Nine D.C. government employees were fired Wednesday and another 32 were disciplined for accessing thousandsof pornographic Web sites on the job last year using their government-issued computers, Mayor Adrian Fenty announced.
The worst of the bunch, according to data provided by the Office of the Chief Technology Officer, was one employee whose computer registered 48,002 hits on porn sites in calendar year 2007. That averages out to about 100 hits a day.
“Obviously this is not just egregious behavior,” Fenty said during a news conference at One Judiciary Square. “This behavior is reprehensible.”
The nine fired employees – all of whom registered roughly 20,000 or more hits – worked for the offices of the attorney general, contracting and procurement and property management, as well as the Child and Family Services Agency. Attorney General Peter Nickles said the investigation, sparked in mid-December after an employee tip, revealed no evidence of access to child pornography.
No information was provided about the terminated staffers, including their specific agencies, titles or genders. The 32 disciplined workers are employed by 18 agencies, including the D.C. Public Schools and the Executive Office of the Mayor, officials said.
The initial investigation only tackled the 10,000 District computers monitored by licensed versions of WebSense, a porn filtering software. Chief Technology Officer Vivek Kundra said the city is moving to purchase another 20,000 WebSense licenses.
