The new system to identify the 50,000 patrons requiring base access was rolled out on Jan. 4, and in just three days, more than 1,180 people have gone to get new identification cards made at one of the six registering stations on base.
Staff Sgt. Joshua Allen, 42nd Security Forces Squadron NCO in charge of pass and registration, said that the registration process has been well received among those who access the base.
There are a lot of benefits to a system like this. The first and most obvious is increased security. Then, increased efficiency of security personnel can bring positive ROI. We talk about these things here all the time.
These types of identity management systems can also play a very important, even life-saving, role in an emergency. They accomplish this through better data capture and management. In a deployment like this, Security Forces Squadron Officers will have a much better idea of who is on base and where they are at any given moment.
If, for example, there's an explosion and fire in a given structure, and the information exists to determine exactly who was in the building, emergency workers can more quickly determine whether all people known to have been in the building are accounted for. This makes it both less likely that emergency workers will give up on possible survivors too early and less likely that they will spend too much time in extreme danger looking for people who aren't there.
This "better safety through better data" application of identity management technology applies in a lot of places but to military bases the application is obvious.
