The federal government’s march to mobility will increasingly revolve around a new, broader digital strategy, expected to be released this spring, a White House Office of Management and Budget official said today.
Lisa Schlosser, deputy chief information officer at OMB, said the administration and Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel are continuing to embrace the mobility revolution. VanRoekel publically declared 2012 as the “year of mobile government” earlier this year in a speech at the Consumer Electronics Show and highlighted an initiative to develop a new Federal Mobility Strategy.
But after listening to various groups and suggestions, Schlosser said, that strategy is evolving into what is now emerging as a more expanded digital government strategy that is likely to also embrace another administration initiative to consolidate federal websites,.
“It will be a little bigger than a mobility strategy,” Schlosser told an audience of government and industry executives at mobility forum in Washington today, sponsored by the trade groups, AFFIRM and GITEC.
Government has a greater “digital opportunity,” she said. “It’s not just a mobile opportunity. It’s really an opportunity to take advantage of a fundamental shift in how consumers use information and how we deliver information as well.”
That shift is prompting the Federal CIO’s office to consider “how mobility, not just (mobile) technology, fits into (federal) organizations, regardless of the device, platform, application,” she said.
“Mobility is not about the device, but how we can build content to be delivered through any devices we want. Going digital means that data is built right, from the beginning,” to better support agencies’ missions.
While Schlosser said it was too soon to reveal details about the emerging digital strategy, she nevertheless outlined several major areas that the plan will focus on. They included:
- Encouraging a bring-your-own-device model with polices in order to lower operating costs.
- Improve mobile web presence through standardized computing language, most notably, HTML5-with an emphasis on “how we collect data, how we build data (sets), and how we disseminate data.”
- Address the need to publish .gov content via (application programming interfaces) to spur innovation
- Adopt greater use of web analytics for all .gov. websites.
- Make content portable from the web to any device
- Create reasonable security guidelines
- Develop federal mobility based on user needs.
Video of Schlosser’s and other presentations, are available on AFFIRM’s website.
Schlosser, who joined the Federal CIO office last July, address speculation that the office would be publishing a .gov reform strategy, in response in large part to the administration’s conclusion that there are too many independent government websites, with oftentimes redundant content.
Instead, she said, the Federal CIO’s office expects to issue digital roadmaps “to enable citizens and an increasing mobile workforce.
A major emphasis driving that roadmap is to help government agencies embrace the need to “innovate with less,” and to close the productivity gap in government, compared to industry, in embracing 21st century technology, Schlosser said.
Schlosser reiterated the urgency to find ways of reducing dozens, and even hundreds of duplication financial management, human resource management, content management and other systems within agencies and across government.
“Gone are the days when we can keep investing in duplicative systems, she said, noting the federal government has “an opportunity to free up that capital” that can and must be put to more effective use.
One way to get there, she said, is to continue work with agencies to embrace a “mindset of share first,” she said.
Another is to continue developing acquisition vehicles that also can be shared.
“At OMB, the CIO team does not do anything without working hand in hand with the procurement (community),” she said. But government as a whole must do a better job of providing a “guide to federal agencies to help procure and manage devices, apps, and data in smart, secure and affordable ways,” she said.
Schlosser made a point of noting the news this week that publisher of the Encyclopedia Britannica has announced that after nearly 250 years, it was ceasing publication of its printed editions.
“The lesson of this,” she said, is that if “companies that have been around since 1768 have reformed there business model,” it’s certainly time for the federal government to reform its model for disseminating information.