Smart Card Achievement Awards Announced at Smart Card Alliance Fall Conference

Oct. 21, 2004
Dan Cunningham, DoD Defense Manpower Data Center and Axalto Honored

The Smart Card Alliance presented its OSCA awards for outstanding individual and organization achievement in the smart card industry for North America during its annual conference. The OSCA award judges honored Dan Cunningham as Outstanding Individual; the Department of Defense's Defense Manpower Data Center as Outstanding End User Organization; and Axalto as Outstanding Supplier Organization.

"The OSCA awards recognize those who have shown outstanding leadership and accomplishment in the smart card industry and at the same time have given back to the industry for the benefit of all," said Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance. "There is a dramatic uptake in the use of smart cards for ID credentials, physical access control and information systems security and online identity authentication. The OSCA award winners all have major achievements to their credit for creating this trend."

The recipient of the Outstanding Individual OSCA award was Dan Cunningham, the co-founder and CEO of Raak Technologies. For more than 20 years, Cunningham has shown leadership, vision, support and commitment to the smart card industry in North America. Dan formerly held the position of president and CEO of Gemplus Card International Corp. and was a founding member and director of the Smart Card Alliance, Smart Card Industry Association (SCIA), the WLAN Smart Card Consortium and the Austin Wireless Alliance Steering Committee. Dan's work in these multi-industry bodies and companies helped shape the industry during its formative years and that work continues today.

"I am honored that the Smart Card Alliance has selected me for this award," Cunningham stated. "Those of us that were involved in the start of this industry in the United States twenty years ago envisioned a future date when most individuals here would carry a smart card. With the widespread use of GSM SIMs, contactless payments, transit cards and, in the near future, passports with contactless chips, that date is almost here."

The Outstanding End User Organization award was presented to the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) for creating and implementing the Department of Defense (DoD) Common Access Card (CAC) program. They have issued 5.5 million smart cards since the program's inception and currently there are over 3 million CACs in circulation. The DMDC team boosted the smart card industry through extensive efforts to communicate with other departments and agencies of the federal government, sharing ideas, lessons learned and solutions. These efforts played an important role in creating a consensus approach that spread to other government smart card ID programs, culminating in an effort to create a common ID card throughout the federal government that became official government policy recently with President Bush's signing of the recent Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12.

"We are honored to accept this award on behalf of the Department of Defense," said Mary Dixon, deputy director of DMDC. "This began and continues as a team effort, both within the Department of Defense, with several of our sister federal agencies and with many of the department's commercial partners."

The Outstanding Supplier Organization award went to Axalto, which has proven its leadership in the smart card industry both through market success and extensive support of the industry. Axalto is a major supplier to the DMDC as well as other federal government and commercial card programs in North America. Axalto executives are at the forefront of smart card advocacy efforts in Washington, D.C., leading or contributing to numerous published reports and actively participating in and sponsoring industry conferences that deal with secure identification technology and applications. Axalto was recently selected as one of the vendors to supply its technology to the Department of State e-passport trials.

"As the world's leading producer of high-end microprocessor cards, it has been our obligation to help drive the adoption of the technology in North America," said Paul Beverly, president of Axalto, Americas. "We are honored to have been chosen for this award, which really should go to our customers, as they have been the reason for our success."

The award judges consisted of North American industry leaders along with individuals from the analyst and media communities: Phil Becker, Digital ID World; Ernest Berger, Gemplus; Brad Grimes, Washington Technology; John Gould, TowerGroup; Steve Hunt, Forrester; Bryan Ichikawa, Unisys; Klaus Peter Kungl, IBM; Eric Lundquist, eWeek; Zachary Martin, ID Newswire; and Karthik Nagarajan, Frost & Sullivan.