According to Gartner, up to 38% of companies expect to stop providing devices to staff by 2016, with the estimated 75% of employees in high growth markets such as Brazil and Russia and 44% in developed markets already using their devices at work. As the vast amount of data and services is now cloud-based and accessible via multiple devices, the implementation of BYOD is increasingly becoming a norm. But can it be adopted by public sector?
Theoretically, there are many benefits of BYOD, no matter what sector you look at. There are significant savings to be made by reducing or avoiding cost of hardware, which is estimated at £500 per employee across public administration. Also the greater mobility and flexibility to work when using your own devices, coupled with greater employee satisfaction and increased productivity is another reason for public sector to harness the power of BYOD.
But as it is easy to imagine there are also certain concerns surrounding the concept, with the security issue being one of these. The coexistence of enterprise and consumer applications on a one device is a major concern, with the risk of breaching company’s confidentiality and resulting in potential financial loss. Notably, Gartner estimates that by 2017 40 % of enterprise contact information will have leaked into Facebook via employees’ increased use of mobile device collaboration applications.
Whilst BYOD becomes common practice in the private sector, there are already public body organisations in the UK considering the options. MOD for example has already prohibited any sort of BYOD as a matter of policy, whilst Norfolk County Council is one of the only councils that allows employees to use their own devices. Will others?
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Anna Mazur
Marketing Executive
