A big week for identity

[Dave Birch] It was a big week in the world of identity. It was the 7th annual Digital Identity Forum in London and in Washington the first GSA ID cards were being issued.  Here’s final updated version of the agenda for the forum…

We’ll upload all of the presentations that we have to the Forum web site over the next day or two so please feel free to drop in and download.  And about the GSA…

Technorati Tags: costs, ID cards, identity

Michael Kareis head of the U.S. government General Services Administration (GSA) program has said that the GSA cards will cost the agencies $110 for each initial issuance and $52 annually for card and database maintenance.  He also said that if more than 500,000 cards are issued, the GSA will be able to take advantage of the volume and lower prices.  These figures presumably provide a useful marker for estimating the cost of ID card schemes with all of the identity technologies that will be discussed at the forum (including biometrics, chips and PKI).   I don’t know what everyone else thinks, but $52 per person for card and database maintenance seems a little high: I guess there must be lots of cards that get lost or need re-issuing, or lots of database updates that need some kind of manual intervention.