Dear members and friends of the Alliance,

Spring has arrived and along with rising temperatures it has also brought a blooming of furious activity in the smart card industry. The annual CardTech SecurTech conference in April is always a peak activity period for the North American market as companies polish up their displays and public images and try to shine for the thousands of people who walk the exhibition floor. This year's event at Washington DC's vast convention center did not disappoint. Yes, you can argue that more people have attended in the past and the exhibit hall was smaller, but that does not take away from the full value of CardTech. Our industry has matured in the last several years. We have moved from looking for parts and components to seeking solutions. Many of the technologies on display a few years ago are now found inside the cards, readers, and software solutions that companies have built into smart card-enabled systems.  

More and more, those same vendors are taking their technology to vertical market conferences where the real users of the technology are, rather than to events billed as technology showcases. Notably the chip, smart card, reader, and card production companies that support the secure ID market such as HID, ST Microelectronics, Philips, Axalto, XTec, SCM Microsystems, Datacard, Sharp Microelectonics, Fargo, NBS Technology, OTI, G&D, and Orga were front and center with impressive displays. Those same companies are also marketing smart card technology at other security, government, transit, retail payments, IT security, and wireless conferences. That is a sign of strength, not weakness, in the U.S. market. A total of 27 Smart Card Alliance member organizations exhibited at the event, with many more represented there as speakers or attendees taking advantage of the tremendous networking opportunities the show provided.

The Smart Card Alliance was at the center of a number of important activities at CardTech:

• Our renowned Educational Institute team presented the "Fundamentals of Card Technology" workshop to the pre-conference attendees. In addition to the 80 people who pre-registered, the room soon reached capacity seating as more and more people came through who had registered to attend other sessions or stopped in to hear what we had to say. An estimated 130 people passed through the room during the course of the day long workshop.  
• Our member organizations on the exhibit floor proudly displayed their Alliance placards and were identified in the official program guide with the official Alliance logo.
• At the Alliance booth on the exhibit floor, Bob Johnston distributed free CDs containing our two most recent white papers on contactless payments benefits and secure identification systems chain of trust.
• The Alliance hosted a networking luncheon and invited all new member organizations and some prospective members to attend. I delivered a brief update on the Alliance's activities, along with comments from Kevin Gillick, Datacard (SCA Chairman), Gilles Lisimaque, Gemplus (SCA Technology Vice Chair), Julie Krueger, JCB International (SCA Marketing Committee Chair) and our featured guest, Mary Dixon, Director Access Card Office, Department of Defense.
• Cathy Medich (SCA Task Force Chair) led the work group committee meetings, taking advantage of the rare opportunity for face-to-face meetings to solidify existing projects and plan next efforts.
• I chaired (for the final time) the international ISCAN group meeting that included representatives from Canada, Europe, Southern Africa, India, and China. Catherine Johnston, president of ACT Canada, was elected to serve as new ISCAN chair.

For me, the highlight of CardTech is the opportunity to see so many of my friends and colleagues together in one place. This always renews my enthusiasm for this job and the members I serve. Fortunately for me, I ate the tainted Chinese food with no ill effects though I am sorry for those who were not so lucky. I want to commend Jonathan Moore and Bill Rutledge of Thomson Media, who put on this year's CardTech conference. Their efforts to address many of the concerns our organization and its members had about past conferences were evident in the numerous postive changes. You have renewed my belief in CardTech and its future. Good job!

I have received many positive comments on our new "Weekly Smart Card Industry News Summary" that is emailed to Alliance members each week. Judging by the many email requests from people asking to be added to the distribution list, the news is being read and shared. The marketing committee is in the process of several additional improvements to serve our members. We will be adding a member contact listing along with the company listings on the web site in an effort to assist members looking for contacts to discuss business opportunities, explore new ideas, or simply to stay connected. We are also making major improvements to this Smart Card Talk monthly newsletter. Hopefully by this time next month, you will see an exciting new format that will include more industry news, more vertical industry articles, reference implementations, individual and company profiles, and expanded coverage of Alliance work groups and industry outreach initiatives. All these improvements are intended to increase the Alliance's value to the smart card industry.

