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Rather than a rash of acronyms, this post looks at Bring Your Own Device strategies in the third sector.

The launch of the latest version of the iPhone (slightly larger screen, a wee bit thinner, a faster processor and slightly worse on-board maps) reminded me about the opportunities and challenges of introducing a BYOD strategy in a NFP organisation.

The rise of smartphones and tablets, and particularly the increasing share of that market taken by consumer (i.e. Android and iOS) devices, has been an important factor in the increase in requests from employees in the NFP sector to use their own devices to access work email and files. Doing so can allow staff to be more productive as they can potentially work anywhere. It also puts extra work on the IT team as they are expected to support more devices and may need to install additional infrastructure.

The trend is for more organisations to adopt BYOD. In our experience, key factors that need to be considered are:

• Whether there is a BYOD strategy or if adoption is on an ad-hoc basis
• Incremental approach – test your strategy by providing for one type of device/operating system first and then extend to others
• Implications for the IT team – what level of support are the IT team expected to provide? Is there an understanding of the associated IT costs?
• Device Management – is there a need for the organisation to be able to remotely access employees’ own devices (e.g. to remove organisational data)?
• Responsibilities of staff – make it clear what employees are responsible for (e.g. report if they lose their device, any restrictions on the type of organisational data they are allowed to store, use PIN code rather than slider to unlock screen)

As with many things, BYOD seems to be more a case of when and not if. However, each NFP needs to decide where does BYOD fit in the overall priorities of the organisation.