Government Use of Mobile Technology

by Tim Larkins, Senior Manager, Market Intelligence

This week the Digital Services Advisory Group (DSAG) released a report, Government Use of Mobile Technology, in collaboration with the Federal CIO Council.  The report identified successes and setbacks in the implementation of Steve Van Roekel’s Digital Government Strategy (DGS), which endorses government adoption of mobile technologies.  DGS officially highlighted mobility as a necessary platform that government and industry must deliver to.  To that end, the government has had open discussions with industry about development of a Mobile strategy since May of 2012.

In its report, the DSAG identified a number of gaps that industry and the government face in embracing mobile technologies; with the primary concerns related to security and infrastructure.  Specifically, the report outlined a lack in:

• User authentication
• Data encryption
• Application security
• Compatibility and access to legacy applications from mobile platforms
• Cross platform infrastructures that satisfy security requirements

The report went on to describe other challenges, including:

• Immaturity of the product space
• Inability of agencies to react to rapid changes in mobile device management solutions and mobile application stores
• Unavailability of secure continuous network connections to allow for delivery of web applications and virtualized desktops
• Lack of legal, privacy, and financial policies
• Lack of reimbursement policies for government employees’ use of mobile devices
• Lack of a life cycle cost benefit analysis to justify investment in mobile technologies

Mobility is not just an emerging technology– it is a necessity; and we expect spending on mobile solutions to ramp up over the next several years.  However, before mobile technologies can be fully embraced, helping our customers address these challenges must be our top priority.