Page 28 - FCW, July/August 2018

Over Hill and Dale
Armed With Rugged Mobile IT, Feds Go Off-Road
iberated from desktop work environments, growing numbers of federal workers outfitted with mobile devices are transforming the way government agencies do business, routinely collecting data in
the field and transforming it into actionable information without having to rely on desk- bound PCs.
Agencies have found out the hard way, however, that commercial-grade mobile devices are
not suitable for the challenges of some field situations. In those cases, civilian agencies are looking to rugged computers, which are valued for their physical durability and lower overall total cost of ownership.
Rugged computers aren’t new to federal workers. They have been a part of the military’s operational toolbox for years, even before the now decade-long growth of mobile technology. Until recently, though, rugged devices have attracted relatively little interest from civilian agencies, except for specialty uses. Now agencies are realizing that employees who work in harsh environments can benefit from rugged devices as well.
Challenging environments demand devices that that can withstand being bumped and dropped and whose screens can be read in bright sunlight. Moreover, rugged devices provide users with the capabilities they need to be major content creators. Consumer devices meant for “a couple of hours a night sitting on couches and consuming media” don’t fit the bill, said Scott Heckman, Panasonic’s national sales manager for federal civilian and army sectors. “There is now a settled demand for mobile in field work.”
Civilian agencies’ use of mobile devices cover a wide
range of applications, Heckman said.
The Geological Survey uses tablets to collect field
data. User’s devices are docked in the office for general work and taken to field locations to collect data there and then returned to the office for downloading and data analysis.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) uses tablets for cargo inspections at ports and inputting patrol data in austere environments, such as those on the southern border of the United States.
The US Department of Agriculture is using mobile devices to do everything from collecting data on outbreaks of livestock disease to general research in remote and hostile environments.
In a recent study by the Government Business Council, “Delivering Mission Mobility: A Candid Survey of Federal Leaders on the Sate of Mobile Devices in 2017,” seven out of every ten respondents said the capabilities of mobile devices are “highly important” to executing their mission. Around half of survey participants described their current mission demands as requiring mobile technology, with laptop computers heading the list of devices most frequently used on the job.
Consequently, rugged computers are attracting more attention from civilian agencies, including organizations operating under the lowest price, technically acceptable (LPTA) model for their IT purchases. LPTA, some agencies have found, isn’t a reliable guide for acquiring field capable computers.
A report released in late 2017 by market analyst IDC, “Pay Now, Save Later: The Business Case for
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