How iPads and media tablets can improve government productivity

By Jerry Mechling, Vice President, Gartner Research | Nov 6, 2011

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Portable computing devices, the Internet and mobile broadband have liberated workers from their desks. While the "office in your pocket" ideal is yet to be fully realized, media tablets have dramatically bumped up work away from the desk. With nearly 15 million iPads sold in its first nine months, early data suggests that they are being used for perhaps 1.5 hours of work per day.*

Assuming that this work could be 10 percent more productive, we have possibly improved productivity by 2 percent overall.**

Best for certain jobs

Tablets offer better Web browsing experience than smartphones or laptops and are ideal for news and other information.  Meetings are usually done "away from the desk". In such settings, tablets are superior to smartphones (the screen is too small), laptops (unreliable batteries, too heavy, too intrusive) and paper (too expensive and too heavy to carry around), making tablets the best tools for document access and sharing at meetings.

Tablets offer better access to graphics, maps, photos and videos. These are expected to greatly expand the use of videoconferences and, therefore, help dispersed groups make better decisions.

Their instant-on, long battery life and great touchscreens make media tablets powerful for interactions that benefit from persuasive demonstrations or explanations.

Perhaps the most powerful element of Web tablet systems is software distribution that makes a wealth of new applications financially as well as physically accessible.

Media tablets are good — and better than smartphones, netbooks or laptops — for many kinds of data navigation and consumption. They are getting better for data input and production. The office is evolving from a specific place to something that is with you and quickly available all the time.

The dark side

Media tablets do present some risks to organizations wishing to use these as extensions for work. More information may actually make it harder to make decisions or stay focused. Also, if the brain is too stimulated, it may not have the time it needs to digest new concepts. The interactive design of media tablets may attract unwanted attention towards apps like games, movies and social networking – activities that will not help keep government workers focused on their jobs.

US President Barrack Obama noted in an address at Hampton University in Virginia on 10 May 2010: "… with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it's putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy."

The capabilities of media tablets bring risks as well as rewards. Minimizing the risks will require governments to manage work by focusing more on outputs and less on inputs. It will also require educating workers on how to better manage time and the blurry boundary between their work and personal lives.

Recommendations

Gartner suggests that individuals get acquainted with the iPad (or any competitive product) and explore what it can do for them in terms of work. Individuals need to discover how these devices can benefit the person while away from his or her desk through applications like e-mail and calendar updates, Web browsing for news and information gathering, document access in meetings, and access to graphics, maps, photos and video.

Government departments can consider identifying groups to test the value of tablet-accessible information. It is important to identify information sets most likely to be useful in away-from-the-desk settings. Assess how tablet time can be used to improve time management and help employees reach desired outputs and outcomes. Finally, develop an explicit strategy to manage information production and distribution specifically for media tablets, especially to provide information that makes new sources of work time productive, and encourages engagement through well designed interactivity and multimedia.

Success with media tablets comes from using information well while avoiding too many distractions. The strategic concern is not the devices themselves, but rather how to keep up in the rapidly changing and often consumer-driven world of readily available and interactive information.

* www.businessinsider.com/ipad-survey-results-2010-11
** As a "back of the envelope" estimate: (1) take the 1.4 hours/day of iPad work use (as an expected value from the distribution of usage times from the survey in Evidence Item 1); (2) express that time as a percentage of the typical work day, or 1.4/8 = 0.175 as the fraction of the day available for tablet-augmented productivity; and (3) if the tablet-augmentation factor is 0.1, then the total contribution can be estimated as: .1 X 0.175 ~ .0175 or roughly 2%.

About the author

Jerry Mechling is a vice president at Gartner Research focusing domestically and internationally on helping governments and their corporate and nonprofit partners with issues of strategic planning, work process innovation and implementation, governance, and information management and analysis.

Dr. Mechling is also a lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he has written "Eight Imperatives for Leaders in a Networked World" (a series of policy papers for the Harvard Policy Group on Network-Enabled Services and Government) and "Finding and Funding IT Initiatives in the Public Sector" (a book by the Government Technology Press).