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Government smart cards

By Joab Jackson and William Jackson, GCN Staff

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The new Personal Identity Verification card mandated by Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12 could usher in an era of public-key-infrastructure-enabled transactions, improved network security and interagency trust models. But it won’t happen anytime soon.

Judith Spencer, chair of the Federal ID Credentialing Committee, said the new interoperable smart ID card is “in many ways, just a key.” How that key will be used will depend on the agency using it.

The October HSPD-12 deadline was largely a formality. Agencies had to demonstrate minimal ability to issue the cards. Most agencies are a long way from fully implementing a PIV card program. They have until 2008 to actually get the cards into the hands of all employees and contractors, and even that is an ambitious schedule.

Using the cards as anything more than a picture ID will require technical infrastructure and new business processes. In the near term, federal IT administrators probably will have too much on their plates moving their networks to IPv6 to give much attention to enabling PIV cards.

To date, agencies, along with the Office of Management and Budget and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, have focused on the technical standards and issuing process. These are necessary and important pieces of the PIV puzzle, but it will be some time before we have ubiquitous smart-card readers, PKI-enabled applications and reciprocal trust arrangements between agencies.
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