The General Services Administration has awarded a $93
million contract to Maximus Inc. of Reston, Va., to develop
smart cards to administer the way that NASA and its
contractors gain access to facilities and information
systems, NASA has announced.
It said a smart card pilot-program is scheduled for this
May at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville,
Ala., and if successful, the technology will be rolled out
for 2,000 employees, and eventually expanded to 100,000 by
the end of fiscal 2005 pending approval from the Office of
Management and Budget.
NASA is working with the National Institute of Standards
and Technology and the federal Interagency Advisory Board.
GSA awarded the contract on January 8, through its Smart
Access Common ID Contract managed by the Federal Technology
Service Center for Smart Card Solutions, according to NASA.
GSA said the cards are not like regular credit cards with
a magnetic strip but contain a computer chip (holding up
to 64 kilobytes of information) and can have multiple
functions, such as storing biometric data for positive ID
and digital certificates for Internet transactions. If
smart cards are a success at NASA, they could become part
of life for all federal employees.
