By Calvin Biesecker
The State Department yesterday awarded General Dynamics [GD] a potential $72.7 million contract to produce its new border travel document, the PASS Card, beating L-1 Identity Solutions [ID].
The win for GD continues a spate of recent homeland security-related awards for the company’s Information Technology business unit, which last week garnered a potential $28.8 million contract from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service, the arm of the Department of Homeland Security charged with administering immigration and naturalization functions. That contract was to upgrade the agency’s document production facilities.
Stanford Group investment analyst Jeremy Grant first reported yesterday morning that GD had won the PASS Card contract. Later in the day the State Department posted the award announcement on the FedBizOpps Web site. Grant said that L-1 had been the favorite given its hiring a former head of the State Department’s passport program and its current role personalizing U.S. passports.
Grant said the loss is “significant” for the identity solutions and intelligence services firm, calling it a “setback in L-1’s efforts to establish a major presence on all U.S. identity solutions programs.”
The State Department will begin accepting applications for the PASS Cards beginning Feb. 1 as a less expensive alternative to the traditional passport. Each PASS Card will cost $45 for adults and $35 for children. A passport costs $97 for adults and $82 for children. The new PASS Cards are expected to begin arriving in the mail this spring.
The PASS Cards will be for land and sea travel only for U.S. citizens arriving back in the country from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda. The document meets the requirements of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative.
To speed processing at the border the card will have a vicinity read radio frequency identification (RFID) chip that will contain a unique identification number that will link the card to stored records in a government database. No personal information will be written into the RFID chip.