What would you rather use at work – the corporate, standard-issue hardware provided by your employer, or the stylish cutting-edge smartphones and tablets that you use at home?

It’s a question that public sector organisations are beginning to ask. Not just employees, who would enjoy using their gadgets of choice, but also their employers, who recognise they could make huge cost savings by giving them that choice, providing they can maintain control of the application, the infrastructure delivering it, and of course the data.

Benefits of ‘bring your own device’

More and more of the enquiries we receive about ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) initiatives come from public sector organisations tasked with cutting their costs, realising better utilisation of their estates, and reducing the size of their workforces and the number of desks they occupy.

The obvious benefit of a ‘bring your own device’ initiative is that every computer a staff member pays for is one that the organisation doesn’t have to pay for itself, although some employers run schemes which provide contributions or allowances. An organisation offering a BYOD initiative can save a huge amount in terms of capital expenditure: if you currently need computers for 1,000 people, for instance, but know that you will have to reduce your full time workforce to 800 people, it wouldn’t make economic sense for you to order 1,000 computers. Doing so would leave you with 200 computers that nobody uses but that you can’t return to the manufacturer. BYOD initiatives give employers a more flexible and cost-effective IT solution that copes with variable staffing levels.

They also enable more staff to work from home, so as well as spending less on technology, you can spend less on the desk space your organisation needs. You can also cut training costs, because staff don’t need training to install and use the common platforms, applications and technology that they already use at home. And you can reduce the cost of ongoing maintenance: people tend to look after their own devices better than they would employer-provided devices.

Of course, there is also the received wisdom that satisfied staff are productive staff. BYOD initiatives are the key to giving staff the satisfaction of choosing both where they work (at home, in the office, in a café) and what device they work on. The introduction of the iPad has seen a huge wave of people dropping their existing platforms and infrastructures for the sake of what they regard as an enhanced user experience.

Things to consider

One common reason for resisting BYOD is the myth that staff can’t use their own devices on the organisation’s network. But the truth is that they can, as long as they have the right technology in place. IT managers’ fears partly stem from the security issues involved in people using their own hardware on a corporate network. How, for example, can they tell if someone’s laptop has up-to-date virus protection? How can they monitor what software the employee has installed?

They need not worry. Technology from vendors such as Microsoft, VMware and Citrix enables organisations to deliver applications, data and indeed desktops to any device, whether PC, thin client, laptop or tablet. This approach allows data to be displayed, and interacted with, on the device in question, while keeping the data itself secure in your datacentre. When the user disconnects, no data is left on the end device. While technologies like this have been around since NT 4 Terminal Services, the fact that we have been able, for the last three years or so, to deliver a full desktop experience rather than a terminal services session has seen rapid take-up recently in organisations who want the dual benefits of device-independent computing alongside secure data access.

While the underlying technology is of course important, public sector organisations should look for good service providers that can handle everything needed to set up and support a BYOD initiative, including connectivity, security and ongoing management. If an ‘off premise’ hosted solution is required, the service provider should have the right infrastructure to satisfy these needs and be capable of delivering a good virtual experience with no latency.

Of course, keeping track of hundreds of devices is no mean feat, so it is important to have policies and processes that keep data secure and devices visible and in the organisation’s control, and that safeguard employees’ privacy at the same time. Some organisations install software on staff devices that lets them erase data remotely if the device is lost or stolen – staff that want to use BYOD must first agree to have this installed.

Taking the plunge

The rise of BYOD in the public sector owes much to the fact that a lot of the people who want to use their own devices at work are senior councillors, clinicians or professors. Now that secure, dependable technology is available, they can demonstrate the savings to their finance managers and quickly build support for BYOD, although many still choose to pilot the idea, or restrict the applications that staff can access on their own devices, before making the switch completely.