Discover: The Case for Citizen Centric Mobile Gov

Mobile has been called transformative for healthcare, commerce, development, and education. Mobile will be transformative for government, too.

The widespread use of mobile devices - studies show that 96% of 18–29-year-olds own a cell phone - signals changing needs and expectations of the public. The federal government must deliver services and information always, anytime, anywhere. Many agencies are already pushing the government’s adoption of consumer mobile services. We are calling this shift Mobile Gov.

The case for Mobile Gov is driven by:

the ubiquity of mobile use in the U.S.;
opportunities to use mobile to improve the efficiency of service delivery in government;
innovations in mobile that can propel new government services/service delivery; and
improved transparency through increased access to government data and information.

Government is at a crossroads very similar to where we were with the new World Wide Web in the 1990s. Early mobile adopters--like the early Web adopters--are experimenting. Some have created products. Some are beginning to build programs and strategies. But in the 90s, there was no overall coordination of federal Web efforts. Websites grew like kudzu, creating not only great services but also, in many cases, redundancies that confused citizens and consumed resources.

Government needs to make technology investments and build systems that will support the way people are communicating and interacting today and for the future. Unlike 15 years ago, we can use new communications and collaboration technologies to share experiences and ideas and to build strategies and toolsets across agencies--making the most of current budgets while meeting the expectations of a citizenry on the move.

Based on our work with mobile innovators in a growing federal community of practice, we think we can help government embrace the promise of mobile by:

educating federal department and agency leadership, program staff, and IT staff on the benefits of mobile use;
developing criteria to identify better projects and better ways to implement them;
encouraging mobile strategy and technology investment decisions to meet agency mission goals; and
spurring and modeling interagency collaboration to accelerate Mobile Gov.

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