Managing mobile devices from a government perspective

Federal Tech Talk

Managing mobile devices from a government perspective

Horace Blackman, CIO and director of IT support services at the Veterans Affairs Department Central Office talks about how mobile devices are handled at his age...

John Gilroy

September 4, 2012 8:53 pm

< a min read

wfedstaff | April 17, 2015 4:07 pm

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September 4, 2012 — Many listeners know that more people have cell phones than toothbrushes in the world today.

What they don’t know is how to manage mobile devices for federal employees.

This week we will take a look at managing mobile devices from a federal perspective and then next week, from a commercial perspective.

Horace Blackman is the CIO and Director of IT Support Services at the Veterans Affairs (VA) Department Central Office.

The VA has an installed base of over 19,000 mobile devices and Blackman is focused on managing them properly, looking at new devices, and trying to establish best practices in order to scale.

After all, there are 400,000+ employees at the VA!

From Blackman’s viewpoint, he is glad the GSA has a pre-competed contract in the GSA’s Federal Telecommunications Service (FTS) program.

That gives him assurance that the contract was competed and he can focus on creating systems that serve the wide ranging Veterans Administration.