16-21: National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors annual meeting in Atlanta Sept. 21-24: National Association of State Chief Information Officers annual conference in Milwaukee Sept. 30-Oct. 1: Governing management workshops in Austin, Texas Oct. 1-3: Governing's Managing Performance 2008 conference in Austin, Texas

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June 2008

GOVERNMENT 0.0: WORK WITHOUT THE WEB
When it comes to government workers misbehaving online, Bill Schrier has plenty of horror stories. Seattle's chief technology officer has seen city employees use their work computers to visit Internet dating sites and their city e-mail addresses to shop and sell on Craigslist and eBay. They have downloaded and left "images of half-clothed people on the computer screen, scandalizing a co-worker." And in a typical month, Schrier's staff wipes clean five city computers that have been "infected with malware from visiting non-business Web sites."

The Managing Technology Letter is edited by Governing's Mark Stencel. Got an idea? Contact us at techletter@ governing.com.

These and other "realities of working in government agencies" give Schrier "a different view" on at-work Internet use from the one I outlined in a column that appeared in Governing's May issue and last month's newsletter. (Column: At Work on the Web) And since Schrier is among the most insightful municipal technology leaders I know, the concerns he detailed in his blog (Seattle's Chief Geek) gave me pause.

I also heard from plenty of aggravated state and local workers who agreed with my conclusion that overly restrictive Internet-use policies in government offices may do just as much harm as they aim to prevent.

A senior official from a county in Iowa, for instance, wrote to tell me that he had reached the "boiling point" with his jurisdiction's Internet policy. His frustration started with a link to the local radio station -- a link posted on his county's own Web site. Blocked. Later the official tried downloading maps from a site that showed gas pipelines in his community. Nope -- blocked again. When the official also was prevented from watching an online sample video of a potential conference speaker, he said he actually left the office "to regain his composure." In all three instances this official was trying to download information that was directly relevant to his work for the county.

Technology administrators have good reason to use tools such as Websense to monitor employees' online activities, and even to block access to clearly inappropriate content. On the other hand, some policies go too far, imposing Internet restrictions that seem to have as much to do with public-relations worries as they do with real security and productivity concerns. Meanwhile, overly stringent limits on online activity risk hampering creative thinking and best practices for e-government and discouraging the next generation of technology thinkers from considering government careers.

Many of the dot-gov'ers who contacted me agreed that clear and enforceable Internet-use policies, regular training, and strong security software are better long-term remedies than cutting off access to information that has potential to improve how government does business.

But just as many government tech leaders told me that my thinking was naive and that I was understating the security threats and management challenges they face when it comes to employee Web trolling. One New York official said bluntly that I was just not "seeing the constant barrage of attacks on our network, all of which are coming from the Internet."

Writing in his blog, Seattle's Schrier made clear he was in that camp too. Many diligent, well-intentioned, hard-working city employees just "can't help themselves from surfing or bidding on eBay or browsing MySpace for their friends," he wrote. Most of those workers earn enough to "buy a personal computer for home" and have the time "to indulge themselves in the cyberworld" there.

"Public employees are held to a higher standard than workers in any other industry," Schrier said. "When there's a disaster, private employers shut down and their employees go home. Public employees work 12-hour shifts for the duration of the emergency. Those same higher standards apply to use of city equipment and conduct at work day-to-day, and the Internet content filters remind all of us of our duty to meet that standard."

Websense and other Internet filtering software reduce the need to formally discipline workers for non-business use of city computers and "helps keep honest people honest," Schrier said, comparing some of the online conduct he has seen to problems "with pin-up girls decorating cubicles" in earlier times. "The Pin-up Girls are long gone from the workplace. Let's not bring them back with the web and Internet."

Banning pin-ups on office walls makes perfect sense to me -- as do reasonable limits on and policing of Internet use. But as I put it in a comment on Schrier's blog, blocking access to useful and appropriate online content just because there also is inappropriate content out there seems to me like the equivalent of banning the wall, not just the pin-up.

Schrier thought that analogy was flawed too. "In the case of pin-up posters, what had to be regulated was not the walls nor the posters, but the behavior of employees who could not regulate themselves," he wrote back. "The same is true of Websense or other Internet monitoring/blocking software. We are not regulating the Internet itself (walls) or content (pin-up posters) but rather the behavior of employees who cannot regulate themselves."

If you have your own take on this complicated subject, leave a comment and join our ongoing online conversation. You'll also find that Seattle's Chief Geek has plenty of other smart and useful ideas and observations. Assuming, that is, you can access blogs from your computer.

TWITTERING ONE'S THUMBS
My Seattle friend Bill Schrier not only was among the several hundred state and local officials on hand last week when his city hosted Governing's 10th annual Managing Technology conference, but he was blogging about it too.

The Governing staff in Seattle blogged about the conference proceedings on our own Web site as well, posting items about fusion centers, the public-record implications of Web 2.0, and a handful of the numerous other topics we covered in three busy days of discussion. (Blog posts from Managing Technology)

I also enjoyed a running commentary on the conference via a Twitter feed from David Fletcher, Utah's chief technology officer. Fletcher was one of two people who raised their hands when I asked a lunch crowd of a few hundred who among them was using Twitter.

The governmental potential of services such as Twitter, particularly for emergency management and communication, was a topic we covered in some depth in the closing session of the conference. Twitter feeds posted by communities from Los Angeles to Franklin, Mass., help illustrate the potential too.

However, Twitter's architecture is having a tough time keeping up with its popularity, creating annoying and frequent service disruptions. In fact, the problems are serious enough that the company has established a blog (status.twitter.com) just to talk about how it's dealing with performance and reliability concerns. Those issues ultimately may limit Twitter's public-sector application for sharing critical information -- at least in the near term. But the platform is still worth exploring and understanding.

Still no idea what I'm talking about? Actually, many conference attendees told us they had no idea what Twitter or microblogging was all about. So we showed a short video -- Twitter in Plain English -- to convey the basics and kick off the conversation. Maybe it will give you ideas too.

Is your state or locality using Twitter, formally or informally? Let us know at techletter@governing.com

HELP FOR HELPING HANDS
If social services and health overlap with your responsibilities in any way, you'll want to sign up for our latest e-mail newsletter: Human Services Monthly, written by Governing's Jonathan Walters. This free e-newsletter debuts later this month.