The Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) program is improving security at the nation’s seaports and should continue to move forward, two officials from different Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies tell Congress.
The TWIC program is “not dead,” Rear Adm. Joseph Servidio, assistant commandant for Prevention Policy at the Coast Guard, and Steve Sadler, assistant administrator for Intelligence & Analysis at the Transportation Security Administration, tell the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security.
“The Coast Guard sees great value in having a single credential, with the background and the biometrically-enabled, and I think what’s important is not just to look at the past but to look at the future and we do need something in the environment that we’re going to be going in that will allow real-time, biometric-enabling to verify a person is who they are when they are going” into a port, Servidio says.
TWIC is not dead,” Sadler says. “It should continue and I think we’ll see some clarity” on the program going forward when the Coast Guard finishes getting and reviewing public comments for creating a final rule on the use of electronic card readers for the credentials in seaports, he says. “Because that’s the key to this…the reader is the key to using that card.”
Servidio’s and Sadler’s comments were prompted by a question from Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), who says a terminal operator at a port in his state believes the TWIC program is dead.
The House hearing was prompted by a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released in May that said pilot testing at a number of ports of biometric readers to verify the TWIC card and its owner essentially was insufficient and did not support the DHS’ finding that the reader technology is viable and that the Coast Guard could move forward with a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for the readers.
“The overall message that I wanted to convey today, and this is a very important message, is that the pilot results reported to Congress in February 2012 should not be used as the basis to inform the current rulemaking or to inform decision making,” Stephen Lord, director of Forensic Audits and Investigative Services at GAO, tells the subcommittee.
The GAO report has already damaged the program, which is why some in industry are concerned that the TWIC program, for which $394 million has been spent, may soon be history. The House in its version of the FY ’14 Homeland Security Appropriations bill has proposed that $30 million in TSA headquarters funds be fenced until a security assessment of the effectiveness in us a TWIC is conducted.
That assessment is due with the submission of the FY ’15 budget request next February, which would delay the TWIC card reader implementation. The Coast Guard this week will finish collecting comments on the reader NPRM. Servidio gave no indication at the hearing that the service intends to halt the creation of the final rule.
The House wants, as the GAO has suggested, that DHS include in the assessment, a comparison of alternative credentialing approaches for achieving TWIC program goals.