Five agencies team on smart card buy

Five federal agencies — NASA, the Defense Department, the Homeland Security Department, the Interior Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs — have agreed to pool their smart card needs into one large order for up to 40 million cards during the next three years. This degree of collaboration, unusual in the federal government even several years ago, could accelerate the government's long-envisioned transition to smart card-based identification cards, officials say.

Federal agencies will receive guidelines later this month from the Office of Management and Budget on how and when they must translate the government's new smart card policy into practice. But the five agencies are moving ahead with a contract that could be the largest aggregated buy of smart cards in the federal government.

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