“The Department of Interior plans to purchase and distribute Apple iPads to see how the devices can improve worker productivity,” Elizabeth Montalbano reports for InformationWeek.
“The move is part of a larger acquisition of Apple hardware products the department plans to make and mirrors similar moves by businesses to experiment with giving employees iPads and similar tablet devices to see how it affects job performance,” Montalbano reports. “Interior is seeking to acquire the tablet devices, which will be “used in personal productivity and visual media” within the department, as part of a two-year, firm fixed price indefinite-delivery contract, according to a public request for proposals posted on FedConnect. The contract period will begin April 1. Other products Interior seeks to buy in the acquisition include MacBook Pro and Air notebooks, and MacPro, iMac, and MacMini desktops.”
Montalbano reports, “The department ran into a stumbling block recently with a strategy to move its 88,000 employees to cloud-based email and collaboration tools. The department’s plan to award an estimated $59 million contract to Microsoft to deploy its email and collaboration services was blocked by a court injunction stemming from a lawsuit by Google and reseller Onix Networks. The companies filed suit in late October charging Interior with failing to follow federal procurement guidelines in its search for a hosted collaboration suite last year.”
Full article here.
Giving 88,000 employees e-mails to Microsoft is like giving it to Wekileaks. Everyone will be reading it in the next few weeks.
Good block. Block some more please!
Great, now they can be even more efficient in keeping their boots on the neck of our economy!
@Rabbit (droppings):
Poor little fluff ball of uninformed flatulence – stay down your smelly burrow and keep your pathetic ignorance of domestic affairs to yourself.
“giving employees iPads and similar tablet devices”….hmmmm,
what similar devices are out there?
@Rabbit
Are you nuts? Do you know what the Dept of Interior does? And that is one agency that has been pro Mac since the mid 80’s. Take a tour of USGS for instance and you will find Apple products everywhere.
@Jersey
So Google is a safer place for government info? Oh yeah, we know Google well. Besides, what kind of leaks do you think the Geologists, Cartographers and Oceanographers are going to interest Wikileaks?
Looks like maybe some IT guys got smart!
I love the iPad, but what a waste of taxpayer money! They should live with what they have until the economy improves.
I’m just repeating what the DOI secretary himself said he wanted to do, so yeah I’m pretty sure I know what they do. Why don’t you stop being a drone or are you not even a US citizen?
Chip T Yipper, is right! What an incredible waste of taxpayer money to give the Interior employees relatively low cost (compared to a decently hardened laptop) iPads that will increase their productivity! The gub’mint can’t do nothin’ right, so if they’s doin’ dis, it ain’t gotta be nothin’ but wrong.
Yeah the DofI (or ID) rule with impunity-
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/48745.html
When not surfing porn on the taxpayer’s dime.
“The Department of Interior plans to purchase and distribute Apple iPads to see how the devices can improve worker productivity”
Now if only the entire US federal government got off Windows and discovered how Mac OS X improved computer security.
Dear Mr. Obama:
Please fire your cabinet security consultants who used to work for Microsoft. Their presence is giving you a delusional reputation. And that’s bad. OK?