GSA to Launch Gov App Challenges Discussion

The General Services Administration's Office of Citizen Services on Wednesday will begin publishing a list of 10 challenges facing federal agencies developing a mobile presence, the division's mobile director said Tuesday.

The office will publish one challenge online each day, along with an open forum for agencies to discuss the challenge and offer tips.

The challenges list is the second phase of Mobile Gov, a GSA program aimed at promoting the development of mobile apps in government.

Gwynne Kostin, Office of Citizen Services mobile director, described the program Tuesday at a conference sponsored by the media company FedScoop.

In later stages, Mobile Gov aims to establish a set of standards and best practices for government mobile apps so the government can be more deliberate and rational about its rollout of mobile apps than it was about the proliferation of government websites in the 1990s.

The number of government websites topped off at around 20,000 before Federal Chief Technology Officer Jeffrey Zients ordered a freeze on new sites earlier this month.

Mobile Gov will reach the meat of that phase in mid-July, when it plans to launch a wiki to gather and organize comments from agencies, citizens and the private sector about which government apps they're using, which ones are more useful than others and what they'd like to see in the future, Kostin said.