State workers gaming the system?

Inter Lake editorial

Unbelievable!

The story on the front page of the Daily Inter Lake Tuesday about state workers and computer games seemed like an April Fool's joke, but unfortunately it was no laughing matter.

Turns out that some employees of the Department of Public Health and Human Services had been complaining that their new computers didn't have some of the high-tech features they were used to - like electronic versions of solitaire, hearts and minesweeper games. It didn't seem fair to them that employees with older computers still got to goof off during working hours while the folks with the newer computers were expected to actually do their jobs.

Hold on there. It has to be an April Fool's joke.

Oops, no, sorry to say this really happened. And it gets worse.

Lonnie Olson, administrator of the Child Support Enforcement Division, fielded the complaints about the missing computer games and realized that something wasn't quite right. Unfortunately, he was wrong about what wasn't right.

"I said if they want them [computer games], we'll put them on," Olson said in an Associated Press story. According to the article, Olson said (presumably with a straight face) that "he wanted to make sure all employees in the department are treated the same."

He then went on to say that "he wasn't aware of anyone abusing the privilege during work hours."

Turns out that the joke is on the taxpayers. Most of us didn't even know that our state employees had a privilege of playing games during work hours, but at least no one is abusing it.

Please. This just has to be a joke!

Even the head of the state's Computing Technology Services Bureau got it wrong. He was quoted as saying it was "up to each department director to decide what to do about … computer games."

Um, no, not exactly. Thanks to a reporter's query, someone actually took a look at state policy and discovered that, "State computing resources are not to be used for non-state related activities, including games or software that is not required for an employee's job responsibilities."

Finally, at the end, a bit of sanity emerged in the story. Sheryl Olson, deputy director of the Department of Administration, which adopted the policy in 2001, said, "the broader policy is nobody should be playing games on state computers. We're at work to work. Why is this even a question? Who has time to play games?"

That is a question which perhaps deserves a broader investigation. Since the state employees were so brazen in making their request for computer games, we have to think they had plenty of time to play games in the past, and were confused about how to fill that time in the future.

Sounds like a good opportunity for budget cutting. With games having now been removed from the computers of more than 3,000 state employees, we suspect a more productive work force will result.

Hypothetically, if each employee had been spending an average of 10 minutes a day playing computer games, that would mean at least 2,500 hours a week of lost productivity or the equivalent of about 62.5 full-time jobs.

No one expects the state to cut 62.5 jobs as a result of this boon, but how about we split the difference and say 30 jobs. OK, maybe that is unrealistic. This is state government after all - let's just say five jobs.

And, by the way, we are not joking.