DHS releases government guide for mobile app development

The Department of Homeland Security released its Mobile Applications Playbook Monday, giving federal agencies a roadmap for creating, testing and deploying apps that will be shared across the government.

The 39-page guide can be used anywhere along an application’s development lifecycle, giving development teams a path forward when they are stuck on an issue related to an application’s progress.

The playbook leans on the agency’s “car wash” process, a continuous cycle that allows teams to build, manage and test source code that has caught on across the government.

Development teams can weigh whether their application would be better on mobile web versus a native app, the difference in user experience between a smartphone and a laptop, what programming language to use, what security and compliance metrics need to be accounted for, and how to test for software bugs.