Feds miss ID card deadline

The federal government fell far short of meeting an October deadline to issue secure personal identification cards to agency employees and contractors, the Office of Management and Budget reported on Friday.

Comment on this article in The Forum.Less than a third of all federal employees and contractors, about 29 percent, had been issued a new high-tech ID card, which contains a cardholder's biometric information. OMB had set Oct. 27 as the deadline for agencies to issue the cards to all federal employees and contractors.

Karen Evans, administrator of e-government and information technology at OMB, said the number of ID cards agencies had distributed was not "an acceptable level of performance. There are agencies that should be commended, because they did what they said they'd do, [and] there are other agencies that were challenged. We're going back and saying, 'You missed your target. It will be reflected on the score card appropriately.' The next step isn't to say tough luck, [but] to make sure they have what they need to meet this goal."

OMB found that 12 of the 16 agencies it tracks as part of the President's Management Agenda met or nearly met their targets for card issuance that were set in previously agreed-upon implementation plans. These targets were not the total number of credentials required, however. . Those agencies include the Defense, Education, State, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, and Labor departments, the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, the National Science Foundation, Social Security Administration, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

President Bush called for the new federal ID cards in August 2004 when he issued Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 to control access to federal buildings and government networks. The plastic credentials, about the size of a credit card and outfitted with a microchip that stores personal data, replace existing flash-card badges, so named because the holder simply shows the badge at a security guard to gain entry to a federal building. The microchip stores personal information, including the holder's fingerprint. An employee inserts the card into a reader that looks to match the cardholder's fingerprint to a database of fingerprints collected when the cards were first issued. If a match is located, the system gives the holder access to the federal building or a network, if logging on to a computer.

In total, agencies issued almost 1.6 million credentials as of Oct. 27, an increase of 300,000 since OMB issued its Sept 1 report on HSPD 12 implementation. About 28 percent, or 1.25 million, of the federal employee workforce and 30 percent, or 338,451, of contractors who require the cards have received credentials.

In addition, only three agencies -- the General Services Administration, the Small Business Administration and the U.S. Agency for International Development -- are issuing HSPD 12-compliant cards to new employees and contractors as they come to work. All other agencies have yet to set up procedures to issue new employees and contractors the ID cards.

Many agencies missed the deadline because of technical problems. The most common complication has been integrating data from legacy systems to new systems that incorporate HSPD-12 capabilities, Evans said. Many agencies also underestimated the amount of time it would take to enroll and issue cards to workers in field offices. Some agency officials were concerned that diverting resources to deploy the new cards would delay other programs.

The Justice and Homeland Security departments have taken what Evans called "a more conservative approach" to issuing the new ID cards. As of Sept. 1, Justice had issued cards to 2,008 of the 79,246 employees who require them, and 328 of its 27,713 contractors. DHS did not post its report online.

"We're trying to ensure them that [most of] the risk has been mitigated so they can aggressively do the implementation," Evans explained. "We have recommended corrective action [to all agencies] so they can move forward through the process and get cards into hands."

The National Institute of Standards and Technology plans to issue a technical guidance for agencies to follow when issuing the ID cards.