The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) next April hopes to release a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a new project aimed at integrating its current array of disjointed and stove piped security threat assessment and enrollment programs, according to an agency official.
The Transportation Infrastructure Modernization (TIM) program will bring together the disparate processes for security threat assessments, enrollment and credential, adjudication and recess, and other processes within TSA, Rex Lovelady, the program manager within the agency’s Transportation Threat Assessment and Credentialing (TTAC) office, says at an industry day sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) this month.
The TIM will be able to offer a system that no matter whether an individual has already been enrolled through the Transportation Worker Identification Credential program or a hazardous materials endorsement or another program, it will be able to identify that person and avoid duplication, Lovelady says.
“So now we can recognize within those particular populations who has actually gone through a security threat assessment,” Lovelady says. It will also help reduce overall fees to these individuals who currently go through multiple credentialing processes under different security programs, he adds.
Another of the program’s goals is go beyond TSA and look at DHS “holistically” for applying integrated threat assessment and related enrolling and credentialing processes and “try to bring them into focus within the overall effort of our system,” Lovelady says.
Lovelady says that TSA plans to do an analysis of alternatives to explore other modernization efforts within DHS “and we’re going to see what we can use, reuse, and how we can bring that together so that we’re really looking at it from a holistic DHS perspective not just internal to TSA.”
There are already a lot of lessons to be learned from all of DHS that can be used to improve enrollment, card production and adjudication processes, he says.
TTAC is responsible for the design, development and implementation of risk-based approaches, systems and programs for vetting and credentialing operations at TSA and DHS. The office performs security threat assessments for individual transportation workers such as hazardous material workers, certain airport employees, port workers and others.
So far TSA has spent $46 million on the TIM effort since FY ’08, including contracting for some program support activities. The agency budgeted $58 million for TIM in FY ’11.
The current program schedule contains some “dependencies” in terms of holding to the dates due to its aggressive pacing, includes a DHS Enterprise Architecture Review Board meeting in February followed by an Acquisition Review Board meeting in March to permit going forward with release of the RFP in April, Lovelady says. If that goes according to plan, then TTAC wants proposals in by next May and plans to award the first task order in July.
Next month TSA plans to host an Industry Day in support of TIM.
Lovelady says the plan is for a full and open competition that leads to a single-source indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract. Task orders would be for things like development, a universal enrollment and credentialing system, card production, security threat assessments, adjudication and redress, vetting and operations and maintenance, he says.
The plan is to “build incrementally to accomplish that integrated system of systems that supports the TTAC mission,” Lovelady says.