Friday, July 29, 2011

Whitehall's Web Day To Day Revealed

Belly dancing, Doctor Who and the Roman Empire are only a few of the interests of polite servants as suggested by their web browsing habits.

The Department for Transport (DfT) has disclosed the 1,000 sites visited many frequently by staff whilst at work.

The BBC website came top, but employees are moreover spending time assumingly shopping, gambling and house-hunting.

A DfT orator mentioned personal internet use by staff should be limited to authorized breaks.

The sum were published in reply to a Freedom of Information solicit by promotion organisation the TaxPayers' Alliance. They casing the time from January to May this year.

Many of the websites advance as no astonishment - Google is shut to the tip along with a number of newspapers and headlines blogs. The BBC homepage is number one with 7.4 million hits.

Facebook comes in at 85th, with more than 130,000 hits. Argos is the many periodic online selling destination, but John Lewis, Next and Debenhams underline too.

Plenty of sports fans be present to have been unctuous in a impertinent look or two at scores or fixtures - with goonerweb, chelseaafc and espncricinfo - a cricket stats website - all popular.

Some might moreover be having a tremble - as a result the recognition of oddschecker and bet365 - that obtain 25,808 and 7,328 hits respectively.

But there are a number of out of the ordinary sites that exhibit a few more astonishing pastimes amid polite servants.

Coming in at number 385 - with 27,634 hits - is bearsfaction.org.uk - a website run by the Lorien Trust that organises daydream role-play festivals.

It invites users to "leave reality behind" and "walk amongst goblins, elves and dwarves".

Even more popular, forthcoming in at 115, is etiquettehell.com that gives undone sticklers for great manners a forum in that to vent.

Smallworldbellydance.com - a south London swell dancing college of music - gets 3,170 hits, whilst a website for fans of the Roman Empire captivated scarcely 100,000.

Some polite servants moreover seem to be meddlesome in counts of glorious inside of Whitehall itself.

Sexymp.co.uk - where users obtain to order Members of Parliament in order of lure - got 21,477 hits in the five-month period, creation it the 465th many renouned site.

The TaxPayers' Alliance mentioned it had contacted all supervision departments, but the DfT was the only one to give the information.

Director Matthew Sinclair said: "While many staff work really hard, there have been sufficient anecdotal reports of time-wasters inside of the polite service that it is key taxpayers are able to scrutinize how time they are profitable for is spent.

"Other departments must be follow fit and tell this information. There is no functional barrier to correct transparency."

The DfT was asked either it could exhibit the amount of time outlayed on any website, but it mentioned it did not keep precise figures.

A orator said: "Our internet access process states that personal use of the internet by staff should be kept as partial as probable and should not in any eventuality surpass one hour any day done in their own time, for instance dish breaks.

"We moreover have measures in place to head off the improper use of internet by staff, for example in connection to racy web sites.

"Personal use should not place extreme final on ICT [information and communications technology] services and should not lead astray from staff's opening of their duties."

The DfT mentioned two staff had been trained during 2009-10 due to "inappropriate internet usage".

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