During my first 120 days at the FCC, I have enjoyed several opportunities to listen and learn from the different views and perspectives at the FCC. Each Bureau and Office has critical missions and IT needs, and I'd like to share some of what I've learned about the Enforcement Bureau's need for mobility.
Shortly after my arrival at the FCC, the Enforcement Bureau reached out to me with a broad vision for leveraging technology to future-proof the agency's on-scene, investigative capabilities. One of EB's key initiatives in this broad effort was a “mobility strategy” for its Field Offices. This included a discussion of what technologies could help personnel collaborate securely in any time, in any place. “Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question” is a quote attributed to e.e. cummings, and our search for what technologies could assist FCC Enforcement Field Offices similarly presented a terrific opportunity to develop a high-level storyboard of the technology solutions for which we are searching.
At the end of this blog are three pictures – each with text captions – that show a brief story of what the FCC is interested in pursuing for the IT future of FCC field office mobility. We hope to use a similar process of storyboards for other FCC endeavors in the future. Developing storyboards helps programmatic and technical teams across FCC reach common understanding. This allows us to dive deeper into additional details on workflows intended for automation as well as identify potential modular, enterprise reuse opportunities across initiatives. We also can share the storyboards with industry consortia for thoughts on what new technologies might help us address our needs.
If you have thoughts on possible technologies that could help the Enforcement Bureau's field agents collaborate securely any time, in any place – feel free to share them in this blog's comments fields or tweet to @fcc_cio on Twitter with your thoughts. We live in a time of rapidly changing mobile technologies, and I'm excited to see what options are available to help transform FCC IT's endeavors.
Storyboard 1: Why does field office mobility matter? It enables seamless transition & interconnection among offices, vehicles, inspection sites, telecommuting locations, and geo-referenced remote sensors.
Storyboard 2: The setting for field office mobility includes: limited or no wireless capability, on mountain tops, high radio frequency (RF) environments, outside, home offices, in business offices, traditional workstations, in private homes, in vehicles, on rooftops, in transmitter buildings, urban/suburban/rural/remote.
Storyboard 3: With field office mobility, we need to be ready to work: in multiple locations using traditional wired infrastructure, and wireless services to complete administrative, technical, and evidence gathering functions.
