The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) has dismissed 14 employees at its Swansea, Wales offices for sending pornographic email attachments. In total over 100 employees were disciplined, including one senior manager. The 14 dismissed were alleged to have sent the most offensive material which was considered to have been gross misconduct.

George Lungley, managing director of SmoothWall, said: "One of the worst aspects of this story is that some of the emails were sent outside of the DVLA to external recipients. The UK public already has a less than favourable opinion about certain government departments, so the idea of staff sending pornographic emails to help relieve the boredom only strengthens the image of wasting tax-payers' money. This is not even the first scandal to hit the DVLA, as a year ago a female employee was dismissed for sending a video clip of herself having sex with her boyfriend to 300 colleagues.

Obviously these DVLA staff were either unaware of their organisation's Acceptable Usage Policy (AUP), or ignored it on the basis that they didn't expect disciplinary action. Management failure to communicate and enforce AUPs is a big problem, as witnessed by SmoothWall's Internet Usage Survey released earlier this year that revealed that 38 per cent of employees who knew their employer has an AUP were unaware of its contents.

Firms must ensure that not only do they have AUPs in place, but that they can actually enforce them. There is no point having something in place where you don't actually know if it is being adhered to or not. The DVLA, and indeed other governmental departments, should learn from this that they have to be able to better monitor what their staff are doing online and have the correct tools in place to combat the misuse."
[Being of Danish origin it never ceases to amuse me how much mileage the English can get out of these old-fashioned sex taboos. Emailing porn about is basically a non-event and firing somebody as a consequence simply ridiculous. Why would an organisation wish to lose a good worker just because she decides to demonstrate that she enjoys her boyfriend? Waste of resources! --Ed].

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