Lockheed Martin wins TWIC contract, WP says

Lockheed Martin wins TWIC contract, WP says Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contractor, has won a Transportation Security Administration competition to provide biometric identification cards for workers at the nation’s ports, he Washington Post reports.
   The contract for the Transportation Worker Identification Credential is initially worth $70 million, according to the paper. It said multiple people, speaking anonymously because the award has not been made public, identified Lockheed as the winner.
   Lockheed will be responsible for issuing the high-tech photo ID cards, which will include an integrated circuit chip that will store the worker's fingerprint and personal identification number.
   The TSA and the Coast Guard will begin in March enrolling port workers, mariners, truckers and other frequent visitors at a small number of ports and gradually roll the program out across the country to cover about 850,000 people. The biometric portion of the card will be inactive however as readers to scan the cards have not proven technologically reliable in the port environment yet. The Homeland Security agencies have deferred this portion of the TWIC rule, meaning the cards will essentially be photo ID cards for the immediate future.
   Lockheed Martin beat out seven other companies for the TWIC contract: BearingPoint, Computer Sciences Corp., Electronic Data Systems Corp., IBM, Integrated Biometric Technology, Motorola and Maximus.