States Aim to Launch More Mobile Apps

With the proliferation of smartphones in our society — there are 91.4 million devices in the United States alone, according to data compiled by go-globe.com — governments are adapting their presence and offerings to what users want: mobile access.

Many state and local jurisdictions are already on top of things, according to a February 2012 survey of 100 members of GovTech Exchange, an online community of senior-level IT pros from state and local government. The survey found that 38 percent of respondents planned to launch new mobile offerings within 12 months. (Another 23 percent said they weren’t sure.) Of those planning new deployments, 55 percent said they will use responsive design techniques that allow a single source of content to be viewed by multiple device types and operating systems. Roughly half said they’ll create the apps using in-house developers, while the other half planned to work with outside developers.