And the formula is...w/m = v (as in virtual)

lt seems to be everywhere – which is ironic, under the circumstances. That would be the BlackBerry, which has become ubiquitous in government. So ubiquitous, in fact, that it’s hard to believe that wireless and mobility technology in government is really just in its infancy.

In part, that may have something to do with how a lot of BlackBerries are deployed in the public sector. Most – especially at the federal level – are used by executives, mainly for e-mail and perhaps as cell phones, even though possible uses extend well into the realm of the desktop. (Some key IT personnel use them to keep tabs on systems and infrastructure; they’re an exception).

Another bump in the road to wireless maturity is the question of security, confidentiality and privacy. How would you feel if, for example, you knew that corrections to your voter information in the Register of Electors were floating around in cyberspace – tapped into a personal wireless device by an election worker who had just been at your door? (Not that this could ever happen, of course, because of the stringent security precautions built into any such application.)

Some observers outside government consider the public sector both inherently risk averse and hamstrung by security requirements in the wireless/mobility world. The average citizen, meanwhile, would likely opt for caution over progress in this respect, knowing that it’s his or her vitals that might be lost in space or, worse, fall into the hands of cybercrooks.

There is another massive challenge that must be met before wireless/mobility use in the public sector, or the private sector for that matter, can achieve the full bloom of maturity: Huge areas of this country are not yet served by wireless networks – including some surprising nooks and crannies in Toronto and other large cities. Until coverage is total, and this may be on the way within the next couple of years, wireless and mobility use will be stuck, at best, in a frustrated and frustrating state of adolescence.

Meanwhile, the first cautious steps are being taken, things tend to move quickly, and some governments are even ahead of the developmental cohort.

Baby steps

Ron Blakey, Manager of Administration and Strategic Planning for the Region of Durham in southern Ontario, says that “we’re really in the infancy stage of a mobility initiative that started out as a remote initiative to address employee requests for access to e-mail from home or while travelling.” For Durham, however, the infancy stage will be short-lived, as regional emergency measures and ambulance services go wireless within the next year.

John Rath-Wilson, Senior Director-General of the Technology Services Directorate at Service Canada, also characterizes wireless and mobility use there as “more or less in its infancy,” with e-mail still the reigning “killer app”. Because of rigid adherence to security standards, Service Canada hasn’t even been able to approve the extension of wireless LANs within buildings, says Rath-Wilson. Yet Service Canada, with its client service mandate, is positioned to be a prime user of a range of wireless and mobility applications that will allow it to function better in the field.

Annoying adolescence?

Although the federal government was a fairly early adaptor of wireless/mobile technology, according to Scott Toske, Director of Government Technology for Research in Motion (RIM) – federal usage, generally speaking, seems to have stalled at the e-mail stage. And we know what that means – BlackBerries. BlackBerry seems to have captured major market share for public sector PDA use, with more than 55,000 in use across all levels of government in Canada.

In an extended rant in the Ottawa Citizen about BlackBerry use, analyst David Ljunggren complained: “You can’t move for people stumbling around town like zombies as they peer at their hand-held electronic devices . . . Whatever the occasion, you’ll see someone senior in government paying more attention to their e-mails than to events around them.”

BlackBerry usage and mobility access seems to be, for the most part, stuck on the executive rungs of government at all levels. Perhaps usage will gradually devolve down through the ranks, as we saw with government cell phones in the late ’90s - especially as governments begin to understand and implement other wireless/mobility applications.