Like it or not, smart phones and handheld messaging devices are all over government. Here’s how to make sure this invasion of mobile devices doesn’t drain your organization’s budget or threaten its security.
A call came on Vivek Kundra’s smart phone just after midnight one day last year informing him that a critical piece of the information technology infrastructure in the nation’s capital city had failed.
Kundra, the District of Columbia’s chief technology officer, used a wireless cellular device — a BlackBerry 8100 Pearl — to set up a communications bridge that connected the smart phones and personal digital assistants of senior managers scattered throughout the city, Maryland and Virginia.
In less than 10 minutes, the managers could exchange e-mail messages, read network operations center alerts and scan status reports on a special Web site as they made their way to the city’s data center.
“I was able to focus on command and control and assemble my top team to solve the problem on my Pearl,” Kundra said. “Everyone was looking at the same information and communicating in real time.”
The managers fixed the outage within an hour, a task that could have taken five times longer without immediate communications and access to relevant data, Kundra said. The return on investment from that single day paid for the BlackBerry services, he added.
Such is the perceived value of the latest generation of wireless mobile devices. In one category are smart phones — cell phones with large screens for e-mail, Web and multimedia capabilities. In another category are PDAs, slightly beefier devices designed primarily for data communications. They have features such as enterprise server connectivity and keyboards and now offer voice capabilities.
PDAs that only handled data messaging were specialized tools for emergency responders and delivery workers. Now smart phones and voice-enabled PDAs are standard issue for public-sector executives, mobile workers or anyone else who might be needed when a problem arises.
Kundra uses Washington’s special homeland security requirements to justify a liberal allocation of mobile devices.
“Given Washington’s position as a target, it’s critical for me to be able to get hold of anyone who is involved in emergency services,” he said.
Kundra issues wireless devices to employees whose responsibilities have anything to do with 911 services, the telecommunications infrastructure or servers.
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