New smart-card specs by March

The Government Smart Card Interagency Advisory Board is reworking the National Institute of Standards and Technology's draft standard for governmentwide identification cards.

The board will revise NIST Special Publication 800-73 as well as the proposed Federal Information Processing Standard 201 based on it to accommodate agencies' personal identity verification cards, said NIST's Curt Barker, co-chairman of the PIV project.

"We may issue the new publication and draft FIPS around March," he said. The board is "working to come up with something more recognizable to vendors with large programs" so as to require only minimal changes for compliance.