8 December 2008

Thousands must re-apply for TWIC after contractor error

The following was reported on in the 8 December 2008 edition of “The Journal of Commerce”.

Some 3,000 workers will have to re-apply for their Transportation Worker Identification Credential because of a computer error by a contractor, according to the House Homeland Security Committee.

In a letter Thursday to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, committee chairman Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., complained that “to date the department’s implementation of the [TWIC] program has been an abysmal failure.”

Thompson said that applications for the 3,000 enrollees were overwritten in the computer because a contractor used the enrollment software in training mode that did not record applicant data. The letter does not say where the mishap took place.

In October, two days’ worth of data in the TWIC program’s activation system were lost because of a power outage at the federal building where the computer was housed.

Thompson’s letter also said that 150 workers who had requested appeals or waivers had been denied access to ports because DHS had failed to process their paperwork.