County employees shut off from the Buzz

   A cry of horror went up late last week at the two Jackson County courthouses and other county offices. Virtually all web sites -- from ebay.com to cnn.com to hotmail.com to this site -- were suddenly unavailable.

   County spokesman Jennifer Berry said too many county employees were using work time to surf the 'Net and that was creating bandwidth problems. She said electronic filing of records was significantly delayed as a result. She said the decision was made to block employee access to many sites. But why news sites like nytimes.com or kcstar.com?

   "Is it about the work of the department? Should people even have access to news sites?" she asked. Berry added the streaming video on news sites especially added to the bandwidth problem.

  Some more conspiracy minded county employees think Jackson County Executive Katheryn Shields and some of her top administrators ordered the cut off due to anger over county employees posting on KC Buzz Blog during work hours. Some of the posts have been unflattering to Shields.

   But Berry denied this. She said the policy will be revisited in 30 days.

   Ken Evans, Berry's predecessor and now spokesman for Prosecutor Mike Sanders, was so outraged that he contacted Shields' folks to have access restored for all employees in the prosecutor's office employees. Evans said for his job he needs to have access to news sites and prosecutors need to do research for their cases.

  Other county employees never had their access denied or successfully made a case to get it restored. KC Buzz Blog has heard a whisper that one of Shields' top lieutenants had a mini-meltdown Friday when he/she couldn't get access to the latest Charles Wheeler v. Sanders Buzz news and after some grumbling got access restored.

  Posted by DeAnn Smith

Comments

[kayceewolf]

Wow! It must really suck to be Jennifer Berry and be saddled with the job of turning her boss' temper tantrums, tirades and fits of pique into policy statements. It's almost enough to give me a grudging respect for her national counterpart, Tony Snow(job). ... Almost.

[Ian]

"Is it about the work of the department? Should people even have access to news sites?" Well, let's see.....if you're in a government office and have to deal public information, it might be work related. But what the heck do I know.

Hey Jennifer, was your access cut? If the problem was with bandwitdth and not enough real work to keep them busy, you might talk to your boss about not hiring her friends in do-nothing jobs in exchange for campaign contributions while spending taxpayers' money surfing on high speed internet at work.

[County employee that hates Sheilds]

I am, needless to say, a fairly high-level employee within the courthouse. This new "policy" was put into place after Shields heard that several employees were passing around copies of the BUZZ BLOG at work (none of which was favorable for her candidate, Charlie). Almost to a person, we cannot wait for the day she is gone.

Well I bet we can expect to see a lot less blogging in favor of Mike Sanders since he cannot have all of his employees post time after time anymore at work. Now guss what they will have to do it on their own time not the taxpayers time.

Unfortunately, only 3 people from the Prosecutor's have even had a chance to check out the Star's wonderful new BuzzBlog.

[Jacomo employee]

"Should people even have access to news sites?" Almost sounds like she's talking about teeny little children, doesn't it?

Don't hold back next time Jennifer, say what your boss really thinks: "Those lazy county employees can't do anything. They just sit around on their brains blogging all day, and they don't even have the sense to blog my way! Ungrateful worker bees! Off with their heads!"

Or maybe the Red Queen really believes that horse pucky about evil bandwidth stealers. Could be. Oh wait, I think I'm getting it now.... What county bureaucrats need is LESS information. Yeah, LESS is better!

With that kind of "horse and buggy" thinking, a mayor from the 1960's might just fit right in! Yeah, baby, Yeah! Oh be-have!

[NannyBGone]

"Is it about the work of the department? Should people even have access to news sites?" she asked. Berry added the streaming video on news sites especially added to the bandwidth problem....

I sense something "streaming" from the courthouse but it isn't video.

[RocketDawg]

You are supposed to be working, not whining. I think it should stay blocked, thats not what you are getting paid for. Stop whining and get back to work.

[Eric Rogers]

What's next? Cutting the phone lines? Turning off the electricity? If it's really a problem then deal with through HR. Just turning off the whole thing instead of dealing with the problem is a cop out on the part of lazy or cowardly managers.

[Jim Lathrop]

The fact is, many other organizations, not only Jackson County, deal with bandwidth problems due to excessive use of the internet by their employees. The problems stems from people leaving their browsers open for long periods of time, waiting for updates for external email systems and news sites. This has, on more than one occassion in my company caused problems with applications which needed to be accessed by ouside clients. It's not suprising that the County's IT department has limited access to determine how much of employee internet time is affecting bandwith, since many of their applications are available to the public online and could very well be affected by bandwidth problems. Gotta find the root of the problem before you can find a solution.

[Another County Employee]

First of all, internet access was cut for everyone to test access to core services that require internet access. Examples such as Records and Taxes. Also, there are several departments that have total denied access to the internet with the exception of the local intranet. Only supervisors have some access. However, prosecutors have full access to the internet due to searching information on trial information and such. Why everything was cut, I do not know. However, this was not a so called conspiracy. The county has just came out of the dark ages of computing and is finally stepping up in the world. It's taking time and testing to get things right. The internet connection at one time was not adaquate enough to support even internet and records information. This had to be researched and evaluated by consultants to determine the need for additional growth. There has been a few problems with bandwidth. Most have been mainly with the explosion of bandwitdh clogging highly developed media sites. Anyway, like I said, many departments are blocked entirely on internet access. However, there are a few departments who are not. Prosecutors are one of them.

