Tag: DES - Page 2 - Granite Grok

BE BREITBART: Update 2: Right To Know Request – IT and HR records for NH DES employee, Richard de Seve

September 26, 2018March 25, 2012

by Skip

Mr. Murphy,

As we discussed yesterday, I have mailed the Department of Environmental Services’ initial response to your request for records. A courtesy copy is attached hereto as a PDF file. Also attached is a PDF copy of DES’ Electronic Communications Policy.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Thank you

(Emphasis mine, above) I mentioned in my last post that instead of the IT policy that the Department of Information Technology follows, the Department of Environmental Services has a different one (and that was sent to me by DES’s “RTK dude and Legal Eagle”, after being informed that DES follows a different tune than what the IT folks do):

The full JPG that I created from the sent PDF is after the jump. However, if you want to see the PDF, click here. And of COURSE, I had questions; those are after the jump as well. I will say that this policy is much weaker (from my techie eyes) than that of the actual IT’s policy. It would probably be a good thing if each departmental policy (under the “if 1, then many” logic, if DES has one, am betting all of the other departments have their separate (and weaker) policies. The IT dept certainly will know better the IT technical “problem areas” that span across the entire network far better than most other departments (although there are always “ringers” that do know more than some IT folks – motivation and curiosity can go way far) while being familiar for most of the biz scenarios that should / should not be allowable.

And I wonder how many of the departments don’t define their terms sufficiently well so that there is a lot of “grey area” in between the letters of the law (while ignoring the Spirit of the policy – and that of just doing a good honest day’s work for a honest day’s pay). Maybe another ‘Grok project – or maybe the IT Dept should be doing that all on their own…

The NH-D.E.S. Break Schedule, and Other Mysteries of The Known Universe

September 26, 2018March 25, 2012

by Steve MacDonald

We have it on good authority that Richard de Seve, State employee over at the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, only reads and comments on the articles at the Concord Monitor-online, during his breaks. He did, after all, admit this too me, so what better authority can there be? And who am I to doubt the “word “of a long time Public employee, part time UNH professor, and high ranking member of the SEIU/NH-SEA?

That question answers itself, yes?

So I did a little test. I took another look at his last four years worth of comments at the Concord Monitor, and checked the posting times.

My conclusion? That DES either offers its employes a very liberal rotating break schedule that occurs with greater frequency than J.R.R. Tolkien’s Hobbits stop to eat or Dick de Seve is simply giving himself a “break” to read and or respond to content at the Concord Monitor, on any given work day, whenever the mood strikes him, in any one of these potential time periods.

BE BREITBART: Update 1: Right To Know Request – IT and HR records for NH DES employee, Richard de Seve

September 26, 2018March 24, 2012

by Skip

To recap, we caught wind that a NH Dept. Of Environmental Services employee, Richard de Seve (former lawyer, chapter VP in the NH SEIU), was politically blogging on the taxpayer dime and time. So, we decided to find out what the State had to say about it and found this IT policy concerning the use of State paid computer / network resources. Once that was posted, Mr. de Seve decided to write an email to Steve (posted here) in which he said he “sorry, won’t do it again) but also demanded that Steve apologize to his SEIU “brothers & sisters” (which Steve did in his usual great “Steve” fashion).

Well, that led to our next post in which we launched a Right To Know request (details here). And we did get a response (after the jump).

Along with it we received a different IT policy that is specific to the Departmental of Environmental Services – Apparently (as NH Rep. Seth Cohn informed me a while ago), when it comes to IT policies, there is a Balkanization that has happened: every man for himself! Who knows, maybe this will lead to some other actions that were unintended from our original thoughts.

The problem, though, is that IT policy is the ONLY thing we have received at this point – not what we expected. Well, we did copy some Legislators on our original request – and we heard back from several of them. While I have had some pleasant conversations with the DES “RTK dude” Pete Demas concerning the request, we’ve not received ANY of the requested data as of yet.

We can be a patient lot here at GraniteGrok – but I’m figuring that perhaps it is time to talk to some of those Legislators again.

An Apology to the NH SEA/SEIU

September 26, 2018March 19, 2012

by Steve MacDonald

No one understands the problems of perception like the Democrat Party. They invest a good deal of time and money into hiding what they are truly up to. Almost as much time as they spend painting pictures of their opponents for the main stream media to hang on your living room walls. So we should not be surprised when a prominent member of the New Hampshire SEA, a chapter president with the local SEIU, sees the kind of perception issues he creates when we uncovered months, even years of online comments, posted during office hours, while he was supposed to be performing state business, on the taxpayer dime, from the Department of Environmental Services, where he is employed by you and I.

Perception is a problem but not nearly as much of a problem as reality.