By Calvin Biesecker
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) next April hopes to release a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a new project aimed at integrating its current array of disjointed and stove piped security threat assessment and enrollment programs, an agency official said yesterday.
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, said during an industry day sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
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 said.
“So now we can recognize within those particular populations who has actually gone through a security threat assessment,” he said. It will also help reduce overall fees to these individuals who currently go through multiple credentialing processes under different security programs, he added.
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 said.
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, which Lovelady said contains some “dependencies” in terms of holding to the dates, includes a DHS Acquisition Review Board meeting in March to permit going forward with release of the RFP in April. If that goes according to plan, then TTAC wants proposals in by next May and plans to award the first task order in July.
Lovelady said 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, and operations and maintenance, he said.
The plan is to “build incrementally to accomplish that integrated system of systems that supports the TTAC mission,” Lovelady said.