Who knew that working for the state Department of Transportation was a XXX job?
Apparently at least 22 employees ? police officers and maintenance staff ? regularly accessed sexually explicit material in 2006 while on duty, according to a recent report by the Office of Legislative Audits.
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The report found that six Maryland Aviation Administration employees “accessed inappropriate materials from 6 to 600 times over periods ranging from 2 to 8 days.” It also found that 16 Transportation Authority employees “accessed inappropriate materials from 17 to 2,200 times over periods ranging from 1 to 7 days.” When do these people work? Who has time to peruse porn 2,200 times in 7 days?
Obviously their jobs do not keep them busy enough.
Since the review was restricted to computers where employees could be identified by name, the report is “understated.” Besides the fact that these state employees wasted taxpayer time and dollars for personal entertainment, what is the state doing with computers that can?t identify users? Why are our computer systems so easily hacked and/or accessed by anyone? And why don?t firewalls exist to stop people from visiting inappropriate Web sites?
Anything less than firing the employees caught abusing their positions and managers in charge of overseeing them would be meaningless and send a message that defrauding taxpayers will go unpunished.
A second step would be to review whether or not any of the positions vacated by the terminated employees need to be filled, given the amount of free time they obviously enjoyed. The state must add new computer security measures to ensure that employees can neither hide their identities nor access the illicit sites.
This report also must prompt other agency chiefs to review the computer records of employees in their purview. Marylanders deserve to know that they pay state employees for jobs they actually do.
