Postal picks SecureKey for $15.1M online ID project

SecureKey Technologies has won a $15.1 million contract with the Postal Service to provide a cloud-based infrastructure to let agencies authenticate identities online.

The goal is to let individuals securely access different online government services such as health benefits, student loan information and retirement benefit information using the same credential. Known as the Federal Cloud Credential Exchange or FCCX, this kind of approach negates the need to have different usernames and passwords to access each system.

FCCX will let people use approved third-party credential providers to access the government systems. The project helps implement President Obama’s National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace and the Identity, Credential and Access management program SecureKey said in an announcement.

SecureKey will provide software configuration, hosting, help desk and third-party integration.

There already are several approved third-party providers of credentials including Citibank, Entrust, Digicert, Google, PayPal, Symantec, VeriSign and Verizon who provide credentialing services for other identity authentication programs such as secure access cards.

The government hopes to lower costs by using a cloud-based exchange that all agencies can tap into instead of each agency building and maintaining their own, separate identity management system.

Eighteen companies bid on the project.

The news of this contract award was first reported by FCW, a sister publication of Washington Technology.