Cult blogger Civil Serf identified and suspended from Whitehall

An internet blogger who published derisive accounts of life as a civil servant at the heart of the Brown Government has been identified and suspended.

Known by the pseudonym Civil Serf, she is a middle manager in the Department for Work and Pensions and had been on its fast-track promotion scheme.

The 33-year-old from London, who launched a one-woman assault on Ministers and mandarins, has now been stripped of her Government laptop and had her security clearance revoked.

Her activities began in November last year when she started posting excoriating insights into daily life in the civil service.

She swiftly attracted a cult following – and enraged her bosses – as she detailed bureaucracy and incompetence in Whitehall, lampooned Ministers, labelled Gordon Brown "Velcro" because bad stories stuck to him and described her working world as "pointless and doomed".

Investigators hunting for the blogger summoned her to a meeting last week, when it is understood that she denied responsibility.

She was told she was being suspended regardless and, when she was ordered to attend a subsequent meeting with the inquiry team, she finally confessed.

She was caught after the Government dedicated a team of computer experts to track her down across the internet.

A source in the DWP said it was an extraordinary outlay of resources as the team was told to clear their desks of everything except their hunt for Civil Serf.

Although civil servants must abide by a code of conduct, it is unclear what, if any, rules have been broken by the blogger.

The website has now been deleted and the Cabinet Office is set to issue guidelines to civil servants to cover insider blogging or comments left on online social networks such as Facebook.

A DWP spokesman said: "All civil servants are expected to abide by a code of conduct.

"We are investigating whether there has been any breach."