BasicGov / BLOG

Mobile computing is changing how IT services are provided in government.

Paul Strobeck, IT Manager for a local government in the San Francisco Bay Area and a contributor writer for TechRepublic, recently wrote an article about tablets in local government and highlighted many interesting and relevant factors in this transition.

• Increased Productivity – local governments that support tablets recognize that it adds to productivity by allowing staff access to access to their work systems in the office or remotely in the  field, at remote sites, or at home.
• Bring Your own Device (BYOD) movement – the iPad has put pressure on organizations, both private and government sector, to allow staff to BYOD for increased work efficiency but this also adds new IT challenges.
• Mobile IT strategy needed – “For tablets to be successful in our enterprise environment, we need to grow our skill sets and discover solutions to new issues” such as policies, security standards, enterprise mobility strategy, and application roadmaps.

Mobile computing is also fueling cloud computing

Mobile apps are also driving demand for cloud services on the back end, such as app stores, databases, and storage (source).

Organizations that have security figured out for cloud computing have the advantage for adding in more mobile computing.

It is encouraging to see local government IT professionals like Paul Strobeck with their embrace change attitude “In the local government, we try to follow what others are doing in the private sector with the mounting issues that tablets have introduced. We do our best to attend conferences and trainings to seek out the evolving policies and advice to support and manage tablets. We’ve discovered that many enterprises are going through the same wave of transition.”

Be on the lookout for news form BasicGov in the coming months for how we are responding to the needs for a mobile workforce in government.