Penza, 21 March 2014. PenzaNews. The head of the governor’s staff department and the government of the Penza region Viktor Rubtsov confirmed that certain categories of officials working in the building in 75 Moskovskaya Street have restricted access to certain Internet websites. Earlier, social activist, executive director of community foundation “Civil Union” Oleg Sharipkov spread the information on Twitter that the regional government has some Internet resources blocked.

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According to Viktor Rubtsov, restrictions apply to all civil servants, however, for example, the officials such as the minister, the deputy chairman of the government of the Penza region and higher ranks have access to an expanded list of websites as compared to ordinary workers — leading specialists.

“We have established a central server which defines the type of connection certain groups of officials have access to. I know for sure that senior officials have maximum access to all websites, except for pornographic. They have a possibility to access news resources, social networks, while lower categories of officials have no,” the head of the department said.

He also clarified that the prohibition does not extend to specific websites and personal pages, but thematic groups of Internet resources.

“Some websites we do not block. Oleg Sharipkov writes that penzanews.ru is closed for access. For me, this is new,” Viktor Rubtsov said, noting that he personally has no problems visiting the website of news agency “PenzaNews.”

He also assured that there is no such document providing a list of banned websites.

However, the head of the department stressed that the hierarchy of access depends not only on the position, but also on the duties performed by the individual.

He gave an example of the department of information policy and media of the Penza region, the duty of which is to view the video channels, track blogs, visit social networks and forums.

At the same time, according to Viktor Rubtsov, it would have been strange if the staff of the ministry of economy was engaged in the same work for their duty is analytical forecasting and strategic development of the territory.

“During their working hours, people should work,” he concluded.

In turn, the head of the department of the information of the Penza region Alexander Antonov also said that restricting access to the Internet for certain groups of officials exist, however, he said, these restrictions were introduced a few years ago with the aim of improving productivity.

He explained that from a technical point of view, the decision to grant or deny access to a particular resource is actually taken by a computer program that works like a normal anti-spam filter on the server and synchronizes information on suspicious sites with content received from public Internet sources.

According to experts of the IT-sphere, in most cases, there is an opportunity to overcome the restriction set by system administrators using special programs including free ones, but a simpler way to solve the problem is to use a smartphone, tablet or flash modem by any operator providing wireless Internet access.