41 Porno Surfers Busted!

Mayor Adrian Fenty on Wednesday said he's firing Nine City workers and suspending or sanctioning 32 others for allegedly browsing and downloading pornographic material while on the job. They worked in 18 agencies including the Mayor's Office, The Attorney Generals Office and the Office of Technology which conducted the investigation.

We're not talking about stumbling onto sexually explicit material by mistake, as some of us no doubt have, (It's happened to me). No! We're talking about using the city government computers to register more than 20,000 hits in some cases, in 2007 alone. That means some DC Government employees were averaging about 100 porno site hits PER DAY!. When do you suppose they were working for taxpayers?

Here's the Total Press release issued by the Mayor's Office on Wednesday.



Washington D.C. – Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, City Administrator Dan Tangherlini, Chief Technology Officer Vivek Kundra and the Director of DC Human Resources Brender Gregory announced the enforcement of policies related to use of government computers to visit pornographic or sexual websites. The Mayor announced the termination of up to nine government employees who were found to have visited an egregious amount of pornographic sites during 2007.



“The residents of the District of Columbia have entrusted us with their tax dollars to provide essential services,” said Fenty. “We must ensure that all government employees are using government resources appropriately to provide the best customer service possible.”



The Mayor’s Office took action to enforce the policies after a District Government wide search of computers found widespread usage of government computers to visit pornographic sites across multiple agencies. The investigation by the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) began on December 15, 2007 when the Office of Property Management received a complaint from an employee about employees abusing government resources by browsing and downloading pornographic content on government computers. After the initial investigation discovered a number of employees with a high level of abuse of government resources, OCTO expanded the search government-wide. Eighteen agencies were found to have employees that could potentially be sanctioned.



The investigation by OCTO is ongoing and additional personnel actions may be taken for violation of the policy. Sanctions range from a letter of warning to suspension or termination in the most egregious cases. The Office of Property Management, Child and Family Services Agency, and Office of Contracts and Procurement have taken action to terminate six employees found to have an egregious amount of hits to pornographic websites during the 2007 year.



In light of the large number of employees abusing government resources DCHR, OCTO and the Mayor’s Office have put in place new technology regarding indecent website usage. OCTO has secured the technology to implement a filter for all government computers preventing the use of government resources to access pornographic content. In addition to preventing access to pornographic material, when encountered the filter informs users of the Internet use and access policy.





Continued

OCTO Investigation Timeline



12/15/2007

· Director of OPM reached out to the Chief Technology Officer after receiving a complaint from an employee about employees abusing government resources by browsing and downloading pornographic content

· CTO immediately convened security team to investigate pornographic use within OPM



12/18/2007

· CTO discussed the ongoing OPM investigation with the City Administrator, which led to the decision to expand the investigation citywide

· Commenced detailed citywide forensic analysis on 10,000 users’ pornographic usage ranging from January 1, 2007 - December 31, 2007

· Procured additional 20,000 licenses for the web content management tool to prevent access to pornographic websites citywide



12/20/2007

· DCHR began developing sanctions for employees based on hit counts



1 /2/2008

· Implemented citywide content filtering to prevent further access to pornographic content by using the additional 20,000 licenses



1/22/2008

DCHR internet usage personnel sanction policies finalized.


1/23/2008

18 Agency directors sanction employees found to have violated the Internet usage policy using the new internet usage personnel sanction policies.


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