RSS104,000 Hours Wasted Annually at US Interior Dept.
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published October 5, 2006, 10:37 PM
Government Computer News is reporting that a 15-page Inspector General's report on time wasted by workers at the U.S. Department of the Interior has raised such a stir that the Dept.'s own servers have seen major slowdowns due to excessive downloads of the report.
The IG's report, entitled "Excessive Indulgences: Personal Use of the Internet at the Department of the Interior," estimates that an average of 104,221 work hours per year are wasted by DOI employees alone, simply by those perusing Internet gaming sites. The report cited thousands of collected logs from users' computers showing workers spending between eight and fourteen hours at a time on gaming sites.
But perhaps even more revealing, the report stated that efforts to curb government workers' time-wasting initiatives have either been hilariously ineffective, or have been cut short due to -- of all things -- time constraints.
For instance, the Office of Surface Mining is said to use Web monitoring software as a matter of policy. Despite that fact, says the IG's report, "one OSM official told us that they do not routinely review and monitor Internet usage data, rendering the system useless for any real proactive measures."
For the Office to investigate the logs its monitoring software does generate, the report goes on, a formal request has to be received from a supervisor, who would probably need to provide evidence for probable cause. The evidence, of course, is in the logs, which can't be accessed without permission.
The IG's investigation did turn up one computer which contained 30,000 pieces of child pornography. The user was immediately arrested and indicted, and has since received an eight-year prison sentence. Two other employees were also indicted for child pornography charges, and received 21-month sentences.
In the case of the Bureau of Reclamation, the installation of Web monitoring software, the report states, may have actually contributed to workers' interest in accessing sexually explicit Web sites, simply on account of having to jump through hoops to get there. One other bureau only managed to adopt Web blocking software just last August, although a spot test of that software yielding laughable results. Testers were able to use the logs themselves as a guide for how to bypass policy controls.
"Based on our findings," the Inspector General's report states, "we believe that the Department and Bureaus would do well not to be lulled into a false sense of security that these filtering tools provide a significant level of protection. Instead, reports generated by these filtering tools should be routinely reviewed to promptly identify prohibited activity and close the gap in the software capabilities."
The GCN story states that DOI network users complaining about current lag times are being responded to with apologetic e-mails explaining that excessive downloads of the "Excessive Indulgences" report are creating traffic tie-ups on the network.
An easy solution is to stop spending tax payer money on "water coolers"....
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|I'd like to see a report about the time wasted at a Fortune 500 company. We love to pick on government, but I can't tell you how many people I know dragging down high six-figure incomes to surf the web on much nicer computers and in bigger cubicles.
Then again, there's the waste of $100 million on the CEO's house.
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|One could make the case that the folks wasting time to quantify this 'factoid' were wasting valuable time instead of contributing to the bottom line as well!
Who says playing with SPSS can't be viewed a complex video game!
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|Damn, so is this article saying I shouldn't work 2 hrs, and play or browse the web for 6 as I currently do?
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|F'in pencil-pushers...
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|The article did say; "simply by those perusing Internet gaming sites". It didn't even mention how much time is being wasted by Instant Messaging, online shopping, reading personal emails, etc. Can you imagine how well things would work if they put all that time into 'serving the public' by whom they are getting paid.
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|Funny, i always thought most people in this country are OVER-worked. Well the ones WITH jobs anyway :)
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|Goverment employees are not like regular working people. When their customers don't pay they can put them in jail.
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|This article is pointless. Do they really expect human works like robot? At least they do glue to their desk. If they do an study on how much time smokers take on their break, they going to ban all smokers from the workforce.
The article shows nothing except poor leadership. Yes, they can fire all these people, the next group they hire will be the same because of poor leadership. Remember what the military says "There is no bad soldiers, just bad leaders"
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|"Do they really expect human works like robot?"
Every job i've ever had, yes!
But i work for myself now. And i just love my boss.
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|You dont have to work like a robot to earn your keep. An honest days work, for an honest days pay. Theyre not going to fire any of them anyway, except the ones caught with pornography maybe. But if they did fire them, there would be no need to replace them. If theyre spending that much time for personal use of the computer, as opposed to doing the job theyre getting paid to do, then they dont need them anyway. If they do happen to fire any, they will use the few that actually do work as scapegoats, and keep the deadheads. If they did a more in depth study, of more departments, they would find this in every dept. , and i imagine that 104,000 hours is a conservative figure. And they always say they cant trim the budget anymore.haha
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|I believe simply this:
If you spend all day working, you'll get stressed out, a little minesweeper, or bejeweled can help you relax and focus again.
