Study to assess impact of HSPD-12

Federal Business Opportunities Web site

Editor's note: On Jan. 5, the General Services Administration cancelled the notice described in this story. A GSA contracting officer said the agency is redefining its requirements and will issue a new solicitation notice or none at all.

The General Services Administration has notified vendors that it intends to solicit bids for a comprehensive technical study on the impact of new mandatory building access controls on existing security systems.

GSA’s Region 9 has posted a preliminary request for information to gauge vendor interest before soliciting bids for the study. Officials plan to assess all the technical ramifications of Federal Information Processing Standards 201 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 on the building access-control systems that GSA’s Public Buildings Service operates at more than 900 locations.

FIPS 201 and HSPD-12 set new mandatory standards for federal building access control systems that will go into effect Oct. 27, 2006. The same standards can be applied to control access to federal computer systems.

The RFI indicates that replacing, updating or supplementing existing building access-control systems to meet the mandatory standards will require a thorough assessment of current wiring, physical-layer protocols, encryption, alarm interfaces, emergency power and other technical components.