Social Networking And Government Employees

By FITSNews || Should state employees be allowed access to social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter or MySpace?

What if it was for (cough) work purposes only? And what if – get this – it actually saved taxpayer time and resources by cutting down on the number of databases that government needed to create and maintain?

Look, you will be hard-pressed to find a more anti-bureaucratic site than this one anywhere in America.  We don’t want to Alfred P. Murrah anybody, obviously, but to say that we harbor an abiding disgust for the bureaucratic class in Washington D.C. and in state capitals across the country would be putting it politely.

Accordingly, the notion of giving a bunch of Twinkie-shoveling, fingernail-filing, productivity-averse dim bulbs access to the friggin’ “Holy Grail of Time-Wasting” strikes us as inherently dangerous – and stupid.

Of course, we’ve been exposed to both sides of this coin.

On the one hand, we’ve watched state employees playing Farmville and blabbing incessantly about themselves to anyone who will listen – all while they adjust their stretch pants to accommodate the latest pastry as they try to figure out which Sex in the City character they are. On the other hand, we’ve seen state employees who actually care about their jobs (yes, a few of those do exist) forced to pull extra hours at home because they weren’t permitted access to these social networking sites at work.

Wait … wait? Come again?

Think about it. When you’re trying to find somebody these days, where’s the first place you usually go to look? Or … suppose you’re trying to inform people en masse about something (like an event), or wanting them to join a group of some sort?

If you answered “MyTwitBook” to any of those questions … you’re right (and wow, there actually is a MyTwitBook.com … go figure).

In fact, we spoke to several S.C. state employees (with varying degrees of MyTwitBook clearance on their work computers) about this issue, and several of them told us they could do their jobs better if they were permitted access to social networking sites at work.

Meanwhile, of course, we spoke with more than a few state employees who admitted that access to these sites at work hindered their productivity.

What’s your take …

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