Federal technology managers foresee the use of tablet mobile computing devices by agency employees will nearly triple over the next two years, from 7% of employees in 2011 to 19% by 2013, and that smartphone use will increase from 35% to 43% of employees over the same period, as agencies look for alternatives to desktop PCs, according to a new survey. Keep reading →
Federal information technology officials are on a mission to hammer out a new, more coherent strategy for using mobile technology in government by the end of next month. But already, they are beginning to conclude that parallel efforts focused on outward-facing citizen services and inward-focused workforce productivity opportunities must be viewed increasingly from a larger, more integrated perspective, according to Richard Holgate.
Holgate, CIO and assistant director for science and technology for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), is playing a lead role in developing a new “federal mobility strategy” announced last month by U.S. CIO Steven VanRoekel during the Consumer Electronics Show. Keep reading →
The days of government-issued BlackBerrys may be waning, but the reason may have less to do with the overwhelming popularity of iPhones and Android-operated devices than with the growing maturity of back-end systems used by agencies to manage their mobile devices.
For the General Services Administration, having an approved and functioning mobile device management system in place was a crucial component in its decision in recent weeks to begin offering its employees a choice over which smartphones and tablets they may use for government work. Keep reading →
Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel declared BusinessUSA, the administration’s new website designed to help American businesses, officially open for business.
The new website, announced last month, and still in beta, is an online platform that “will make it easier for businesses to access the services and information they need to help them grow, hire and export,” VanRoekel said in a White House blog post Feb. 17. Keep reading →
A Federal Communications Commission proposal that would effectively halt the launch of a new nationwide wireless network by LightSquared appears to open the door to a new and potentially disruptive debate on the need to develop receivers designed to coexist with new wireless networks.
Recent tests showed that LightSquared’s network would overpower GPS transmissions, prompting the FCC to reverse its prior approval and now block the plan. Keep reading →
The U.S. Government Printing Office reports that the mobile application it developed for this year’s release of the 2013 Federal Budget proposal to Congress drew 53,000 visits in the first 24 hours of being posted — a surprising volume given the arcane nature and scope of the annual budget document.
The GPO application, available at http://m.gpo.gov/budget, features mobile friendly text versions of the president’s budget message, along with additional commentaries on building the economy, cutting waste, reducing the deficit and investing in the future. Keep reading →
Mobility at work has become the “new normal” for federal employees, but managing mobility continues to create challenges, a new government sector survey concludes.
The report, based on a survey of 414 federal employees and IT professionals, found: Keep reading →
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, speaking to nearly 1,000 technology executives in Northern Virginia earlier today, called on the federal government and the nation at large to re-embrace a national spirit of innovation, or risk seeing the decline of nation’s global economic and political stature.
“If we are to remain the strongest nation on Earth, we must remain the most innovative nation on Earth,” he said. Keep reading →
The General Services Administration, which issued operating plans Tuesday for securing and monitoring cloud computing systems in the government, released a slide presentation and comments earlier today, explaining how the program will work. The information, captured during a presentation with reporters, was made available in the form of a video presentation released on YouTube.
The new program is known as the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, or FedRAMP. The program is part of a coordinated governmentwide effort to simplify the approval process for Web-based cloud computing services. Keep reading →
You’re a high profile executive in the technology industry with a record of innovation–and suddenly are being quietly considered by the White House as a potential candidate for an upcoming presidential appointment.
Naturally, the FBI is tasked with putting together a report, assessing your fitness for the position and looking for potential skeletons in your closet. Keep reading →