State Gets Tough on SPAM

The state's new SPAM filtering system saves Oregon taxpayers over two million dollars a year.

Salem-News.com

(SALEM) - If you think SPAM e-mail is bad on your home computer, try multiplying it by nearly 38,000. That`s the number of e-mail addresses for State of Oregon employees.

While you can`t totally get rid of SPAM, the Department of Administrative Services is taking a proactive approach to minimize the problem.

The Network Operations Center, which runs the state`s central e-mail hub, has set up a SPAM filtering system that does an effective job for state agencies.

The DAS filtering system, which costs Oregon taxpayers nothing, is a much better deal than going out to buy anti-SPAM products sold on the commercial market. Chris Wilch, with DAS, says commercial filtering programs can average $20,000.00.

Thirty-five million messages are processed each month by the state`s central e-mail hub in Salem. In a recent one month period 6.5 million messages to state computers were identified as either SPAM or viruses and were filtered out.

The SPAM messages are not only time consuming to get rid of, taking employees away from their real jobs, they can also be offensive.

Daryl Kottek, with the DAS Network Operations Center, estimates the state is able to filter 80-85 percent of the unwanted e-mails.

Using DAS as an example, about 10 unfiltered SPAM e-mail messages come in to each employee per day. Factor in the time it takes the worker to open the SPAM, read it and hit delete, it would add up to more than 211 days of lost productivity each year for DAS.

That`s about $64,000 of taxpayer money for one agency alone.

For all agencies, filtered SPAM e-mail saves workers nearly 3 hours of time each year.

Multiply that by the state`s 38,000 employees and you have a time savings of 4,256 days, which equates to over two million dollars in taxpayer savings.

Kottek says the problem is not going to go away.

As technology evolves, spammers are just going to find more ways to get their message out. We`re just going to have to stay on our toes developing programs that reduce the distractions state employees have to contend with when they`re working online Kottek said.