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GCN Home > February 8, 1999 issue

Following delays, GSA releases RFP for governmentwide digital certificate service

By Christopher J. Dorobek

After making significant revisions, the General Services Administration last month issued a final request for proposals for a digital certificate service to be used by agencies governmentwide.

Through the Access Certificates for Electronic Services program, GSA wants a vendor to provide a certificate service that will make it possible for citizens to do business electronically with agencies. The winning vendor must establish a public-key infrastructure using commercial products.

GSA’s Federal Technology Service originally had wanted to award an ACES contract last year, but the agency backed away from that schedule after receiving critical comments on its draft RFP [GCN, April 27, 1998, Page 3]. FTS has been working on the project since 1997.

Despite the delays, many federal officials are tracking the project and consider it a bellwether for other PKI applications.

“It is hoped that the ACES project can be used to evaluate the adoption of a uniform and simple identity certificate, thus promoting interoperability among agency implementations,” noted the recent Access With Trust report from the Office of Management and Budget and the Government Information Technology Services Board (see related story, above).

ACES has the potential to spur development of digital certificates and a government PKI, said Richard Guida, the GITS Board’s security champion and chairman of its PKI Steering Committee.

The ACES project has a catch-22, Guida said: It is tough to figure out pricing for digital certificates when vendors do not know how many will be used or how often; meanwhile, price will influence use.

The project is the first government effort to move beyond that “chicken-or-the-egg” question, Guida said.

ACES is also an opportunity for vendors, he said. If it works, ACES “will result in the issuance of hundreds of thousands to millions of certificates for real, live applications, and that has to be good for the providers,” Guida said.

The final RFP is more flexible, he said. The draft required that agencies be charged each time a certificate is used. Some agencies were interested in buying certificates that could be used for unlimited time periods.

For more information about the project, go to http://www.gsa.gov/aces.



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