TAMPA, Fla.—The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shortly is expected to release a call for bids for the first block of its new biometric database and matching, the Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART), once the department’s top management official approves the acquisition plans, department officials said on Tuesday.
The DHS Acquisition Review Board headed by Russel Deyo, undersecretary for Management and Chief Acquisition Officer, is scheduled to review the HART plans next Wednesday. Based on internal discussions program officials are “confident” that Deyo will approve the plans and release of the Request for Proposals (RFP) for increments one and two will follow, David Grauel, program manager for HART within the DHS Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM), said at the annual AFCEA Global Identity Summit here.
Grauel said that release of the RFP is “imminent” and other DHS officials believe that once the approvals are in, it will be about a week or so before the solicitation is issued. Grauel cautioned that there are “a lot of moving parts” to getting the RFP out quickly.
Grauel expects an award decision during the fourth quarter of the federal government’s FY ’17, which begins Oct. 1.
The RFP originally was slated to be issued during the third quarter of FY ’16 with an award for increments one and two during the fourth quarter.
The HART system will replace the current IDENT biometric database, matching and sharing system that was first deployed in 1994 with about 1 million records and several thousand daily transactions. Following 9/11, the number of biometric records and daily transactions stored and facilitated by IDENT grew dramatically to where it now stores more than 200 million biometric identities and processes more than 300,000 transactions and verifies about 7,000 derogatory matches per day.
The IDENT system “is still going strong” and DHS will keep it going for two more years but it is “stressed,” Patrick Nemeth, identity operations Director for OBIM, said at the conference. OBIM is working on bridging strategies for IDENT until HART comes online, he said.
Grauel said several studies in the past five years show that IDENT has outgrown its design and is at risk of a “catastrophic outage.”
DHS projects that the number of biometric identities in IDENT and eventually HART will grow to 220 million in 2017 and 260 million by 2020.
The first increment of HART will take about 18 months to complete and is expected to be deployed in 2018, marking initial operational capability of the system. The second increment will follow in 2019. The first increment will replicate the IDENT system but with better infrastructure and performance, giving HART the ability to continue scaling as demands on the system grow.
The second increment will provide for additional biometric modalities. IDENT is overwhelmingly a fingerprint-based system with a limited iris and even more limited face recognition capability. Increment two of the program will allow for the face and iris storage, matching and sharing capabilities to scale up and provide the infrastructure for additional modalities based on user requirements. Some modalities that have been discussed include DNA, palm prints, voice recognition, signatures, and scars, marks and tattoos.
Japan’s NEC Corp. is currently providing the matching algorithms for iris and face with the iris capability being a one-to-one and one-to-many matching and the face matching recognition a one-to-one capability. A one-to-many face recognition capability is expected to be added soon. This face and iris capability being built into IDENT will serve as bridge to the multimodal capability of HART.
Increment two will also contain a multimodal biometric fusion capability, which refers to improving the likelihood of a match by using more than one biometric modality.
Even though the federal government is expected to begin FY ’17 under a continuing resolution, which typically prevents new programs from starting, an award for the increment one with an option for increment two should go forward as planned as increment one is based on prior year funding, Shonnie Lyon, director of OBIM, told Defense Daily. There is about $65 million available in FY ’16 funds to start the first increment.
It’s too early to say when the task order for the second increment might be awarded, Lyon said. DHS has requested around $58 million for HART in FY ’17 and the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have agreed with the request.
Current acquisition plans for HART also include increments three and four, although they are not part of the upcoming competition. Increment three will include access to the system through a web portal and provide users with a more data, giving them a more holistic view of a subject being queried. During this phase of the program is when OBIM expects to explore additional biometric modalities and possibly begin adding them to HART.
Increment four would see the possible inclusion of more biometric modalities and when the current candidate verification tool used in IDENT will be replaced. Increment three is scheduled to be deployed in 2020 and increment four in 2021, which is when the system would attain full operational capability.