Expectations around personal smartphone and electronics usage in AD Air Force?
TLDR: I know it’s very AFSC dependent, but what sort of expectations are there about using personal devices for communicating or completing work related tasks?
I’ll preface by stating that I know all if not most AFSCs (especially those that require a TS clearance) prohibit any (sensitive or not) work data to exist on any non-sanctioned devices.
More so for non-TS AFSCs, how is this done in practice? What I’m getting at specifically is that we all know smartphones and tablets can do a lot when it comes to productivity and connectivity, especially when paired with other machines, tools, or programs (some non Air Force examples: John Deere machinery app, GPS app companion, Camera companion, Project management tasks tracker, etc.).
Is there an expectation you’ll just download the app on your own phone (if you have one) and use it to do your job?
And regarding communication, is your phone the end all, be all for communication (how else would a supervisor get a hold of somebody)? I understand that if somebody is on-call at a specific location, then an office phone or a Teams ping might be used instead.
I bring this topic up because my old job (small company) was very much like
> “We respect your personal and work life balance, so don’t use your personal devices for work”
but in reality it was actually like
> “Well, we need you to set up 2FA authentication to log into this account so use your phone to download this app and/or provide your personal phone number. Also, sorry but we don’t have the budget to provide a work smartphone for you”.
and
> "Where's John? We need to ask him something"
> "John's out in the field right now"
> "Call his phone, it's important"
Ultimately it was hard to push back because literally everybody but the CEO was using their personal devices for work even though we weren’t supposed to.
I think what I might end up doing is buying a refurbished, older model iPhone or Android and getting the cheapest phone plan so that I can designate that as my work phone and keep it entirely separate from my personal phone. It will suck having to pay out of pocket for a work phone but the peace of mind that I would get will be worth it. TIA for any insight.