RFID technology has been around for more than half a century. Governments and businesses are finally reaping the rewards.

Wal-Mart's mandate that its suppliers institute radio frequency ID (RFID) has thrust this technology into the limelight recently. But Jim E. Davis, strategic account manager in Sun Federal, Inc., points out that active RFID has been in use since World War II. During that conflict, the RAF employed the technology to track fighter bombers over the English Channel. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), Davis continues, has been utilizing active RFID tags since the early 1980s to keep tabs on equipment.

Now, along with Wal-Mart, several government agencies have mandated that suppliers provide passive RFID tags for tracking merchandise, matériel, and the like, and suppliers are scrambling to meet the mandates.

Because of all this, RFID use is poised to become widespread, according to Vijay Sarathay, product line manager for the Sun Auto-ID Infrastructure Solution. Sarathay says that several factors are combining to make the long-held promise of RFID a reality. "It's as if a perfect storm is happening," says Sarathay, "where multiple forces are acting together to cause great demand for Auto-ID technology."

One force is the tags' becoming less expensive, due to technology advances. The Auto-ID Center drove costs down further by standardizing on the protocols and the interfaces, encouraging more people to use the technology. That, in turn, created momentum that inspired tag manufacturers to create new manufacturing processes to help further drive down the costs.

Lower costs, coupled with the technology's ability to keep track of things from cradle to grave, have caused numerous government agencies to embrace RFID.

Agencies Look at RFID

General Services Administration. The U.S. General Services Administration has mandated the use of RFID to help it manage information on the buildings, fleets of cars, and myriad products it oversees, says Rebecca Chisolm, manager of Civilian Strategic Programs at Sun.

Cost reduction and greater efficiency are key driving factors behind the GSA mandate. The agency is implementing RFID as opposed to a paper-based or file-based system, both to reduce the cost of processing transactions and to lower the cost of doing business. Cutting cycle times and providing responses to customers more quickly will increase the GSA's efficiency.

Airports. Airports are another prime opportunity for RFID deployment, according to Tom Lynch, district sales manager. "Airports, which are generally run by city or county agencies, have an obvious need for total, all-around security."

Through use of RFID, airports can centralize the screening of luggage by employing a central facility that provides better security, detection, and luggage isolation, without adding to the time it takes to check luggage through to an airline. Airports can increase the effectiveness of baggage screening and security and reduce labor and maintenance costs by moving baggage sorting from many terminals to a centralized facility.

The airline industry has been examining the possibility of using RFID to track baggage for more than five years, according to RFID Journal, a publication that covers the technology. The journal notes that currently bags can be thrown onto a conveyor and end up in any orientation. As a result, bar code readers scan baggage tags only 30 percent of the time, according to the FAA. Because RFID doesn't require line of sight, it has the potential to improve read rates.

Beyond the security concerns voiced by Lynch, airlines like RFID's ability to improve baggage sorting and tracking and to streamline check-in systems—and its potential to be used in cargo and mail tracking as well as to identify passengers enrolled in frequent-flier programs.

The U.S. Postal Service. This agency, which touches nearly every citizen in the country, handles billions of pieces of mail annually, and to boost the efficiency of its operations, the service is considering putting RFID capabilities on postage stamps, in order to track and locate mail much more quickly.

Food and Drug Administration. The FDA is looking at putting RFID tags into pharmaceutical labels. The aim is to be able to find exactly where on the shelf a drug is and how long it has been there. Such information would be extremely valuable during drug recalls or for more effectively verifying expiration dates.

Internal Revenue Service. No sooner did the United States issue a new, allegedly more counterfeit-proof 20-dollar bill than counterfeiters had fake bills in circulation. Technology makes counterfeiting relatively easy, so the IRS wants to fight technology with technology. The agency is interested in the possibility of putting RFID in money to prevent, or at least minimize, counterfeiting.

Currently RFID technology exists at the "pallet level" within retail and distribution supply chains, but the government agencies noted above, as well as others, are looking beyond that level, to where the technology will be a few years from now.

Although RFID holds great potential for government agencies, it is important that they first examine their business processes to determine where and how the technology best fits into or may supplant existing processes.

In the long run, for governments, RFID technology is ideally suited for determining what a given entity is, where it is located, how long it has been in that location, where it came from, and where it is going.