For BYOD, some industry sharing after all

You can’t spell help without HP.

The multinational computer giant has offered up its mobility policy for the world to see, answering calls for industry leaders to share successful bring-your-own-device policies with federal agencies and others.

Bryan Coapstick, HP’s regional mobility leader, posted the company’s policies on the website of the American Council for Technology/Industry Advisory Council’s Advanced Mobility Working Group, a coalition of federal and industry execs focused on mobility.

“We always try, through organizations like ACT/IAC, to collaborate with the open exchange of ideas – it’s core to our culture,” Coapstick told FCW.

While feds have been willing to communicate on successes and failures in BYOD policy development, industry leaders have been reluctant to share information to keep their competitive edge, according to Tom Suder, co-chair of the Advanced Mobility Working Group, as reported in an earlier FCW article.

“I really commend HP for stepping up and contributing,” Suder wrote in an e-mail to FCW. “They have a strong government leadership that really tries to partner with government. Maybe they took it as a challenge to step it up? (It’s a) really good example of industry/government collaboration.”

HP’s mobility policy, updated frequently over the past two years, applies to a substantial portion of its 300,000 employee workforce. Upwards of one-third of HP's employees use their own devices for work-related purposes.

The policy limits what devices employees can use and emphasizes security, controlling data accessible by employees, Coapstick said.  “We’re a security company, so understanding who wants to do what, from what, and from where, is part of our core,” he said.

Many agencies, meanwhile, have yet to develop specific BYOD policies.  Only 11 percent of 300 recently surveyed federal employees from numerous agencies reported their agencies have a BYOD policy in place, according to a recent Telework Exchange report.