Another County Employee,
you might want to keep your facts straight. Jennifer Berry, County spokeswoman, said that too many county employees were using work time to surf the 'Net and that was creating bandwidth problems. Not something about testing core something of another. Also, the Prosecutor's office was cut off last friday. After a few phone calls, access was miraculously restored.

[Jennifer Berry]

Actually, when I spoke to DeAnn, I DID tell her all about how the new e-recording program was having problems with getting accessed by title companies and so forth, and how it was "timing out" when people were trying to record documents. I also told her MIS was testing by limiting access to see whether or not that would help with the e-recording system access. She must have forgotten that part of the conversation...My comment about whether or not employees should even have access was in the context of that the County departments needed to decide whether or not their employees needed to have internet access as a part of their job, and that MIS would provide access as needed. As Jim Lathrop said above, you need to do some testing before you can find a solution.

I forgot to add though, that people leaving their browsers open all day for email and news sites IS one of the reasons the system is being bogged down. It's not the fact that employees are accessing the sites, it's that open browswers, all day long, take up excessive bandwidth.

Ah yes, blame the reporter for "forgetting" what you said when the story looks bad. Classy, and classic. DeAnn is about as fair as they come Jen, try another one.

[Ex KCMO resident]

Yet another reason we left KCMo for Johnson County.....pissant politicians.

[Jason Zorn]

The root of the problem is that the county is growing its e-government initiatives which is causing a strain on its' internet connection. With the vast amount of data either coming into the county, or employees using the internet at their convenience, the internet line is at its maximum. We scaled down internet access to see if that would solve the problem the Recorder of Deeds was having on “timing out” issues with its e-recording initiative. The solution worked. What that told us is we need to find a permanent solution to this growing problem. Meetings have been held and a solution is in the works. There was NO other reason for the internet blockage and if people noticed, most, if not all the sites they couldn’t get to last week are back. With the growing demand of internet access county wide, the permanent solution should satisfy everyone’s needs.

[Disgruntled JACO employee]

Thanks for the information Jason. It's amazing how far a little communication will take you. Thad should take notes. When called on friday, his staff stated flatly that yes, internet access was restricted, and that all complaints go to him. Have yet to receive a return phone call.

[Disgruntled JACO employee]

Thanks for the information Jason. It's amazing how far a little communication will take you. Thad should take notes. When called on friday, his staff stated flatly that yes, internet access was restricted, and that all complaints go to him. Have yet to receive a return phone call.

[Not that fair]

DeAnn Smith is as fair as they come? Oh my, how far the mighty profession of journalism has fallen. As a KC PR flack in a former life, I have dealt with Ms. Smith. This is S.O.P for her. She wrote the story and then called Jennifer Berry for comments. She cherry-picked the comments to fit her story even if they don't exactly fit what they were talking about.

If the star were interested in accuracy the story would have read thusly, County Employees say Access to Internet Denied...County says its testing solutions to bandwidth problems.

Jennifer chose her comments poorly. She should have simply said, "We are testing to find out if less internet access will improve our ability to get the county's business handled efficiently. We know that external email and streaming video have an effect and the county's business has to be our first priority."

1 part Bad Journalism + 1 part bad PR= inaccurate story. Just another day at the Star.

[County employee (off)]

Let's assume for a minute they had good reason to limit some access, even temporarily. Does anybody really think a good way to do that is to "just do it"??? Do ya think it might occur to one to tell somebody what one is doing and why before you go and do it? I know that probably seems radical to these know it alls.

I love how the head nannies in charge try to hurry and clean it up after they make a mess. Excuses only make a bigger mess. Just fess up already!

[Eric Rogers]

Critical services like the county web site and "e-government" functions ought to be separate from employee Internet access. If employee Internet usage is slowing down the county's web services, then the county needs to rethink it's networking infrastructure.

In other words, one set of pipes for employees and a different set of pipes for publice services.

Got some real children working for the county, don't we? As a Jackson County taxpayer, I wonder why these people think they have a "right" to Internet access. Bitching (anonymously, of course) about Shields or Sanders makes me realize why the county is a mess right now. Reading this blog over anything Wheeler/Sanders is pretty funny. What a joke this county is--now we have it all over the world wide web what kind of people we have handling millions and millions of dollars of taxpayer money.

My former employer limits Internet access to ALL employees--only that is business related is allowed. If you need to get to a site, it is opened up, if not, read it at home. What part of this don't you county employees understand?

[wellpaidscientist]

Ex KCMO resident:

Reasons I will never live in Kansas: Gerlach, Eilert, O'Connor, Kline, Abrams, Morris, Phelps.

I'm sure I will eventually learn to live without JoCo's many conveniences such as ridiculous traffic congestion and beige strip malls on every corner.

Kansas: As bigoted as you think

[Real County employee]

To the anonymous poster posting anonymously about anonymous bitching by county employees: You Da Man!

Congratulations to your "former employer" who "limits Internet access to ALL employees--only that is business related is allowed..."

Whoopee. That company obviously knows how to crack the whip! I bet those children - er, employees - aren't involved in customer service to the public though, or any kind of public service where the job actually REQUIRES employees to know what the heck is going on. As long as they are just punching a time clock, making widgets as fast as they can, or greeting people with a smile saying "Welcome to Wal-Mart!"... I guess that would be just fine. For them.

County employees understand it just fine, thank you not at all. Although they are too often treated like children (case in point) they understand they are in fact adults, and it is only the high paid temps in charge that are delusional about this.

And as for why "the county is a mess right now"... It is a mess. But it stinks from the head. And that, friends, is about to change.