Numerous Defense Department and civilian agencies have incorporated BlackBerrys and other smart phones into their plans for emergency notification and communications.
Mobile phones with Web interfaces, such as the BlackBerry, are crucial components of any effective emergency response system, said Guy Miasnik, president and chief executive officer of AtHoc. The company uses an open standard — the Common Alerting Protocol — to create unified emergency notification systems that allow people to initiate or receive emergency alerts via a BlackBerry.
People can reply to those alerts with an audio, text or e-mail response. “Our system then aggregates that information and provides the organization — the emergency operations center — with a complete [analysis] of what is going on with all its personnel,” Miasnik said.
At DOD, AtHoc is the de facto standard for such capabilities for the Navy and Air Force, Miasnik said. As many as 400,000 employees in each of those services is covered by AtHoc’s unified notification system, he said.
— Florence Olsen
Many federal managers have discovered that the BlackBerry and other smart phones are more than devices for checking e-mail while on the road. They are also powerful management tools that are transforming leadership styles — and creating the potential for various management blunders.
The BlackBerry creates new expectations, which leaders must manage, and it requires a new etiquette, which is still evolving. There’s more to the BlackBerry than meets the eye. Some government leaders describe a BlackBerry-induced state of mind unlike anything they experienced in pre-BlackBerry days when they had to be at their desk to take a phone call or in their office to read e-mail messages.
Many people see the BlackBerry as a transformative technology that has enabled leaders and organizations to optimize their use of time. But some experts say the BlackBerry also has transformed leadership in a negative way.
“The problem with BlackBerrys and the whole plugged-in culture is the lack of reflection, the lack of downtime, the lack of quiet time, the lack of unplugged time,” said John Engels, president of Leadership Coaching.
The problem Engels sees is one that few federal executives recognize. It’s the BlackBerry’s ability to turn downtime into professionally productive time that makes it so appealing to many information technology executives.
“It’s perfect for use in downtime,” said Jacquelyn Patillo, deputy chief information officer at the Transportation Department. “If you’re in the doctor’s office, on a train or during times when you might just sit and gaze off into never land, you can use the BlackBerry to get some work done, and I think that’s a good use of it.”
The ability of the BlackBerry to convert downtime into work time keeps expanding as Research in Motion, which makes the popular device, adds new capabilities. “One of the great features now is you can connect your laptop PC to the BlackBerry and have Internet access through the BlackBerry,” said Marwan Jamal, professor of systems management at National Defense University.
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