Government seeks input on federal mobility strategy

The federal government is turning to crowd-sourcing to find fresh ideas on how to best implement federal mobility and speed up adoption of new technologies.

The newly launched National Dialogue on the Federal Mobility Strategy is a project by the Executive Office of the President and the General Services Administration. The new initiative, announced at the CES Government conference in Las Vegas, expands on federal CIO Steven VanRoekel’s mission to develop a mobility strategy for the federal government and calls on citizens to submit and vote on the best ideas.

Rick Holgate, CIO and assistant director for science and technology at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms will lead the effort to develop a strategy.

The strategy, released as a draft Jan. 11, aims to speed up the federal government’s implementation of mobile technologies and services to use technology to decrease the cost of government operations. The framework also aims to increase federal workforce productivity by “liberating them from ineffective 20th-century work practices,” according to the website.

The plan is to produce a strategy in 60 days and have coordinated acquisition vehicles in place within 180 days. The effort will include coordination with the General Services Administration to develop strategic sourcing.

Citizens are encouraged to share their ideas for six objectives of the Federal Mobility Strategy, among them how to encourage collaboration to accelerate mobility across government and establish government structure for federal mobility.

After submitting an idea, the online community then votes on the best ideas by giving it a virtual thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. The winners then “bubble” up to the top.

Those who are interested in sharing ideas should act fast as the dialogue will be open only for a 10-day period, from Jan. 11 through Jan. 20.