Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel has issued a call for the government to take advantage of the proliferation of smart phones given their ubiquity and increasing versatility to deliver services and fulfill agency missions.
VanRoekel invited agencies to participate in an online dialog, the "National Dialog on Federal Mobility Strategy," at mobility-strategy.ideascale.com, to weigh in on what a first draft of a new federal mobility strategy should include.
He cited government services that have gone mobile already including the TSA’s "My TSA" mobile app providing passengers access to the most frequently requested information such as airport status, carry-on guidelines and real time information on security-line wait times, and said other agencies need "to make their services available to an increasingly mobile nation."
Operational improvements can be realized as well. VanRoekel gave as an example a joint program between the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and U.S. Marshals Service to give their agents rapid access to all mission-critical data in any location using commercial mobile technology.
He also praised FEMA managers for using mobile Twitter to find victims during an emergency, to share pleas for help that need to be translated, and to geo-target the location and extent of an emergency.
