Motorola Solutions

Randy Siegel,a mobile computing executive who has worked with the federal government’s civilian, defense and intelligence agencies on mobile strategies and applications for more than a dozen years, has joined Breaking Gov’s Board of Contributors.

Siegel, who until last month, served as the director of mission critical mobility initiatives at Motorola Solutions, was just named Senior Vice President of U.S. Federal Government sales and strategy for Fixmo, a startup backed by Kleiner Perkins, Motorola Ventures, and other venture capital firms. Fixmo’s mobile risk management technology has been developed as part of a Co-operative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. National Security Agency. Keep reading →

Perhaps it was inevitable. With all the computing power in the palms of a critical mass of end users, commercial off the shelf (COTS) mobile devices – smartphones, tablets and small factor computing devices of various hues and types – are now also getting into the hands of warfighters, first responders, federal law enforcement personnel, covert operators, command and control operation center staffs, and many other government workers.

And as a result, the age of tactical mobility may very well be upon us – finally. Keep reading →


The Department of Defense has taken on the challenge of determining the safest, most appropriate way to deploy modern smartphones to warfighters while maintaining information security.

The consumerization of IT phenomenon–in particular with smartphones–has indeed posed unique challenges to U.S. federal government IT departments. While users would like to take advantage of the smart gadgets that they often also use for private use, there are substantial Information Assurance (IA) concerns regarding the use of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) initiatives. Issues of authentication, authorization, accounting and auditing are paramount. Keep reading →

Although there are many drivers behind the recent explosion of small form factor computing devices in the typical government enterprise environment – including smartphones, tablets, slate and netbook devices, e-readers, and more – perhaps the single most important and under appreciated driver is Microsoft Exchange-based email.

(Full disclosure: Before joining my current employer, I spent nearly 12 years with Microsoft Corp. where I oversaw the company’s strategic and tactical mobile initiatives across the federal government.) Keep reading →