OMB stands tough on deadline for federal smart cards
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With final specifications not due until late February, agencies will have to make a mad scramble to meet the White House mandate to use standard identification cards for building and network access by Oct. 25.
With final specifications not due until late February, agencies will have to make a mad scramble to meet the White House mandate to use standard identification cards for building and network access by Oct. 25.
'Agencies are under pressure,' said Mary Mitchell, the General Services Administration's deputy associate administrator for e-government and technology. 'There are a lot of policies and processes that need to be taken care of, and only a few agencies, such as the Defense Department, have them in place.'
President Bush included the smart-card OMB stands tough on deadline for federal smart cards mandate in his Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, issued in August. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is spearheading the effort to complete federal standards for smart cards and how agencies use them by Feb. 25.
Even though NIST standards and guidance aren't available yet'the drafts came out last month'the administration argues that agencies should have been preparing for the creation of common IDs for more than a year, based on memos the Office of Management and Budget first issued in 2003.
'If agencies have been doing everything based on the OMB guidance, they should be well-positioned for the upcoming year,' said Karen Evans, OMB's administrator for IT and e-government.
But agency managers counter that without the specifications from NIST, they have had little hard information to use to define necessary resources and develop policies.
'Right now we have a lot of questions, and nowhere to go for answers,' said a government procurement official who requested anonymity. 'The Interagency Smart Card Board is working on these answers, but how long will it take to move down to the agencies? We are working on something that is not built into our budgets.'
By June 25, agencies must draft implementation plans that spell out:
- How they will pay for the new programs
- How they will issue cards to employees and contractors
- How will they issue cards to part-time or seasonal employees
- How many cards they need for federal and vendor work forces
- How they will track the cards.
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