A neophyte lawmaker in the 15 Congress of the Philippines is filing a bill that seeks to police government employees on using social networking sites in government offices and government corporations, in particular Facebook and Twitter.
Rep. Romero Quimbo of Marikina filed House Resolution No. 184 that aims to regulate the use of social networking sites on government offices. Rep. Quimbo said that there is need to “impose regulations on the use of government internet facilities to access social networking sites in their respective offices.” If this becomes a law, government agencies will be required to submit their respective cyber use regulations that will be part of each agency’s documents to be included during budget deliberations.
Rep. Quimbo recognized though the power of social networking sites especially for information dissemination but with a government that is facing a record-high budget deficit, the unabated use of these sites he said “adversely affects their productivity and the quality of service they provide.” Further, the lawmaker said,
“The government stands to lose an estimated P103,158,000 every month for electricity expenses alone if all the estimated 900,000 government employees use government computers for at least two hours of unauthorized online social networking activities.”
It was already posted here before that the provincial government of Quezon has already ordered their employees not to use social networking site and surf the internet fearing that it will cause negative impacts on employee productivity. Yet it was uncovered that the very reason of the “ban” was because the provincial government got too lazy on paying their electricity bills that already amounted to P20 million, and the ban on web use is just actually a ploy for cost-cutting measures.
Philippines ranks on top ten countries social networking sites users.
Do you agree that the use of social networking sites in government be highly regulated?
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It does make sense. But a more effective measure would be to instruct the DOTC to install firewalls or filters in every government-owned computer and laptop that will block or regulate access to social-networking sites.
You and I know how this works so well thanks to the ITC.
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Regulation is needed indeed but as you have said, a more effective system that exhibits a lot of common sense should be placed by government.
I remembered researching for child prostitution in our school’s computer, and everything I hit enter on a search engine, the web blocker of ITC pops up and tells me I am accessing pornographic sites, LOL!
But I am not recommending the ITC peepz to tweak this thing for government offices, for obvious reasons, LOL!