For the relatively few ID cards agencies have issued under a Presidential directive for a common government ID card, HSPD-12, most agencies have not been using their electronic authentication capabilities or developed implementation plans to do so, GAO has said in calling for additional OMB leadership for optimizing the use of the expensive cards.
In some cases, products are not available to support those authentication mechanisms, but GAO said a key, contributing factor for why agencies have made limited progress is that OMB, which is driving the rollout, has emphasized issuance of cards, rather than full use of the cards’ capabilities.
Much work has been accomplished to lay the foundations for implementation of HSPD-12, but agencies have made limited progress in implementing and using the “personal identification verification” cards, GAO said.
In fact, no agency met OMB’s goal of issuing the cards by October 27, 2007, though a number of agencies GAO looked at have generally completed background checks on most of their employees and contractors and established basic infrastructure, such as purchasing card readers.
Still, OMB has set milestones that focus narrowly on having agencies acquire and issue cards in the near term, regardless of when the electronic authentication capabilities of the cards may be used, according to GAO-08-292.
Further, it said agencies anticipate having to make substantial financial investments to implement HSPD-12, since the new cards are considerably more expensive than traditional ID cards.
