GENEVA -- An audit by the New York State Comptroller's office finds city of Geneva officials and employees used city-owned computers to visit pornographic, social networking, and gambling websites, as well as to conduct outside business.

The audit covered the period from July 2008-September 2009.  It found the city's IT security and information controls were poorly designed and ineffective at preventing inappropriate use of the city's computers.  It says the city also did not adopt a policy for acceptable computer use.

According to the report, auditors found one computer located at City Hall was used to visit adult websites with explicit sexual content, including an adult-oriented social networking site, an online dating website, and a pornographic website.  Also, the audit found three computers assigned to city councilor members were used for private employment, file sharing, social networking, gambling, shopping, and streaming movies. 

Geneva City Manager Matt Horn says city officials are taking the audit very seriously, and they are already taking action to correct the problems.  He says only one computer was used to visit pornographic sites.  That happened during a time when there was a problem with the protective firewall.  He says that computer was not password protected and has since been removed. 

To address other cases of misuse, the city is working with the comptroller's office to develop an official computer use policy, and will allocate about $240,000 in next year's budget to help fix the problem.

City councilor Paul D'Amico was one of the people cited in the audit.  He says he was given a computer for home use, and the city did not give him guidelines on how it could or could not be used.  He says his children may have used the computer and visited sites like youtube.com.  Now, he plans to give the computer back to the city to avoid any future confusion.

Some people who live in Geneva say a city-owned computer should only be used for city business.

"It's just outrageous to be at work and to be going on those websites when they're supposed to be working," says Tony McDaniels.

"I thought it was wrong," says John Watson.  "They need to be dealt with, and maybe they don't need to have those computers or use of those computers."

Horn says the city will continue to work with the comptroller's office to make sure computers are being used properly.  And it's also looking into ways to use social networking sites, like Facebook, in a positive way to market city programs and services.

Should there be limits on using city owned computers?  How strict should they be?  Post your comments here: