Their own words...
The TWIC enrollments are well underway. After verifying system readiness, TWIC enrollments began in Wilmington, Delaware, on Tuesday, October 16, 2007. I am pleased to report to you that today we have fixed enrollment centers operating at 54 ports, including all 50 of the ports we originally designated, including such major ports as Baltimore, Los Angeles/Long Beach, New York/New Jersey, Jacksonville, and Houston. In fact, this morning, we opened enrollment centers at two more ports in Bourne, Massachusetts, and Green Bay, Wisconsin. Currently, almost 110,000 applicants have pre-enrolled for a TWIC, almost 50,000 have actually enrolled with slightly more than 25,000 cards printed and almost 12,000 cards activated. The average TWIC enrollment time for a port worker is less than 11 minutes.
As required by the SAFE Port Act, in cooperation with the USCG we have initiated pilot programs with five partners across the country to test card readers. The pilots will test access control technologies in real world marine environments. Our current list of participants includes the Port Authorities of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Brownsville, and New York/New Jersey, in addition to Watermark Cruises in Annapolis, Maryland. For FY 2008, Congress appropriated $8.1 million to support the card reader pilots, enabling TSA and the USCG to move forward with this important program. As part of the outreach efforts for the TWIC program and in conjunction with the Department's Port Security Grant Program, we continue to seek additional participants. Our objective is to include pilot test participants that are representative of a variety of facilities and vessels in a variety of geographic locations and environmental conditions. There appears to be sufficient interest from the maritime community to achieve this objective.
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