GAO has called on DHS to address problems developing the Transportation Security Administration’s transportation worker identification credential — designed to regulate access to secure areas of transportation facilities — that were identified during testing before moving ahead with implementation.
TSA completed TWIC program testing in June 2005 and is moving forward with implementing the program in the maritime sector by the end of this year, but GAO said the actual rollout is for a much larger population of workers than the population used for testing and echoed an independent contractor’s recommendation for further testing after finding deficiencies.
GAO also said most testing facilities did not use biometric readers so there is limited information on their use in the maritime sector, and that it is unclear that attempting to balancing security requirements with commercial flow will run smoothly.
Rapidly moving forward with implementation of the TWIC program without developing and testing solutions to identified problems to ensure that they work effectively could lead to further problems, increased costs, and program delays without achieving the program’s intended goals, according to GAO-06-982.
It said that while TSA acknowledged implementation challenges and has taken actions to address these issues, including allowing more time to consider requirements for installing TWIC access control technologies, TSA still plans no additional testing of the TWIC program.
TSA had problems overseeing the contract used to test the TWIC program and had to make a number of changes to contract requirements after the award, which doubled the cost, and TSA did not ensure that all key components of the program were tested, the report said.
It said the agency recognized that it did not have enough personnel to monitor contract performance, but said it was working to address the problem.
