Our team attended the Federal Mobile Computing Summit by the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center (ATARC) this week. This one-day symposium, featuring mobile subject-matter experts from the Federal government, industry and academia, discussed the latest tools and trends in government mobility. Artemis Consulting was invited as a known leader in development of mobile apps that help with citizen engagement.
The morning Mobile Technology Showcase featured some of the latest mobile technologies by exhibitors These companies are some of the leading innovators within the mobile community in mobile app development, securing mobile apps, secure mobile devices, and cloud hosting of mobile pps. The afternoon featured Mobile Collaboration sessions to discuss and ‘white-board’ some of challenging areas within mobile computing. The sessions brought together industry experts with Federal mobile policy and implementation leaders who tackle some of the toughest challenges and decisions facing Federal IT professionals and leaders. Results of these discussions will be presented as white papers with recommendations for the Federal Government.
Rohit Gupta, President of Artemis Consulting, served as the Industry Lead on the session about Mobility Solutions to Enhance Citizen Engagement. The session was lively and covered a wide-range of topics. It covered both mobile apps and APIs that support mobile apps. The session initially touched on the ability of government agencies to provide APIs in a consistent manner. Participants discussed the need for not solely relying on postings through data.gov, but instead promoting them through their social media and other marketing channels. The session considered the circumstances for building a responsive website and identified when using a mobile app is appropriate and necessary. They also addressed the kind of apps being built for citizen engagement at the local or county level and how they differ from the ones being created for the state and federal arena. In addition, they briefly compared mobile apps built overseas by other governments to ones here in the U.S. They discussed how some of the international apps issued by governments would not scale in the U.S. due to the larger population size, and how some of the international apps issued by governments would be considered threatening commercial markets in the U.S. and overstepping the bounds of what government should do.
The total cost of ownership was also a topic debated during the session. They looked at the full cost of owning a mobile app over many years, agreeing that it requires a multi-year commitment from an agency. Reasons for this include planning for maintenance as OS upgrades are published and new features are needed. Simply publishing an app on the app store can be considered the beginning of the process of citizenship engagement.
The mobile summit was eye opening for many that attended and delved into the nuts and bolts behind creating what at first glance seems like a simple endeavor. Other topics covered include mobile DevOps, mobile continuous integration, app vetting and security.
Is your organization considering an app to engage citizens through sharing information or gathering information? Invite Artemis to the table, we are proven experts with proven mobile solutions.