This article was originally published by RFID Update.
November 12, 2004—It was announced at last week’s RFID Opportunities for Transport and Logistic Providers conference in Dallas that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is pushing back the deadline for compliance with its RFID mandate. Originally set for January 1, 2005, compliance will now not be required until February at the earliest. A “lack of documented specification” by the DOD and Office of Management and Budget, the executive agency that advises the President on the federal budget, is the reported reason for the delay. The DOD’s RFID implementation mandate plan seeks to give suppliers 90 days to comply from the release date of the specification in question. That remains the plan, so if, in the words of the DOD’s chief of automatic identification technology Ed Coyle, “[the specification isn’t released] until Jan. 1, then [the compliance deadline] will be the first of April.” It is unclear exactly when the specification can be expected, with “soon” being the only hint. Many will wonder if this news from the DOD foretells a similar deadline delay by Wal-Mart. Doubtful. It appears that the delay in this case is the simple result of standard government bureaucratic drag that doesn’t afflict Wal-Mart.
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