There must be a lot of lonely bureaucrats at Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).
Between 2006 and 2009, the two bodies launched 46 investigations of employees suspected of inappropriate computer use such as participating in online chats, visiting dating sites and viewing pornography.
QMI Agency has acquired government documents through the Access to Information Act that show eight of the cases involved "accessing explicit sites for extended periods of time" that could have been seen by nearby fellow employees.
One of the cases involved a single user accessing sexually explicit websites for more than 19 hours in one month.
While Health Canada and PHAC employees have been fired over how they've misused computers owned by taxpayers, the documents don't say how many have been let go.
Only one case is detailed, involving a Health Canada employee fired on the spot after viewing something the feds had to refer to police.
Most cases, according to the documents, involved excessive use of the Internet during work hours.
By far, the high-miler was the bureaucrat who was on the Internet for almost 338 hours in August 2008 monitoring news sites, checking out ads, watching videos and chatting.
That goes well beyond typical work hours.
Someone on the usual Monday-to-Friday schedule would have to rack up 16 hours a day online to hit that level of Internet use in one month's time.
Anticipating that the release of this information could be an "embarrassment to the department," officials developed a script to help communications officers deliver the official departmental line about the viewing of pornography on government computers.
"This is eight cases in four years in a department with more than 11,000 employees," read the so-called media lines.
The documents say nothing about what it cost taxpayers to investigate and catch the naughty civil servants.
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