The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Monday said the potential value of three blanket purchase agreements it awarded last week to meet the requirements of Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD)-12 is $180 million over five years.
The three companies selected for the work, BearingPoint [BE], EDS Corp. [EDS] and XTec, Inc., will compete against each other.
“Award of these three contracts, in the form of blanket purchase agreements, is the next major step toward meeting our goal in deploying an HSPD-12 compliant credentialing system,” Elaine Duke, deputy undersecretary for management at DHS, said in a statement. “We are doing more than issuing ID cards. We are establishing a common identification credential in one infrastructure, for technological and physical access control across the department.”
Under HSPD-12, federal agencies are issuing biometric-enabled credentials to their employees and contractors for physical and logical access control. The credentials meet a government-wide standard.