GSA to cease free HSPD-12 testing program
After agency spends $750,000 to catalyze the market, vendors will have to contract with private laboratories for HSPD-12 certification; costs seen as on the downswing; seventy-five vendors have already been approved
Bad news for prospective HSPD-12 vendors. The General Services Administration has announced that it will soon cease paying vendors to test their products and services as HSPD-12-compliant. In May the agency installed a free testing lab in order to help companies move forward on the much-delayed mandate and has spent $725,000 on equipment and supplies to support the program. This could not go on forever, and so starting 23 April, testing “will be borne on a cost-reimbursable basis by the supplier,” with GSA certifying independent testing labs who will be paid directly by the vendors. These costs, however, are expected to be relatively minor. “The efficiency of testing improves with experience; we would expect the cost to firms to be less than the costs to GSA to approve the initial approved products,” said Steven Kempf of the Federal Acquisition Service.
Over the past eight months, GSA has tested products or services in twenty-two categories and approved 166 products from seventy-five different vendors. Thirty service vendors were approved, as were an additional five to provide public-key infrastructure digital certificates.
-read more in Jason Miller’s Washington Technology report
