Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Report urges government to wade into wireless

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 15:36:08 -0500

Report urges government to wade into wireless
Source: Newsbytes
Publication date: 2002-12-17

Secure wireless devices have plenty of potential federal users, but first
agencies must weigh their willingness to embrace the technology, according
to a pair of professors who have surveyed more than 200 federal workers.

“User technology readiness plays an important role in determining whether
to go for immediate deployment of wireless/mobile technology and in
determining the strategy for deployment,” noted Ai-Mei Chang, a systems
management professor at the National Defense University, and P.K.
Kannan, a marketing associate professor at the University of Maryland.

Agencies should launch wireless pilots, they said in a new report, Preparing
for Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Government, sponsored by the IBM
Endowment for The Business of Government. The first steps should include
assessing employee readiness for wireless integration, training workers and
budgeting for these products use as part of an agency’s long-term strategy,
the report recommended.

The report suggested using a technology readiness index, a metric that
measures employees’ optimism against their distrust of technology, and
their tendency for innovation against their discomfort with new technology.
Based on the authors’ survey, the report said high levels of optimism and
innovation paralleled high levels of discomfort.

Chang and Kannan recommended that agencies encourage employees to
use wireless devices in their personal lives to become more comfortable with
them. Agencies also should provide training classes and create peer
support groups in which tech-savvy employees can walk their less-technical
colleagues through wireless use.

Agencies should start with simple applications, such as mobile e-mail,
before venturing into projects that demand interagency collaboration, the
report said. Meanwhile, the authors called on wireless vendors to address
the high-cost, interoperability, and inadequate security and privacy issues
related to enterprisewide wireless use.

If agencies do not begin launching wireless technologies, they will lose out
on significant data-sharing possibilities with one another, the public and
industry, the report concluded.

“The coming decade is clearly the era of e-government,” it said. “Societies in
each city, state and country are increasingly interconnected, and citizens
and customers who have experienced the improvements and efficiency that
the Internet facilitates are demanding more from their governments.”

Reported By Washington Technology,
http://www.washingtontechnology.com

http://cnniw.yellowbrix.com/pages/cnniw/Story.nsp?story_id=35230229&ID=cnniw&scategory=Telecommunications%3AWireless&

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