OMB believes that this architecture should integrate agency work processes and information flows with technology to achieve the agency's strategic goals. Mr. McConnell discussed a conceptual model of the IT architecture, which is included in the draft discussion paper. OMB proposes the issuance of this paper, or a similar one, as agency guidance. Comments are due to OMB by March 26, 1997. The approach is to work with industry, academia, federal, state, and local governments to design a public key infrastructure, based on standards and interoperable COTS products, which supports the management of public key certificates and associated services.
Membership consists of senior government officials currently involved in public key projects.
Regarding the Emergency Access Demonstration Project, Ms. Edfors said the Interagency Working Group on Cryptography Policy established a task group to demonstrate the practicability of a key recovery regime as an element of a key management infrastructure. Ten federal pilots have been selected to test various techniques, products, and services for key recovery. Demonstrations will begin in April 1997. The evaluation period will end within 12 months. It provides awareness and reference materials, lists of security-related seminars and conferences, recent NIST and other publications that address information security issues, virus software reviews, and archives of computer security incident alert information issued by various computer security response centers.