[PBARC] ID card interoperability

[WOLF, EARNEST G]

FYI -

Glenn



HSPD-12 to get its first field test

02/15/06 
By William Jackson, 
GCN Staff 

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The Pentagon will host an exercise next week to demonstrate smart-card
interoperability among federal, state and local emergency personnel in the
Washington metro area. 
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The Winter Fox exercise, scheduled for Feb. 23, would be the first field
test of the First Responders Access Card, an initiative of the
multigovernmental National Capital Region. The card is expected to meet
technical specifications for the federally mandated Personal Identity
Verification card. 
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The Virginia and Maryland departments of transportation have begun issuing
FRACs in pilot programs. 
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The First Responder Partnership Initiative includes agencies in Montgomery
and Prince George's counties in Maryland; Arlington, Fairfax and Prince
William counties in Virginia; as well as Washington and federal agencies
including the departments of Homeland Security, Defense, and Health and
Human Services. 
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The FRAC program was announced in August and is managed by the DHS Office of
National Capital Region Coordination and funded through DHS grants. 
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The cards are intended to enable communication and access across
jurisdictional boundaries during emergencies. The need for such a tool
became apparent when the Pentagon was attacked Sept. 11, 2001, said Lamar
Jones, director of the DOD Force Protection Agency's antiterrorism
directorate. 
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"Because of command and control, a lot of us couldn't get back to the
incident site" because access was blocked at multiple federal, state and
local boundaries, Jones said at a meeting Wednesday of the Government Smart
Card Interagency Advisory Board. 
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Winter Fox will provide proof of concept for an interoperable card that
could help alleviate such problems. 
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Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/08/20040827-8.html> mandated
development of the PIV card, an interoperable, electronically verifiable
form of identification to be used by federal employees and contractors for
IT and physical access. Federal Information Processing Standard 201
<http://www.csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips201/FIPS-201-022505.pdf>
spells out technical standards for the card, which agencies must begin
issuing in lieu of current ID cards in October. 
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The National Institute of Standards and Technology still is fine-tuning FIPS
201 and aligning the supporting technical specifications and guidelines, and
plans are being finalized for testing and certifying products. Judith
Spencer, chairwoman of the General Services Administration's Federal ID
Credentialing Committee, said Wednesday that industry appears ready to
provide services for issuing and managing the cards by the October deadline.

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"The next two or three years are going to be a ramp-up period," with "manic
activity" as agencies begin issuing millions of the cards, Spencer said.
"Things should normalize again" after that time, she added. 
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The Defense Department already has issued more than 4 million Common Access
Cards, a smart military ID card that is being brought into line with HSPD-12
requirements. Outside the federal government, Virginia and Maryland are the
first states to begin adopting the standards. Both will be participating in
Winter Fox. 
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W. Duane Stafford of the Virginia Department of Transportation's Security
and Emergency Management Division said FRACs are being issued on a trial
basis for physical access to a single Northern Virginia facility and to
incident sites. 
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Maryland's DOT issued the first of 2,000 test cards Feb. 14. The cards are
being issued as part of the Port of Baltimore's Access Control System
upgrade and are expected to be used for physical access to port facilities
by June. The cards will go to members of the Maryland National Guard and the
U.S. Coast Guard, and to emergency personnel in the city of Baltimore and
eight Baltimore-Washington area counties. 
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