Pilot Program to Speed TWIC Enrollment to Become Nationwide, TSA Official Says
This story appears in the June 9 print edition of Transport Topics.
A pilot project in two states to require only a single visit to enrollment centers where truck drivers and other transportation workers obtain a Transportation Worker Identification Credential is being expanded nationwide, Transportation Security Administration officials told a Senate subcommittee last week.
The “OneVisit” program will cut in half the number of trips truckers need to make to the 300 enrollment centers to obtain their TWICs, which allow them unescorted access to secured areas of ports.
The program, expected to be in place at all TWIC enrollment centers this summer, has been tested in Alaska and Michigan, Stephen Sadler, TSA’s assistant administrator for intelligence and analysis, told a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee at a June 4 port security hearing.
“We think it’s going well,” Sadler said, adding that “TSA has conducted comprehensive security threat assessments and issued cards to more than 2.9 million workers, including longshoremen, truckers, merchant mariners, and rail and vessel crews” since October 2007.
But Stephen Caldwell, director of homeland security and justice issues for the Government Accountability Office, said he had concerns that the one-visit policy is a trade-off between “security and convenience” because the cards are mailed to workers rather than requiring them to pick them up in person.
The two-visit requirement, a common complaint among truckers, is only one of several criticisms that have been leveled at the program, which has experienced yearslong delays and significant cost overruns.
TWIC requires applicants to undergo a criminal background check and submit fingerprints, making the card a biometric identifier that the U.S. Coast Guard largely has been unable to use because of delays in deploying readers.
The Coast Guard issued a proposed rule last year that would require electronic TWIC card readers at only a limited number of ports that were deemed high risk to terrorist attacks.
Coast Guard Rear Adm. Paul Thomas, assistant commandant for prevention policy, told the subcommittee the final rule for the high-risk ports isn’t expected until sometime in 2015 and would include a two-year grace period for deployment.
In written testimony to the subcommittee, American Trucking Associations said TWIC background checks should suffice as checks for a hazardous materials endorsement.
“Our greatest concern at this point is the multiplicity of background checks, and their associated costs and burdens, which drivers undergo to perform their everyday work responsibilities, from transporting hazardous materials and delivering at maritime facilities, to crossing our international land borders and transporting air cargo,” ATA said.
ATA also said the readers should be expanded beyond the high-risk port group, rather than “continuing to utilize expensive TWIC smart cards as ‘flash passes’ for visual inspections.”
A TWIC card costs $129.50.
Members of the testifying panel were questioned by the subcommittee’s chairman, Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.), and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who said they had concerns about TWIC and several other port security programs.
Both senators were critical of the Port Security Grant Program, which they said lacked metrics and has allocated money to programs that were not security-related.
Coburn asked the panel why only 2-4% of containers arriving at U.S. ports were inspected, a number which he said was far below the program’s goal of inspecting 100% of containers.
Kevin McAleenan, acting deputy commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said that 85% of containers identified as possible security threats were being inspected but that it was not practical to inspect all containers arriving at U.S. ports.
