I conclude this after spending some time looking over Toronto Auditor General Jeffrey Griffiths’ report detailing the extent to which city employees are skiving off work surfing the Internet. And for someone like me, being paid to skive off work and write a blog that should amuse a few of those workers, the news is very discouraging.

Turns out that Mr. Griffiths found of all the city’s 10,000 computers, just 200 per day were found to log excessive Internet use. That’s defined of users with more than two hours of Internet activity, with more than 500 page views to 10 different sites that don’t have anything to do with work.

That represents just two per cent of the city’s workforce - and perhaps, wrote Mr. Griffiths, not even that.

“Given the way computers are used and how the related usage information is recorded, it is difficult to be definitive as to the amount of time an individual user spent viewing particular Web sites. As an example, if a user has set up their internet browser to stay connected to an email or a chat messaging Web site, the log for that computer will likely show that the site is accessed every few minutes and it could appear as if the user is constantly reviewing that Web site. This is related to the software automatically updating the computer for activity on the Web site and happens without the user taking any specific action. In our analysis, we have attempted to make allowance for such activity by setting our thresholds very high and filtering out as much of the automated activity as possible.”

And he goes on to point out that it’s impossible to tell if the same user was surfing all those pages through the day. So it could be that the amount of reading of this blog by city employees on the taxpayers’ dime is in fact quite miniscule.

Depressingly, it’s likely to get smaller still. Mr. Griffiths recommends that the city start monitoring individual Internet usage more rigorously, to prevent even those few city workers who read this blog now from doing so in the future.

Oh well - it could be worse. At least this isn’t one of those smutty blogs - or worse, Facebook. Those, according to Mr. Griffiths, are utterly locked out of the city hall computer system and have been for some time.

Something to cling to…