Planning has begun for the 2004 Fall Annual Conference in San Francisco on October 18-20. Our committee is working on the theme and program for this premier event. We are seeking speakers from end user or industry groups and organizations in financial, retail, cellular, transit, government, and enterprise security. If you would like to nominate a speaker, please contact me. We expect a large turnout this year at the Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco location and its proximity to Silicon Valley. There will be no exhibits at this event, which has been our custom, although sponsoring organizations will be offered information tables as recognition for their support. Stay tuned for details on sponsorship opportunities. Upcoming events to note on the industry calendar include the DoD PKI Users Conference (June), GOVSEC (July), eSmart-France (Sept), CardTech ID (Sept), SCA Fall Annual (October), Digital ID World (October), Cartes IT Security (Nov), and Inside ID (Nov).
 
On a final note, if anyone was wondering what the loud stadium cheer that was heard in and around the beltway in Washington DC last Monday night was - it was the release of the Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) RFP. This long awaited next step in the 12 million cardholder federal credentialing project was issued to the prime contractors. The RFP is for a 7 month prototype phase involving 16,000 cards and related readers and software. It cleared its final political hurdles and is now out for bid. Congratulations to Lolie Kull and Jack Cassidy at TWIC for their tireless efforts to keep this program on
track, despite lobbying efforts by government special interests that challenged the recommendations of the TWIC program committee.

Randy Vanderhoof
Executive Director
Smart Card Alliance
rvanderhoof@smartcardalliance.org

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Each week the latest news, press releases, and articles are made available at your Alliance web site. To include your company's articles, news, and releases in this great industry resource, send electronic submissions to news@smartcardalliance.org. Click on the headline to read the full text of these articles–currently "showing" at the Alliance site.

		ActivCard Digital Signature and Smart Card-Based ID Deployment Receives 'Card Technology Breakthrough Award' for Integration
		OTI Completes $15.1 Million Equity Financing to Institutional Investors
		Datakey, Inc. Announces Agreement with HID to Provide Integrated Physical and Logical Access Solution
		Gemplus Delivers World's First New Generation of MasterCard Payment Smart Cards
		Giesecke & Devrient awarded IT security common criteria certificate for SECCOS bank signature card
		MBF Cards, Malaysia To Purchase 10,000 Smart, Fast, Easy-Use Hypercom T7Plus Card Payment Terminals
		Gemplus Becomes the First Company Validated to Deliver 64K Smart Cards for the Next Phase of the U.S. Government's Largest Smart Card Program
		Smart Cards Continue to Draw Influential Adopters for Access Control and IT Security
		Visa Launches Visa Wave For Contactless Card Payments
		First 'All American' Smart Card Solution Receives FIPS 140-2 Security Certification
		SCM Microsystems Introduces Physical Access Control Terminals

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The ISCAN organization met during the CardTech SecurTech conference in April.  Representatives from the Smart Card Alliance (U.S.A.). Eurosmart (Europe), ACT Canada (Canada), SCSSA (Southern Africa), SCFC (China), SCAFI (India), CPS (France), JavaCard Forum, Cartes IT Security, SIM Alliance, and CardTech SecurTech were in attendance.  The group met for three hours discussing the major developments of smart card technology among the represented regions of the world.  The group shared ideas on how to address industry concerns related to costs and challenges to certification testing for payment applications by the various payments associations.  Eurosmart shared their 2003 industry survey figures and forecast for 2004. SIM Alliance and JavaCard Forum sent representatives to audit this meeting, with the possiblity of becoming members in the future.  ISCAN members elected Catherine Johnston of ACT Canada to be its next chair and Philippe Delanoue of CPS technologies to be vice chair.  The next meeting of ISCAN will take place in Paris at Cartes IT Security 2004.

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