Chairman wants details on $133M contract to protect hack victims

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) is asking for details on the $133 million contract to provide identity theft protection services for those affected by the massive hack at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

Identity Theft Guard Solutions, doing business as ID Experts, will provide assistance for the 21.5 million federal employees, contractors and others whose personal information was compromised in the data breach.

The contract was awarded by the Department of Defense and the OPM in early September.

{mosads}In a letter to the Defense Department, Chaffetz demanded a copy of the contract, as well as documents detailing who will be covered, the cost of the services and a timeline for notifying victims.

The OPM said when it announced the contract that the Defense Department would begin sending direct notifications at the end of this month and take several weeks. The agency declined to give a more specific timeline.

Because the contract was not awarded until two months after the second, more significant breach was revealed, some victims may not find out their data was taken until November.

ID Experts will be under close scrutiny after the firm contracted to handle the first OPM breach — which compromised roughly 4.2 million personnel files — faced fierce criticism from federal workers and lawmakers.

Critics lambasted contractor CSID for having a website that crashed easily and lengthy phone waits to speak to a representative. Affected individuals were also critical of notification emails from CSID addresses that many people mistook for a scam.

Chaffetz has requested that the committee receive the requested documents by Sept. 29.