Parliamentary Services tests iPads for Canberra

By Ry Crozier on Feb 21, 2011 9:48 AM
Filed under Hardware

Several month trial with officers.

The Department of Parliamentary Services has commenced a trial of Apple iPads with middle and senior officers in a bid to test how the devices might reduce parliamentarians' reliance on paper.

The trial, which started just before Christmas, will also test how iPads connect and run on the Parliament network in Canberra.

The department is responsible for providing ICT services to Parliament House.

"We're conducting a small trial internally to test the use of iPads," department secretary Alan Thompson said.

"I don't know what the future is but it does seem very likely that staff and politicians will want to use [these types of devices].

"We want to test how it can be connected into the network and run a business rather than with heaps of paper.

"We have to get to an endpoint [of the trial] in the next few months but I think it's a very interesting little trial."

Assistant secretary David Kennedy said although the department was testing with iPads, "our intention is to look at the range of mobile computing devices that are now becoming available."

The trial was expected to result in a DPS "assessment" due at the end of next month.

Similar trials have been conducted in Canada, whilst in recent months MP's in Germany and the UK have been granted permission to bring their own tablet computers into parliament.

Parliamentary Services tests iPads for Canberra

4 comments in this discussion

"I guess the reasone they are also trialling iPhones is because they were trialling iPhones last year, so I guess it's a case of less of a learning curve, considering both devices use IOS. ..."

By Ezy2Confuze

Tags

dps, parliament, services, department, thompson, ipad, apple, officers, trial

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Comments: 4

Corsair Feb 21, 2011 10:27 AM	Will this trial also be conducted with other equipment which is coming down the line - such as the Galaxy Tab 10.1? In other words - why restrict the test to Apple iPads?
Notomys Feb 21, 2011 11:53 AM	Generally speaking, when a business/government body does a trial of something, you want to trial the market leader. Hence why Microsoft is a standard desktop in most businesses, Blackberries are the common mobile solution for businesses, etc. All which probably originate with a trial of the market leader at the time. It has nothing to do with religious reasons, just market truth.
Mark D Feb 21, 2011 7:07 PM	anyone who has gone beyond the hype and actually setup multiple of these devices can tell you they are a joke. Convenient? no, Secure? without a doubt no. Manageable? no. Consumer toy, yes. What happened to DSD security classification of the device? or is this a case of who cares, loosing classified national documents to China/wikileaks not an issue now?
Ezy2Confuze Feb 22, 2011 10:32 AM	I guess the reasone they are also trialling iPhones is because they were trialling iPhones last year, so I guess it's a case of less of a learning curve, considering both devices use IOS. Personally, I'm holding out to see what the Cisco Cius is like. Poor Fred Nile, imagine, if he'd had an iPad, they wouldn't have found all that "research" porn on his PC.