The Smart Card Alliance, a not-for-profit, multi-industry association, released a paper summarizing and highlighting key concepts in the new government document, “Federal Identity, Credential, and Access Management (FICAM) Roadmap and Implementation Guidance.”

The FICAM document outlines several new agency initiatives and numerous supporting activities that agencies must complete in order to align with the government-wide identity, credential and access management (ICAM) framework. Members of the Alliance’s Identity and Physical Access Councils reviewed, extracted and summarized the content from the original document, following the same outline and flow. The summary includes the FICAM segment architecture, as-is and target use cases, and roadmap and initiatives for federal implementation of the FICAM architecture. 

The Alliance white paper, FICAM in Brief, is available on the Smart Card Alliance Web site. The full text of the “Federal Identity, Credential, and Access Management (FICAM) Roadmap and Implementation Guidance” can be read on the federal government’s ID Management Web site. 

The Smart Card Alliance also presented an additional smart card certification program for government identity and security professionals, the Certified Smart Card Industry Professional/Government (CSCIP/G) designation.  The Alliance announced its first two CSCIP/G exams, which will be held June 29 and November 19, 2010 in Washington, D.C.

“The use of smart card technology has become a mainstay in the U.S. federal government, securing identities in programs like the FIPS 201 PIV card for all government employees, the DoD’s Common Access Card, the Transportation Worker Identification Credential and the First Responder Authentication Credential,” said Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance. “We recognized that there is a pressing need for more detailed training about the government smart card market than the present CSCIP program provided.” 

Information about the CSCIP/G training materials is available on the Smart Card Alliance Web site.  Instructor-led training courses will be held in Washington, D.C. on June 28 and November 16 prior to the CSCIP/G exams. 

Also coming up for the Alliance is the Smart Card Alliance 2010 Annual Conference, which will address “Smart Cards in Action,” focusing on the issuers and users of smart card technology in payments, security and mobile markets.  The conference will be held May 17-20 at the Camelback Marriott Resort and Spa in Scottsdale, Ariz.