Across the government, "data liberation" is the mantra for agencies moving away from a role as application provider and toward the role of data opener. But Gwynne Kostin, director of mobile at GSA's office of citizen services and innovative technologies, says code-a-thons and developer outreach will not satisfy all mobile initiatives; sometimes government is best suited to provide applications.

"There are some cases where we have better information, better data and provide access to data. But there are also some things that are inherently governmental or would be hard [for developers] to monetize," Kostin said Oct. 11, while speaking at FedTalks 2011 in Washington, D.C.

For example, the Internal Revenue Service's IRS2Go app lets taxpayers check the status of their refunds. Kostin said, it makes sense that this service is provided by IRS and not a third party, due to the sensitive nature of the information. 

If people are seeking government information, they want to know it's really government information, she said. Kostin indicated that, even when government doesn't play the role of application provider, it could still facilitate and ensure trust in a mobile application.  

"There are a couple things we're looking at in the mobile community of practice to identify some level of standards, some level of--I don't want to say accreditation at this point--but some way to validate that this is in fact government information and government data. And that continues to be a work in progress but I think that's something we'll continue to look at," said Kostin.

The importance of trusted government mobile apps was highlighted this summer with the Aug. 26 release of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's "FEMA App." At the time of the application's release, in advance of Hurricane Irene, a free rogue application called "FEMA Mobile" also appeared in the Android marketplace. In the comments section of the download page, Android users noted that it was not the official FEMA app and some suspected it was scamware. FEMA released no official statement on the app.

Related Articles:
Mobility, search to drive citizen engagement strategies 
Panel touts the benefits of a 'new media team' 
Public prefers PCs to mobile devices when accessing federal websites