Insights regarding the IT management action
You are now in the position of advisor to the current CIO of the FBI. Your task is to communicate your insights regarding the IT management actions that the CIO has to undertake in order to finally accomplish the Sentinel program successfully.
I would encourage the CIO to continue benchmarking against new media, most notably mobile apps and social media, in an effort to work smarter. The idea of mobile apps (iOS, Android) available through a marketplace (iTunes, Google Play) can virtually eliminate installation requests, especially for functionality needed on mobile devices. Employees can manage the applications they need as their assignments change. This app format also facilitates agile development where apps can be developed in a modularized fashion, thus putting functionality in the hands of users sooner while building on a common platform for seamless integration.
Applications like Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr offer timely opportunities for the FBI in their quest to share information. Twitter-style short form microblogging provides information about what field employees may be experiencing on the ground as events happens. Removing some of the burden of completing forms allows employees to more quickly assess a situation and mobilize the necessary human, technical and/or communication resources needed to respond to or monitor a developing situation. Hashtags offer a way to organize information in real time and can be used for data-driven analytics and decision making as management tracks what is trending.
Studies like the one conducted by Facebook on journalistic engagement (Facebook, 2011) have demonstrated how engagement increases in the form of likes and shares when imagery is included with stories and URL links. Visual storytelling in the form of images and videos, similar to functionality available on Tumblr and Instagram, combined with geotagging can increase the FBI’s ability to identify where a situation is developing, and the many dimensions of that situation (location, landscape, sight, sound, emotion, etc.). Leveraging existing processes employed by social media to subscribe to and approve subscription requests could reduce administrative overhead typically encountered with more centralized rights management systems.
Additionally, social media applications like Twitter and Tumblr are tools many people are familiar with in their daily lives. Replicating similar functionality over a secure infrastructure would reduce training costs by delivering highly usable interfaces where employees can share events socially as they happen, and can do so over any approved mobile device or desktop machine. Leveraging the capability already used to develop ITDashboard.gov, the FBI and other government agencies can make select hashtags, hashtag trending data and visual content available to the public in real-time. Information from a trusted source, like the State Department for example, could assist citizens in making travel decisions, especially helpful for those traveling to high-risk international destinations.
Article References
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