D.C. to More Closely Monitor Web Surfing

WASHINGTON - Now that 41 District workers have been fired or suspended after visiting pornographic Web sites on government computers, the city is cranking up the technology to keep an eye on all government computers.

"We have a system for tracking people's use and redirecting people's computers away from those sites, to get people back to work, serving the citizens of the District of Columbia," says D.C. City Administrator Dan Tangherlini.

Before its investigation, D.C. could track 10,000 computers. Now the city can monitor 30,000.

"Content will be filtered. Those sites will be blocked and re-directed to our policy of appropriate use," says Chief Technology Officer Vivek Kundra.

Rather than just have a policy on paper, every time a city worker logs in on a city computer, he'll see a warning about inappropriate computer use.

The District fired nine employees and suspended 32 employees during its investigation. The fired employees include men and women, but officials would not say how many.

D.C. officials are continuing their investigation and say more employees may be fired or suspended.

An internal investigation by the Office of the Chief Technology Officer revealed 20,000 hits from pornographic Web sites on the nine fired employees' computers in 2007.

The 32 suspended employees accessed pornographic Web sites 2,000 times in 2007, the investigation found.

Of the fired employees' estimated 200 work days a year, the investigation showed that they visited pornographic Web sites 100 times per day, Mayor Adrian Fenty says.

Employees from 18 city agencies, including the Office of the Attorney General, were accessing pornographic or sexual Web sites.

D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles says the employees' actions are egregious.

"It's outrageous that people should access hard-core pornography, but to do it on government time...," Nickles says. "This will not be tolerated in our government, and least of all in the Office of the Attorney General."

The investigation began on Dec. 15 after the Office of Property Management received a complaint from an employee about other employees browsing and downloading pornographic content on government computers.

None of the accessed Web sites involved child pornography.

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