GSA reviews authentication needs of e-gov projects

The General Services Administration has reviewed security needs for five of the 24 Quicksilver e-government projects and will finish reviews for the other 18 within the next 12 to 14 months. E-Authentication project leaders assessed the Business Compliance One-Stop, E-Grants, E-Travel, Govbenefits and Integrated Acquisition Environment projects to establish levels of authentication for each, said John Sindelar, GSA’s deputy associate administrator for governmentwide policy. He spoke last week at the Association for Enterprise Integration conference in McLean, Va.“Those assessments essentially recommend solutions of what level of authentication they have, and we will build [E-Authentication] as a gateway using FirstGov,” Sindelar said.The next phase of the project is a pilot using a handful of e-government initiatives, which still must be selected.The President’s Management Council recently pushed agencies to step up their participation in E-Authentication and two other e-government efforts, and Safecom. Sindelar said he did not know what resources the council was talking about, but suspects that they are equipment and personnel.Meanwhile, the Integrated Acquisition Environment will launch in the next few weeks a Web site with links to all governmentwide acquisition contracts and Multiple-Award Schedule contracts. Additionally, the Federal Acquisition Regulation Council will add a FAR rule requiring all contracting officers to use the online GWAC catalog, he said.