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also, installing software on each PC to stop employees from browsing the web for personal reasons instead of business reasons is impractical. People will always find a way to slack at work, its human nature. If they aren't playing games online, they will just play games offline.
Or am I just a raving loony?
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|i dont know, but from what i see working at a school, everyone uses the motto, "Good enough for government work." It seems to me that they slack off just be cause they can, and they do it to excess, like a 20 minute break every hour, essentially doing no work at all.
Of course this is only the support staff, not teachers or IT members, who get acused of slacking cause nobody realizes the amount of computer work we really have to do.
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|I'm a programmer with the government, but this applies to every business, government or not. Nobody is going to work all the time. For example, me reading betanews. It's not technically working, but IMO it helps me out as a technology worker. Most of my "goofing off" involve things of that nature, but then again I'm sure a lot of betanews readers do the same thing as me.
However, playing games at work or looking at anything that could be considered indecent is a big no no, and pretty freakin' stupid.
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|Well i can only go by my experiences, which i have to admit are limited at best. personnally i do most of my browsing during my enforced break times. meh whatcha gonna do right?
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|Yeah, like anyone anywhere is 100% efficient!
So come on! No small talk, no time to be polite or sociable! If it doesn't directly contribute to productive accomplishment it is not allowed!
Maybe its time to examine the underlying nonsense assumptions that predicate the absurd studies that have become ridiculous examples of modern society!
And I love the folks complaining about the government, AS IF trolling THIS site is part of YOUR self-righteous PRODUCTIVE job description!
The headlines should instead perhaps read: BetaNews uncovers studies that confirm employees are people! Study discovers that People are not 100% efficient!
Yawn.... Hell, even robots on assembly lines have down time!
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|I think you're missing the point here.
Sure, all of us spend time in an unproductive way, but the amount of time being spend on unproductive avenues during work hours has grown tremendously as the internet revolution has grown. As far as you comparing time spent reading articles about Information Technology to the time being spent playing games, they aren't even on the same level. Some of us HAVE to research the latest and greatest software and hardware, and keep up with the news in the I.T. industry, our jobs depend on it!
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|They are doing EXACTLY what you are doing for the same stated reasons! Rationalize it in whatever selfserving manner you like.
What makes you so immune to that which you attribute to others?
And considering the majority of what is debated here is 'which OS platform is better' ( a zero sum game in the enterprise) and rabid anti-DRM rants (as if music is critical to IT!) - neither of which have anything to do with the net availability of enterprise jobs! Whether you use a Mac or Windows does not radically effect jobs - unless you actually accept the potential for there to be less of a need for support for Mac systems!
And unless you are a CIO, you don't have to worry about strategic planning for the 'the latest and greatest software and hardware', most of which is NOT adopted early on by the enterprise sector - an area (with rare exception!) notorious for being late adopters of new technology! In fact, the lack of compelling reasons for updating desktops to run email, a browser, and Word and the few apps necessary on a typical business desktop is a significant drag on the market! And the scant few "some of us" do NOT represent the majority of employees in any market sector!
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|i think the point in this report was that people are spending a tremendous amount of time surfing the internet and doing very little work.
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|The FACT is that our productivity levels are higher now then anytime in the past!
Now, if we could just outlaw superfluous talking...and arrange for people to LIVE at the office and eliminate wasted time commuting! ;-)
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|Its a pretty good bet , that you arent in business for yourself, and you dont have any employees. Or you have one of them govment jobs, and you do as little as possible except holding your hand out for your check. lol If you think screwing off at work is so normal and cool, quit your job, and become self employed. Then you can screw off all you want and your boss wont say anything about it. You wont have much of a check to hold your hand out for though. pimpl !
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|all we need is some armed goons and a few army cots in cubicles!
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|This is a real surprise. With 7800 computer users, that only turns out to be roughly 15 minutes of messing around a week per worker. That is amazingly low...
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|thats assuming that they are all doing it. now i would believe more, that some do it a bit, but some probably take it to excess. and hell im sure there are a few that are perfect shining angels. but probably not that many.
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|Is this any surprise?
If our government and any affiliated agencys that use tax payers money were run like businesses, we'd probably save billions yearly, if not monthly.
You know many DPW departments work slower to use up their budget - why can't they work faster and just do more - they'd still meet their budget by spending more on products rather than time.
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