Friday, October 06, 2006

I Have *Got* To Get a Government Job

Sounds like there's not a whole lot of work pressure at the Dept of the Interior.

Computer-use logs revealed more than 4,732 entries relating to sexually explicit Web sites and gambling sites. Some computers accessed sex sites for 30 to 60 minutes during the test period.

Department of the Interior. Don't they deal with parks and Jack Abramoff Native Americans?

Despite these ongoing issues, the department is sensitive to Internet misuse, having had several employees convicted in the past for various offenses, including possession of child pornography. The department has appropriate-use policies in place and conducts regular training, although it does not have a system[-]wide monitor or blocking system yet. Some bureaus within the department do use such tools, and there are plans to provide them department[-]wide.

Well, policies are a first step. But for them to be effective, they need to be enforced. Here's a case where a centralized security management system would come in handy. All the information from various monitoring and security tools gets aggregated in one place. With the correct data mining techniques you would be surpirsed and the kind of information and conclusions that can be pulled.

I don't see this improving any time soon. They got an "F" on the government's security audit in 2005 (so did Homeland Security -- yikes!). Unfortunately, I have a feeling they'll concentrate on
only the perimeter, as most people mistakenly do. Not a bad thing, but we like to call that crunchy on the outside -- chewy in the middle in my business.

Regardless, they have these slope-brow, lazy-ass freaks playing games and wanking to porn when they should be doing their job. It sounds a lot like economic agency models (PDF file) at work. (via Prof. Bainbridge's article on Casino Dealers). It looks like there's no incentive here to do real work. Nor much punishment to correct behavior (unless you download child-porn -- people tend to get worked up over that). Most government employees get paid no matter what their level of performance.

Perhaps I should get off my high horse. Because, I am supposed to be... uh... working right now.