The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) this month posted a brief document on its Federal Business Opportunities portal site clarifying requirements for outsourcing vendors seeking to deploy, operate and maintain the various systems needed for the smart-card program.

The outsourcing plan also includes business processes and covers functions such as employee registration, identity and card management, public-key infrastructure certification and card printing, according to the document.

The note updated a formal request for information, published on Dec. 13, in which the GSA asked outsourcing vendors to provide details on their ability to meet the implementation requirements of Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12.

Under HSPD 12, which is an unfunded mandate, all federal agencies are required to use smart cards to authenticate their employees for access to buildings and IT systems starting Oct. 27. Outsourcing Advantages

A decision to outsource the necessary infrastructure would significantly ease the compliance burden for individual federal agencies, said Gregg Kreizman, an analyst at Gartner Inc. "It is necessary, because they don't have the people or the skills to do it on their own," he said.