BYOD and e-government
I will be giving a local government future vision presentation in Arlington, TX next week and one of the areas I’ll touch on is Bring Your Own Device.
My view is that BYOD is coming, not just for their employees but for citizen centric government. It is not a choice but something to prepare for and plan around. Organizations need to review their systems and processes to enable everyone and everything to be connected in a way that is secure yet available anywhere, anytime. Look for opportunities to converge services, connecting them in ways that still support enterprise-class controls.
To be successful, efforts like BYOD need to have defined expectations and metrics. This will allow the effort, the organization, and even the employees to be more agile, since adjustments can be made earlier either to the requirements or the expectations. An incremental approach is going to be required, since one wants or can survive change that is too drastic.
As companies and governments embrace BYOD, content management is critical. After all BYOD is not about devices, but about the information to which the devices will have access. Everyone still has a responsibility to comply with the license terms of their software, protect IP and privacy, meet legislated requirements, and minimize threats to operations. The focus needs to shift away from traditional approaches and move toward personalization and persona management. By using personas, organizations can focus on the devices they own and the information that needs to be protected.
Employees expect their systems to support them with instant results and immediate gratification. Organizations expect the technologies they adopt to provide measurable opportunities and advantages over the way the work was accomplished in the past. BYOD is a banner that employees, constituents and their organizations can stand behind. It is part of a wider range of technology shifts that are underway, that I'll hopefully be able to cover in the session.
