WASHINGTON-On Wednesday, the Government Printing Office awarded contracts to four additional companies for testing electronic passports that use radio-frequency identification technology.
On Track Innovations Ltd. said its U.S. subsidiary won one of the contracts. OTI is based in Israel.
“We are very pleased that the GPO has determined to make the award to us. We believe that, on the basis of the work that we will perform under the contract, the technology that we have developed for use in the growing worldwide market for personal identification and other homeland security applications, we will be selected for use in the production stage of the U.S. passports,” said Ohad Bashan, president and chief executive officer of OTI America.
In addition to OTI America ($91, 736), other firms receiving contracts were ASK Contactless Technologies Inc. ($103,220), Electronic Data Systems Corp. ($136,832) and Oberthur Card Systems ($111,752).
“The goal of the State Department and the GPO is to provide Americans with the best passport in the world. To that end we are actively testing electronic passports that embrace a wide range of technologies available today in order to help us meet that objective. We are expanding the pool of products to test before making an official decision on which products to use,” Clarence Jellen, general manager of security and intelligent document at GPO.
Last October, the GPO awarded contracts to four companies to provide computer chips for testing a new electronic U.S. passport. The four companies and the value of those contracts-covering testing during the first phase of the project-were Axalto Inc., two awards of $107,770 each; BearingPoint/SuperCom Inc., $82,823; Infineon Technologies North America, $108,317; and SuperCom Inc., $73,787.
After testing is completed and a final vendor(s) is chosen, the State Department expects to begin issuing RFID passports to U.S. government employees in the second quarter of 2005. Full deployment at all State Department passport agencies is planned for early 2006.
The three-phase project involves GPO, Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
On a related front, Scottsdale-based In-Stat Worldwide said RFID tags could become the most far-reaching wireless technology since the cell phone. The high-tech marketing research firm said global revenues from RFID tags will jump from $300 million in 2004 to $2.8 billion in 2009.
“By far the biggest RFID segment in coming years will be cartons/supply chain,” said In-Stat analyst Allen Nogee. “This segment alone is forecasted to account for the largest number of tags/labels from 2005 through 2009.”
In-Stat said Wal-Mart, which has directed top suppliers to use RFID technology, will drive this market segment.
Meantime, federal regulators are examining privacy implications of RFID technology.
