Govt servants may face complete social media ban during work hours

[Zibago]

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Govt servants may face complete social media ban during work hours
Web Desk On Nov 20, 2019

ISLAMABAD: The federal government is mulling over imposing a complete ban on use of social media by government servants during work hours.

This was told by National Information Technology Board (NITB) officials during a meeting of National Assembly (NA) standing committee on Information and technology on Wednesday.

It was said that not only the use of social media applications or pages including Facebook and Whatsapp would be banned during the office timing but the officials would also be barred from bringing storage devices-USBs- to the offices.

The government employees will also be barred from indulging in any part-time businesses, the NA body was apprised.

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It was further told that the government was also mulling over to counter fake news pertaining to government orders and actions and a central server would be established at the NITB, for fulfilling the propose.

E-offices will be established at every ministry, which will be interconnected, they said. “Any official information would be shared on the server after prior approval of the federal authorities.”

This server would act as Whatsapp and official videos, audios and photos could be shared on it after prior permission.

 

[RoadRunner401]

Copying state secrets on personal USB ports, running a personal business from government provided office, surfing the internet and social sites, spreading fake news all while getting paid by Pakistani Taxpayers!! Priceless

 

[313ghazi]

Easy to say, not so easy to enforce. You could easily ban it on work computers, but personal devices? Will govt issue work phones and ban personal devices? Will software be installed on personal devices to restrict access to social media during work hours?

The side business thing is also tricky to enforce. It's reliant upon the business being registered and people paying tax. It certainly should be during work hours though.

 

[Verve]

USB part is easy to implement on government computers.

Government employees running own business will not be easy to catch.

Phones can be restricted easily if required. Very doable.

Every government department should be audited by external audit firms once a year - Financial and Technical/Security audits. Combined with interim internal audits.

 

[jupiter2007]

1. Every government office should be secure with security cameras installed and special police guarding it.
   
2. Body/Security Scanner should be installed to prevent anyone from bringing firearms.
3. To prevent people using USB/flash drive, government should use McAfee disk encryption software on every computer. As soon as employee plug usb drive, it will encrypt the drive. There are other ways also to stop that. Groups policy to block USB port.
4. Blocking social media from government computers will be easy but any Computer savvy person can use external proxy to get to those. Government can install tracking software on every computer to track every keyboard and mouse click. There are many employees tracking software in the market.
5. Custom applications can be build to share announcements, pictures and documents. There are off the shelf solution like Skype for business or Microsoft teams, or other software.
6. Government should also limit the personal phone usage. It should only be allowed during breaks.
7. Every employee should be at the office during work hours. They should arrive on time or before the start time. (Anyone worked in Japan would know about this)
8. It will be easy to track Government employees who are running a business on the side. This kind of stuff can’t be hidden for too long. If an employee is absent from work or on the phone all the time, most likely he is asking for trouble.
   
9. Bi-yearly performance review to make sure employees are performing up to their potential.
10. Government employees vacation should be reduced to 4 weeks per year with pay. Any additional vacation or personal time off should be without pay and it should depend on person yearly performance review, unless someone has a medical condition or need to take a medical family leave of absent.
11. Yearly internal audit should be done and external audit should be done every 2 to 3 years due to cost.
12. Every new employee or contractor should go through background checks.