Government apps for mobile devices could be on the way

Federal agencies racing to embrace tablets and a new generation of smartphones are facing a new challenge: There’s no government app for that.

As more federal workers swap their government-issued BlackBerrys and laptops for a new crop of mobile devices, the focus is quickly turning to applications. Enterprise government apps are currently limited in scope and quantity, but agencies are increasingly looking to their own programmers or contracting third-party developers to build apps. “There’s going to be a million different government apps,” said Tom Suder, president and CEO of Mobile Government Solutions, a private-sector firm that developed a mobile app for the Federal Registry. “But we’re not quite there yet.” That means agencies are putting in place the initial building blocks to set up internal app stores. It’s something along the lines of a hybrid Apple/Android app store that gives federal workers a one-stop shop for all their agency-specific app needs.