Northrop Grumman [NOC] yesterday said it has received a follow-on task order potentially worth $141 million to continue developing and supporting the Defense Department’s Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS), the Defense Department’s authoritative database for the storage and matching of fingerprints and other biometrics by United States forces. The award was made under the Army’s Information Technology Enterprise Solutions 2 Services indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract and has a one-year base period and four one-year options. The value of the award in the base year is about $40 million, Frank Griffin, Northrop Grumman’s program manager for DoD ABIS, tells our sister publication Defense Daily
. Northrop Grumman unseated incumbent Lockheed Martin [LMT] in late 2006 to develop and deploy the new ABIS system, which goes beyond fingerprint storage and matching to include other biometric modalities. The next-generation ABIS system is operated and maintained by the Biometrics Identity Management Agency (BIMA). The next-generation biometric system went operational in early 2009. Demand for the system’s services continue to grow, Dr. Thomas Killion, director of BIMA, said earlier this year. In addition to fingerprints, the DoD ABIS system also stores face, iris and palm print records for persons of interest. Another key feature of the system is that using data fusion capabilities, the system’s advanced algorithms can use partial matches from different biometrics that have been captured to increase the likelihood of an automatic match, Griffin says. Under the award Northrop Grumman will “enhance, integrate and maintain and provide training for this scalable enterprise solution,” Griffin says. System upgrades will include government and commercial off-the-shelf technologies, he says. As for scalability, Griffin says that currently DoD ABIS is storing a “little over” six million biometric records. The system also has a daily throughput of between 8,000 and 10,000 transactions, he said. Under the new contract the storage will be scaled to greater than five times current capacity and be able to handle up to 40,000 transactions daily, he says. Northrop Grumman’s teammates under the new task order include Booz Allen Hamilton [BAH], Science Applications International Corp. [SAI], Six3 Systems, SRA International [SRX], E&M Technologies, NEW-BOLD Enterprises, Ultra-Scan Corp., MPL Corp., and STS International. These companies together are bringing expertise in training, software development, case management, biometric-enabled watch lists, interoperability and disaster recovery for continuance of operations, Griffin says. L-1 Identity Solutions [ID] continues to provide its biometric matching algorithms for the DoD ABIS program, Griffin says.