News
GSA taps five for $1.5 billion smart card contract
BY Colleen O’Hara
05/22/2000
The General Services
Administration on Friday selected five companies for an estimated $1.5
billion program to supply government agencies with smart cards and services.
The five prime contractors
on the governmentwide Smart Access Common Identification contract will
produce microchip-equipped cards capable of supporting multiple applications,
such as personal identification and access to buildings and computers.
The contract is the
first governmentwide contract for smart card services and has the potential
to significantly impact the smart card market, according to Stephen
Berg, director of the Federal Computer Acquisition Center in GSA’s Federal
Technology Service.
GSA, along with vendor
and agency representatives, will in 45 days draft an open, interoperable
specification so that smart cards bought off the contract by one agency
will be able to work with applications and smart-card readers used by
another agency. "We are the ones who are pushing these standards,"
Berg said. "That’s what we were looking for: to have a common standard
among awardees. That way we can use these cards across government."
The winning prime
vendors are: KPMG Consulting LLC, Litton/PRC Inc., Electronic Data Systems
Corp., 3-G International Inc. and Logicon Inc.
Each of the winning
vendors will provide a common interoperable set of smart card services
that support physical and logical access control, such as access to
a computer network or to a building, biometrics such as fingerprint
scans, and cryptographic services such as digital signatures and data
encryption.
"Agencies have
been waiting on GSA for standards so that they don’t move forward with
technology that will not be interoperable," said Kevin Kozlowski,
Litton/PRC Inc. program manager.
Although there are
many smart card standards already in existence, getting the standards
to work together is the challenge, Kozlowski said. "It’s the glue
that’s going to hold them together," he said.
Each agency will be
able to issue task orders off the contract for specific applications,
depending on what they need.
"I believe that
the Smart Access Common ID Card contract meets the needs that several
government agencies have," such as growing security and safety
concerns, said Suzanne Strickland, GSA administrative contracting officer
for the contract. "This new technology will support important applications,
such as e-commerce."
Some smart card applications
that the winning vendors are expected to provide include an electronic
purse application to store value and a property management application
to link an item such as a laptop computer with a specific person.
-- Diane Frank
contributed to this article.
