DorobekINSIDER Live - Experts Weigh in on BYOD Lessons Learned

A special edition of GovLoop’s DorobekINSIDER today. We're LIVE! It's the fourth time we’ve met and we are doing this at least once each month this year. The idea is simple: get smart people together and share ideas because we believe that the real power of information comes when it is shared. 

On Tap Today: BYOD 

BYOD -- bring your own device. If there is any topic that demonstrates how times have changed in government, it is the topic of BYOD. It was just a few years ago when most people would have predicted this would never happen in government.

But now that government is considering BYOD there are lots of questions. Like, why do this in the first place and also the HOWs -- how do you do this successfully. How do you implement? What about cybersecurity or privacy?

We have compiled an expert panel to help us sort through some of these issues.

The DorobekINSIDER's Guests:

• Kimberly Hancher, Chief Information Officer, Office of Information Technology (OIT), EEOC
• David Yang, Vice President at Digital Management
• Shawn McCarthy, Research Director, IDC Government
• Steve Cooper, Former acting Assistant Administrator for Information Services and CIO at the FAA
• Patrick Fiorenza, Senior Research Analyst, GovLoop

BYOD at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

"The BYOD program at EEOC came to fruition out of a necessity to lower our costs for wireless devices. Back in the 90s we started allocating Blackberries or other handheld devices. So our agency was spending $800,000 for our government provided devices with budget reductions in fiscal year 2012. We couldn't sustain that cost any longer," said Hancher.

How it works:

• We have had a good deal of interest in a BYOD program. We offered an opportunity to our employees to opt out of receiving a government device and instead use their own smartphones. 23% of our employees decided to opt out.
• Goal was to cut wireless costs by 50%.
• Strongly advise other agencies looking at BYOD to do a cost-benefit analysis. When we delved into the usage patterns of our employees we found that 75% of Blackberry users never used the telephone services which means that email is the killer app. We were also able to move everyone that had a government provided devices to a shared minutes plan at a very low cost level.

BYOD at the FAA

"We realized that everyone was using a personal device in the workplace. It wasn't connected to the network, but they were using it to make phone calls, check emails or access the web. So we realized that either IT was going to be viewed as the villain if we blocked it or we could take a different approach and figure out how to become the enabler and make it happen safely," said Cooper. 

How it works:

• We launched the Alternative Forms Factor Operation Pilot program. We had to be certain we didn't endorse any one product in particular. Although the demand was for the iPhone and iPad.
• We started with tablets because they had the highest productivity rates in the FAA environment. David Yang's Digital Management was one of our vendors.
• Went through a very methodical and structured approach to the pilot program. Started by reaching out to the acquisition and legal teams.
• Figured out in advance for the pilot program at least we would need a policy in place around the acquisition of these devices.
• Looked at tablet devices to be used in a structured way around roles. We created 7 personas of the workforce and then we built the pilot from there.
• We required every pilotee to bring one business objective and a metric that can measure whether the objective was achieved in order to participate.

BYOD at Digital Management

"Cost is a primary driver for BYOD. But before any agency goes down the road to BYOD they need to step back and do a mobile strategy. They need to find what exactly they want to accomplish. Is it cost reduction, employee retention, enable a larger workforce?" said Yang. 

What works:

• We've seen with successful agencies like the EEOC that getting the objectives upfront is essential. But it is even more important to have way to measure success.
• Lots of agencies buy a bunch of devices and throw them into the environment and hope for the best and then are shocked when it doesn't work out.

BYOD with IDC

"There is a grassroots demand going on right now for BYOD. People have their mobile devices that they own and carry with them on a daily basis. They realized those devices have a computing power that they want to take advantage of in the office. But when you bring that device into the network employees run into trouble," said McCarthy. 

Dangers of BYOD?

• You walk into your agency with an entire network on your smartphone. Agencies need to make rules to protect themselves.
• Unless agencies frisk employees when they enter the building you are going to need to deal with these issues, because the devices are coming in.

GovLoop's BYOD Resources List

• GovLoop Guide: Exploring BYOD in the Public Sector
• Take GovLoops Survey: Staying Secure with BYOD
• McCarthy: Rival Implementation Paths - Yet BYOD Still Hits a Wall
• GovLoop: Tackling cybersecurity in BYOD
• GovLoop: EEOC cuts costs with BYOD pilot program
• GovLoop:Tech Challenges in BYOD with DHS's Nick Nayak
• GovLoop: Top 10 Priorities for State CIOs

For lessons learned from our panelist click here. 

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