Incorporating personal devices into work will be high on the agenda when the association for public sector ICT professionals meet this week.
Members of Socitm Scotland will gather in Stirling for their second regional meeting of the year to discuss ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) policy within local authorities north of the border.
The issue – which will form part of a wider themed event on mobile applications – comes after Edinburgh, Stirling and Western Isle councils announced plans to issue iPads to councillors, together with certain senior members of staff.
IBM – the world’s largest computer services provider – has been invited to offer an industry perspective on BYOD, while a member from South Lanarkshire Council is expected to lead discussions on deployment of mobile applications.
Socitm Scotland chair, John Grieve, believes increasing demands now dictate BYOD merits attention within the public sector IT community.
He told Connect: “The focus of this meeting is mobile devices and increasingly the ‘Bring Your Own Device’, which we’re getting demands [for] from both people within the organisation but also particularly in the school environment.
“Can pupils use their own devices to access education material and then particularly, with the council elections, new elected members having an expectation that they can connect their devices into the council’s IT systems, particularly email-type systems. All of that causes problems relating to our information security.
“We’ve all got the same challenges and rather than reinventing things, we’re trying to share knowledge and experience within the IT community. Hence, we thought that for this meeting it would be a good focus.”
Socitm members’ views on progress made will also be requested following last year’s McClelland Review.
Alan Robertson
A graduate in Politics and Journalism from the University of Strathclyde, Alan joined the Holyrood team as a reporter in May 2012 fresh from finishing his studies. Alan spent four years in student media, the last of which helping to launch the award-winning Glasgow Journal as Managing Editor, and continues to work part-time as a sub-editor in sport for the Sunday...