The Department of Homeland Security Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM) has selected three companies to compete for the systems integrator role for a new biometric database to replace the existing IDENT system.
CSRA, Inc. [CSRA], Leidos [LDOS], and Northrop Grumman [NOC] are expected to submit bids by April 7 for the Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology program, also called HART. The prime contract is only available to companies that are on the DHS EAGLE II contract.
The initial procurement will be for the first two increments of the multimodal biometric system, which would include fingerprints, face and iris matching and storage. The IDENT system is largely based on fingerprints and includes limited face and iris capabilities.
The fingerprint matching software for IDENT is supplied by 3M Corp.’s [MMM] Cogent business unit. Japan’s NEC Corp. supplies the low volume iris and face matching capabilities for IDENT.
The OBIM office part of the National Protection and Programs Directorate within DHS. The office says that HART will provide scalability to add capacity and potentially other biometric modalities over time, and will speed up transactions. IDENT is running out of capacity and is expensive to maintain.
The pending contract will be for the first two increments of HART. The first increment will include fingerprint matching and analysis capabilities that encompass OBIM’s current 10-print and 2-print matching subsystems—provided by 3M—either by replacing or incorporating those subsystems, according to the solicitation that was issued in February.
Latent fingerprint management and analysis capabilities will also be part of Increment 1. The existing Multimodal Bridge Solution subsystem that provides the low volume face and iris matching for IDENT and is supplied by NEC will also be part of Increment 1.
The second increment will build on the business processing workflows implemented in the core application in the first increment. It will also feature full-scale iris and facial image matching and storage, and fusion capabilities that leverage the results from multiple biometric matching operations to increase overall accuracy.
Increments 3 and 4, the final two phases of HART, are not part of the current solicitation. Increment 3 will establish web access to the HART services provided in the first two increments, including identification, pre-verification, information retrieval, notification and others. The third increment will also add more biometric modalities for storage and retrieval but not for matching.
The fourth increment will integrate biometric verification and identity management across multiple modalities and introduce capabilities for data analysis.
Deployment of the first increment will constitute initial operating capability and completion of Increment 4 will satisfy full operating capability of HART.