October 15, 2009
Happy Farm is a game which every Facebook user can play. While the popularity of Facebook is growing in Taiwan, as well as the popularity of other social network websites, somebody began to ask whether or not using those kind of services on web, and therefore those games, can negatively impact on the productivity in the offices. This problem has been already analyzed in Italy, where Facebook and Twitter have been banned form many offices, both public and private. Among these, mine , the Italian mail service (Poste Italiane), IT companies, etc.
In Taiwan, it's a business of the private company, to decide whether to censor those websites. But in the public administration? Of course, if the employees will spend a long time by playing games or chatting, this can negatively impact on the productivity of the office/department/administration. On the other side, spending 10 minutes every 3 hours by chatting with a friend can't be considered a crime, in my humble opinion. Neither can it be considered non honorable, nor causing a bad impression on the public. While Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said yesterday that the central government would not impose a ban, some local administrations already took measures to prevent civil servants and employees playing Happy Farm (like if this were the only playable game on internet...); this game includes extra features too, which can be gained by paying real money to the website. Therefore, if using Facebook at work won't be such big issue, maybe the use of real money for playing its game can change our point of view a little bit.
Taipei City Government and Kaohsiung County Government are among those which have already blocked Facebook. Others will follow. But is this kind of behavior worth? Maybe not so much. And now I'll explain why.
-Basically, I'm against censorship. It doesn't serve anything. Once you ban a website from your office what did you get? Nothing, the users will move to another with a similar content.
-You can find any kind of trick to avoid users accessing a website, but there'll always be somebody smarter than you, who will be able to jump over the hurdle, and probably will share with the colleagues his acknowledgments.
-What is better, having an employee sitting for 9 hours on a chair looking at the ceiling, pretending to work, or an employee who spends 30 minutes a day on Facebook and the other part of his working time by really working? I think chiefs pay too much attention on the appearances instead on the substances (for what I've seen, this happens in all Far East's countries). Brain needs short but recurrent time-outs to provide optimized performances during the daily job. Five minutes in an hour for checking ad answering messages on internet won't impact the job.
On the other side,however, if somebody spends the whole day on Facebook, of course this is reprehensible. But personally I don't think it's because of Facebook or Twitter or anything else: if an employee is a good employee, he/she is able to self-regulate on the time spent on internet as well as on other not working activities. If somebody is not willing to work at all, even you ban Facebook, he or she will find another way to avoid working. At the end, if you have hired a bad employee, who's fault is it? Yours, not of Facebook! 
