Senator Pushes All Work, No Play on Federal Computers

When members of Congress left Washington in droves earlier this month for their summer recess, federal employees could breath a sigh of relief: Their computer games were safe, for now.

But when the lawmakers return in September, their agenda of weighty affairs of state will include whether to push forward with a proposed ban on computer games in every nook and cranny of the federal bureaucracy.

The prohibition is part of the Senate version of a bill that passed in late July and funds the White House, Post Office, Treasury Department and assorted other government agencies. The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R-N.C.), would require the removal of existing games programmed on government computers and bar future purchases of computers with games already installed.

Faircloth hopes to find a sponsor for a similar amendment in the House version of the appropriation bill. If that does not happen, he says, he will fight to have the amendment retained as part of a conference version of the bill produced by House and Senate negotiators.

While some labor leaders have accused Faircloth of being technophobic, the senator said it is government waste he fears, not technological advances. “The taxpayers don’t need to be paying the salaries of people who are playing games while on official time,” he said.

Faircloth’s amendment was the result of an Internet lesson gone wrong. While showing the senator how to operate his own Web site, an employee accessed the office computer games.

That was the end of those games and the beginning of Faircloth’s crusade. Faircloth said he had already heard complaints from constituents that government agencies are unresponsive, as well as accusations by federal employees that some of their co-workers spend too much time playing computer games, such as solitaire. He wondered if the one complaint was related to the other.

Then Faircloth, who since being elected in 1992 has compiled one of the Senate’s most conservative voting records, came upon a 1993 study of 1,000 corporations showing that the average employee spent 5.1 hours a week playing games or doing computer tasks not related to work. “I would suspect federal employees are not playing less; if anything they are probably playing more . . . than that,” he said.

The study, by a San Rafael, Calif., software company, estimated the cost of lost productivity at $10 billion annually, leading Faircloth to claim that his initiative would save the taxpayers millions of dollars.

Recent interviews found that some government workers support the ban, claiming that some employees do, in fact, waste too much time playing computer games, which is unfair to their harder-working colleagues.

“I think it’s a great idea,” said Bill Crockett, a Department of Transportation employee. “I like it because we are here to work and not to play games, and you get a lot more done if the games aren’t there.”

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But others defend the games as a useful break from the monotony of routine tasks. Russ Binion, president of Local 12 of the American Federation of Government Employees and a Labor Department employee, said the games may well increase the productivity of workers faced with repetitive work.

But Binion conceded that fighting the proposed ban could give taxpaying Americans the idea that federal employees want to protect their right to goof off.

“I don’t think we in the federal government can afford to defend to the public that we need computer games on our computers,” he said.

Faircloth’s amendment was originally part of a separate bill he introduced in June. As part of his drive to improve government responsiveness, that bill included provisions to require federal offices to use live operators on main phone lines and to make sure the numbers for those lines are listed in public directories.

Faircloth is hoping to pursue the rest of the original bill next session, according to spokesman Peter Hans.