Instant gratification – a motto for our modern world. With information available almost instantly for download, mobile workers with wireless access can answer questions faster, enter data and complete tasks right from the field. With more productive field agents, citizens and businesses reap the benefits.

Per International Data Incorporation (IDC), the mobile device market reached a critical inflection point at the start of the year 2011: for the first time more than half the world’s global Internet users, roughly 1 billion people, accessed the Internet from a mobile device. Those devices increasingly consist of smart phones, which overtook PC shipments in 2010 for the first time.

Based on our own personal experiences with Blackberries and smart phones, it’s obvious; workforce mobility and converged networking systems provide flexibility to employees in delivering services and balancing their work-life experience. Collaboration, within and among organizations, is enhanced. As government improves citizen self-service for simple information queries, mobile employees can focus on issues of greater complexity. Public safety improves as real-time access to applications and data is enabled. Transportation systems provide better services with intelligent sensors and actuators responding to real-time information.

In 2010, Brookhaven National Lab (BNL) in Upton, New York needed a facilities management solution to enable higher productivity and accurate budgeting data for a 52-acre facility with 348 buildings, and its own fire and police departments. When implementing a solution, it is important to consider if the new solution will address both immediate business requirements while providing a foundation for future growth and innovative expansion.

BNL implemented a solution that enabled automated workflow and data tracking with enhanced reporting and mobile work management capabilities. A Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) was used to indicate all defects, upload defects in an asset management software, generate work orders, generate assignments and track defects over time. A web browser-based solution connected staff with management and provided visibility into work management system and ability to analyze results.

Once the solution was implemented, the benefits kept rolling in. Automatically generating and tracking work orders and comparing the results against Key Performance Indicators (KPI) enabled the maintenance staff to improve their productivity by 32 percent. BNL realized an improved ratio of preventive versus corrective maintenance (51 to 30 ratio). Twenty full-time employees were repurposed to higher value tasks.  BNL was also able to save $240K in clerical work.

Let us know how your organization is achieving the goals of enhanced workforce to increase productivity, speed responsiveness, and improved communications between government functions.

Johnny Barnes, left, is the General Manager Technology and CTO for IBM's Global Business Services. He has more than 35 years of experience with IBM, holding a variety of product, solution development, staff, system architecture, management and executive positions.  Previously, Mr. Barnes worked to re-engineer IBM’s internal hardware development, global computing and telephony environments and grow IBM’s Public Sector transformation services business. 

Mr. Barnes has an overall perspective of the computer industry and its applicability to business segments, as well as IBM's strategic plans to meet the distributed computing and e-business on demand market to satisfy future critical business requirements.  Currently, Mr. Barnes oversees IBM’s WW Public Sector Technical and Solution Strategy and expanding IBM’s Public Sector transformation service business.

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