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Government Mobility and Why It's Not an OxymoronBy Brian T. HorowitzMay 28, 2009
With the vast number of government agencies in the U.S. government, you might wonder what they use to communicate important messages, whether the task is delivering the mail, fighting a wildfire or working at the scene of a hurricane. Here, we take a look at three agencies to see how they manage and secure their mobile devices. USPSThe United States Postal Service (USPS) uses 28,000 mobile phones and more than 9,000 BlackBerries, according to spokesman Michael Woods. "USPS has a long, proud history of creating and using the most advanced technology available to process and deliver mail and better serve our customers," said Ross Philo, chief information officer and executive vice president. "The Postal Service uses the latest in mobile and wireless technology to connect a workforce of nearly 700,000 career employees nationwide and to support operations that are in motion 24/7, processing and delivering almost 200 billion pieces of mail each year." The IT department manages mobile applications for its 9,000 workers, comprising postal managers, officers, operation management, and continuity of operations processing (COOP). On call around the clock, Postal Service managers, senior staff and key support employees rely heavily on RIM's ubiquitous BlackBerry devices. "Through real-time alerts and notifications of the latest conditions and issues, postal employees are able to respond faster and with better information than ever before," Wood said. "Multitasking features allow users to use the phone, e-mail and internet simultaneously and even enable conference calls." Devices are encrypted, password protected and autolocked, he said, adding that the Postal Service has the ability to terminate the device remotely if sensitive information becomes unsecured. In the near future, the USPS plans to add mobile applications for customers, including the ability to track packages, schedule a free package pickup, and look up ZIP codes. FEMAAccording to acting deputy CIO at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Rex Whitacre, FEMA uses 40,000 wireless devices in the agency and is one of the largest users of wireless devices in the government. The goal, for mobile workers, according to Whitacre is "real-time situational awareness." These devices consist of BlackBerries, wireless aircards, pagers and cell phones. FEMA's asset management office tracks these devices and ensures proper accountability of the equipment. FEMA uses AT&T service in its offices, and the Verizon Wireless network out in the field, he said. Everyone in the field gets a wireless device and a wireless aircard. Since December, FEMA has been rolling out mobile devices that feature push-to-talk functionality. These phones allow the headquarters to broadcast a message automatically to workers in the field. According to Whitacre, the Disaster Information Services Clearinghouse (DISC) manages this equipment. Push-to-talk functionality is safer for workers than dialing, especially when responding to a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina. "When you have disaster relief workers in harm's way, the push-to-talk functionality allows you to communicate without much effort by the worker," Whitacre said. "You can communicate a need to evacuate due to a shooting or hurricane." According to Whitacre, the agency learned some lessons about wireless deployment from the disaster operation of 2005's Hurricane Katrina and applied them during 2008's Hurricane Ike in Galveston Island, Texas. Whitacre acknowledged that mobile connectivity was lacking for workers during Hurricane Katrina. "In Katrina, we didn't get real-time situational awareness; we didn't react quick enough," Whitacre said. "We had wireless assets at that time but not the capability we have today. Sometimes it takes an event like that to spur the funding." In contrast to Hurricane Katrina, within three days after Hurricane Ike hit, mobile users had more cell service on Galveston Island than before the hurricane. Whitacre said FEMA uses satellite systems that provide voice, video and data situational awareness. "That gives upper management the know-how to respond better to the disaster." The agency leases satellite space from commercial vendors, though FEMA employees program the earth stations. "We don't typically restore commercial infrastructure," he said. "First responders go in just to communicate back to government leadership for situational awareness and then depending on the size and magnitude of the disaster will deploy emergency support functions." For disasters such as Hurricane Ike on Galveston Island, FEMA gets help setting up the commercial satellite towers from IBM, Dell and AT&T. Department of InteriorMobile workers in the Department of Interior (DOI) use 60,000 mobile devices, and many of them include the instant communication capabilities of land mobile radio (push-to-talk functionality) like that of FEMA, according to Timothy Quinn, chief of the enterprise infrastructure division at the U.S. DOI's office of the CIO. The Department of Interior consists of the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Land Management, the Office of Surface Mining, the Minerals Management Service, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Bureau of Reclamation. With push-to-talk technology, a radio signal hits the repeater when you make a call and a radio repeater then picks up your signal, amplifies it, repeats it and sends it beyond where your range is, Quinn said. The priority for Quinn and the DOI's office of the CIO is to get data to law enforcement officers covering areas such as Indian reservations, national parks, wildlife refuges and Washington, D.C., landmarks. Land mobile radio helped officers keep order at President Obama's inauguration in January. "Push-to-talk capability is very important for people like firefighters or law enforcement officers," explained Quinn. "They need instant communication — they need to be able to push that button and talk and get through to the dispatch center." Although as Quinn noted, "push to talk is older than dirt," dating back to the early 20th century. DOI workers actually use radio over Internet Protocol (IP) technology. "So you'd have a private network for a federal agency, and you can backhaul radio traffic across that network by taking the radio voice data and converting into a TCIP protocol and moving it over the data network," he explains. The data on the push-to-talk devices is encrypted on multichannel trunk radio systems, but Quinn explained that users must keep proper etiquette in mind due to the large amount of listeners. Quinn said the department hopes to add remote satellite communication via PDAs to get data into remote areas such as wild land forests and national parks. Follow Enterprise IT Planet on Twitter
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