The Census Bureau released its first mobile app, "America's Economy," on Aug. 9--just days after it opened two application programming interfaces, or APIs, to better share demographic data with developers.

FierceMobileGovernment spoke with Stephen Buckner, director of the center for new media and promotions at the Census Bureau, to learn more about its new app and better understand the bureau's vision for digital services going forward.

Stephen Buckner: The app is really an illustration of what we are trying to do at the Census Bureau with the overall web transformation as well as interaction with our users. We want to be able to provide more timely and accessible statistics to them, whether they're coming to our website or on their mobile devices. We've got to do better at allowing them to find and get at the information they are looking at.

America's Economy is our first mobile app but we feel like it does a great job at giving users a real quick glimpse into what's going on currently, based on the latest economic indicators coming out of our agency, as well as BEA [the Bureau of Economic Analysis] and BLS [the Bureau of Labor Statistics].

So, you look at that first splash screen and right up at front you get a list of the economic indicators with what the indicators is, when it was released, the latest number, whether that went up or down and whether or not it was statistically significant or not.

So, right off the bat, we're sort of educating users that aren't used to looking at this kind of stuff, how best to look at these things and whether or not there is actually a change. Very quickly they're able to get a piece of information and if they want to dive into it a little bit more, they can go into a more detailed view of the individual indicator and look at the trend line over the last 2 years. On this interactive graphic you're able to sort of explore the ups and downs of that individual indicator and see over time how it's been performing.

And then if you want to go a little bit deeper you can go directly into a historical, longitudinal database where some of these indicators go back over 20 years, in terms of looking at the data.

It provides quick, easy access to the information but also gives you touch points to get at more information if you want to. And some of the cool things that we like about the app is that you can actually integrate it with your personal calendar on your phone or tablet, you can set up notifications so that if you're interested in a particular indicator you can get push notifications or emails that the data has just come out.

And even more interesting, you can order the way they are displayed. So if you want to constantly look at just two or three of the indicators, you can put them up in the top. While we've ordered them in terms of the latest releases, you can go in as a user and change your settings to look at specific ones up top, so you don't have to look for them. And then of course this all integrates with being able to share it via email or on social media with Facebook and Twitter.

FierceMobileGovernment: I realize the app hasn't been out for long, but any findings in terms of downloads, or interest and feedback? You had an official launch event, maybe some feedback there?

Buckner: Yeah, we tried to give a demo. So, we went into the den where all the economic indicator reporters go into a lock up room. This is a tradition around some of the economic indicators where, they have to give up all the electronic devices and, because the information is so sensitive, because it moves markets that they're able to look at the data but they can't do anything with it until the actual release time. So, they are able to write their stories and they can file right as the numbers are formally released at a given time.

We went there to talk to people that knew the data the most and sort of preview it with them before we launched it, to sort of get initial reaction, to sort of showcase it. And we got a really good response from the people that were there. We did two different groups, one was on trade and the other one was on wholesale figures. And so they were actually able to see it update on the app, as well as start playing around with it and look at it from a user's perspective.

We kind of considered them expert users. They know what economic indicators are but they saw the utility in it very quickly. If they are not at their desk, it's hard to find out what the number is real quick, so if they're looking to work on the story they saw value in that.

Certainly, the reaction that we've seen from actual downloads--it's only Android at this point because of the delay it takes getting something into the iTunes store, there is a larger review process--but we've had over a hundred downloads already. We had ten reviews and I think we're averaging around 4.6 stars right now.

So it's getting really good reviews for the presentation of the statistics as well as the utility of them and the ease of use. Those are all things we tried to engineer this app around. So, we're really happy with it and we're going to continue to try to market it and I think it will grow over time.

The more and more people that start learning and hearing about it, and then certainly when we hit the Apple market we expect to have a lot more downloads at that point as well.

-->READ THE FULL INTERVIEW

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The National Science Foundation is seeking public input on what information should be "first in line" to become an application program interface, or API, according to an Aug. 8 NSF announcement.

"NSF is asking the public to help it prioritize which data sets, or digital collections of information, to open more broadly through the use of interactive search and display functionality," through a crowdsourcing site at nsfdigitalstrategy.ideascale.com, says the press release.

As of Aug. 14 eight data sets had been submitted to the platform, with six of them posted by NSF's "Digital Strategy Moderator." The data set with the most support on the site was the "Project Outcome Reports" with 14 positive votes and one negative vote.

The Project Outcome Reports refer to the project outcomes or findings, addressing the intellectual merit and broader impacts of the work as defined in NSF merit review criteria. This review of publicly-funded research is required to be made public under section 7010 of the America COMPETES Act.

