GSA to award new contract for ID card services

The General Services Administration last week began implementing a new strategy for providing about 420,000 federal employees from 40 agencies with standardized high-tech identification cards.

GSA on Friday issued a request for quotes from companies interested in supplying the ID cards required under Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 to agencies using its shared service center. The request went out to the 18 information technology companies that had qualified under GSA's IT schedule to provide the cards.

Agency officials expect to make an award to a single vendor late in the second quarter of fiscal 2007, which ends March 31, or early in the third quarter, said Michel Kareis, director of GSA's HSPD 12 program. GSA decided last fall against exercising remaining option years in a contract for end-to-end ID card services with BearingPoint.

The contractor selected as GSA's new provider will be expected within 90 days of the award to start producing cards that include a digital image of the holders' index fingers and a digital certificate, Kareis said.

The contract will be for a period of about five years. The base period will run from the award through Sept. 30, 2007, followed by four one-year option periods, Kareis said.

The value of the contract is not yet available. The maximum amount will be based on the price per card multiplied by the expected number of enrollees. There are up to a million potential enrollees, according to Kareis.

Under the BearingPoint contract, agencies paid $110 for each card issued and were scheduled to pay $52 for annual maintenance.

The Interior Department's National Business Center, which runs a competing shared service center, is charging agencies $120 for each card issued, with the first year's maintenance included in the price. IBM and Lockheed Martin Corp. are implementing NBC's card services. In October, NBC said it will issue about 300,000 cards through its shared service center. NBC officials were not available to update that information for this article.

GSA's deal with BearingPoint was worth up to $104 million. Officials said at the time that they decided against exercising the option years because they wanted to bring more competition into the award process.

BearingPoint and the three companies that filed protests against its initial contract are among the 18 firms that could submit bids on the latest deal. The three companies that protested the award to BearingPoint were Electronic Data Systems Corp., Xtec Inc. and Lockheed Martin.

Under the presidential ID card directive, agencies are required to complete background checks on all employees and contractors and issue new cards by Oct. 27, 2007. Agencies faced an Oct. 27, 2006, deadline for issuing at least one employee one of the cards. A one-year exception can be made for employees with more than 15 years' experience.

While many smaller agencies have signed up to use GSA's or NBC's offerings, several agencies, including the Defense Department and the Social Security Administration, are meeting the directive's requirements without the help of shared service centers.

In an attempt to monitor and validate agency issuance of the new cards, the Office of Management and Budget asked agency chief information officers Thursday to provide GSA with a credential that has the standard configuration, for testing purposes.

In a Jan. 11 memorandum, Karen Evans, administrator for e-government and information technology at OMB, stated that GSA would provide agencies with test results and notification of any configuration problems within three weeks. If problems exist, then agencies must resubmit a credential for another test once changes have been made.

Agencies should not issue new credentials until all problems discovered in testing are resolved, the memo stated.

The memo also requires agencies to post on their Web sites a report on the number of credentials issued, distinguishing among employees, contractors and other users of the identity cards. They are to start doing this on March 1.