Defense Department to Study Viability of BYOD

The Defense Department is planning a pilot study to determine the feasibility of a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) program within the department, says Terry Halvorsen, acting chief information officer.

“I think what we might be able to do is offer some set of services, probably email, maybe some file share, on a select number of commercial devices” for Defense Department military, civilian and contractors, and the department then could offer support services.

The impediment to enacting a department-wide approach has been policy issues, not a lack of technology.

“It’s not a technical issue,” Halvorsen said this week during a media roundtable. “It’s more about the tactics and procedures that allow us to … be able to see while protecting the individual privacy rights, and it gets very hard. The data could be lost that was government data, if somebody say, you know, maybe accidentally or purposefully mismanaged the data we let them have on their phone. That is the more complicated part of the process than the technology.”

That said, while the department plans to launch its pilot program on viability, BYOD is not a pressing issue for the department.

“How often has BYOD been successful in commercial industry? I’ll answer. Not as often as people think,” Halvorsen said. “We are looking at what it would be to do a BYOD, and we’re going to do a controlled pilot for that. We haven’t worked out all the details yet, but we’re going to do that.”

He gave no timeline for the pilot program.