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Facebook banned at Portsmouth City Council

Is five minutes a month too much time for an employee to be spending on Facebook?

By Asavin Wattanajantra, 2 Sep 2009 at 16:39

Portsmouth City Council has banned its employees from using Facebook after it was revealed they were wasting time on the social network.

On average, the 4,500 staff were spending a total of around 400 hours on Facebook each month, which the council said added up to between five and six minutes per month for each person.

According to reports, use of all social networks peaked at 572 hours in the month of August. This was one of the reasons that has led to a blanket ban by the council's chief executive David Williams.

“We revised the policy in July to facilitate work life balance and allow things like internet banking in staff’s own time, but we intend to restrict internet access to social networking sites more than at present for non-business use," he said in a statement.

“Any member of staff may, under this revised policy, make a business case to have these sites unblocked if they need to use them for council business."

Tom Newton, a product manager at web filtering firm Smoothwall, said that the ban could penalise many honest users who were looking at the site at break times, which the council admitted it couldn’t determine.

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4 comments

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Any misuse is too much

Portsmouth council is funded by taxpayers. For employees to use facilities and paid time at taxpayers expense is, plainly and simply, theft. Regardless of "they are only ..." it is, at best, misuse and, at worst, theft. Facilities are available in public libraries for those who wish to access the internet for private purposes in their own time. I get so many emails group forwarded with public office addresses that it is a wonder any work gets done - and then there are all the readers who steal time to read the things.

By hampshirehog on Friday Sep 4

quite agree

well i totally agree with all your comments hampshirehog. your points are very valid

By catenorfolk on Friday Sep 4

Sweeping assumptions just make everyone miserable

hampshirehog makes a sweeping assumption that the usage takes place during work periods. I am tired of people who, apparently, just want to make other people miserable during work. You pay taxes but that's frankly that's not a particularly admirable thing. You're supposed to pay taxes, if you don't you're a criminal, and in return you get services. One of those services is not the right to make people work during their break periods "because you pay their wages". They're council workers, they're not hampshirehog's slaves. They get breaks just like the rest of us. If they choose to spend that break surfing Facebook at least that means they aren't wandering away from their desks when you try to call them. I don't know who's sending you these emails, I suggest you update your spam filter instead of blaming the council.

By steviesteveo on Friday Sep 4

Wasteful

From a security standpoint any social networking site isnt a good idea for any company to be letting its employees use. Companies with lax security practices are the ones that get compromised , database, laptops, usb keys, electronic data and credit card details stolen. Internet usage is a privilege in company time or otherwise and should be treated as such.

By omendata on Tuesday Sep 8