House Committee Upset With TWIC Delays

This story appears in the May 2 print edition of Transport Topics.

Already several years behind deploying biometric card readers to identify transportation industry workers at the nation’s ports, the Transportation Security Administration is not expected to issue a proposal for regulating the devices until late 2012.

TSA was harshly criticized at a recent hearing by members of the House Transportation Committee, who said they were frustrated by the program’s slow progress. They also were angered that TSA Administrator John Pistole and John Schwartz, program manager of the Transportation Worker Identification Credential program, refused to appear before the committee.

Committee Chairman Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) said agency officials also have declined to meet in private with the committee.

“But I can assure you we will have TSA testifying either at a joint future hearing or with one of two committees,” Mica said.

A TSA spokesman told Transport Topics that officials at the agency declined to testify because the committee lacks jurisdiction.

“TSA has reached out to Chairman Mica to explain its reasons for declining the invitation, and looks forward to continuing to work with him and other members of Congress,” said spokesman Greg Soule.

Mica said TSA already has spent $420 million on the TWIC program and could spend up to $3.2 billion over a 10-year period.

The TWIC program requires maritime workers to undergo a background check to obtain a biometric identification card. The card is then required for an individual to be eligible for unescorted access to secure areas of vessels and facilities.

Although the biometric TWIC cards have been issued to maritime workers, TSA and the U.S. Coast Guard have yet to establish regulatory requirements pertaining to the use of TWIC readers.

However, initial testing and evaluation of TWIC readers began in 2008 as part of a pilot project.

Mica said that although the agency was supposed to have the biometric card readers in place by 2009, the agency has told Congress it will not complete its rulemaking to establish access control requirements for the electronic readers until late 2012.

The biometric card readers identify transportation workers by a fingerprint embedded in the TWIC and a photo. Plans call for a retinal scan also to be embedded in the card.

Since 2007, TSA and its contractor, Lockheed Martin, have issued nearly 1.7 million TWIC cards to truck drivers and dockworkers, but the agency has yet to put in place the technology to read fingerprints on the cards.

However, more than 155 card readers have been deployed as part of a pilot program, which will be completed on May 31, Soule said.

“The U.S. Coast Guard will use the data collected during the pilot to inform the card reader final rule,” Soule said.

Mica pointed out that truckers and dockworkers are required to pay a $132.50 fee for a high-tech TWIC card that, without the card-reader technology, cannot be used for its ultimate intended purpose.

“Without any readers, TWIC is about as useful as a library card,” Mica said.

U.S. Coast Guard officials have been testing biometric readers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach for at least the past two years, but they are uncertain about just when the readers might go operational.

“We don’t know when the final regulations will be out, or how they will address the use of biometrics,” said Port of Los Angeles spokeswoman Rachel Campbell. “The systems in our port worked well, and there were no problems.”

The committee, however, said there were years-long delays in issuing the TWIC cards and setting up the card reader pilot project. Although biometric readers are commonly used by several federal government agencies, the TWIC card readers had to be tested under sometimes harsh weather conditions at seaports.

Coast Guard Lt. Michael Collet, chief of the facilities and containers inspections branch at the two ports, said TSA currently is “crunching the data” before it offers recommendations for the regulation that will outline the requirements of the biometric card-reader program. Several different types of readers have been tested, Collet said.

The readers are generally working well, but some of the bugs have taken a while to work out, Collet said. On average, he said, it takes about13 seconds for the biometric electronic readers to read a TWIC card.

The goal is to allow truckers and other workers to pass through the readers quickly, Collet said, so there will be no long backups at the gates.

Some of the program-development delays have been the result of so many federal agencies and contractors working on the project, Collet said.