“The White House announced a framework for reopening federal workplaces to jibe with an April 16 news briefing in which President Donald Trump said plans to ‘reopen America’ were imminent…”
“The coronavirus outbreak has shuttered federal office buildings and sent employees to work from home. While most expect those facilities to eventually reopen, the shift to telework is changing how agencies and contractors conduct identity and access management.”
“The decades-long dominance of Personal Identity Verification (PIV) and Common Access Cards (CAC) as the preferred method to regulate employee access to physical and IT resources may be coming to an end…”
“The problem: as quarantines and self-isolation guidelines have taken hold, not everyone has workstations or agency-issued laptops with card readers at home, leaving some feds and contractors with no easy way to fulfill the government’s primary identity and access requirement.”
“Civilian agencies and the military are scrambling to purchase new computers and equipment, but they are competing with private industry and other organizations for limited supplies. The Army recently cited impending supply chain shortages to process an immediate sole source purchase of 200 Dell ruggedized laptops and docking stations that will ‘allow government workers to telework to avoid exposure to the potential COVID-19 while still completing the mission.’ Other agencies like the Department of the Interior have made similar purchases…”
“Further, new hires normally go through a thorough onboarding process to obtain their cards that often includes in-person interactions to collect biometrics like fingerprints for their PIV credentials. In a March 25 memo, the Office of Personnel Management noted that many of the federal, state and local offices that vet newly hired government employees are ‘temporarily closed’ due to the coronavirus outbreak, making it difficult or impossible to fulfill FBI-requirements for fingerprints to process background investigations and criminal history checks…” Read the full article here.
Source: The federal government’s identity crisis – By Derek B. Johnson, April 20, 2020. FCW.
