Executive Director's Letter

Dear members and friends of the Alliance,

Well, it is hard to believe I am writing “a year in review” letter for 2007 already.  It seems like just yesterday that I was putting my thoughts together on the significant opportunities 2007 might have in store for the Smart Card Alliance.  If you are curious, you can look back at the January 2007 issue and see what I had to say about the upcoming conferences we were planning and the exciting work that was in store for our Industry Councils (Identity, Transportation, Contactless Payments, Physical Access, and Healthcare).  The enthusiasm I felt last January has, today, been replaced with pride for the accomplishments achieved over the year. Our success can be gauged in countless council conference calls, in-person meetings, conference events, web seminars, education programs, and publications that the smart card industry organization and our dedicated industry leaders delivered in 2007.    

Besides boasting about these Alliance activities, I want to talk about some of the biggest issues our North American industry faced over the last twelve months, and the Alliance response to these challenges and opportunities.  I will focus on only three of these major issues from 2007.  The first issue relates to the ongoing Federal government HSPD-12 activity and rollout of the federal employee ID, called the PIV card, and the need to help federal agencies and their physical access security departments understand the requirements for migrating their systems from the legacy ID badges currently in use to the new smart card-enabled IDs.  After many delays and a few missed deadlines, full scale production seems imminent.  Our Physical Access Council developed a series of white papers and partnered with other security industry standards and support organizations (SIA, OSE and IBIA) to create industry-wide guidance for federal administrators and their security suppliers to follow. NIST has incorporated key elements of these guidelines in its upcoming publications.

Feature of the Month 

The Alliance Industry Councils – Year in Review

The Smart Card Alliance launched its first industry councils in 2004.  Establishing member-driven industry councils was a key strategic initiative to accelerate smart card and related technology adoption within specific industry segments and attract new users and members to the Alliance. 

Over the past three years, councils have been an unquestioned success!   In 2007, over 380 individuals from more than 130 organizations participated in at least one council, with over 60% of members involved in council activities.  Councils have been very successful in responding to issues arising in the media, developing industry responses on key government initiatives, and proactively developing educational and outreach material targeting specific vertical markets.

All told, in 2007, councils published eight white papers, developed industry statements or responses on ten different market or government initiatives, fielded two web seminars and one in-person briefing, and issued 16 press releases on council deliverables and/or industry positions – quite a set of accomplishments for these member-driven groups.

This month's feature article takes a quick look at each council to give highlights of the past year's activities.

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