Porn Fed
This story from the conservative Washington Times promises "exclusive" coverage of "Porn surfing rampant at U.S. science foundation." Supposedly the NSF is experiencing a sixfold increase in problems with pornography-viewing on computers in government workplaces, which creates not only the potential for a hostile work environment but also lost work productivity among employees.
"To manage this dramatic increase without an increase in staff required us to significantly reduce our efforts to investigate grant fraud," the inspector general recently told Congress in a budget request. "We anticipate a significant decline in investigative recoveries and prosecutions in coming years as a direct result."
The budget request doesn't state the nature or number of the misconduct cases, but records obtained by The Times through the Freedom of Information Act laid bare the extent of the well-publicized porn problem inside the government-backed foundation.
For instance, one senior executive spent at least 331 days looking at pornography on his government computer and chatting online with nude or partially clad women without being detected, the records show.
When finally caught, the NSF official retired. He even offered, among other explanations, a humanitarian defense, suggesting that he frequented the porn sites to provide a living to the poor overseas women. Investigators put the cost to taxpayers of the senior official's porn surfing at between $13,800 and about $58,000.
I'm interested in where some of the numbers come from. Has porn-watching increased or is it just being monitored for the first time? Is the estimate of taxpayer cost based on lost work hours or on misappropriated funds?
There was also a more subtle argument against federal investment in the public knowledge sector that is made more explicitly in the website for Citizens Against Government Waste, a group quoted in the article. Republican lawmakers also play a prominent role in the investigation.
The report caught the attention of Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, who launched an inquiry that generated unwanted media attention on the online activities of employees at the foundation.
Computer surveillance by government agencies of private citizens has certainly been controversial in the past, but most Americans accept the idea that workers on the public dime should accept that their labor must take place in a panopticon.
"To manage this dramatic increase without an increase in staff required us to significantly reduce our efforts to investigate grant fraud," the inspector general recently told Congress in a budget request. "We anticipate a significant decline in investigative recoveries and prosecutions in coming years as a direct result."
The budget request doesn't state the nature or number of the misconduct cases, but records obtained by The Times through the Freedom of Information Act laid bare the extent of the well-publicized porn problem inside the government-backed foundation.
For instance, one senior executive spent at least 331 days looking at pornography on his government computer and chatting online with nude or partially clad women without being detected, the records show.
When finally caught, the NSF official retired. He even offered, among other explanations, a humanitarian defense, suggesting that he frequented the porn sites to provide a living to the poor overseas women. Investigators put the cost to taxpayers of the senior official's porn surfing at between $13,800 and about $58,000.
I'm interested in where some of the numbers come from. Has porn-watching increased or is it just being monitored for the first time? Is the estimate of taxpayer cost based on lost work hours or on misappropriated funds?
There was also a more subtle argument against federal investment in the public knowledge sector that is made more explicitly in the website for Citizens Against Government Waste, a group quoted in the article. Republican lawmakers also play a prominent role in the investigation.
The report caught the attention of Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, who launched an inquiry that generated unwanted media attention on the online activities of employees at the foundation.
Computer surveillance by government agencies of private citizens has certainly been controversial in the past, but most Americans accept the idea that workers on the public dime should accept that their labor must take place in a panopticon.
posted by Liz Losh at 12:43 AM
2 Comments:
Would it be equally problematic if NSF employees were spending large chunks of their time watching cute kitten videos instead of reviewing grants? I'd expect so.
You might want to add a tag: "productivity" to this post.
When I hear these stories, I can't figure out whether the employees are being terminated for looking at porn, a lawful activity, or for wasting time. This came up recently at a dinner with a NASA manager. She told us how she had just terminated another manager who was logged onto porn sites for six hours a day. I asked her if the employee was still fulfilling his job responsibilities in spite of wasting six hours a day. She said he did. When I asked if she replaced the terminated employee she said she did. When I asked her why she bothered to replace him she looked at me like I was crazy.
My view was that if all the responsibilities of the terminated employee could be done in two hours; it would be cheaper to delegate those responsibilities to some other person and eliminate the original position altogether.
I also asked her if the manager would have been terminated for being logged onto the Houston Chronicle for six hours a day and she said no. Go figure.
Post a Comment
<< Home