Bored Montgomery County employees soon will have a new way to kill time as the county loosens its restrictions on the popular social networking site Facebook.
But employees won’t be given carte blanche to peruse newly posted pictures of their friends and keep tabs on old flames, said E. Steven Emanuel, the county chief information officer. Instead, they will be expected to conduct a “limited” amount of Web surfing for personal use, Emanuel said.
Emanuel said the Department of Technology Services doesn’t have the resources or the desire to monitor every employee’s Web habits. But to help keep employees honest on a potentially “addictive” Web site, Emanuel said the county would keep an updated list of its 25 most prolific Facebook users on the county payroll, and let the bosses of those on the list know how much time their employees have spent on the site.
“This is a tool, and it needs to be managed,” he said.
Emanuel said there has been a growing demand from county employees to have access to use the site to conduct county business. Organizations and individuals who do business with the county use Facebook, he said, and the county needs it to keep current.
“We’ve realized that social networking sites are similar to what Internet access was nine years ago,” Emanuel said. “We need to change with the times.”
The county government has its own sites on Facebook and Twitter, a microblogging Web site, and posts updates on government activities on both. The county has about 300 “fans” on Facebook and 1,120 followers on Twitter.
Montgomery has decided to keep other social networking sites, such as MySpace, blocked, Emanuel said, because there has been little evidence that those sites are popular beyond teenagers.
The county already allows a “very limited number” of people, such as police investigators, to access all social networking sites with the approval of their boss, Emanuel said.
A ban on access to Facebook at the Maryland General Assembly during the legislative session was quickly lifted after lawmakers strongly protested their inability to access the site.
