It seems today that everyone is going mobile and virtual in conducting business. Military forces on the move are being given better access to critical information needed to conduct military operations, and business leaders are almost constantly connected to others in their fast-moving, daily business lives. Not long ago, we thought that being able to plug into a data stream at a wall socket was pretty agile and “high-speed.” However, we’re quickly moving into an era where wireless connectivity and virtual presence are provided almost everywhere we travel. Most people I pass on the street today are connected to someone on the other end of a powerful handheld communication device.

More than five years ago, Netscape browser inventor and entrepreneur Marc Andreessen told me about the amazing capabilities the world soon would have via their cell phones or other mobile, handheld devices. Marc’s list seemed almost unimaginable but, lo and behold, it’s all available to us today in our hands just as he predicted — phone, e-mail, global positioning system (GPS) locator, Internet browser, instant messaging, endless music selections, television, direct satellite connectivity, and secure voice and data, for example. What an incredible, exponential growth in mobile, handheld technology that’s available to everyone — and, some developers today are asking, “What else can we build for you?”

At the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) in late 2000, we also started asking ourselves about initiatives we could take to enable our office employees to work from home — a slightly different twist on mobility that we referred to as telework. We were looking for new approaches for improving productivity, saving employee travel time, reducing big-city traffic congestion and pollution, and improving employee morale.

Our experiment was tackled by Jack Penkoske, the DISA human resources leader, who began studying applicable job positions, trial work periods, processes to use and metrics for measuring results. The first test for management was to learn new levels of trust in our work force. We asked ourselves questions such as, “Can we trust people to give us a full day of productive work if we allow them to work at home?” “How can we trust but verify?” “How can we measure productivity?”

Read the rest of the article at SIGNAL Magazine. 

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