More state workers using personal phones for work

LANSING – Over the last 18 months, Gov. Rick Snyder's tech agency has nearly quadrupled the number of state employees working on their own mobile device instead of a state-issued smartphone or tablet.

The state's "bring your own device" — or BYOD — program is making for a more nimble state government that is more attractive to Millennial employees and saves taxpayers money, said Tiziana Galeazzi, the general manager of the state Department of Technology, Management & Budget who has spearheaded the program since its November 2014 launch.

And, thus far, DTMB is not aware of any of the security breaches state employee union officials' had feared, Galeazzi said Wednesday.

"We've seen very, very positive feedback from the employees and the agencies that are participating," she said.

In February 2015, when the State Journal first reported on the program, 50 DTMB employees were using their own smartphone or tablet for work. As of Wednesday, 189 employees were participating in the voluntary BYOD  program, and 11 agencies are either using or testing BYOD devices, DTMB officials said.

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That's a sharp spike, but still off-pace for meeting DTMB's goal of turning 90% of the state-issued devices into BYOD devices by the time Snyder leaves office in 2018. Nonetheless, Galeazzi said she was confident DTMB could meet that goal as more agencies learn to enjoy the benefits of the program.

"Obviously, that's an ambitious goal, but we like that," she said. "We feel that it's achievable."

The state currently manages 14,200 devices, including the BOYD devices, DTMB spokesman Caleb Buhs said.

Buhs said Wednesday it would be difficult to calculate total savings for the state because the amount saved per device would depend on the type of device the employee used.

But the program saves money because employees become responsible for replacing and upgrading their own devices and taxpayers no longer pay for the full phone and data plans on the devices.

Instead, the state gives employees a taxable reimbursement — up to $46 a month — for their own plans and pays a $20-per-month subscription subscription fee on each device for an app, called MaaS360, that allows employees to access their work programs. The MaaS360 subscription cost has gone down as participation has gone up.

That app, which is also used by several other states and some federal agencies, essentially partitions state government programs from employees' personal apps on their devices. That helps prevent what state employee union officials worried about, that either something on an employee's device would corrupt or expose Michiganders' personal information on state servers or a hacker on state servers could then access employees' personal information on their devices.

Those fears could be justified. The state battles some 2 million cyberattacks a day on state servers. And employees sometimes make dangerous choices, like the employee at the House Anderson Building whose iPad was hacked in 2014 after he stopped paying for a pornographic video chat service, according to police reports.

But DTMB is "pretty confident that the necessary security protocols are in place," Galeazzi said.

Union officials also worried about employees having the tools they needed to do their jobs, but Galeazzi said that is why the program is voluntary. There are some jobs where BYOD devices won't work, she said, and that is why departments test the program before fully rolling it out.

Contact Justin A. Hinkley at (517) 377-1195 or jhinkley@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter@JustinHinkley. Sign up for his email newsletter, SoM Weekly, at on.lsj.com/somsignup.