The Meaning of Significant and HSPD 12
By Daniel Pulliam | Friday, May 25, 2007 | 03:53 PM
By Daniel Pulliam | Friday, May 25, 2007 | 03:53 PM
The Federal Aviation Administration's chief information officer, David Bowen, said this week that the agency wouldn't make an impending deadline to comply with a governmentwide mandate for implementing an employee identification system.
We asked the Office of Management and Budget to clarify what the deadline is and how many agencies are likely to meet it. The directive, known as Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, HSPD 12 for short, requires agencies to complete background checks and issue personal identity verification credentials "to a significant portion of their employees and contractor population by Oct. 27, 2007. In September 2006 agencies submitted updated HSPD-12 plans, and agencies are on track to meet the milestones indicated in their OMB-agreed upon implementation plans," the spokeswoman said.
Asked to define a "significant portion," the OMB spokeswoman replied that the interpretation of a "significant portion" depends on agency-specific implementation plans. The spokeswoman said that OMB expects agencies to have by October 2008 credentials issued to all, or the majority of all, their employees and contractors as indicated in their plans.
Comments
The date that matters is 2008, 2007 is the year where cards start to get issued, where HSPD 12 budgets become a regular line item in budgets, where applications for logical and physical access get defined and the migration plan to address full populations over the course of 2008 take place.
There was a 2006 deadline to have in place the ability to sponsor, register, vet, enroll and issue a single credential. There is no real deadline in 2007 “a portion” is subjective, the only goal is that there is progress to be made beyond the first credential. At some point FIPS-201 credential go to new employees and then existing ones must be replaced.
It seems your question belittles the significance of HSPD 12 without an understanding of the timelines. I don’t think there is any question it has set the standard for smart cards in the United States and even globally and will enable many applications that will improve security, scale, performance and cost of operations.
Asking an agency today, when many had to operate on continuing resolution budgets that did not have HSPD 12 dollars, is basically asking when they are going to do something that they don't have budgeted. Not because they don't want to, but, in many cases, because they did not have to deploy (beyond a single card) HSPD 12 in government Fiscal Year 2006.
If you are going to ask about the deadline, think about October 2008 or what does the agency look like in 2010 when this single credential is used for logical, mobile and physical security.
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Allan Holmes, Bob Brewin and Daniel Pulliam on what's happening and what's being discussed in the world of federal information technology.
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