FEDweek IT

A new report from the IBM Center for the Business of Government has three recommendations for how public agencies can start benefiting from mobile apps – whether internal enterprise apps or those geared toward customers.

First, Dr. Sukumar Ganapati or Florida International University recommends taking the practical approach of assessing existing services an agency already offers online and engaging users to identify which would be most useful offered in an app.

Second, agencies should make sure to provide open data based on common standards. Federal agencies are required to provide data by default in open, machine-readable formats. Standardized data has the benefit of interoperability among different platforms, even different apps and this approach has the benefit of freeing data from its context – be it a website or mobile app.

Finally, agencies should assess the feasibility of standard data structures across and within agencies. “While technical standardization is important for interoperability, the more fundamental issue is to create a standardized structure of data,” notes Ganapati.

Link: http://www.businessofgovernment.org/report/using-mobile-apps-government