President Obama issues mobile tech mandate

President Barack Obama Source: whitehouse.gov

Mobile technology is hot right now. So hot that President Barack Obama has declared a presidential mandate directing federal agencies to implement such technology within the next 12 months.

Obama issued a memorandum on the federal strategy, “Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People,” ordering that each federal agency deploy at least two government services available to the public via mobile technology. The policy paper outlines a 12-month roadmap for agencies.

“The strategy will enable more efficient and coordinated digital service delivery by requiring agencies to establish specific, measurable goals for delivering better digital services; encouraging agencies to deliver information in new ways that fully utilize the power and potential of mobile and web-based technologies; ensuring the safe and secure delivery and use of digital services to protect information and privacy; requiring agencies to establish central online resources for outside developers and to adopt new standards for making applicable government information open and machine-readable by default; aggregating agencies' online resource pages for developers in a centralized catalogue on www.data.gov; and requiring agencies to use web performance analytics and customer satisfaction measurement tools on all '.gov' websites,” the president wrote.

In addition, agencies, within 90 days of the memorandum date of May 23, are required to create a page on their website to publicly report progress in meeting the requirements of the digital strategy in a “machine-readable format.”

Alongside the digital strategy, Obama is planning to roll out Presidential Innovation Fellows this summer; pairing top innovators from the private or “third” sector with federal employees to collaborate on tools to deliver business results in six months on the following goals: improve the lives of the American people, save taxpayer money, and fuel job creation.

One of the five projects, Blue Button for America, will focus on developing apps and creating awareness of tools that help individuals get access to their personal health records that can “improve their health and healthcare.”