Audit committee split on whether to pay for additional software

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Catching the two per cent of city workers who spend too much time on Craigslist and their hotmail accounts aren’t worth the $100,000 it would cost to install Internet monitoring software on city computer networks said councillors on Toronto’s audit committee Monday.  
“At the end of the day it’s going to end up costing us more money than what it’s worth,” said Ward 39 (Scarborough-Agincourt) Councillor Mike Del Grande.
The report on inappropriate Internet usage from Auditor General Jeffrey Griffiths was, according to Griffiths, largely a matter of delivering good news: based on a four-day audit of Internet use citywide, auditors found that just 200 out of 10,000 computers logged what they determined was an inappropriate amount of time spent on personal web surfing.
Those 200 computers – or their users – spent two hours or more a day on such sites as Google’s e-mail; the American news site cnn.com; the Toronto Star’s website; the shopping/e-trading site Craigslist; and various travel, financial services and online radio stations.
Existing filtering software kept all city workers away from websites featuring pornography, gambling and Facebook. That, combined with the relatively small incidence of workplace surfing, had Griffiths pleased.
“When we started this audit we had no idea what we’d find,” he said. “But we were pleasantly surprised with the issues we did identify.”
Nonetheless, Griffiths did recommend spending about $100,000 on software and procedures that would make it easier to police city Internet use. Currently, city IT staff can monitor an individual computer’s Internet use if a manager asks them to. The new system would monitor all computers, all the time.
Ward 8 (York West) Councillor Anthony Perruzza said given that managers can ask for reports and monitoring with potential problem employees, it made little sense to create another structure.
“If I, as a manager, believe that someone is spending an excessive amount of time consuming resources, that can be checked for zero additional money,” he said.
“We don’t need comprehensive software throughout the system, with somebody assessing that information and figuring out who’s doing what. We’re chasing shadows.”
In the end, the committee was split on the matter. Chair Doug Holyday (Ward 3, Etobicoke Centre) said it makes sense for the city to start monitoring now as a preventative measure.
“The Internet grows by leaps and bounds. There’s more material on there that’s new every time you turn around,” he said. “I think what might not be a huge problem today could be a growing problem and I think we have to have something preventative in place.”
The recommendations lost on a tie, which means that council will have to make up its mind on the matter at its meeting in October.