| This week's sponsor is Accunet. |  | Building a Scalable Big Data Infrastructure
Download this complimentary whitepaper about how the Accunet Solutions team architected a new infrastructure for the National Cancer Institute's Frederick National Laboratory. |
Editor's Corner: The cat's out of the bag with social, mobile Also Noted: Innovative Solutions Consortium
T-Mobile won't participate in H-Block spectrum auction; Three surprises in FDA's mobile medical apps final guidance; and much more...  Follow @fiercegovit on Twitter
More News From the FierceMobileGovernment Network:
1. Congress.gov to lose beta status this month
2. CMS reorganizes healthcare.gov tech surge into functional teams
3. Intelligence officials argue for bulk telephony metadata
| This week's sponsor is Aruba Networks. |  | Lopez Research: The New World of Mobility Management
Mobility management continues to evolve as BYOD and mobile application deployments become more commonplace. There isn't a "one size fits all" strategy. It is important to implement an enterprise mobility management solution that secures corporate data while maintaining employee privacy and device usability. Download to learn more. |
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The cat's out of the bag with social, mobile
 Following reports late last week that journalists covering the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia would be banned from using social media, the International Olympic Committee has now confirmed that journalists can take pictures and upload reports on-the-fly using tools like Twitter, Vine and Instagram.
At a seminar for reporters covering the games, a journalist from Russia's state-run media outlet reportedly told attendees that journalists using smartphones to post would lose their accreditation to cover the events. An official statement later came out saying that social media posting was not only allowed, but encouraged. It's a good thing, too. The proliferation of smartphones and tablets among, not just the press but all attendees at the games mean the committee's monopoly on Olympic content--video, images and event results--is significantly weakened. Organizers of the London games faced a similar dilemma. According to The Atlantic Wire, in official guidelines, reporters at the London 2012 games were not supposed to take photos or videos and upload to social media, but the policy wasn't widely enforced. Attempting to put the cat back in the bag would have been futile. Social and mobile media has caught fire, and organizers' initial, knee-jerk reaction is another example of an established model struggling to respond to disruptive technology. - Molly |
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Today's Top News 1. DoD app store, MDM running by year end
 The Defense Department will begin using its mobile device management system and mobile application store by the end of the year, said DoD Public Affairs Officer Air Force Lt. Col. Damien Pickart. Digital Management, Inc., the Bethesda, Md.-based contractor that won the contract June 27, will provide the department with initial operating capability no later than Dec. 31.
Functionality will likely be added in the following months. "The DoD will continue to evolve its mobility solution given that commercial mobile technology changes at a rapid pace and will need to be evaluated to see how it can effectively meet mission and organizational needs," said Pickart. The initial performance period for the contract runs until July 9, 2013. The initial award to DMI was $2.9 million, with four, 6-month option periods costing up to almost $16 million, reports the agency. The technology to be delivered by the MDM and MAS will serve as the foundation of DoD's mobile implementation plan, the department said at the time of contract award this summer. The MDM could potentially allow the department to connect a wider variety of devices to the network. At present, only BlackBerry-based devices have authority to operate on DoD networks. In May, the DoD revealed its interest in expanding the devices it allows when the Defense Information Systems Agency approved security technical implementation guides for BlackBerry 10 smartphones and BlackBerry PlayBook tablets with BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, and devices using Samsung's Knox for Android. At the time Pickart called it a "significant step towards establishing a multivendor environment." The MDM would presumably further the department's move in that direction. Related Articles:
DoD inks MDM, app store contract potentially costing $16M
DISA guided Samsung Knox development
DoD okays Blackberry 10, Samsung Knox for Android Read more about: DoD, MDM
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| This week's sponsor is Kony. | 
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2. 'Create once, publish everywhere' model comes to government
An effort to structure government content under a "create once, publish everywhere" model will help agencies adapt, share and syndicate information, Lakshmi Grama of the National Cancer Institute said Nov. 7. Grama, the senior digital strategist in the NCI's Office of Communications and Education, said during a HowTo.gov webinar that ideally, agencies shouldn't have to alter content to publish it anew on their websites, mobile sites and social media platforms. Structured content can be plugged into different formats automatically. Grama described one such transition that the NCI made with its fact sheets, each a collection of questions and answers on a particular topic. "They were all in HTML on the website as one big blob," she said. Her team structured each question-and-answer pair as an individual element so the fact sheets could be reformatted easily. Now, on mobile devices, the questions can be clicked to expand and collapse each one's answer. On a desktop browser, the entire text fills the page, with no need to collapse the answers, since screen size is not in short supply. 
Much of the government's data is not so flexible. Agencies often publish content as PDF documents, a convenient way to publish content to the web initially, but a format that traps content, making it difficult to extract and apply elsewhere. Grama acknowledged the massive undertaking that restructuring all government content would be, so she suggested agencies focus on high-value content or that which draws the most users. She is part of an interagency working group working to restructure government content. The group is currently developing a model for event listings on agency websites, which would allow agencies to take information about their events and display it across multiple communication channels. For more:
- go to the webinar page (presentation slides and archived webcast available) Related Articles:
Less is more when it comes to mobile app user experience, gov panel says
USA.gov, GobiernoUSA.gov unveil mobile-friendly sites Read more about: responsive web design
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3. Congress.gov: Why there isn't an app for that
 The Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office introduced congress.gov in beta in September 2012, slowly adding features over time. Starting Nov. 16 all visitors to thomas.loc.gov will automatically redirect to the new legislation tracking website, which boasts screen-size agnostic design.
