I was fortunate this week to be both a speaker and a panellist at Questex Asia’s ‘BYOD and Mobile Security conference held in Singapore. It turned out I was the only lawyer in a room of 200 plus IT people, which was an interesting experience. Having made my presentation (Olswang_Asia_BYOD_presentation) my conversations with delegates brought home to me how hard it can be to effect change within an organisation.
Whilst speakers had run through the organisational benefits from BYOD, and it is clear from my experience that generation X and generation Z are increasingly demanding the ability to bring their smartphones and tablets to work, as any change requires the buy-in and collaboration between at least IT, legal HR and senior management many organisations were struggling to actually change in a structures where any stakeholder saying ‘no’ could stop implementation.
My message that the legal issues (whilst important and needing to be dealt with) shouldn’t stop BYOD deployment seemed to give comfort to some of the delegates I spoke to.
As is always the case with these things, two days after I had delivered the talk the UK Information Commissioner published their guidelines on BYOD. I was heartened to read that the guidance covers pretty the same ground as my talk, albeit (not unsurprisingly for regulatory guidance) with a somewhat more negative view.