Ross Wilkers
The Agriculture Department is aiming for a more mobile workforce, based on technology and where its employees do their work.
As covered by our sister site ExecutiveGov in October, USDA is aiming to have 40 percent of eligible employees teleworking by 2012 according to a study from the Telework Exchange.
This week USDA continued the theme of a mobile workforce with a department official saying USDA plans to have a department-wide mobile app store ready by 2012, according to a report from NextGov.
Owen Unangst, the department’s associate chief information officer for enterprise network services, said Wednesday USDA is working on a mobile application for veterinarians reporting results of cow inspections along the U.S.-Mexico border.
USDA is also developing an app for Natural Resources Conservation Service employees that could cut required travel in half, Unangst said at an event sponsored by TechAmerica and GCN.
“Today, most of the work we’re doing with these mobile devices is communication, emailing and so forth, but we’re starting to utilize more of the commercial things like Google Maps,” Unangst said according to NextGov. “We’re just starting to experiment with commercial and in-house [developed] apps.”
