Department Of State Uses RFID Asset Tracking Solution

  • Oct 15, 2009

The Department of State is tagging 10,000 mission critical IT assets with passive RFID to save money, increase security and reduce administrative burden.

The State Department chose ODIN to provide a turn-key IT Asset tracking solution. ODIN’s packaged solution is secure, faster to deploy and drives a quicker ROI than integrating separate RFID products or using bar code technology.

The State Department’s IT Asset system, based on RFID, is part of a growing trend within the federal government to leverage RFID 2.0, the latest in transformational technology. RFID 2.0 is passive RFID technology that is gaining widespread adoption mainly because costs have declined significantly, performance has improved dramatically in the past 12 months, and a global ISO standard has stabilized.

“The State Department is using RFID technology to save taxpayers money by dramatically reducing administrative burden,” said ODIN’s founder Patrick J. Sweeney II. “The added security of having RFID-tagged assets will keep sensitive information where it belongs. After all, no federal agency wants to find itself on the front page of the Washington Post.”

Initially the State Department started with a trial of the technology to ensure that the business process within their agency would benefit from RFID. Once the technology was proven, they decided to start an agency-wide program by tagging 10,000 critical assets with UHF Gen 2.0 passive RFID tags. The tags are based on the same standard in use by the Department of Defense and other federal agencies.

“There were many choices of RFID components, but only one or two solutions providers with deep expertise and a complete physics-to-software solution. We chose ODIN because they've completed hundreds of successful RFID projects and have a heritage in RFID physics going back to MIT,” said Kirk Ingvoldstad at the Department of State. “After using barcode and thousands of labor hours to track assets for the past 20 years, it is well past time for a new technology. Passive RFID from ODIN was the right choice for a higher level of security and cost savings.”

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