Consumer tech in the federal enterprise not without complications

Federal government adoption of mobile technology into its vast enterprise is a good thing. Maybe if the political appointees play Angry Birds all day long, something can actually get done.

But, this week there have come early warnings that adopting will come loaded with some complications.

First, the Veterans Affairs Department, which is admirably doing its apparent best to put mobile devices in the hands of clinicians, is seeing its stance of device neutrality already suffering cracks.

Specifically, during a Jan. 25 press call with reporters, VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker touted an app called "Clinic in Hand," which allows VA medical records to be viewed on mobile devices. But, the application is being developed for the iOS platform and therefore could not in its current state run on Android or BlackBerry devices.

"Our app development group realizes we're going to try to be as agnostic as possible, but there are things that may be in one device type that aren't in another device type. And it may well be that you've got an enhanced app in one area that you wouldn't have in another," Baker said.

Admittedly, the general trend already is for developers to favor iOS (as noted CNET in December), but many of the problems in federal information technology today can be tied to vendor lock-in. In favoring iOS now because iOS today happens to be the more exciting platform, it's likely that the government is setting itself up for future difficulties. The VA should do its best to ensure that device agnosticism is truly agnostic.

That brings up the other complication of the week: Google's reprehensible new privacy policy, which extends to users logging into Google accounts from Android devices.

Although Google says its new policy of disregarding the privacy of consumers and steamrolling over individual desires to opt-out (they  phrase it differently) won't apply to enterprise applications, including Google Apps for Government, that's scarce comfort for future government employees utilizing an Android device. It gets even messier when you consider that "bring your own device" might even become real in the near future. Even with a logical partition on an Android device, one wonders how strictly the data-grabbing consumer side of the phone functionality will be separated from the  government side.

Google, of course, could make this go away by back-tracking and hopefully there'll be enough pressure for it to do so. But such backtracking are typically only a temporary receeding of the wave; it's likely inevitable that whether now or later, Google will win out.

Resolving this, then, will be a problem for the government. Well, that's what it gets for wanting to adopt consumer technology so badly--seeing employees treated like consumers. - Dave