By Calvin Biesecker
The Defense Department late last month formally turned on its new biometric database that features multimodal storage and matching capabilities as well as fusion technology that further boosts the likelihood of positively identifying a suspected insurgent or terrorist.
The Next Generation Automated Biometric Identification System (NGA) replaced the current DoD ABIS prototype on Jan. 30 as part of an ongoing development effort by Northrop Grumman [NOC], which beat Lockheed Martin [LMT] for the contract two years ago (Defense Daily, Jan. 23, 2007). Lockheed Martin developed the ABIS prototype.
“The new technology and the fusion algorithm are the kickers,” Greg Fritz, product director, for the Biometric Enterprise Core Capability, said in a statement. “Not only does the new system provide better matching algorithms against four distinct biometric modalities, it is also able to synthesize what would formerly be ‘maybe’ matches (yellow resolves) in a single modality into automatic matches across multiple modalities. This means that, around the clock, NGA will make more ‘lights out’ automatic identifications, dramatically improving biometric support to warfighters around the globe.”
For example, with NGA the multimodal biometric features can combine a weak match against a poor quality fingerprint that is in the repository with a much stronger iris match to increase the confidence of an identity, Ken Lehman, vice president of Identity Management at Northrop Grumman’s Information and Systems Sector, told Defense Daily yesterday.
“I may have a bad quality print and now if I take that…and also associate it with let’s say either iris, or palm or face, now I can raise the confidence about specifically hitting that identity and do that in a manner that I can do it via automation rather than have to have human intervention” to improve the confidence of a match, Lehman said.
The ABIS prototype developed by Lockheed Martin was largely a database for storing fingerprints, and to a very limited degree other biometrics such as iris images. The database has been built up in part by capturing fingerprints and other biometrics from suspected and captured insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Design of ABIS began in 2000 and it was launched four years later with the capability to handle 2 million biometric records and 2,000 transactions per day. The repository has grown to over 3 million records. The Army’s Biometrics Task Force (BTF), which made the first official announcement yesterday about the switch-on of NGA, said that when the ABIS system began operating in 2004 it had an “acceptable” turnaround time for anyone submitting a biometric for a search.
The NGA will handle as many as 4.2 million records, 8,000 transactions per day, and give a response time in two to 10 minutes.
“That’s a big deal for our priority customers,” Sam Aloi, chief of the BTF Technical Management Branch, said in a statement.
In addition to fingerprints, the other biometric modalities that can be ingested and searched in NGA are iris images, facial photos and palm prints. The new system also features blade server technology that allows for increased modularity as other technologies are adopted and scaled to accommodate future growth.
The BTF said that ABIS will be retained as a backup for NGA.
Over the next year, Northrop Grumman will continue to support the BTF and the Army Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems, which is managing the ABIS and NGA programs, Lehman said. That work will include supporting emerging requirements such as other biometric modalities, continuing to scale up the system, developing better ways to share information as well as maintaining the system, Lehman said.
Northrop Grumman’s teammates for NGA include Ideal Innovations, Inc., L-1 Identity Solutions [ID], Microsoft [MSFT], IBM [IBM], Symantec [SYMC], Red Hat, NetIQ, NetApp, New Bold Enterprises, Oracle [ORCL] and Cisco [CSCO].