Or should that be “Internet Policing” ?

As a technically aware user of the internet (I hate that tradition dictates it should have a capital I, so I fight it) for over 20 years I am well aware that the internet poses many dangers to the unwary or is that the uneducated?

As a part of my drive to get the Church to start creating and accepting the validity of IT based policy documents, I thought I’d try and start with what should be a no-brainer. I say this because I think even the most uneducated person knows of the potential problems of using a computer on the internet – even if they don’t know about trojans or the latest virus or chain letters or security breaches or… or… they may at least know that (as an example) a lot of criminal activity goes on via the internet. Or that the fastest growth industry is probably still pornography.

Beyond all this, the fact that 61% of UK households in 2007 had internet connections and that 84% of those have broadband connections (National Statistics Online) makes it plausible to take a leap that not everyone is being 100% good, all the time.

But then I find that some people just don’t want to know and thus we need to introduce policies or as some of my friends call them ‘policing’ documents.

My main issue here is not that we should but in how and not so much even the hardware and/or software methods of restricting use but the soft methods of simply getting user X to agree that this is a good thing. I know the staff at my Church well – only one of them has been in the Church longer than I – and I believe I have a good rapport with them all, but getting them to take that step and introduce policies seems monumental at the moment.

My senior pastor takes the approach of if he doesn’t want to deal with something that isn’t specifically about the health of the Church or its members or potential members then he simply doesn’t respond to the eMail(s).  I can’t go over his head as there is no one else beyond him. My position is only semi-official in that there is nobody else whom could (at present) step into my shoes and support the Church and I certainly don’t get paid for it. So my dilemma comes down to one of two choices.

  1. Introduce semi-stealth policing and advise each staff member individually that this is the case.
  2. Create the policy documents myself and present them as a ‘fait accompli‘ to the management.

Neither approach is the best but either or is the best I can come up with for now.

Additionally I don’t want the document (in this case an internet AUP) to be heavy handed or bogged down with legalese, but neither do I want it to be so inconsequential as to be useless. Beyond this, really I need to make the senior leadership team take some ownership of this and certainly to be a party to enforcing standards and in encouraging the staff to comply with these new fangled ideas.

I could (and will) just keep pounding at the door and keep on keeping on, but I feel honour bound to help the Church navigate the murky depths of the internet. As an IT professional I hear (and know) the horror stories of clicking on what seems an innocent link only to be dumped into a storm of adverts and popups – or to end up the victim of a browse by malware attack – or worse, to be perusing your internet surfing history and find pictures or URLs that you never went near (google images and the like have a lot to answer for on this).

So, folks of Church IT land I need your help.

I need suggestions, I need practical help (prayer is always good as well), but most of all I need to borrow your policy documents to see how you’ve done it. I can, but don’t really want to, create all of them from scratch. Ultimately I know, I need to persuade the senior leadership to create a staff handbook.

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