The Transportation Workers Identification Credential program continues to be plagued by performance shortcomings, technical glitches, poor communications and other problems, according to a report from the National Maritime Security Advisory Committee's TWIC Working Group.
The panel, chartered to advise the Homeland Security Department on implementing the new ID cards, has identified more than a dozen problems the panel says are causing the program to fail, according to a July 22 report obtained by Federal Computer Week.
“Unresolved problems…help to foster the sentiment among stakeholders that the TWIC program is broken,” the 17-page report states. The “Coast Guard and TSA must address the issues identified in each of these areas if they hope to generate higher rates of enrollment, sustain stakeholder cooperation and meet compliance dates.”
TWIC is a biometric identification card being produced for about 750,000 maritime workers under supervision of the Transportation Security Administration. A $70 million contract for TWIC card production and enrollment was awarded to Lockheed Martin Corp. in February 2007. Port workers initially were supposed to begin using their cards for entry to secure port facilities by September, but the deadline was pushed back to April 2009 for much of the country.
Meanwhile, goals for delivering the cards are not being met, according to the working group.
“Though we recognize that steps have been taken to improve card production and delivery times, after nine months of operation, TSA is still not delivering cards within the seven to 10 days after enrollment, which was the time frame industry required and which TSA agreed was a target goal; and the agency is not even reaching the 30 days after enrollment as outlined in the final regulation,” the report said.
Technical problems continue to slow enrollments, the group said, especially the inability of the biometric scanners to accurately record and process enrollee fingerprint templates. For example. at the Port of Long Beach, of more than 200 enrollments attempted, seven were unsuccessful due to fingerprinting failures. In some ports, as many as 8 percent of enrollees cannot complete enrollment due to fingerprinting issues, the panel said.
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