An anonymous tip to the state?s fraud hotline lead to 22 employees of the Maryland Department of Transportation ? mostly police officers and maintenance staff ? who looked at sexually oriented Web sites while at work, according to a report by the Office of Legislative Audits.
At least a few employees went to sites containing “nude and/or pornographic pictures” hundreds and even thousands of times within a weeklong period, according to an investigation report made public Thursday.
Legislative Auditor Bruce Myers, who supervised the state’s investigation, said he was “a little disappointed, a little surprised” by what was found. The tipster initially identified the problem at the Maryland Aviation Administration, a unit of the state transportation department that is responsible for operations at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and the Martin State Airport.
You might be interested in the state’s full investigative report
But in the process of investigating that allegation through the office that provides computing resources to many MDOT units, auditors discovered that similar sites also were being accessed by employees of the Maryland Transportation Authority, which is responsible for the state?s toll road facilities.
“I?m not surprised that some of this goes on,” Myers said, but he was disappointed by the number of people involved.
He noted that a conservative approach was taken, in that anyone who had gone to a porn site once was not included based on the assumption that it could have happened accidentally. Also, as the report notes, “the number of employees and occurrences is understated” because no instances were documented unless the computer files identified a specific employee. There were hundreds of such incidents.
An appendix to the report includes reactions from officials at the agencies involved, who said the guilty parties would be punished but did not elaborate other than to say it would include suspension of Internet privileges and other “appropriate disciplinary actions.”
Both agencies already have policies prohibiting inappropriate Internet use and filters that helped prevent such use but were not fail-proof, the report said.
The agencies said they would take stronger action, such as developing a training program on the proper use of the Internet and enhanced technology to catch violations.
Anyone who wants to report other incidents can call the state fraud hotline at 877-FRAUD 11.
