Parish can legally monitor employee emails/web activity
The St. Charles Parish government has the authority to view their employee’s email and Internet history because of an agreement those workers signed when they were first hired.
Kendall Stall, the parish’s director of information and technology services, says that despite the rumors that he’s been monitoring employee emails and Internet sites, he hasn’t been. However, if Stall was requested to monitor an employee’s computer activity at work by someone higher up in the administration, his department would comply.
“The parish has the right to monitor employee activity according to the acceptable use agreement an employee signs once they’re hired to work for the parish,” Stall said.
According to information obtained from the American Management Association E-Policy Institute, employers can log on and review all computer activity as long as they own the computers.
Last year, according to the AMA, of those organizations that engaged in monitoring and surveillance activities, 80 percent informed workers that the company was monitoring content. 86 percent of employees were also warned about e-mail monitoring.
Stall says he has been too busy improving the parish website and supervising his department to worry about monitoring employees.
“Improvements are being made to the current web pages until the new web pages can be developed,” Stall said. “Renee Allemand, our PIO (public information officer), and Abel Dufrene, our web page coordinator/technician, have been working together on this task.”
Stall says the pages are kept up-to-date and provide an abundance of information. Some short videos, which can be seen on Cox Channel 6, have been added to the site.
An agreement was approved by Parish President V. J. St. Pierre to hire Vision Internet Providers last week.
“This is the company that we selected to make upgrades to the current website,” Stall said. “As soon as Vision Internet receives and signs the contract, the project will start and take about 15 to 26 weeks to complete.”
But like many other departments in the parish, Stall says he’s short of workers.
“Now that I have been on the job for five months and have had an opportunity to evaluate the parish’s needs, I am recommending that we increase the staff by two and redefine job responsibilities for the current staff,” he said. “There are currently three employees on staff, including myself.”
The proposed staff would include one technology director, two systems analyst, one GIS coordinator and one web page and multi-media coordinator/GIS assistant.
Stall says skilled workers are required to fill the positions.
“At a minimum, the systems analyst should have at least a bachelor’s degree in either computer science or computer information systems,” he said. “The GIS coordinator should have at least a bachelor’s degree in geomantic or a related field.”
The web page and multi-media coordinator/GIS assistant should have at least 2 years of experience and related work experience.
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