A Letter from the GAO Regarding RFID
Today I stumbled across an interesting letter. It was written two years ago, by officials at the Government Accountability Office, and sent to Secretary Rumsfeld. Essentially, the letter reveals one of the major pitfalls of active RFID solutions: failure to create procedures for staff that will allow the organization to use the tags as planned.
The Department of Defense originally planned their active RFID system under the assumption that used active tags would be sent back to the Defense Logistics Agency for re-use. Unfortunately, according to the letter:
"Army, Navy, Air Force, U.S. Transportation Command, and DLA officials informed us that few active RFID tags were being returned or reused. Army and DLA officials estimated that rates of tag returns had been 10 percent before Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, and 3 percent after."
The letter lists the price of the military's RFID tags at $100 each, which means that they are spending millions of dollars each year replacing tags which were intended to be re-used.
The letter goes on to beg Secretary Rumsfeld to change DoD policy to require tags to be re-used.
The really disappointing part of this is that the military's RFID program began in 1997, and this problem wasn't reported until nearly a decade later. This goes to emphasize the importance of planning in RFID deployments, and making sure all the players have bought into the program prior to the 'go live' date.
If you are interested, you can read the letter here: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06366r.pdf
The Department of Defense originally planned their active RFID system under the assumption that used active tags would be sent back to the Defense Logistics Agency for re-use. Unfortunately, according to the letter:
"Army, Navy, Air Force, U.S. Transportation Command, and DLA officials informed us that few active RFID tags were being returned or reused. Army and DLA officials estimated that rates of tag returns had been 10 percent before Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, and 3 percent after."
The letter lists the price of the military's RFID tags at $100 each, which means that they are spending millions of dollars each year replacing tags which were intended to be re-used.
The letter goes on to beg Secretary Rumsfeld to change DoD policy to require tags to be re-used.
The really disappointing part of this is that the military's RFID program began in 1997, and this problem wasn't reported until nearly a decade later. This goes to emphasize the importance of planning in RFID deployments, and making sure all the players have bought into the program prior to the 'go live' date.
If you are interested, you can read the letter here: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06366r.pdf
Labels: RFID
posted by Mika Lofton at
10:45 AM
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