Any topic (writer’s choice)

You are the fire chief. The firefighters have demanded that the city install Internet access in all city firehouses and some other city owned buildings through a wireless system that would be both accessible to the firefighters and the local population. It would cost the city approximately $30,000 for routers and other equipment and it is on the city councils agenda tonight. Public access to this wireless system would only be accessible at the building department, City Hall, parking authority offices and the local airport. This situation was brought about by a firefighter union grievance. Firefighters at one station paid for their own wireless Internet last year and as chief you yanked it according to the unions interpretation of the public record. The firefighters filed the complaint that said losing their online connection violated their contractual right to freedom of reading material. Under the settlement reached, the firefighters would no longer have to pay for the wireless; taxpayers would foot the bill for equipment and annual maintenance. The citys information technology department would help troubleshoot problems. The connection would be available from 6 PM to 8 AM weekdays and from 1 PM to 8 AM weekends. The agreement required fire personnel to follow all applicable city policies and standards regarding computer usage. The city policy bands any city employee from accessing sexually oriented material, but then questions were raised about eBay, Facebook, and other social networking sites. The city has stated that those would be off limits also. In fact you found out that a city spokesperson said it was you that raised the concern about staff spending time on the social network sites while on city time. The city administration will be working with the IT people to block access to sites like this, but they never bothered to tell you. Now you have been called in to the office because it turned out that a police officer in the adjacent community has just been caught with child pornography on his laptop which was apparently accessed through just such a system as the city is placing in the firehouse, with the same requirements and regulations. You know through a phone call that they want you to not only comment on this situation but they want you to develop a better and tighter set of regulations for the use of the very thing that you did not want in the firehouse in the first place. What do you do? And how do you approach it? (Remember, the times are changing fast and in this whole discussion they have forgotten that many now have handheld devices and tablets that are also in the fire house which may be of further interest in this discussion). How you would handle this problem and what groups you would enlist to assist you. (This problem is adapted from an actual situation that occurred in Florida.