“It Took A Brave Man To Eat The First Oyster”

For Identity Management, “the trust relationship is fundamental in where we are going as a country,” explains DHS Senior Advisor Tom Lockwood. "When we talk about a knowledge-based community, we are talking about working in a distributive environment, where the ability to cross boundaries quickly must be commonplace.”

“I’ll sum it up in a phrase that Mark Twain said, ‘it took a brave man to eat the first oyster'. It’s going to take a braver person to really accept the certification of identity that’s been done by another department or agency. And it’s going to take leadership and guts when when something about that identity doesn’t go right the first time.”  Read More

Tom Lockwood was talking about the implementation of HSPD-12 and the trusted relationships necessary for identity management programs to succeed. He gave his views during the October Federal Executive Forum on Identity Management broadcast on Federal News Radio and produced by the Trezza Media Group.

Moderated by Jim Flyzik of The Flyzik Group, Lockwood was joined on the panel by:

• Mike Butler, Program Manager,GSA Managed Service Office

• Mary Dixon, Director, Defense Manpower Data Center, DOD

• Gordon Hannah, Managing Director, Public Sector Security and Identity Management Group, BearingPoint

• David Troy, Director, US Government Identity Management Solutions Group, EDS

• Phil Myers, Director, Identity and Access Management Solutions, Unisys Corporation.

“When you do something like HSPD-12, it starts to wring out these gremlins that we’ve lived with for many, many years. This is a huge place where it’s going to impact a lot of agencies. It’s a big deal,” says GSA’s Mike Butler.

“About 20% of the people who come in to enroll have some data issue with their identity,” explains Butler. “This is coming right out of the HR systems of the agencies. I think that a lot of the agencies are wrestling with the challenge of anchoring people’s identities with the normal documentation that people would expect like a passport and getting that data back into their systems and making sure that it’s consistent.” Read More

Gazing Into The Future

Looking over the horizon, Forum panelists see a bright future ahead.

Mary Dixon, DOD, says "On the eGovernment side, it allows us to work as a global organization which the Department of Defense certainly is; it allows us to conduct business without having to move pieces of paper. So I can now move pieces of paper electronically and be assured that the people on the other end are the right people. I can use digital signatures to get rid of the web signature if you will and I can do a lot of things to simplify my business processes and become more efficient." 
 

“When we think of identity management we shouldn’t just think of the card and the person. Identity management is about people, things, perhaps electronic bits," says Jim Flyzik of The Flyzik Group. Think about cargo coming in and out of our country. We want to allow the good cargo in and keep the bad cargo out. Then think about bits coming in; we want to identify let the good bits in and keep the bad bits out. Take it to another level of thinking and it just opens up a whole new world of opportunity. Read More

“There is a new thing that surprised me,” reflects Mike Butler, GSA’s Program Manager heading up GSA’s HSPD-12 programs.

“We do have some agencies that have signed on with the managed service and they have no requirement to do HSPD-12, they are not under the mandate,” explains Butler.  And when I talked to some of their senior leaders they told me ‘we are small and we’ve never really been treated like federal workers. I want my people to have a common credential that says that I work for the federal government and serve the people of the United States’.” Read More

The TSA Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) is a vital security measure that will ensure individuals who pose a threat do not gain unescorted access to secure areas of the nation's maritime transportation system.

TWICs are tamper-resistant biometric credentials for workers who require unescorted access to secure areas of ports, vessels, outer continental shelf facilities and all credentialed merchant mariners. It is anticipated that more than 750,000 workers including longshoremen, truckers, port employees and others will be required to obtain a TWIC. Enrollment and issuance begins at the Port of Wilmington, Delaware October 16, 2007 and will continue through calendar year 2008.

Learn more at http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/layers/twic/index.shtm.

Full HSPD-12 implementation takes teamwork. Assisting government are leading government contractors such as BearingPoint, EDS and Unisys.

Gordon Hannah is Managing Director of the Public Sector Security and Identity Management Group at BearingPoint.

“We are in the business of helping agencies move towards HSPD-12 compliance and be successful,” says Hannah. “We’ve been helping a number of agencies including the Department of Defense and TSA with their prototype TWIC (Transportation Worker Identification Credential) program.”

 “The whole industry segment has moved forward towards industry compliant products, components and services,” explains David Troy, Director of the U.S. Government Identity Management Solutions Group at EDS. “That’s really helped us from a systems integration perspective relative to being flexible and incorporates a number of products.” Troy says what industry is doing is extending the FIPS 201 standard to really reflect the requirements associated with multi-agency support.

Progress is being made says Phil Myers, Director of Identity and Access Management Solutions at Unisys Corporation.

“It’s worth looking back at where we’ve been from an agency standpoint and from an identity management industry perspective. (In June 2006) we saw the first 9 products approved for FIPS 201 compliancy,” reports Myers. “In October, that number reached 50 or 60 products, none of which would have provided a complete HSPD-12 solution.

So we’ve seen both the agencies and the industry stepping up to help meet the directive guidelines. Today we have some 300 products on the GSA approved products list, over 30 systems integration and consulting firms that have been evaluated and approved for HSPD-12 implementations.” ###