GSA seeks 100,000 PIV-II cards

The General Services Administration's Federal Technology Service seeks proposals for vendors to produce 100,000 personal identity smart cards as part of the Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 on behalf of the Social Security Administration.

The Personal Identity Verification-II (PIV) cards must comply with Federal Information Processing Standard 201-1 from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and GSA's list of approved HSPD-12 products.

Vendors must have secure manufacturing and backup production facilities within the United States, GSA said in its request for proposals recently published on FedBizOpps.gov.

Proposals are due Aug. 28.

Agencies have until late October to start issuing PIV cards to new employees under HSPD-12, but may have difficulty meeting the deadline.

The Social Security identification badge will contain the employee's name, photograph, organization and an expiration date. Among the other card elements, vendors must be able to install a card single sign-on application that will provide a unified cardholder verification method, using an eight-digit personal identification number, a pass-phrase of up to 128 characters, or a fingerprint match on the card.

Social Security will purchase a total of 100,075 PIV II cards for delivery through September 2008, with the chosen vendor to provide 10 sample cards by Sept. 15. These cards will contain the employee's data, end point applet suite, single sign-on application and containers with sizes customized to fit SSA's needs. Next, the agency will require 65 cards by Sept. 30.

Over the next year, the vendor will provide SSA:

• 2,500 cards by December
  
• 10,000 cards by March 2007
  
• 15,000 cards by June 2007
  
• 15,000 cards by September 2007
  
• 15,000 cards by December 2007.