§ 11.00. Computer Policy.

The City provides the necessary supplies, uniforms, equipment, automobiles, and electronics such as computers for employees to perform their job. These items are intended for use for the City's purposes.

Employees are expected to exercise care in the use of the City's equipment and property and use such property only for authorized purposes. Loss, damages or theft of the City's property should be reported at once. Negligence in the care and use of the City's property may be considered grounds for discipline, up to and including termination.

Employees must not deliberately perform acts that waste computer resources or unfairly monopolize resources to the exclusion of others. These acts include, but are not limited to, sending mass mailings or chain letters, spending excessive amounts of time on the Internet, playing games, engaging in online chat groups, personal phone calls or texting, printing multiple copies of documents, or otherwise creating unnecessary network traffic. Because audio, video and picture files require significant storage space, files of this or any other sort may not be downloaded unless they are business-related.

No Expectation of Privacy

The computers and computer accounts given to employees are to assist them in performance of their jobs. Employees have no expectation of privacy in anything they create, store, send, or receive on the computer system. The computer system belongs to the City and may only be used for business purposes.

Monitoring Computer Usage

The City has the right, but not the duty, to monitor any and all of the aspects of its computer system including, but not limited to, monitoring sites visited by employees on the Internet, monitoring chat groups and news groups, reviewing material downloaded or uploaded by users to the Internet, and reviewing email sent and received by users.

Material that is fraudulent, harassing, embarrassing, sexually explicit, profane, obscene, intimidating, defamatory, or otherwise unlawful, inappropriate, offensive (including offensive material concerning sex, race, color, national origin, religion, age, disability, or other characteristic protected by law), or violates the City's equal employment opportunity policy and its policies against sexual or other harassment may not be downloaded from the Internet or displayed or stored in company computers.

Employees encountering or receiving this kind of material should immediately report the incident to their supervisors or the City Manager. The City's equal employment opportunity policy and its policies against sexual or other harassment apply fully to the use of the Internet and any violation of those policies is grounds for discipline up to and including discharge.

Upon termination of employment the employee must return all City property including computer and associated equipment, work product and documents in his or her possession or control.