| |
Card Technology
Analyst Sees Boom In Identity And Biometric Projects
September 21, 2006
The European Union is set to announce the winner of a major biometric project this fall and the next 12 months “will herald a great boom in U.S. biometric and identity projects," predicts analyst Jeremy Grant of Washington, D.C.-based Stanford Group. He predicts annual spending on U.S. identity projects will grow from $620 million in 2004 to a peak of nearly $1.7 billion in 2009, before falling to just under $1.6 billion in 2011, the last year of his forecast period.
Grant, formerly a consultant with Maximus, a systems integrator that focuses on U.S. government work, foresees significant growth in several smart card-based ID projects. He sees the Registered Traveler program, in which travelers undergo a background check and then receive a biometric smart card for speedier passage through airport security checks, growing from $5 million in annual revenue this year to $300 million by 2011. He also sees the government’s new smart card ID taking off in 2007, with $275 million in spending on that project in that year, growing to a peak of $340 million in 2009. The new electronic passports that contain contactless smart card chips will generate $4 million in revenue this year, but $50 million in 2007 and $70 million in 2011, Grant predicts.
The biggest news this fall, he says, will be the European Union’s award of a contact worth $200 million or more for its Visa Information System, a border control project that will use biometrics to identify travelers. Grant calls U.S.-based Cogent Systems the favorite, but does not rule out France-based Sagem Morpho or U.S. electronics giant Motorola.
Here are Grant’s projections on several other U.S. government projects:
- PASS card—The project would create a card to be used by travelers to and from Canada and Mexico. Grant believes Congress will reject a proposal to require use of the same kind of contactless smart card chips (conforming to ISO 14443) being used in passports. However, he believes the U.S. State Department and Department of Homeland Security ultimately will settle on that contactless smart card technology, perhaps early next year, creating a program that will generate $20 million to $24 million in revenue per year. Meanwhile, LaserCard, which provides the optical stripe cards now used in the border-crossing program, will benefit from the delay.
- Registered Traveler programs will ultimately get off the ground, and Grant sees some 4 million travelers paying an average of $75 per year for the speedier airport access, a $300 million revenue opportunity. The key contenders are all U.S. companies: Verified Identity Pass, Saflink and Unisys, with ImageWare Systems having a role in the Saflink and Unisys offerings.
- The U.S. government’s program to offer all employees and contractors new smart card IDs, called HSPD-12 after the presidential directive that set the program in motion, will be delayed by vendor protests over a contract award to BearingPoint to run a card-issuing facility. However, Grant, foresees significant spending on the programs in the next three years.
- The government will miss its goal of issuing 750,000 smart cards IDs to transportation workers this year, but over the next three years the Transportation Worker Identification Credential will be issued to some 750,000 workers. Grant estimates the contract value at $90 million to $100 million.
- The government’s mandate for more counterfeit-proof driver’s licenses, known as Real ID, will triple the spending on licenses, although Grant predicts Congress will put back the May 2008 deadline. With states complaining about the costs of sophisticated technologies, Grant predicts the Real ID standards will not include smart cards or biometrics, and will use two-dimensional bar codes as the primary machine-readable technology.
|
