Tuesday, November 11, 2014

City-County Employees Blocked From Accessing Advance Indiana And Other Sites

Apparently the powers that be in the Ballard administration have determined city-county employees should not have access to certain websites on the Internet, including Advance Indiana. The Chief Information Technology Officer Beth Howen told the Star the information technology board approved a long list of categories that aren't considered "business-productive websites." That list includes Internet radio, web chats, online audios and videos and personal blogging sites. Apparently Advance Indiana falls into that last category.

The Indiana Law Blog's Marcia Oddi crowed about her personal blog being blocked and the administration retreated quickly by allowing employees to access her website, even though this blog covers many local government issues of concern to city-county employees which are never touched upon by her blog. Amos Brown complained that his radio show could no longer be heard by city-county employees and access to his radio station's website was restored, along with WIBC's website so city-county employees can listen to Greg Garrison's radio talk show,  along with the Rush Limbaugh show. Other employees have asked that access to Advance Indiana be restored. We're still awaiting news on that decision.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

If they want to listen to the radio, they should be using a radio instead of their computer. Online shopping sites haven't been blocked either. What does that have to do with work? The board's policy seems arbitrary. You can still access a ton of websites that are not related to city government in any way.

Anonymous said...

Beth White chairs the technology board which made the decision. Shame on her.

Anonymous said...

Why didn't they block access to Abdul's Indy Politics? There's nothing on there but Republican propaganda.

Anonymous said...

Abdul is nothing but the official spokesman for the Indy Republicans.

Anonymous said...

I consider Advance Indiana the best source of local & state government reporting. Time and again AI has scooped the MSM. That said, AI should be left available to the CCB employees.

However, I have serious objection with paying taxpayer money for streaming Amos Brown or any radio station. Taxpayers should not pay for that type of streaming, it takes too much bandwith and is an unneeded expense. If the individual workplace rules allow playing of radios, then the employees may bring their own radios and use them in an appropriate manner on their desk. Streaming of radio, internet shopping for personal goods, etc should be prohibited on city-paid bandwidth.

Anonymous said...

Why would a city employee have any reason to listen to Garrison? The last few times I've tuned him in he was talking about going to war with ISIS and protecting Israel at all costs, sprinkled in with some useless interviews of Rokita, Messer, et al. talking about stopping Obama.

Anonymous said...

I would consider this a badge of honor. I can hear the conversation of the fools when this was being discussed!

Anonymous said...

Messer and Rokita are the same shallow establishment airheads. One can replace the other without noticing the difference. As I was writing this, I wondered "Did Messer go to Wabash?"

Sure enough, he did, just like Rokita.

There is some very weird stuff going on at Wabash.

Anonymous said...

Is that like the firearms training unit having access to firearms websites blocked?

Anonymous said...

Look into this issue further. There is complete computer/technology infrastructure failure with Indianapolis-Marion County at all levels in all agencies and department regardless of party. They are running XP on 6-7 year old computers whose lease on the computers expired 2 years ago on some computers. The software programs utilized are not remotely integrated or compatible. Truly, third world technology.