Starr Report Cuts Into Productivity
Curious Employees Cost Companies $500 Million

Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Oct. 3) - Employees reading the juicy details of the relationship between President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky on the Internet cost American companies almost $500 million in lost productivity, according to a report released Friday.

San Diego software company NetPartners Internet Solutions Inc. said about 13.5 million workers downloaded Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's report to Congress or the president's videotaped grand jury testimony at work over the past two weeks.

The company, which makes software that allows companies to track the Internet usage of their employees, said companies lost an estimated $470 million in productivity if each employee spent an hour on the net looking at the presidential testimony or reading the report. The company based its figure an on average employee cost of $35 per hour.

That figure dwarfs the estimated cost of $45 million for Kenneth Starr's investigation into various scandals surrounding President Clinton.

All told about 25 million Americans, at work and at home, accessed the Starr report on the Internet with another 2 million downloading the president's grand jury testimony. About half that number logged on at work, where computers are typically better equipped than home computers to download large files.

''You had 27 million people over the past two weeks who have been interested in the Starr report and have looked at it over the Internet,'' said Bryan Wampler, spokesman for NetPartners.

''Most people don't have the resource at home to download this, so the majority of people do this at work where they have faster Internet connections and faster computers,'' he said.

The eventual cost to companies could be much higher when the strain put on computer networks and time spent downloading software to view the video testimony was factored in, the report said.

NetPartners' software allows companies to block employee's from accessing certain Internet sites in much the same way as parental control Internet software.

REUTERS Reut06:43 10-03-98

Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

---