GSA Prepares For Federal Mobile Push
By Elizabeth Montalbano.
Anticipating the influx of new mobile technology in the federal government, the General Services Administration (GSA) is preparing to simplify the purchase of wireless equipment and services, just as GSA itself is beginning to explore the use of iPhones and Android-based devices.
The GSA, the federal government's chief procurement agency for technology products and services, will soon release a wireless blanket purchase agreement (BPA) under the Federal Strategic Sourcing Initiative (FSSI), according to a GSA blog post by Mary Davie, assistant commissioner for the Office of Integrated Technology Services in the agency's Federal Acquisition Service.
The BPA will allow agencies to purchase wireless service plans, devices, and infrastructure, such as messaging services and devices, according to the GSA. BPAs allow agencies to make repeated buys of certain products and services, simplifying their purchase by reducing time and paperwork as well as allowing them to take advantage of discounts.
The BPA will include requirements to enable enterprise-level management and reporting, and will integrate with planned modifications to the GSA's Telecommunications Expense Management Service (TEMS) FSSI, Davie said. This will allow agencies to manage their mobile inventory and expenses through a single, secure interface.
The GSA also is part of a mobile government, or mGov, team that's examining opportunities in acquisition, inventory, and expense management to further aggregate and leverage what and how wireless products and services are bought, she added.
The move supports a trend across agencies to bolster their use of mobile technologies to improve internal efficiencies and how they do business with partners and customers. It also supports a standard mobile strategy that U.S. CIO Steven VanRoekel is working with agencies on to accelerate the adoption of mobile technologies.
The BPA coincides with a decision by the GSA to join other agencies that will expand its smartphone use, beyond the stalwart BlackBerry, to iPhones and Android-based devices. The agency is giving a small number of its more than 12,000 employees these devices in addition to ones based on Research in Motion's (RIM's) OS, which long has dominated the federal market.
BlackBerry's position has been challenged recently by more widespread adoption of iOS and Android, as well as a bring your own device policy many agencies are instituting, allowing employees to use their own smartphones at work.
Just last week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it will replace the agency's BlackBerry devices with iPhones, a full-stop move that is more dramatic than the slower transition other departments--like the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs--are taking.
However, a RIM executive told InformationWeek recently that the company's government business remains strong and continues to grow, despite more competition from other smartphones.
Android Fragmentation does not matter to you
By Chris Burns.
If you are an everyday average user of a smartphone that just so happens to use Android instead of iOS or Windows Phone or BlackBerry, you might have heard the word "fragmentation." This is a word that in this case means there are many different kinds of hardware surrounding the Android software and many different versions of Android out there on these devices today. This can pose a problem for developers making apps that, if at all possible, should work on every different Android-laden device. For you though, the problem with fragmentation is this: it's a scare tactic.
When Apple decides to update its mobile operating system iOS for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, it does so with a precise set of measures that allows for the vast majority of its modern devices to get the update quickly. Google's Android is not in a position to do such a thing, nor will it ever be. You the user purchase an Android handset with a version of the software on it that you pay for as a part of the whole package. When you purchase a laptop, you also get a single version of whatever software that laptop comes with.
Each time Google releases a new version of its software, its biggest aim is to get manufacturers to create new devices that feature that software for the masses. It is not profitable enough for Google to consider creating software that can be adopted instantly by devices that are already on the market.
Google has a line of devices it's created to feature the newest version of the software they produce in its purest form - this line is called Nexus. Though Google's original intent was to create one device, manufactured by them and pushed to all carriers in a country at once, this did not pan out. Instead we've got releases of one device on one carrier followed by the rest of the carriers one by one - the Galaxy Nexus for example was released to Verizon first and will soon be carried by at least one or more other carriers in the USA soon. This device features Google's newest mobile OS Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
If you purchase an Android device with the latest operating system inside several months of it being released, you are at a bigger disadvantage than every other Android device owner. The reason being that developers must catch up with the software in that period of time, so you may not have access to every app you love until they update their builds for all versions of Android.
When you purchase an Android device, you are not guaranteed anything more than the software it comes with. You shouldn't need anything other than the software the device comes with unless it is found to have bugs, in which case free updates are entitled to you. You get what you pay for.
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