US department blocks the bloggers

United States department of the interior chief information officer Hord Tipton has just delivered his presentation at the AFR's Government Technology Summit here in Canberra, Australia.

Interesting, smart guy. My ears pricked up when he started talking about how the government has implemented web filtering across approximately 45 categories, including all the usual areas: porn, dating services etc. Then out comes this pearler.

"We blocked the bloggers. That is a first ammendment right as far as bloggers are concerned," he said. "They have taken over in the United States."

Bloggers were apparently wasting time and not doing their 'real jobs.' The audience here laughed at the fact that Hord had upset his department's bloggers. 

But seriously, blogging an elicit activity worthy of being banned like porn sites? Yikes.

If there are any blocked corporate/government bloggers out there, I like to hear how that's affected your attitude towards your employer.

Comments

[Simon Sharwood]

Fair enough, IMHO.

Sure corporate blogging is fine, if it is part of someone's role.

But I find blogging can be a massive productivity drain - in fact why am I writing this now instead of filing something for an editor?

[Cameron Reilly]

It amazes me that in this day and age employers still havent figured out that the only way to manage white collar "information workers" is to make them responsible for an outcome, not for punch card activity. If you agree with your employee that their objective in any week/month is to achieve a certain outcome, then who cares what the hell they do during work hours as long as the job gets done when they said it was going to get done? This draconian method of whipping the slave labourers into action isn't going to lead to more productive employees - it's going to lead to sullen revolt.

cheers
Cameron Reilly
CEO, The Podcast Network
GET PODCASTS: www.thepodcastnetwork.com

[Mark Jones]

Cam - My sentiments entirely.

[Simon Sharwood]

I agree that the outcome should be the main thing, but with my self-employed hat on know that blogging is something that limits my output - my outcome could be greater if I were more focussed during working hours.
I reckon employers are keen to make sure the output of the people they pay is as high as possible, hence blog bans.
I also find that when I muck around with blogs, I end up working nights to catch up on things.
Work/life balance is one thing. I', not sure if achieving it at the expense of Work/life mashup is quite the answer.

[provokeit]

I think it's stoopidity in a lot of cases, not all, that employers stop people from blogging during the day - obviously if the blogging is not harming the business etc.

Most people in the blogging world have a large element of creativity about them. That's what makes them writers.

For anyone with a half an understanding of how creative people work, they understand that it's not 9-5. So to say that a regular work day, 5 days a week, is going to produce the same personal best for all people is ridiculous.

As a developer in my early years, and now as a CIO in my latter years, I still get my best hours of work done outside of 9-5!

Employers have to be adaptive.

Remember 7 years ago when employers were shirty when people used internet banking during the day and were getting shirty? Employers stopping this sort of thing happening now would lose staff by the droves.

Let's wait for the next shift in employer thinking. It's early days for blogging at work - in fact, flexible working hours completely, where people just do what they need to do and get the same results from the same 40 hours spread out through the week.

It will be the next major phase of employment and it's what the next generation of employees want as standard.