Uncivil Surfer

In response to a comment and an email received from different people, no I am not the Civil Serf.

How bad are things and how diversified/incoherent is the UK blogosphere that I didn't even know about its existent until it hit the headlines this weekend, and was withdrawn from the 'net. A few years ago, all other 99 UK blogs would have alerted me to it, because I would have been reading them reading her.

I have to confess that I did contemplate being a mole in my government department. For the sake of anonymity, we shall call it the Department for Administrative Affairs (stolen from Yes (Prime) Minister and beloved of Training Course case studies).

The late lamented Sunday Correspondent did a feature on the Official Secrets Act that said that even revealing the content of the menu of the staff canteen is a breach. It has been revised since. I actually don't know what I'm allowed to discuss and what I'm not, but I'm a professional, and I work to the professional ethical standards of my institute and the Standards in public life.

There isn't a major employer around that doesn't expect confidentiality from its employees. I knew someone who had a friend in an accountancy firm who was working on papers on the train. Someone form the client company walked past, caught sight of the papers; that friend of a friend was sacked.

Back in the Golden Age of Blogging, we were all a bit naive and said things about our employer that we wouldn't say now. Back then we thought that only other bloggers read blogs, back when most of one's non-blogging friends thought Google was an unnecessary addition to a saturated 'market' where Dogpile and Ask Jeeves did just fine in searching - how could it be a market anywhere when there were no income streams?

I try to avoid blogging about work. I don't see any harm in discussing stuff like the menu, or that there was a fire alarm one day, or that I saw someone dressed in a way worth remarking. I might report conversations eg today a colleague commented that the French for paper-clip is trombone, which encapsulates the difference between the English and the French - the English go for utility and the French for style. It's not important that it was a colleague who remarked on this. It's hardly a big secret that the DAA has the occasional use of paper-clips/les trombones.

I don't discuss the nature or content of my actual projects at work. We don't even call them projects, we call them audits. I might occasionally say, I have a new project starting, or that my current project might involve a trip to some other part of the country. I don't think anybody knows what part of the DAA I audit, nor the type of audit I do, or my modus operandi, or even which of my colleagues is on my blogroll. Not even me...;-)

I try to avoid direct discussion of the policy responsibilities of the DAA, except where they directly or indirectly affect me as a citizen and taxpayer. Sometimes I will write about political stuff and I am conscious that the matter is more relevant to DAA work than a lay person would recognise. I've just deleted a hilarious passage where I give a fictional name to a Sec of State, thinly disguising their real identity in much the same way that one would say Gordie Broon to hide the fact that I was referring to the First Lord of the Treasury. Nah, not worth it.

I think some of the commenters in the Times article are idiots. Every employer with an ounce of nous, by explicit contract or implicit Code of Conduct, expects their employees to retain confidentiality. Government is no different.

One can try and blog anonymously, but people will find out if they want to (tip - never access your blog from work, in any way, shape or form). If you have a genuine grievance, there are usually appropriate channels for airing grievances and separate ones for whistleblowing.

I have never encountered a situation where I have considered whistle-blowing - although I can think of one where, in retrospect, I realise that I should have gone with my instinct when I suspected the then Tory government was covering up the extent and impact of a disease I can't name, but is known to send cattle demented. I figure that if the conventional whistle-blowing doesn't work, one approaches one's constituency MP, or the Chair of the relevant Select Committee or a carefully selected independent-minded MP. If none of these are interested, you have to conclude you are almost certainly barking up the wrong tree (or barking, or MP for...no, let's drop that string...), especially if neither the New Statesman nor the Daily Mail are interested either.

I'm sure it's fun to spill the beans from an insiders' perspective, but delusional to think that it is in anyway justified by conscience. At the end of the day, I'm a bean-counter, not a bean-spiller. I could be accused of complacency and selling-out, but I don't believe that to be true. Even with my New Labour matching underwear on, I can't say I totally support all the policies pursued by DAA, and in respect of the policies I endorse wholeheartedly, I may question their effectiveness, or the manner in which they are implemented. The last two are implied in my job description, and I can look myself in the mirror in the morning, albeit with a sidelong glance minus my spectacles.

I don't feel any sympathy for the Civil Serf. She knew what she was doing and she did it anyway. I imagine she must work in a fairly sensitive area - Private Office, or an area that gets an overview of Departmental responsibilities. Maybe she is an auditor. She is presumably not a clerk at Jobcentre Plus, because she wouldn't have access to insider gossip. I expect she'll get a book deal out of it, and we can all yawn along in boredom.

Comments

[Gert]

"I'm a bean-counter, not a bean-spiller" - that could make a good tagline.

[jams o donnell]

Haha I like that one Gert. btw I can safely say that I am not Civil Serf either!