Yellowknife (Apr 04/03) - It may be hard to imagine a serious, buttoned-down bureaucrat visiting pornography Web sites or gambling during work hours.

But believe it.

Two NWT government employees were fired in the last three years for inappropriate Internet use, including surfing porn sites at work.

The government recently purchased a content filtering service -- at a cost of about $30,000 -- to block porn, hate literature sites and gaming.

"Some people used to be able to go to sites and play bingo on a government PC," said Peter Dunn, GNWT director of systems and communications. "But that's not possible now."

Dunn is at the centre of a system with 3,000 users.

The GNWT relies on him and his staff to maintain the latest technology and inform departments when there's a problem.

"There's no cyber cop for e-mail," he said. But the GNWT can now block executable files (like a dancing Santa Claus), movie files or screen savers.

Dunn says he can also check and see how many e-mails a department is receiving. He provides those numbers to departments once a month.

"These numbers might imply to their managers that something is fishy."

But, as director of labour relations Sylvia Haener said, "You can't block everything."

Haener gives advice to government managers about what to do if an employee engages in inappropriate behaviour.

While she confirmed the dismissal of two GNWT employees for porn surfing, Haener said, "Don't ask me anything more specific than that because I can't tell you. I don't want to reveal specifics around identities."

When asked about the porn surfing incidents, and the effectiveness of filtering systems, Dunn said "It must have been a timing thing."

The content filtering has only been in place since the fall.

When it comes to following rules, he said, adults with serious jobs abuse the Internet. The Internet is not just a domain for hacker-type kids to get the rap anymore.

"You might find more young people who are wired and connected and know how to use this stuff," said Dunn.

"But when it comes to morals and scruples, I don't think age is anything."