The Department of Veterans Affairs Takes On Enterprise Mobility Like a Veteran

The Department of Veterans Affairs is taking a great approach to developing, testing, and implementing their mobile plans. Gov Info Security recently reported on the VA revamping their mobility plans in order to keep them a bit more realistic as well as to stay in line with their overall business objectives. The article states that a year ago Roger Baker, the VA’s CIO, described plans for accommodating the use of 100,000 mobile devices within 18 months as it started phasing out desktop devices to cut costs.

It seams like the VA has taken a step back from these initial estimates, and are taking more of a strategic approach to their enterprise mobility implementation. It is now reported that they will be implementing a mobile device management (MDM) solution from AirWatch and piloting around 5,000 mobile devices on the MDM platform over the next 6 – 12 months. As they continue to build their mobile capabilities they can foresee upwards of 30,000 mobile devices in 3 years being utilized by staff and employees.

This revamp in the VA’s mobility strategy is something that we couldn’t agree with more for a number of reasons. First is the reality of their initial implementation estimations, which numbered over 100,000 end devices of the course of 18 months, seemed a little ambitious. While that would be nice to get done, enterprise mobility is just something you do not want to throw yourself into. By scaling back their implementation they have allowed themselves the ability to test and make sure they are proceeding properly, and ensuring the devices and data are secure. This slower and more strategic pace will also allow the VA to prove the value of their enterprise mobility strategy.

By growing their mobile device population in smaller phases they will be able to more easily align their mobile strategy with over all business goals and gauge the true value of their mobile initiatives. What ever the reason was that made the VA readdress their mobile strategy we believe it will workout better in the long run. By scaling out their enterprise mobility implementation the VA will be able to better ensure the integrity of their network and organizational data as “Everything we do is based on the core component that VA data doesn’t get leaked,” stresses D.J. Kachman, the VA’s director of mobile and security technologies. Slow and steady wins the enterprise mobility race. Click here to read to entire article.