The Digital Dilemma Report of 2013 has found that out of 300 government employees surveyed, 95% believe that their work has improved through access to mobile devices such as laptops, smartphones, and tablets. Although many government agencies currently lack a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy, a majority of these federal employees are bringing their personal mobile devices into the workplace due to the benefits reaped from their use.
The report cites four main reasons that government employees consider mobile devices to be beneficial in the workplace.
Feds say that these benefits have led to an increase of nine hours in productivity per week for their agency which equates up to $28 billion a year. The report has found that 61% of the federal employees surveyed responded that their specific agency does not have a BYOD policy in place, 28% percent were not sure, and only 11% responded that there was a BYOD policy in place.
“My government laptop is down so much that I often do government work on my personal laptop, which I’m sure doesn’t meet security requirements,” one employee stated. 57% of respondents said that they would consider paying their agency to have security features updated on their mobile devices.
The benefits of personal devices outweigh the costs by such a large amount that a majority of government employees are willing to pay their own money to use them in order to be more productive for their agency. This highlights the glaring problem caused due to the lack of BYOD policies. Government agencies need to implement these new procedures which foster greater productivity while maintaining fundamental standards for mobile security.