jeudi, septembre 18, 2008 Premature outrage over Palin running the government on Yahoo! email account  While I laud the furor of alarm and consternation which is erupting over the Palin email invasion of privacy, I think it's extremely naive to start pointing fingers at Palin, or the Bush administration (much as I detest it), or the Republicans, or anyone else for that matter, for using a public web-based email for work purposes. Why? For the simple reason because government email and computer accounts are often technologically inferior to the other available free email providers, such as yahoo, hotmail and gmail. Which civil servant here has NEVER come across a problem of insufficient storage space in their government mailboxes? (Come on, own up.)In addition, sometimes even just getting the damned account up and running takes a week or two - or more. You've got forms to fill out in triplicate, and yet your boss wants you to get the programme up and running like, yesterday, so you have absolutely no choice - you formulate that email using your personal email account (or like me, you create a new work email account), and start running your office from there. This is not a Singapore-centric statement; I've worked for an American government-linked agency before, and had to spend an agonising 2 weeks in email limbo as I waited for Washington to get back to me on the status of my email account application. In the meantime, I used my gmail account to get my work done. And to add a feather to this wonderful cap of government account woes, sometimes - as in the case of the government service here in Singapore - you can't access your email account from home because it's an intranet account. I really do understand the arguments under the FOIA, I really do. I also firmly believe that governance should be transparent in all their dealings. And I also understand the problems of running a government from, say, a gmail account. There are a multitude of legal issues that implicate and dominate this area of discussion. But cut the girl some slack. Sometimes the government needs a little help from the private sector. Libellés : current affairs, issues, politics, thinking [Premature outrage over Palin running the government on Yahoo! email account] |
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