Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Has Haringey Blocked Flickr?
Councillor Alan Stanton reports in another post that he fears that Haringey Council have blocked their staff from accessing Flickr. Can this be?
Alan wrote:
Sadly, the Council's staff now appear to have been blocked from seeing what the borough looks like beyond their offices. Perhaps the photos of dumping posted by Liz, me and others have proved too 'dirty'?
Alan wrote:
Sadly, the Council's staff now appear to have been blocked from seeing what the borough looks like beyond their offices. Perhaps the photos of dumping posted by Liz, me and others have proved too 'dirty'?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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A tweet from Cllr Joe Goldberg here suggests not, but he is interested for more info if we find out to the contrary
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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I've just phoned to apologise to a member of Haringey staff for not posting my photos on Flickr. They're from an Estate inspection and show 'snagging' work which our contractors need to do.
Like all other tools (since tools were first invented in prehistory) these sites can be used for good or ill; serious tasks or silly purposes.
I realise that some staff in every organisation will be tempted to spend worktime on Facebook, Ebay, etc. But the vast majority of Haringey staff I've met can and should be trusted to behave as professionals - and to respect the rules about personal Internet use. Let managers manage the small minority who abuse this privilege.
All organisations are the poorer if they handicap staff by banning the use of some very useful web 2.0 tools.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Before the WWW@work I worked 8.5 hours a day. I now work 10+, they just like to have me in the office for core hours, and here I am spending time on HoL. You know, when I was young I remember my father using his work phone to call my mother... shocking.
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When I was a language teacher, the Internet was a valuable resource. You could show kids the countries, find great materials etc but one thing infuriated me. They blocked You Tube for teachers. The amount of language teaching material from music videos to travelogues, the TV ads, well as you can imagine- a total goldmine. I really resented the fact that the same rules for the teenagers were applied to us and we were treated like potential naughty adolescents instead of professionals. I would imagine that council employees probably feel the same.
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I've now heard - though not yet officially - that the Council's rationale for blocking staff access to social media websites is that some staff spend too much time on them. The software also prevents access to gambling and porn sites.
I've requested but not yet received a list of the banned sites. Hopefully, useful sites like Flickr and Twitter will quickly be unbanned. (Music lovers will be pleased to learn that the Royal Festival Hall is no longer on the proscribed list.)
Plainly, the sensible approach for a well-run organisation is to manage this problem directly with staff who break the rules and fritter away time on non-work-related websites.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Thanks for the update Alan.
I was reading last night that Brighton Council (I think it was Brighton) did the same thing for the same reason. They'd calculated the number of hours wasted per year. When that was divided between all staff members it came down to it that it equated to about 2 minutes per staff member.
Some staff spend too much time talking, making coffee, should that mean similar blanket bans or is effective people management the answer?
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Fulbright & Jaworski, the international law firm, just published their 6th Annual Litigation Trends Survey Report. It is an independent survey of senior corporate counsel from a wide range of industry sectors.
About half of the respondents (52% of U.K. and 46% of U.S.) claim to block employees from accessing social networking Web sites. Two in five of all corporates (42%) block the most popular personal social networking sites (such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo) and 30% block business-related networking sites (LinkedIn and Plaxo). The YouTube web site is also blocked by more than a third of companies (37%).
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I'm glad to report what looks like good news!
On 16 October an email from Stuart Young, Haringey's Assistant Chief Executive, told me the "Cabinet" Advisory Board on 15 October received a report proposing to lift the software block for a trial period of six months. If that was the outcome of the meeting, it's very welcome. Mr Young's email is on my Flickr page here.
On this issue, I'm grateful for the support and advice of Hugh and Liz, and of Hol member Kake Pugh. You can read their comments and a list of useful weblinks here.
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That's good news. Given the context provided by Fulbright & Jaworski's report, Haringey Council should be warmly congratulated on their decision. All this stuff is new and scary to organisations in all sectors. I welcome Haringey's decision to explore the benefits social media can bring and to allow staff to make full use of them.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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I have to say that I have mixed feelings about this.
If Haringey Council banned access to Flickr, I hope that was not motivated by an attempt at censorship of Cllr. Alan Stanton’s questions about Cllr Charles Adje, that he posted on Flickr. These important question remain unanswered. Anyone that cares about integrity in public life has an interest in seeing a response to the open, public questions about the Welbourne Centre and Cllr Adje. (Cllr. Adje must be a real expert in property because he often manages to get close to situations where the council is trying to sell council-property: Welbourne Centre, Hornsey Town Hall, Alexandra Palace).
And if the council need to see picture of litter in order to do something about it, then they should be able to see pictures of rubbish. And it is probably a good thing that the council sees HoL to show that there still exists free speech in this country, in spite of the blanket issue of Haringey Pravda. It is dangerous for any institution to believe their own propaganda, and Haringey People is the most partisan proselytizing publication I can think of, short of the Jehovah's Witness WatchTower. So it is important that council staff see that the performance of employees may be percieved differently than inside the New River House-bubble.
At the same time, nobody should kid themselves that those council employees who have been surfing the web are necessarily motivated by improving the service to the public who pay their wages. I’m sure there’ll be instances where it’d be useful, but we have to be realistic.
As it is, vast resources go into Haringey Council and it is not always matched by an equal and opposite production of service.
There are probably few departments where employees have web browsing as part of their job description. I’m all for staff having access to web pages that list complaints, compliments, comments or suggestions about council services. But Facebook?
If we call for improved service from the council, we should be careful about advocating measures that would in effect obstruct efforts of council managers to make employees more productive, for the benefit of the community.
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Mmmm, but I think we should be mindful of the danger of coming across as a determined rather than a thoughtful critics of Haringey Council.
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I am determined to be thoughtful about this danger Hugh and I think where this council is concerned, the risk you outline is outweighed by the even greater danger of coming across as more thoughtful than determined!
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