Federal Mobility Strategy Ideas

Going mobile is an excellent opportunity for agencies to revisit their commitments to accessibility for people with disabilities. There is a great deal of synergy between best practices for mobile and the Section 508 / WCAG 2.0 standards.

Develop government-wide shared services catalog that houses code, application programming interfaces (APIs), and web-services that agencies and the public can easily access and use. This will encourage cross-sharing of data, code, etc. (emulating forge.mil – “forge.gov”).

Since each agencies have web content that is being used on day-to-day basis, extending the web content to Mobile approach helps to easily adopt mobile strategy for any agency. Based on the Page-Views of the Web-Content it will be easy to prioritize the content portability to mobile.

Please keep these users in mind, when designing for Mobile apps/sites:

Blind

Low-vision

Mobility-Impaired (limited or no use of hands)

Deaf

Elderly

Low-Literacy

Each have unique needs when using Mobile apps/sites.

Establish centers of excellence for common security services like app vetting, device/OS evaluations, certification and accreditation (i.e. mobile FedRAMP).

Everyone—specifically everyone with an internet-enabled device—is a sensor. All of these individuals have the capability to report events in real-time. As federal budgets are slashed, the Federal Mobility Strategy can incorporate the use of free, publically available information to uncover first-hand situation reports. Constant flow of geo-tagged information and images provides government the opportunity to collaborate ...more »

Government should foster secure, NIST compliant, collaboration and crowdsourcing technologies within and across government agencies to make information sharing more efficient and effective. A variety of information is collected across agencies, and agency-specific security limitations inhibit information transfer. Creating one collaboration platform accessible across agencies will increase speed of communication and information ...more »

Define and establish common infrastructure layers to support mobility (network security, device management, etc.).

Consider updating federal websites to incorporate responsive web design. It allows the arrangement of your content to change to fit the browser screen. Imagine a seamless user experience across federal websites and across a wide range of platforms. With responsive web design you get the same content on a laptop, a tablet, or a smartphone and it is displayed in a way that best suits the device you are using. This ...more »

Government enterprise-wide mobile strategy cannot be limited to simply purchasing mobile devices. Agencies and departments need to recognize the need to establish short- and long-term plans and strategies for mobile deployment and mobile application development. Without a strategy for effectively using mobile in the federal space, mobile application and device deployment will be inefficient and costly.

75% of enterprises now have "Bring Your Own Device' (BYOD) policies, according to the Aberdeen Group. Given the power, availability, and relative affordability of today's smartphones and tablets, the Federal government cannot keep up on technology and shouldn't have to. Instead, provide standard mobile data management (MDM) security protocols to allow employees to use their own, privately owned devices. Agencies should ...more »

The civilian side of the federal government currently has no common policies or guidelines in place on how to evaluate, validate, protect or secure mobile technologies - including mobile infrastructure, mobile devices, mobile apps, mobile data practices, etc. I suggest that the government create reasonable security guidelines so that the important work of protecting the federal computing infrastructure is not duplicated ...more »

Design government mobility products and services based on citizen and employee needs, behaviors, and desires.

One of the best mobility strategies for the US Federal Government is to adopt a mobile policy that is device independent. By adopting standards like HTML 5, developers can develop once and deploy to multiple devices. This would protect the Government’s technology investments, and would provide the Government with the most flexibility in terms of dealing with new and unforeseen technology advancements. The mobile computing ...more »

Develop government-wide (vs agency-specific) policies, guidance, metrics, and tools to support and accelerate mobility adoption (one privacy policy, one accessibility policy, etc.).

Apps that work well for alerting first responders, apps that work well for collecting information, apps that work well for citizens requesting services all have specific and even unique requirements in their supporting infrastructures. Acquisition, governance, and other strategies for common application across agencies need to reflect those differences intelligently to maximize benefits of standardization while minimizing ...more »

Strive for reusability, simplicity, and platform-independence to the maximum extent practicable when developing mobility solutions.

Create a Federal mobility reference architecture to enable adoption of common solutions (e.g., for BYOD).

Develop an Innovation Center where Industry and Academia partners can come together in a live 'sandbox' environment to create and develop prototype solutions to address the US Gov's mission needs. This would bring the expertise and technology from the mobility community in infrastructure, devices, applications content and security. This ecosystem could help create, evaluate and validate service concepts in a very agile ...more »

Even in early draft form, a document like this that has the power to transform Government must address security at a fundamental level. If security is left to be bolted on by individual agency procurements, we'll end up increasing risks and costs. There should be some high level direction that the introduction of mobile must not increase the risks, and that a common set of standards (not products) across broad groups ...more »

The mobile strategy needs to consider: 1) Who the audience is 2) What device(s) they have 3) What you want to achieve Different audiences have different expectations. Frequent users might like a app on their device from an app store. First-time or infrequent visitors will not download an app. They will expect to access with the web browser on their mobile device. Frequent users will want the navigation to be streamlined. ...more »

Online forms need to be flexible enough to be displayed, filled out and submitted on a mobile device. Large PDFs intended for use on a PC only are impossible to use on a smartphone. Forms should be able to adapt to a mobile device and display in a mobile-optimized format.

Is the Federal government wants to truly go mobile, recommend eliminating all landline phones and replacing them with either employee-owned or government smartphones. This will not only save money, but make life easier for all Feds. Also, let's implement secure wireless systems to replace the old ethernet wired systems. This will allow more employees to work in less space, promote office-sharing, and provide true mobility ...more »

Don't force the technology worker to use one brand for a SmartPhone (Blackberry, Android, MS Windows, Apple). Leverage what the user is already buying. Give the end user a set amount of funds to purchase technology every three years.

United Spinal Association wishes to emphasize the importance of the federal mobility strategy's recognition of accessibility and accommodation of mobile devices and apps to the functionality, productivity, independence and quality of life of people living with disabilities. Devices like the I-Pad and smart phones have already opened new worlds of communication and functional capacity to those with spinal cord injuries ...more »