Smart Card Alliance Government Conference Delivers Breaking News and Record Attendance

New program details were announced at the Smart Card Alliance 3rd Annual Smart Cards in Government conference, as the fast-growing focus on smart cards in the federal government more than doubled attendance at this years event.Government agencies that announced new program details in ID credentials and physical access control were the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Representatives from the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), the Federal Identity Credentialing Committee (FICC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) presented new standards efforts, an essential part of the success of smart card technology in government. NASA NASAs Tim Baldridge presented new details about the "One NASA" smart card system to be used by all NASA employees and contractors across the United States. In February, NASA announced an award to Maximus to develop the system. Plans call for dual contact and contactless chips in a high-reliability card body similar to the 4.5 million Common Access Cards (CAC) issued by the Department of Defense (DoD), according to Baldridge. The contact portion is a 64K Java-based chip and the contactless component is a 4K ISO 14443 Type A chip. Special features include on-card secure key generation and a PKI certificate profile consistent with the FICC cross-credentialing guidelines and following the DoD CAC card model. Following a successful operation readiness review from July to September 2004, NASA will begin issuing 20,000 cards in October and plans another issue of 70,000 cards between November 2004 and September 2005. NASAs application priorities are using the card for an ID credential, physical access control and logical access control. One interesting aspect of the program is the decision not to put any distinguishing graphics or logos on the card. Department of Veterans Affairs Fred Catoe, project manager for the smart card initiative in the Office of Cyber and Information Security for the Department of Veterans Affairs, presented new details about the VA’s smart card program. There are three major parts to the system: a smart card ID credential and physical access control card, a PKI certificate meeting the federal PKI standards, and an identity and access management system. The VA is working closely with the DoD on PKI implementation choices and other issues. An interesting aspect of the program is its support for a thin client system logon in VA hospitals. A doctor logs on from one room using the smart card, and removes the card when he or she leaves the room. The doctor then inserts it in a computer in another room, and the session comes right back to where it was. If the testing and pilot phases go well in the coming months, the deployment will be starting in July. Current plans call for issuing 15,000 cards from July through September 2004. Starting in September 2004, the VA plans to issue 12,000 cards per month for the next three years, eventually issuing smart card credentials to 500,000 VA employees, doctors and designated support contractors. The VA administers health and benefit programs for 25 million living veterans, and has the largest civilian workforce of any U.S. government agency. TWIC Testing To Begin in State of Florida ? The TSA Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) is moving forward with a smart card-based program. One of the important steps forward in the program was to add the 14 deepwater ports in the State of Florida to the ports in Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington and Long Beach that participated in the first round of tests. Florida has decided to do enrollment with port personnel working in conjunction with TSA, and they will use the TSA centralized card issuance model for security reasons. Based on years of experience in looking at security for distributed driver’s license issuance for the Department of Motor Vehicles.