Allowing the use of a single, employee-provided device for both personal and work environments is "on the table" at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

"It's actually getting to a point where I couldn't care less what device you've got," said Darren Ash, chief information officer at the NRC, while speaking an April 14 AFFIRM mobility event in Washington, D.C.

"The genie's out of the bottle," he said. "I know that we've got employees--I see them throughout the agency--the employees with the iPads, the iPhones whatever, a myriad of devices. They're there, and potentially using them for things they need to do. They're not connecting to our network because we won't allow it, but we know those devices exist."

Many NRC employees work at fuel and power plants in rural locations, using laptops and docking stations. Ash said NRC's exploration of consumer-provided devices isn't that much of a jump considering its remote workforce. As a CIO, Ash said he "shouldn't focus on the brand or device, I need to focus on the business capability."

The lingering issues with allowing devices that can toggle between work and personal needs aren't necessarily technical or security-oriented, they're primarily cutural and contractual, said Carl Froehlich, associate CIO, end user equipment and services at the Internal Revenue Service.

"With the smartphone, when you're in the sandbox doing work, you're protected. If you're using the same phone and you're not in the sandbox, you're in the wild wild west," said Froehlich.

"If it's an IRS-provided device, and we allow them to use it for personal use, because our ethics say if it doesn't increase cost to government incremental use of IT facilities are okay," said Froehlich. "Now, if they go to a site on an IRS-provided phone, even if it's on the personal side of the phone, is it an ethics violation? We don't have an answer to that."

This issue has to be negotiated because "rules of behavior" have major considerations for union employees' contracts, said Ash.

"In all the pilots I'm doing with smartphones and iPads, not a single person is a union member," added Froehlich.

In February Federal CIO Vivek Kundra revealed that he was looking into a move to "employee-owned" mobile devices which would disintermediate centralized IT departments. Government employees could virtualize a mobile operating environment for work on their personal mobile device. As a result, security concerns would shift and CIOs would be less focused on inventory and device management and more focused on the HTTPS environment, a scalable approach, said Kundra.

Kundra's proposal was met with less than universal approval, however. One federal official said it would require a change in congressional appropriations law.

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