Marking another milestone in its journey to acquire security equipment built with open standards and interfaces, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on Tuesday published its first Open Architecture Roadmap, which includes estimated schedules for its goals and objectives.
The agency has been discussing the need for open architecture (OA) solutions for more than a decade and the vision has picked up steam under David Pekoske, the current TSA administrator. However, actual open systems solutions in the security equipment do not exist yet, at least not in use, and the developers and manufacturers of this equipment have been reluctant in most cases to get on board.
The goal with OA-based systems is to have the hardware and software be standards-based and be interoperable, allowing third party and other vendors to create new algorithms and other solutions that could essentially plug-and-play with detection equipment. This will increase competition, drive innovation, improve the customer experience and operational efficiency, and support operators.
Pekoske has previously mentioned that OA will be first applied to the agency’s checkpoint computed tomography (CT) carry-on baggage scanners with one goal being to have the same operator interface across different manufacturers’ CT systems.
The release of the roadmap is the first milestone on the schedule of goals and objectives and the agency is planning an industry day in the current quarter to further communicate its OA plans to industry.
TSA’s history in OA goes back to 2010 when it worked with industry on the first security image data standard, called Digital Imaging and Communications in Security (DICOS), which “provides a common, accessible data file format to enable the exchange of consistent information for security screening equipment that maintains a high quality image,” the roadmap says. Implementing the DICOS standard, first on checkpoint CT systems during the third quarter of fiscal year 2023, will allow also allow TSA to better share data with industry, it says.
A year from now, TSA hopes to have a user-driven software model for DICOS, according to the schedule.
In the current quarter, the agency also says it expects to adopt a common and accessible interface format through Open Platform Software Library, which is a “set of application programming interfaces” that “standardize how software can interact with each other to enable interoperability between screening solutions.”
The agency also this quarter expects to demonstrate in the lab a scalable and common computing platform to provide and open transportation security system of systems solution and in two years conduct an airport assessment. And, a year from now, TSA has a goal of a “continuous mechanism to develop and evaluate solutions” such as algorithms and workstations that lead to growth in the security market and more competition.