The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is looking for an app that would not only allow its 18,000 employees to display their vaccination status when entering a NASA facility but also help the space agency efficiently survey, report and analyse data on the immunisation status of its workforce.
This is as an act of compliance with the Presidential Executive Order that mandates vaccination of federal employees. Agencies need to be able to validate the vaccination of an employee, provide a method of display of that vaccination, and report analytics of the number of employees vaccinated, while simultaneously maintaining the privacy and security of employee data.
Agencies must require documentation from employees of their immunisation record that includes the date of vaccine administration and the name of the health care organisation providing the vaccine. That documentation can be a paper or digital record that clearly and legibly displays the required information.
The technology must also allow manual input of data as well as take a photo or upload proof of vaccination. The technology must allow for input of either the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) emergency use authorisation COVID or rapid antigen tests and the time/date of the test and result.
While agencies must collect information necessary to verify that an employee is fully vaccinated, they may develop their own processes, systems, tool or applications for data collection and maintenance — provided they allow employees to update their vaccination status and related information,
To meet those requirements, NASA issued a pre-solicitation for technologies and software that could be downloaded to a smartphone that will allow employees to display their vaccination status before entering a NASA facility. Users must be able to manually input data as well as upload a photo of a proof-of-vaccination document and any booster shots. The solution must also allow for results from rapid antigen tests, including the time/date of the test and result, and alert app users to a positive test result and when a completed test is more than seven days old.
To maintain the security and privacy of the data, the app should verify the employee’s identity either through biometrics or a scan of a driver’s license or other government-issued ID. Uploaded data must be encrypted and converted into a QR code or a colour-coded indicator so vaccine status can be easily checked upon entering a NASA facility.
The solution should include a reader or a downloadable smartphone application that can read the QR code in order to identify if an employee meets the criteria. Aggregated data must be exportable to allow for reports analysing overall employee vaccination rates
The request for information asks potential vendors if their solution can meet federal data requirements for storing COVID testing data, such as the Federal Information Security Modernisation Act for overall cybersecurity and the Federal Risk and Authorisation Management Program for cloud-service security controls.
As reported by OpenGov Asia, many U.S. states have introduced a secure digital option for residents to provide proof of vaccination against COVID-19, including Minnesota. Using an app called Docket, Minnesotans can now view and share their immunisation records with local businesses, restaurants and other public venues where COVID vaccination is required.
The release of the app comes after the state Department of Health has been flooded with requests for vaccination records. So far this year, there have been more than 33,000 vaccine record requests, with 19,000 coming since July 1.
The app allows residents to access a digital copy of their vaccination records without having to sign up for an app specifically intended for verifying COVID-19 vaccines. Docket uses two-factor security and searches for immunisation records based on a person’s name and date of birth.