I recently got a tip that the progressive blog West Virginia Blue has been blocked on some state employees’ computers — but not the conservative blog West Virginia Red.
Sounded fishy.
Chief technology officer Kyle Schafer confirmed today that the site had been inaccessible to some employees, but says it was a mistake caused by filtering software. Some agencies had asked the office to block “travel sites,” Schafer told me.
A Web site with a very similar address — www.wvblue.com — fell under the travel category (though it doesn’t look like a travel site).
Schafer says cabinet secretaries can ask his office to block certain kinds of sites, but it’s rare that an individual site is targeted. Usually, they ask to block broad categories, like social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.)
Schafer’s office fixed the problem today. Any employees who think a site was inadvertently blocked should call the Help Desk at 558-1257.
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Thank you for your investigation and coverage of this issue. CTO Schafer’s explanation doesn’t quite add up for me. I still have a lot of questions about what happened, please see:
http://www.wvablue.com/diary/4846/why-was-west-virginia-blue-blocked-to-state-employees
Thank you for your investigations and for your coverage of this story.
It still doesn’t quite add up for me. The answer from CTO Kyle Schafer just doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve got a whole bunch of questions about the policy he describes and exactly what might have gone wrong: http://www.wvablue.com/diary/4846/why-was-west-virginia-blue-blocked-to-state-employees
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How interesting… sounds fishy to me too…
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