Ethics in Illinois

The annual online State of Illinois Ethics test is coming round again. All State of Illinois employees have to take it.

This is the test that famously disqualified thousands of participants last year not for getting the answers wrong but for getting them right in too little time.

So this is how I plan to 'game' the system this time round: After answering the first bunch of questions, I'll go out and rob 5 banks, shoplift enough school supplies to last me a whole year, steal the identities of six dozen people, and swallow half a pound of grapes at the supermarket without paying for them. This will still leave me enough time to get back to the office and complete the test.

Problem solved.

Illinois House Votes for Internet Filtering on Library Computers

The Illinois House just passed a law to require internet filtering on all computers in the public libraries.

From what I understand this would affect all public access computers -- not simply those used by children.

If that's the case this is really setting up the public library as a third rate service for adults who don't need government telling them what they can and cannot look up.

I'm not talking porn here -- I'm talking about the right of adults to unfettered access to the Net for legitimate purposes.

If there's an illegal site, fine, tell the FBI! But don't impose on us some fake watered-down version of the Net just because we're at the library and not at home or at Starbucks.

State Ethics Test Itself Raises Ethics Issues for Illinois Academics

If you work at a public college or university in Illinois you may already have heard of this. In fact, your Faculty Senate may be gearing up to lodge a complaint as we speak. There's also been articles about this in both the Chicago Tribune and Sun-times. [earlier version on archive.org]

Above is a copy of one of the letters the State Inspector General has been sending to a number of participants in last Fall's online State Ethics Test. The letter tells participants that their "certificate of completion" for having gotten the answers right is no longer valid because it took them less than 10 minutes to complete the test.

Now to a normal person, successfully completing a test, in this case on Ethics, in record time might indicate a special aptitude for the subject. However for the state of Illinois, this indicates instead an unwillingness to "meaningfully engage" with the material.

The "Noncompliant Employee" is then instructed to go though an included brochure, to sign the final page and send it back in -- under penalty of "disciplinary" action including being fired.

So naturally no one wants to be called "noncomplaint" particularly when it comes to ethics and many are refusing to sign the thing. The Tribune reports over 2300 offenders from U. of I. alone.

It would have been nice if they had mentioned the time requirement at some point during the test itself. Things aren't helped by the fact that Deputy Inspector General Gilbert Jimenez is going around "wondering" if people used a "cheat sheet" to finish up so quickly. Jimenez's statement to the Tribune implying that full-timers (i.e. people working "8 hours a day") had ample time to devote to the test is inaccurate if not altogether misleading since part-timers were required to participate as well.