John Wiley Price to Dallas County employees: No blog reading for you

by Scott Henson of Grits For Breakfast

An update on The Great Dallas Blog Ban:

Unfair Park follows up on reports at Grits and the Wretched of the Earth about Dallas County employees being restricted from reading blogs. They've confirmed a new policy - enacted two weeks ago by the Commissioners Court - and identified its source: John Wiley Price, who apparently doesn't have enough to do trying to get the county jail into compliance.

The policy explicitly limits access to sites that are “potentially harmful to Dallas County,” without defining what that means (though it apparently includes Grits). Amazing! Does Dallas County actually WANT its employees to be unaware of potential harms?

This is essentially a policy that says county workers will be less well informed than others in the community about what's going on around them. Foolish. And yet, somehow, typical. Dallas residents should let their commissioners know their opinion of this thoughtless blindering policy.

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What struck me in the Unfair Park piece was the convoluted high-level process to get moved up a level.

If every employee-- hell, even only 20%, applied for a permission boost, the County would be shut down.

Mike Orren Staff

2 years, 7 months ago
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What struck me was how the real story wasn't about John Wiley Price's hair. WHOOSH!

NateDawgUNT Anonymous

2 years, 7 months ago
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I just talked with John Wiley Price. He doesn't know anything about any banned blogs. In fact, he sounded completely befuddled by the topic. He said he remembered a year or so ago that some restrictions were put into place because County employees were looking at pornographic sites. He also said "I don't even know what blog means."

Alan Cohen Staff

2 years, 7 months ago
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OK, so Unfair Park reported that "Price is on the county’s IT steering committee, and two weeks back got his colleagues to adopt a new policy that restricts Internet access for county workers." That should be checkable - the IT committee must have minutes, etc.

If Price really is clueless, then this is just an unintended consequence and all county employees should be placed on level 3 instead of level 1 in the hierarchy described by UP.

As for saying he doesn't know what blog means - Good God! Welcome to the 21st Century, Commissioner. That's really sad.