by Mike King
There was a great story recently about how civil servants employed at the Department for Transport spend their time on the internet when at work. It comes in response to a freedom of information request that has resulted in the DfT publishing a list of the 1000 most popular websites visited by its staff.
Apart from the list disclosing the number of visits to each site, no other information about the time of day when the sites were visited or how much time was spent on each has been released. So there’s not really much of a wasted resources angle to the story, though that, predictably, hasn’t stopped the Sun drawing its own conclusions.
The story’s also been picked up by the BBC and The Drum among others.
In addition to the obvious (BBC, Google, The Telegraph etc) there are some interesting sites listed, including a site where visitors can rank MPs based on their sex appeal www.Sexymp.co.uk – seems odd to me, maybe it’s a public sector thing. I can’t say I’ve visited the site myself (apart from for, ahem, research purposes) but it did get me thinking.
All those workplace internet monitoring tools that I’ve always dismissed as the preserve of old-school, untrusting management styles may have something to offer after all. Then again, who’d want to know that their office is full of role playing freaks with an unhealthy sexual fascination with MPs? Or worse still, Tottenham supporters. Frankly, I’d rather not know.
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