Anthony Bradley

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Anthony J. Bradley
GVP
3 years at Gartner
19 years in IT

Anthony J. Bradley is a group vice president in Gartner Research, managing teams that cover business process management, project and portfolio management, enterprise architecture, IT procurement, IT sourcing, and vendor management. Read Full Bio

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Results of my Survey on Restricting Access to the Social Web-Part 2

by Anthony J. Bradley  |  October 26, 2009  |  Comments Off

In response to a Computerworld citing a study finding that “54% of U.S. companies say that they have banned workers from using social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace while on the job, I did a little survey of my own with these results. I left the survey up to possibly collect more responses (only 22 people took the survey the first time). Now there are 40 responses. Still not exactly statistically relevant numbers :-) but here are the new results:

Q1. Does your employer leave the decision on social media access up to you (i.e., there is no policy)? Yes. 59% No: 43%

Q2. Does your employer encourage the productive use of social media Web sites? Yes: 46% No: 54%

Q3. Does your employer restrict access to specific social media Web sites such as facebook and YouTube? Yes: 49% No: 51%

4. Does your employer restrict all access to the Web from work devices? Yes: 5% No: 95%

Though responses almost doubled, the numbers didn’t change dramatically. But they did get slightly more conservative across all questions. Some people left comments. Here are some interesting ones:

  • documents are published presenting Social Networks ( without clear distinction ) as dangerous system both for preserving information asset and as place where virus could infect your PC
  • No encouragement or discouragement [of social media], but because the company has fairly conservative culture, most are choosing not use social computing just to be on the safe side.
  • Hasn’t been encouraging it [social media] but that’s because they didn’t really understand it. Part of my job (I’m new) is to start it going
  • [Access restrictions] done under the guise of bandwidth management, but it’s really an attempt to control the message.

Thanks to those who participated in the survey.

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