Federal Agencies Lag on Secure ID Card Mandate
The number of HSPD-12-compliant smart cards issued by the federal government remains minuscule.
CSO — The number of HSPD-12-compliant smart cards issued by the federal government still remains minuscule, according to an analysis of the public updates that federal agencies were required to post by June 1.
In a detailed study, CSO found that only 30 agencies have posted any quarterly HSPD-12 compliance updates on their websites, as required by an order from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). (Read the OMB’s order online here in PDF). At agencies that did post status reports, a total of 749,372 employees require the new Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards, but only 3,564 cards have been issued so far—or about 0.48 percent of those required.
Agencies have until Oct. 27, 2007, to conduct background checks on employees and issue most of the smart cards, which are supposed to standardize government identification processes and work for both physical and logical access. (Read more about the origins of the project here.) The only exception for the coming October deadline is for low-risk employees who have been with an agency at least 15 years.
At the March 1, 2007, deadline for quarterly updates, CSO found that 1,495 PIV cards had been issued. The agencies making the biggest strides in the last quarter were the Environmental Protection Agency (which issued an extra 842 cards, bringing its total to 856 of the 17,000 required) and the Department of State (which issued an additional 458 cards, bringing its total to 1,373 of the 19,865 required). The Department of Labor issued an extra 371 cards, but also increased by 95 the number of employees who require the card, bringing its total to 382 cards issued out of 15,473.
The agencies reporting the largest percentage of cards issued are the State Department, with 7 percent of its cards issued, and the National Science Foundation, at 6 percent.
Four of the largest departments seem not to have posted any public reports at all: Defense, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security. Four others—Commerce, Energy, Interior and Transportation—have not posted updates since March.
Back in March, government sources said the card issuance process had been slowed down by a contract dispute. The General Services Administration (GSA), which is acting as a shared service provider and will be issuing PIV cards to other agencies for a fee, awarded the card contract to BearingPoint, the consulting and systems integration company. However, another vendor disputed the contract, which was put out for re-bid. (See recent coverage of the issue here.)
