Operations at Unalaska’s local TWIC office went smoothly this week, despite the failure of several off-site TSA servers on Saturday.

An alert was sent Monday that the office’s services would be limited because of technical difficulties experienced by MorphoTrust, a contractor with the Transportation Security Administration. The server outage was expected to prevent the activation of transportation worker identification credential cards – or TWIC cards for short. The cards are often a requirement for employment at secure maritime facilities in Unalaska.

John Fulton is the assistant city manager and one of the managers of the TWIC office. He says that the problem was fixed in time for the office’s weekly opening on Tuesday.

"MorphoTrust was able to resolve the server issues, and we were able to function as normal," says Fulton.

Meanwhile, staff is getting ready for the City of Unalaska to hand over operations of the TWIC office to an outside contractor. Because the closest TWIC facility to Unalaska is in Anchorage, the city has volunteered staff time since 2011 so that credentialing can be done locally. In August, a TSA official announced that the agency would require its contractors to provide services in Unalaska. The transition is expected to take place early next year.