MaSSSoftech

The U.S. government has gone on a wireless shopping spree, buying off-the-shelf equipment, services and software to meet its changing communications needs.

In the past, many federal offices handed out smart phones, like the BlackBerry or devices running Windows Mobile software, only to their top executives. Rank-and-file employees either were tethered to office-based computers running on private networks or, if they were in the military or other critical field operations, used expensive, specialized wireless devices.
Now, with an increasingly mobile and tech-savvy work force, government and disaster-relief agencies are embracing off-the-shelf wireless devices and commercial high-speed networks for tasks previously handled by specialized systems.

This year, the U.S. government will spend $70 billion on information technology, including wireless devices, service contracts and applications, according to Warren Suss, president of Suss Consulting Inc., a Jenkintown, Pa., company that advises government agencies and the companies that supply them. An increasing proportion of that spending is on commercial equipment and services.

The shift is being driven by the desire to make government workers more effective and efficient by giving them access to critical information wherever they are, and by the need to cut costs—private networks and proprietary devices are expensive to develop and require specialized staff to maintain and update.

The government's embrace of telecommuting to lessen the need for office space has accelerated the trend. And it has been facilitated by a streamlined purchasing process that eliminates much of the negotiating each government agency had to do to buy wireless technology.
Information At Hand

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, a support agency for the federal court system, first considered using hand-held devices for its probation and pretrial-services officers because of budget cuts. The agency's clerical staff was being cut, making the devices attractive because they would allow officers to enter information directly into the agency's database, rather than submit reports to be input by someone else.

But the agency, which uses Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry devices, has found many other uses for them. Officers can use online programs to direct them to a parolee's house, or set a calendar application to remind them to administer a drug test. They can also tap a secure Federal Bureau of Investigation database for mug shots and other information on people with criminal records.

"I can show an offender's picture from my device to a victim or a police officer," says Frank Fuller, senior U.S. probation officer for the Western District of Virginia.

Off-the-shelf products also made it practical for the agency to pursue a major technology initiative. It developed an application to store data securely on officers' hand-held devices, so that the information can be accessed amid natural disasters, in remote areas and in other situations where wireless coverage is unavailable or compromised. "With the associated complexity and expense, this project never would have gotten off the ground without using available devices and networks," says Nick DiSabatino, chief of technology for probation and pretrial services at the agency.
Providers Prosper

The shift in government spending has been a boon to providers of wireless devices and services. AT&T Inc., for example, has generated $800 million in federal contracts in two years under the Networx Universal program, the initiative that streamlined technology purchases by government agencies.

In the past year alone, AT&T has announced contracts for $292 million to build a data network for the Department of Homeland Security, for $120 million to provide data networking services for the 1,300 offices of the Department of Veterans Affairs, for $80 million to supply a backup data network for the Social Security Administration, and for $50 million to supply BlackBerry devices, push-to-talk cellphones and wireless data cards for laptops for field workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The company declines to reveal the total of its federal contracts, but Don Herring, senior vice president, AT&T Government Solutions, says it is a multibillion-dollar business.

Another beneficiary of the new government focus on cost-cutting and efficiency is Research In Motion. For example, the Federal Aviation Administration now uses BlackBerry devices for communications among its employees, partly as a way to minimize its purchases of equipment, since they provide a single substitute for pagers, cellphones and in some cases laptops.

The fastest-growing pool of government spending is on applications, according to Mr. Suss, of Suss Consulting, with contracts going to companies like Citrix Systems Inc. that host applications for users to access from whatever device they are using. The use of public networks also requires the government to spend on encryption and other security software to protect sensitive information.