Customs and Border Protection (CBP) last Friday said it doesn’t expect to use a large system integrator to design the backend capabilities for its planned rollout in 2018 of a biometric exit capability that will help track the departure of foreign nationals as they leave the U.S. from airports.
“We are looking at innovative procurement options including public/private partnerships, smaller procurements, and leveraging DHS enterprise capabilities,” CBP said in a March 3 notice in the government’s FedBizOpps.gov business opportunities listing. “However, CBP does not envision one large systems integrator procurement to support air, land and sea environments.”
In the past year or more CBP has performed various biometric technology pilots at different airports and a land port of entry to gauge operating concepts, develop requirements, and test how well different types of technologies would work such as fingerprints, face and iris capture. Last year the agency began to settle on facial recognition, at least for deployments at U.S. airports with large volumes of departing international flights.
Congress has already authorized CBP to take advantage of $1 billion in fee increases to be used over 10 years to help with deploying a biometric exit system. Early last year then Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson directed the agency to begin work toward rolling out a biometric exit capability at the largest U.S. international airports in 2018.
CBP hasn’t provided any schedule for its deployment plans and various government communications have sent mixed signals on the agency’s plans to roll out a biometric exit capability. Last Friday’s notice says the agency “is committed to delivering a solution at the top Gateway Airports in 2018.”
In late February, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report saying that CBP is planning to deploy a biometric exit system to at least one airport in 2018, suggesting that the agency might be backing away from plans to roll out a system to multiple airports based on Johnson’s direction.
The GAO report cautioned that CBP can’t complete its planning process on biometric exit until it works out partnership agreements with airports and airlines in order to reduce costs and give industry more control how such a capability is deployed.
In late January, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order that attempted to temporarily suspend travel to the U.S. by foreign nationals from seven countries. That order contained a provision directing DHS to expedite deployments of a biometric entry and exit capability at U.S. land, air and seaports for all travelers to the U.S.. The order was eventually blocked by a federal court but on March 6 Trump rescinded the previous order an issued a new one, which also includes the call to accelerate the deployment of the biometric entry and exit system. The biometric checks under the new order only apply to “in-scope” travelers to the U.S., which likely narrows the affected population to foreign nationals.
In early February, after Trump’s original Executive Order, CBP said it is accelerating its plan to rollout a biometric exit solution and would soon provide deployment schedules. The agency still hasn’t done so.
A senior DHS official speaking with media during a background briefing on Monday ahead of Trump signing the new EO said that “we’re not in a place to announce anything in terms of any timelines,” adding that the president has directed DHS to “ramp up its efforts to deploy it as quickly as possible.” He added that CBP is “working diligently to ensure that we meet that obligation.”
CBP said in its March 3 announcement that for the backend system design and integration of its biometric exit system it will take advantage of existing contracts. The agency is currently doing pilot testing of a facial recognition capability at Atlanta’s Hartsfield Jackson International Airport on one departing international flight each day. That effort is called the Departure Information Systems Test (DIST).
Using the DIST contract vehicle, “CBP is designing and building a back-end, facial recognition, cloud-based solution that will enable matching for biometric data stored by flight manifests,” the agency says in the March 3 FBO notice. “The back-end system will interface with airline and other third party providers.”
CBP has used its Integrated Traveler Initiatives (ITI) contract, which was awarded under the DHS EAGLE II contract vehicle, to integrate its biometric pilot efforts. Unisys [UIS] is the contractor for ITI.
This spring and early summer CBP said it expect to expand the DIST effort “in conjunction with the back-end cloud solution to eight locations.” The agency also said it is working with its air travel partners on how its biometric platform will “integrate with their efforts to streamline the travel process.”
In comments included in the recent GAO report, CBP says it has transitioned the facial recognition pilot test to the Biometric Verification System, demonstrating that the congressionally-mandated exit solution is beginning to take shape.
CBP in the FBO notice listed six opportunities if foresees for industry to support the biometric exit mission. These are cloud services, facial recognition matching software, equipment for entry lanes to include fingerprint readers, cameras and ePassport readers, program management support, innovation experiments, and solutions for land and sea environments.
CBP last fall began outlining its grand vision for a biometric-based platform that would include the air travel industry and even the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which controls the security checkpoints at all U.S. airports for travelers before they enter the secure side of a terminal.
TSA is planning on doing biometric pilots this year, including one related to exit solutions that could work as part of CBP’s platform.
President Trump’s new Executive Order, just like the one in January, requires reporting every few months on the status of deploying biometric entry and exit tracking systems.