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April 2007 • Volume 12 Number 4
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Executive Director's Letter
Inspiration comes from many different sources. Sometimes, inspiration is a result of adversity and other times it is a product of your successes. Whatever the source may be, when inspiration envelops you, it seems to put into focus all the things that get lost in the frantic pace of trying to make a difference and an impact based on what you believe in. This month has been full of both adversity and successes, and as a result very inspiring. Those feelings were being stoked at the beginning of April as the final preparations for the 6th Annual Smart Cards in Government Conference in Washington, DC were underway. The long hours and constant reminders from my wife and family that I needed to stop some time to sleep and eat were taking their toll on me when it finally hit me about one week before the event that “it is finished.” The speakers were in place, the exhibitors had their instructions, the conference facility stopped calling to ask me to make yet another final decision, and everything suddenly got quiet – like the time when a hurricane is passing directly overhead. Only in this case, there were no damaging storm effects to follow. The conference went on without a single hitch (at least none that anyone but a few staff members and I were privy to) and the inspiration of seeing the whole smart card community together and excited again made it worth all of the effort. I hope I am not the only one who walked away from the conference feeling the way I did. The sweet feeling of success was quickly transformed into adversity again as we entered into another cycle of event planning, speaker coordination, and exhibitor advising for the forthcoming Latin American event, the Smart Cards for Government and Payment Conference – Mexico City 2007 on May 7-8th. And now, nearly two weeks later, that calm is starting to take over again – more inspiration to come, I hope. But this too will be short-lived. The free webinar, Contactless Payments: Issuers Meet Demand for Speed and Convenience is fast approaching even before we travel to Mexico City on May 3rd. I am expecting renewed inspiration from the line-up of leading financial card issuers including Wells Fargo, Keybank, and BB&T, along with one of the Alliance's leading payments industry experts, Deborah Baxley from IBM, to discuss the contactless payments adoption trend in the U.S. from an issuer’s perspective. More than 325 registrants have already signed up, including about 100 international registrants. Finally, add in the Smart Card Alliance annual support and promotion of the CTST 2007 event, the largest gathering of smart card payments and secure identification professionals and exhibitors in North America, and you can understand my sense of inspiration as a result of adversity and success. It is not just the big events that provide inspiration. The Identity Council is a great source of inspiration too – not just for their thought leadership that was evident at the various presentations and panels led by our Council members at this last conference, but also for their work behind the scenes in trying to shape public opinion and influence government policy makers at the federal and state level on important issues to our country related to the Western Hemisphere Traveler Initiative (WHTI) proposed passport card and the REAL ID enhanced driver’s license efforts. DHS made their position quite clear on these subjects during the April conference: that RFID technology was the only solution they are considering for WHTI. Plus, as a result of some generous grants to border states, DHS is trying to entice states like Washington, Michigan and others to pilot the same long range RFID technology in enhanced driver’s licenses. These efforts are undoubtedly to try to head off critics like the Smart Card Alliance and privacy groups who understand the dangers associated with putting convenience ahead of security and privacy and confusing the issues related to the right to drive with the citizen’s proof of identity. Our Council’s well-written position paper Statement on DHS/State Pilots for Enhanced Driver’s Licenses, a private letter to the Governor of Washington encouraging the State not to allow DHS to dictate the identity technology to use in the enhanced driver’s license pilot, and a soon to be submitted formal response to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) regarding the minimum standards for machine readable driver’s licenses for REAL ID Act compliance have been the best-written, most compelling arguments on the subject of identity management and security concerns I have ever read. Inspiration, like Spring, is now in full bloom! Until we meet again, Randy Vanderhoof
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