Are there a few solutions for actually performing the monitoring that you would suggest?

And the concept of expense tracking? Surely team members should be trusted to spend corporate funds wisely, right? Should we stretch that to government? Can trust our civil servants to spend our money wisely?

Time is the most scarce resource a business has. Getting reporting on how people spend a resource isn’t evil, if done correctly… And it’s not necessarily a signal that you don’t trust your team (especially if the team can see how the manager is spending their time!).

Transparency like this has some pretty radical effects. People who don’t know what they should be working on seek out productive stuff to do. People who are leisure surfing don’t hastily alt-tab to Excel when the boss walks by because they’re confident their data is out there. People who work odd hours don’t look like slackers. People who aren’t necessarily good at APPEARING productive/focused no longer pale next to those who do. Workplace camouflage is no longer rewarded.

Putting the truth out there isn’t a force of evil– hiding the truth IS. But obviously, an evil/small-minded manager could do considerable damage with spyware-style monitoring tools.

It’s hard to see this as anything but evil. If you are required by regulation to monitor activity that’s one thing, but anything else shows a distinct lack of trust that will only be harmful in the long run. If you treat people like criminals, they will be behave like criminals.

I have no doubt that there is a market for these products, but I for one would never buy any for my company.

But, short of artificial intelligence, how could you possibly allow them access to social media / web 2.0 sites yet NOT allow them to misuse those services in a way that is detrimental to the company?

And a broader question– how much are you paying for that security? i.e. if I could make a case that your security was causing a 10% reduction in employee performance/output and a 8% increase in annual employee attrition/churn and was a major reason why high-performing people aren’t taking jobs at your company, is it worth it? What if you double those numbers? I suppose it depends on the potential damages that a leak could cause.

If providers want companies (not just users) to embrace services on the Internet then they need to build in functions that allow companies to extend their corporate security/controls/processes into the data users may put on these services rather than ignoring corporate security needs and embracing only user ease of use and functionality.