OMB M-08-01 states that agencies must complete background checks and issue credentials to all employees with 15 years or less of service and to contractors by October 27, 2007. The Department of Health and Human Services is presently over 70% compliant on meeting this background investigation requirement and has encountered delays on issuance due to reasons further explained in this document. Since June 1, 2007, the Department of Health and Human Services has moved from over 80% of the population requiring a background investigation to fewer than 37%, an improvement of almost 50%.
As HHS goes through the process of developing and deploying the infrastructure, processes, and contracts to implement HSPD-12, unforeseen issues have surfaced that have caused minor delays in full scale deployment capability. These revolve mostly around the inconsistency and quality of the facial image and the production of the card itself (personalization). Below is further explanation of these issues and the planned resolution.
There are a number of environmental and technological factors that have caused inconsistency in capture and quality of the facial images. The primary reason for the poor color tone and contrast is largely due to the widely varying lighting conditions present in the enrollment workstation locations. The standard light blue backdrop, used as a calibration tool, has appeared as dark grey, grey, blue, light blue meaning that the skin color of the individual was not truly represented in the images captured.
In addition, the calibration software used to size and crop the image for maximum definition and consistency did not perform well with individuals wearing head scarves, large eye glasses, heavy beards, or any other dominant facial feature. These had a tendency to "trick" the software into computing erroneous values for image processing resulting in images were the image was not compliant for enrollment or cropped so much that features were not captured.
The combination of these issues were felt to pose a significant identification problem for security guards and other who will rely on "flash pass" style ID verification.
The card production facility contracted by HHS to personalize the PIV cards from the enrollment data is still in the process of calibrating the high-volume printing machines to produce the best quality cards possible. None of the initial test cards were of acceptable print quality to warrant going into full production. After a site visit to the production facility and inspection of the printing equipment, a new set of quality controls were agreed upon to ensure a consistent level of acceptable quality. The following is a summary of the new quality measures:
HHS plans to validate the "maximum quality" PIV credential and the Personalization Quality Book by 2 November 2007. The following week, 5 November, the card production facility will move into a four day end-to-end testing process to ensure that the service level agreement with HHS can be made under full production conditions. Successful completion of the end-to-end testing will result in a full production start date of 13 November 2007.
The Department purchased enrollment workstations to be distributed to their operating divisions to expedite and facilitate the compliance with this memorandum. These enrollment workstations were successfully installed and staff trained on how to operate these machines which has allowed the Department, as a whole, to begin sponsoring and enrolling individuals to be queued for badge issuance.
Presently, there are approximately 32,000 cards in-stock and ready to be personalized at the manufacturer. Once the final issues are worked out with the topography, mass production will commence immediately and we will be well on our way to issuing cards to our Under 15 years of service population.
With the aid of bulk loads, derived from our HR systems, integrated into the sponsorship portal created by our HHSIdentity team, Health and Human Services is able to further expedite the enrollment process. As we near the next deadline of October 27, 2008 the Department of Health and Human Services will be in full compliance.