Blocking Facebook at Federal Agencies

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Richard McKnight on August 30, 2010 at 11:41pm

So a disclaimer, I work in the private sector, so I may be looking at this through a different lens.

I used to work for a large financial services firm and at different points in time various web sites (such as Facebook) were blocked. For the most part this was done for security and compliance reasons rather than productivity and infrastructure cost.

In my opinion Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites are on line communities of sorts. Like any community they facilitate work, play, and participations by individuals and groups. Like any community, there should be the expectation that people will act responsibly.

It is a bit of a balancing act. Most productive employees have very little time for personal communications during the day. On the other hand, to say to an employee that may work long hours and is tethered to their blackberry out of hours, that they cannot spend a couple of minutes reaching out to friends/family during the day may be a bit draconian.

A clear code of conduct regarding the use of agency resources and culture that rewards performance and productivity is probably the best weapon against abuse of network resources.

Permalink Reply by Lauri Stevens on September 1, 2010 at 1:04pm

I work exclusively with law enforcement and I've heard many comments from commanders of agencies at federal and local levels that Facebook is creating a big problem with loss of productivity. To me, that's a discipline or training issue though.

Facebook in law enforcement is an ideal way for LE to engage citizens and many agencies are figuring that out.

A big problem still exists for School Resource Officers. In schools they're often blocked from all social media sites when that's precisely where they need to be to reach the kids.

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