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Federal agencies deserve a star for their efforts to share over the last few weeks--particularly around mobile. The recent explosion of mobile resources could continue into this week, as well. Thursday marks the one-year anniversary of the Obama administration's unveiling of the Digital Government Strategy.

If the architects of the digital strategy can deliver on even a portion of these outstanding items mobile champions at the agency level will have much to celebrate.

The General Services Administration's office of citizen services and innovative technologies has developed a guide for agencies looking to procure mobile applications, responsively-designed websites, mobile program testing or mobile developer services.

"Agency developers looking to jump-start their efforts can find source code for native and web projects from a variety of sources: federal agencies, other governments, and third-parties in the private sector," writes Mike Pulsifer, lead IT specialist for the division of enterprise communications at the Labor Department, in a May 13 blog post.

The Defense Information Systems Agency announced May 17, the approval of security technical implementation guides that will open the department's doors to Apple's iOS 6 devices. The STIG approval allows government-issued iOS 6 mobile devices to connect to Defense Department networks within mobility pilots currently underway or under the forthcoming mobile device management framework, said the department.

The strategy initially called for a governmentwide bring-your-own-device policy within 3 months, which ended up becoming a 43-page BYOD toolkit (.pdf) published Aug. 23, 2012. "It became quickly apparent that getting out an actual policy that applied across the diversity of agencies in that time frame was not something that was realistic and achievable," said Rick Holgate, chief information officer of the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms Bureau.

The task of pulling together a complete, standardized inventory of all of its data is an enormous task for agencies—one Martin admits could be an overwhelming challenge.

One way Apple devices are working their way into the hands of federal employees, with the blessing of IT departments no less, is through hearing- and visually-impaired employees.

The issue of reimbursement has been difficult for agencies to navigate as they experiment with bring your own device as an alternative to their traditional, government-provisioned mobile device strategies. It's clear that employees would pay for their own device but responisbility for talk and data plan costs are less well defined, said Kim Hancher, chief information officer at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The Veterans Affairs Department May 7 awarded a $200 million indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract for cellular services and devices to AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless and A&T Systems.

During last month's meeting, Fitzgerald accused the board in charge of setting up a national public safety broadband network of not thoroughly weighing the interests of the public safety subcommittee and making decisions about the network in secretive meetings.