Ten Steps To Creating Insanely Great Mobile Apps

The government is going mobile. But making mobile apps for the government space isn’t as easy as you might think.

“People get confused because they see 15 year old kids writing codes for an app. and selling them on iTunes for 99 cents. This has set a precedent that its very simple to start an app. in government too. But those apps. are very different from the apps. that need to securely access federal information and databases. Federal apps. need to be distributed to hundreds of thousands of employees securely and in a controlled manner,” said Tim Hoechst.

Tim is the Chief Information Officer at Agilex.

Tim told Chris Dorobek on the DorobekINSIDER program why mobile adoption is spreading so quickly through government.

“A lot of consumers have this expectation that it should be as easy to create a government app. as it is to create Angry Birds. But in fact it’s a lot more sophisticated like that,” said Hoechst.

Tim has compiled his list of 10 steps to creating a great mobile app.

1. Deliver quickly and precisely the right information to and from the mobile device.
2. Rigorously protect information from unauthorized use.
3. Present the information in a manner that optimizes the business process.
4. Allow the user to remain productive even when the network is unavailable.
5. Minimize impact on underlying enterprise IT systems and infrastructures.
6. Exploit the capabilities of the device.
7. Accommodate the ever-changing variety of available devices.
8. Deliver new and focused capabilities frequently and consistently
9. Establish governance standards that empower developers
10. Delight the user.

“The app. needs to get the data in a form that makes the app. usable. With some of our big mobile applications it hasn’t been about the app. at all but the process it takes to build the platform of web services that expose legacy systems so that we can get access to the data for the mobile app.,” said Hoechst.

Biggest Challenge: Mobile apps. have a small amount of real estate that has to be use in a very thoughtful way.