The IdeaScale site allows visitors to suggest data sets and vote up or down suggested data sets. The site will be open for public feedback until Aug. 22, according to the announcement.

By Aug. 24 agencies are required to identify at least two existing major customer-facing services that contain high-value data or content to be made available as an API, under the White House's digital government strategy.

For more:
- read the announcement
- visit the IdeaScale site

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The limit for radio-frequency energy exposure from cellphones that the Federal Communications Commission set in 1996 should get another look, the Government Accountability Office says.

The FCC's 1996 limit was based on a 1991 recommendation from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, along with input from federal health and safety agencies. But IEEE updated its recommended limit in 2006.

That limit could allow for more radio-frequency energy exposure from cellphones. Actual exposure, though, depends on factors such as the phone's operating power and how the user holds it, the GAO notes in its report (.pdf), dated July 24.

The IEEE said its updated recommendation is the consensus of the scientific community. Forty countries, including the European Union countries, have adopted it.

Three cellphone manufacturers told GAO they could save time and resources if they didn't have to adhere to different standards in the United States. Still, the FCC hasn't updated the limit because federal health and safety agencies have never advised it to, senior officials from the agency told GAO.

For their part, officials from the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency told GAO that the FCC hasn't formally asked for an opinion on the limit. If they had a concern, though, FDA officials added that they would bring it to the FCC's attention.

FCC officials noted that they could use the rulemaking process to solicit information and opinions from other federal agencies. They could also release a notice of inquiry to get information without going through the formal rulemaking process.

For more:
- download the report, GAO-12-771 (.pdf)
- go to the FCC's webpage on radio-frequency safety

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This week in mobile presidential campaign apps hasn't been a stellar one. The campaign of putative Republican nominee Mitt Romney announced with fanfare July 31 that it would announce its vice presidential nominee pick via mobile app "before the press and just about everyone else (except maybe Ann)."

The campaign said that within the first 48 hours of the app's release more than 200,000 people downloaded it onto their iPhone or Android smartphones.  

But when the campaign finally did announce on Aug. 11 via app its pick of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), it did so at about 7 a.m. eastern time, "hours after Romney's pick of Ryan had been widely reported by news outlets," notes the NY Daily News.

The gap led, of course, to fair amount of online derision, including an NBC news producer tweeting a picture of the app along with the comment "Woops!"  

With Ryan now known as the VP pick, some have also taken to wondering what happens to the Romney app now.

"We've said consistently that we have a mobile app strategy," Romney campaign digital director Zac Moffatt told Politico. "Obviously, it wouldn't make much sense to just leave [the app] as is."

Meanwhile at the re-election campaign of President Barack Obama, a new mobile app meant for street canvassers that lists the address information of registered voters has caused privacy concerns. Although the app draws on already publicly-available information, the app is more readily available "to people who may have bad intent, and that fear could deter people from giving money" or otherwise participating in the political process, Justin Brookman, a consumer privacy expert at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Reuters.

Obama campaign officials told Reuters that they take privacy seriously "and can take action against any wrong-doing," Reuters says.

For more:
- read the NY Daily News article on the Romney VP pick app
- read the Reuters article on the Obama campaign app

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Early versions of the iPhone gave Apple's iOS devices a reputation for insecurity, but a report published Aug. 13 in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Technology Review finds today's iPhone 4S and iPad 3 devices are so secure they're actually problematic for law enforcement officials.

"Technologies the company has adopted protect Apple customers' content so well that in many situations it's impossible for law enforcement to perform forensic examinations of devices seized from criminals," writes report author Simson Garfinkel, associate professor focused on computer forensics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.

The primary forensic challenge is from the increased use of encryption on iOS devices, says Garfinkel. Encryption is nothing new but over the last 20 years no devices have allowed users to securely manage their encryption keys. "Cryptography, for all its power, provides no security unless the keys used to lock the data remain secret," writes Garfinkel.

But the new iOS security architecture allows consumers to easily apply encryption and makes it difficult to steal the encrypted information, says the report. The iOS architecture uses the Advanced Encryption Standard algorithm, or AES, a data-scrambling system "widely regarded as unbreakable."

"Burning these keys into the silicon prevents them from being tampered with or bypassed, and guarantees that they can be access only by the AES engine," writes Apple in a May 2012 security white paper (.pdf).

Turning off the iPhone 4S and iPad 3 erases a copy of the encryption key on the device, writes Garfinkel. "An investigator who gets a suspect's phone would have to try all possible keys--the task deemed impossible by the NSA," he adds.

For more:
- read the Technology Review report

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