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There's an App for That!

“Government Dashboard” iPad App Being Developed For British Prime Minister

by Max Eddy | 12:00 pm, January 1st, 2012

There seems to be no end of possibilities for Apple’s iPad tablet: You can explore stonehenge, Orangutans can play with it, cats can slice fruit with it, and you can fake a grievous bodily injury with it. Now, you’ll apparently be able to help run a government with one, too. At least, that’s the plan for British Prime Minister David Cameron, who is having a specially made “government dashboard” app developed especially for him.

While the idea of adjusting the controls of state from an iPad — say, moving troop by taping icons, adjusting sliders to change taxes, and pinch-zooming to establish trade agreements — sounds appealing, the app will be more of a snapshot of useful information. With it, the Prime Minister will be able to view wait list figures for the country’s National Health Service, unemployment numbers, and crime statistics. The app will also include breaking news alerts fed from Twitter and other sources.

In short, it’s the kind of information that a public official should keep in mind when making decisions. Or, perhaps more importantly, making statements to the press. Either that or it’s all just a pretense to give Cameron access to Angry Birds for “official purposes.”

The move for a special government app is a surprising one, especially because of a UK government announcement in 2010 that forbade ministers from using iPhones due to security concerns. Hopefully Cameron’s IT guys will get that sorted out. However, I’m left wondering how they’ll get the app on the iPad in the first place. Will the the British Prime Minister be rolling with an unlocked/jailbroken iPad?

(Tech Week Europe via SlashDot, image via conservativeparty and Andrew Parsons)

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  • RevRonaldG Cosseboom

    All heads of state are using smart devices be they iPhones, iPads, Blackberries, or Android devices, but that doesn’t mean there still isn’t a problem with this thinking.  Is Apple going to allow a “different” way of uploading an app?  How will the app interface with Apple computers?  If it is jail broken, does that compromise its internal integrity?  Really how secure could an app like this be?  We’ve all read reports of devices going missing.  There was one in the US where the device was basically wiped clean before giving it back to the party it belong to.  I would have destroyed the device and replaced it with a new one I knew was unhampered with.  And how did they determine that NONE of the important information being kept on the device had not been copied or duplicated in any way?   Then again, I’m paranoid in these cases and one reason I’m not a fan of open source items.  I’m not a programmer so I don’t know what lurks in the code.  What a great way to launch an attack on a system and what better way than to embed the code in an app like Angry Birds that has MILLIONS of players.  Everyone who opens the app has opened up their device to the prying eyes of the development team, or worse yet, some agency created to monitor the movements of those who play the game!  But of course that’s also a great mini plot for some SciFi show in the future.
    Oh and Happy New Year everyone!
     

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=563223409 Vic Horsham

    Ye gods he even manages to look like a smug git eating toast.


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