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Executive Director's Letter
 Dear members and friends of the Alliance:
As we near the end of the first month in the new year, let me summarize some of the major Alliance projects we are feverishly working on in the upcoming months. My father was quick to say to me “don’t confuse work with accomplishment.” It may be too early to take credit for a job well done in terms of what we have achieved so far, but I can say with confidence that these next few months will be filled with a number of valuable events, projects and deliverables that will benefit the smart card industry in many diverse ways.
Let me begin by talking about our next conference event, which is still a few months away, but is certainly our biggest event of the year. The 5th Annual Smart Cards in Government Conference will be held on April 18–20, 2006. This 3-day conference and exhibition has become the cornerstone event to discuss the Federal government’s HSPD 12 program, the ePassport initiative, and new opportunities on the horizon such as Registered Traveler, DHS First Responder Program, and the REAL ID Act. The event returns to the Sheraton National Hotel in Arlington, VA, just outside the DC limits and the site of the 2003 event. We are expecting more than 400 attendees and 40 exhibitors for this year’s event, plus we have added a full day pre-conference FIPS 201 Implementation Workshop on April 17. You can visit the Alliance web site for registration and exhibitor information.
Our Contactless Payments Council will soon announce an upcoming free webinar, called Contactless Payments: A New Era of Payments for Retailers, on February 22. The webinar features guest speakers from KeyBank, Chase Paymentech, and Wawa Food Stores who will discuss their first-hand experience with the benefits of contactless payments. The Alliance has partnered with the National Retail Federation STORES Magazine to produce and promote the webinar. The event will be targeted at retailers who may be considering joining in the contactless payments revolution that is spreading across the country.
Another council is also planning an event for February. This one is being organized by the Transportation Council, that is holding an in-person council meeting in Salt Lake City, hosted by the Utah Transit Authority. This council has just released a terrific report entitled Smart Cards and Parking, which explores the changes taking place in the parking industry and the emerging role of smart card-based payment strategies. The paper also reviews the payment trends of the transit, financial and tolling industries, and their impact on the parking industry. The council expects approximately 35 of its members to meet and review the state of the transportation and parking industry and plan additional projects for 2006. The Transportation Council has grown rapidly in the last year, bringing in twelve new members who have joined the Alliance at the government or general member level. Until the recent council elections, this great effort was led by co-chairs Greg Garback and Michael Dinning.
Also in February, the Smart Card Alliance has greatly increased its presence at the 2006 RSA Conference, both literally and figuratively. The Smart Card Pavilion, organized by the Smart Card Alliance, returns for a second year, with a bigger footprint (20’ x 30’) and more co-exhibitors than last year. (P.S. – we have one space still open.) In addition, our Educational Institute will be delivering a full-day pre-conference tutorial on February 13 called Smart Cards and IT: Looking at the Edge of a Secure Network. This is a first for the EI to bring its smart card expertise to the RSA Conference's international IT security industry audience. Also on the conference agenda is a panel on February 16 led by healthcare industry experts from the Alliance’s Healthcare Council, who will be speaking about smart card applications in the U.S. healthcare industry. The Healthcare Council will be releasing its new white paper on the same subject around the time of this year’s RSA Conference.
The Identity Council is also wrapping up its initial white paper, entitled Top 10 Hot Identity Topics, which addresses the most talked about and debated topics related to identity. This white paper discusses the key identity topics that governments, enterprises and the public should be concerned about and offers suggestions on how the issues could be addressed with policy, process and technology solutions. The report is scheduled to be released in February and will serve as resource for media and analysts who report on this topic frequently.
In the last few weeks, I have participated in several government HSPD 12 briefings in Washington, DC, and have been joined by members of the Physical Access Council in both public and private meetings with the government working groups at IAB, OMB, GSA, and NIST. These meetings have been important steps forward for the industry to continue to assert itself in the discussions around standards and policies affecting the implementation of FIPS 201 compliant ID systems in the Federal government later this year. Having successfully overcome a significant barrier for the industry with the adoption of fingerprint templates by NIST, we are now preparing for the next phase. This phase involves developing conformance testing procedures and engaging industry in the development plans for GSA’s performance test criteria and subsequent approved products listings for the new GSA procurement schedules due out later this spring. In the meantime, we continue to work with other industry groups, like the Security Industry Association (SIA) and the International Biometrics Industry Association (IBIA), and with the Federal government’s Interagency Advisory Board (IAB), with the goal to develop a single voice from the industry to advise and lead the government’s efforts to meet the HSPD 12 directive implementation deadline of October 2006.
So in summary, you can see that the Smart Card Alliance is a busy organization to be involved with these days. We have projects underway in every market segment we serve and new programs are being developed for deliverables later this year. We hope to continue to engage our members in actively participating in advancing the smart card industry. If you are reading this letter and have not signed up for or participated in any of these activities in the last 3 months, I have only one question: What are you waiting for? Don’t tell me you are too busy. These groups I have just mentioned include some of the busiest people I know. They find a way to participate and are rewarded for their work – or else they wouldn’t keep coming back. You should know my motto by now: “Be connected …be active…make a difference!”
Randy Vanderhoof, Executive Director
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