Congress.gov has been mobile-friendly since inception, said Jim Karamanis, director of web services at LOC. "The entire site is responsive and it scales to your screen size," he said. "Thomas, of course, was not responsive because it was an old legacy website." The agency is no stranger to optimizing web content for a mobile experience. The Library has a Congressional Record app and it offers the Constitution annotated as an app. For those applications, there's a real benefit to being able to download the content and work with it offline, said Karamanis. But when his team had to decide the best model for congress.gov, he said the conclusion was that an app just didn't make sense. "For congress.gov, this content is constantly changing, and constantly being updated. And having something mobile friendly like that across all devices is just a better experience for all the users," said Karamanis. "We've decided to go the responsive route with all of our websites because it makes all of our content mobile friendly," he said. Related Articles:
Congress.gov to lose beta status this month
Congress.gov expands, U.S. Code now available in XML
Task force requests more time to advance open legislative data Read more about: congress.gov, mobile app
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4. New FCC app to crowdsource mobile broadband speeds
A new app that the Federal Communications Commission plans to use to measure wireless broadband service is set to be unveiled Nov. 14. On the agenda for the commission's open meeting that day is a presentation of its Speed Test app, which it has developed for Android smartphones. The app will crowdsource data on the performance of mobile broadband services, the FCC says. The effort is part of the commission's Measuring Broadband America program, which so far has involved fixed broadband services only. The first report from the program, issued in August 2011, looked at services from 13 large wireline broadband providers, and the FCC has produced another such report each year since. In the 2013 report, released in February, the FCC said that the broadband service Exede, from the satellite Internet company ViaSat, had the highest ratio of advertised download speeds to actual download speeds. Exede was the top performer both in general and during peak Internet use periods. None of the 15 services in the 2013 report provided average download speeds that were less than 80 percent of what they advertised. Seven of them delivered faster speeds than advertised, though only four did during peak periods. All four major wireless carriers in the United States--AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile--have agreed to participate in the app, the Wall Street Journal reported. The aim of the app is to "empower consumers, industry, and policymakers with open, transparent, and accurate information about mobile broadband services," the FCC says. For more:
- go to the FCC's meeting agenda Related Articles:
FCC would regulate Internet data caps under Wyden bill
FCC proposal would require carriers to disclose network reliability in disasters Read more about: Speed Test, FCC
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5. FCC sees new leadership, favorable performance rankings
 New leadership takes the reins at the Federal Communications Commission at a time when employees are satisfied with their work life.
Tom Wheeler was confirmed as FCC chairman and Mike O'Rielly as a Republican commissioner Oct. 29 to fill two seats that had been left vacant for about 5 months. Wheeler will replace former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, who left the Commission in the spring O'Rielly will fill the seat left vacant by Republican Commissioner McDowell, who exited the FCC after a 7 year tenure. Wheeler has been involved in the communications profession for nearly 40 years and emphasized that he is a businessman, having served as the head of the National Cable Television Association and head of NTIA, says a Center for Strategic and International Studies brief (.pdf) on the two new FCC officials. In those positions, Wheeler saw the important role that policy can play as either a boon to growth or brake on innovation, the report says. "At the same time, he underscored his support for universal service as a key tenet of the Telecommunications Act – and that the Commission should bring broadband to this program," the report says. "Mr. Wheeler appeared committed to sticking to a schedule to ensure that the broadcast incentive auction will be held." While in Wheeler's first public remarks he likened the complexity of the auction to that of the Rubik's cube, he, too, realized the benefits of mobile technologies and services that could result from the auction, says the report. He spoke of the incentive auction as if it were a priority, even though it was then Chairman Genochowski's idea, the report says. O'Rielly worked in the House and Senate combined for 20 years as a staffer and believes the communications industry should be free from excessive government regulation, CSIS says. "He underscored that he favors a smaller governmental role, but that this is not an absolute, as the government can play a constructive function in certain instances, whereby it can set and enforce rules of the road," the report says. And the new officials are moving into an agency where worker satisfaction is high, the recently released 2013 Office of Personnel Management Viewpoint Survey shows. Satisfaction has been rising. About 68 percent of FCC workers say they're satisfied with their job overall. That's up from 66 percent in 2011 and an agency low of 59 percent in 2008, OPM says. The FCC was third out of all agencies, with 71 percent in global satisfaction, which takes into account all questions OPM asked federal workers, not just job satisfaction. Only NASA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission came out higher. The survey polled 376,577 federal employees. For more:
- download the CSIS report (.pdf)
- go to the OPM Viewpoint Survey Related Articles:
Wheeler, O'Rielly confirmed to FCC
O'Rielly nominated as FCC commissioner
Wheeler nomination moves to Senate floor Read more about: FCC, Julius Genachowski
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Also Noted | This week's sponsor is ISC. | | 
|
> T-Mobile won't participate in H-Block spectrum auction. Article (Reuters via CNBC)
> State Department website re-launched with responsive design. Post (MobileGov Blog)
> Three surprises in FDA's mobile medical apps final guidance. Article (GovHealthIT News)
> Mobile surpasses desktop for social media. Post (HowTo.gov Blog)
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