TSA Testimony on TWIC Program Update
TRANSPORTATION WORKER INDENTIFICATION CREDENTIAL (TWIC)
ORAL TESTIMONY OF
MAURINE FANGUY
PROGRAM DIRECTOR
TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
BEFORE THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY,
SUBCOMMITTEE ON BORDER, MARITIME, AND GLOBAL COUNTERTERRORISM
Sept. 17, 2008
Good morning Chairwoman Sanchez, Ranking Member Souder and distinguished members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for this opportunity to speak about the steady progress we have made in implementing the Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) program.
My name is Maurine Fanguy and I am the Program Director for TWIC.
Today, I am pleased to announce that we opened the final enrollment center in Saipan, successfully completing TWIC deployment. This makes 149 enrollment centers – 19 more than originally planned – and together with our mobile units provides an extensive network to support workers.
We have the facilities and resources in place to support a smooth transition to compliance starting in October. We encourage workers who have not yet enrolled to start the process as soon as possible.
Since we began TWIC enrollment 11 months ago, we have a number of other accomplishments to report:
- This week we crossed the half-million mark on enrollments and are well-positioned to enroll all workers prior to April 2009.
- We have partnered with over 200 local businesses, unions and industry groups to enroll workers at their places of business. This has made the process much easier and saved the industry millions of dollars in travel and time away from work.
- We are enrolling nearly 20,000 workers per week and that number is climbing.
- Processing time has been streamlined and turnaround times continue to decrease. Currently, the average time to get a card after enrollment is less than two weeks for workers with routine cases.
- We have a 98.8 percent success rate with fingerprint submissions to the FBI, which is better than the industry standard. We have worked closely with the National Institute of Standards and Technology to ensure that those workers with poor quality or no prints are provided with cards that reflect that status.
- Help Desk wait times average less than one minute and customer satisfaction surveys indicate that the process is working.
TWIC is by far the largest biometric smartcard program of its kind in the world. As leaders in Federal credentialing, we continually analyze data from the field to find ways to streamline processes, refine the technology and make TWIC easier and more convenient for workers.
Partnership with industry is critical to developing practical approaches to make the program successful now and in the future. Some of these common-sense solutions include:
- Adding and relocating enrollment centers in direct response to stakeholder feedback. For example, we recently added new centers on Terminal Island between Los Angeles and Long Beach and also in Houston.
- Offering flexible hours of operation to accommodate after-hours enrollment, when requested by stakeholders.
- Adding online status checks so that workers can track the progress of their credentials.
- Redesigning the disclosure form and translating it into 12 languages.
- Rewriting the eligibility letters to make them easier for workers to understand and facilitate the appeals and waivers process.
- Adding new Help Desk features including e-mail, online and phone self-help, to facilitate resolution of questions.
We also continue with our aggressive communications campaign, in partnership with the Coast Guard and industry:
- We have provided communications toolkits to our industry partners and maintain an outreach database with more than 7,000 stakeholders. We applaud the efforts of maritime stakeholders to aggressively get the word out to their workers.
- We have developed targeted marketing materials for trucking and rail; advertised in industry publications; attended numerous conferences and local meetings and participated in trucking radio call-in programs.
- And we redesigned the TWIC website to provide information tailored more specifically to workers, owners and operators, and technology providers.
We also have several milestones to report on the TWIC card reader pilot:
- In June, we issued an announcement calling for biometric reader manufacturers to provide products for testing. We completed one round of testing and are pleased with the results. We are preparing to publish those results in the next few weeks.
- Based on the interest of additional manufacturers, we opened a second round of testing in August and expect to complete this testing in early October. The two rounds of testing will provide pilot participants with a wide selection of readers to choose from for their operational tests.
- We have completed initial baseline analysis at all of the pilot locations. We currently have more than 20 participants at four port authorities and three vessel operators, including the Port Authorities of Los Angeles, Long Beach, New York and New Jersey, Brownsville, Magnolia Marine in Mississippi, Watermark Cruises in Annapolis and the Staten Island Ferry.
- Based on the progress of our port partners in developing their operational test plans, we expect to begin field testing readers this winter.
Much progress has been made in the first 11 months of the TWIC enrollment program. When compliance begins next month, it will mark a significant milestone in our multi-layered approach to securing our nation's ports.
We will continue to work with our partners – the Coast Guard, maritime stakeholders and this Sub-Committee – to ensure the ongoing success of the TWIC program. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today and I would be happy to answer any questions.
