By Vicky Falcón
NAVAIR Public Affairs

The Department of Defense Smart Card Office (DONSCO) envisions a day when Navy sailors and Marines will be able to transfer between duty stations carrying only a Common Access Card (CAC). There would be no more need for four folders full of paperwork, and check-in time would take 30 seconds instead of three days.

This is just one of the many benefits the CAC card promises. According to Rob Carey, DONSCO director, the card will also allow encryption of e-mail, digital signatures, and access to secure Web sites.

"We are not only issuing a new ID card, we are issuing a card that acts as a computer," Carey said. "This card is your passport to the e-world."

At this point 28,000 cards have been issued out of a total of 80,000 within the Navy. More than 10,000 of those CACs have been produced at NAVAIR Patuxent River. China Lake, the only other NAVAIR site currently issuing cards, has given out 1783.

Until issuance is completed across the team, the Geneva Convention-approved CAC will be used only for access to military bases. Eventually individual stations will choose what features of the card to use, but according to Carey, the big push for CAC within the Navy is to support the security features of the Navy Marine Corp Intranet (NMCI). After CAC is issued Navy-wide, the technology will be used to improve business processes, information assurance, mission effectiveness, and quality of life.

The Department of Defense has already approved additional "smart card" uses that the CAC could employ. For example, the Naval Training Center Great Lakes has seen significant cost savings using "smart card" applications to improve accountability for food services, recruit functions, and to significantly streamline business practices.

Other "smart card" applications in use include food service, warrior readiness, manifest tracking, and weapons issuance. "As the chip technology expands, the limits for new applications are boundless," Carey said.

The CAC features three forms of technology - the magnetic strip, the bar code, and the computer chip. "As we migrate into a chip-based environment the need for the current magnetic strip and bar code will diminish," Carey said.

And, he added, as chip technology develops, DON plans to use the CAC card as an access token to data, not as a storage card. "The only information that will actually be stored on the card will be basic demographics and unique personnel benefit entitlements," Carey said.

For more information about the Common Access Card access the DON Web sites -http://www.donsmartcard.com/interestTemplate.asp?theID=15&type=initiati… and http://www.don-imit.navy.mil/.